The European Commission opened competition for the world's biggest investment programme in green technologies yesterday (9 November), in a bid to gain a competitive advantage over the US and China on renewables and carbon capture and storage.

Approximately €4.5 billion will be made available to at least 34 innovative renewable energy and eight carbon capture and underground storage (CCS) projects.

The money will be raised by selling 300 million carbon permits from the 'New Entrant Reserve' of the EU's emissions trading scheme (EU ETS) for greenhouse gases.

Right now there’s a lot of focus at the Federal government level here in the United States on creating jobs. Of course, anyone who thinks government can create jobs doesn’t really understand how jobs in the private sector are created.

Government cannot create jobs. What government can do is make an environment that encourages businesses to do more hiring. And government definitely can get in the way of new businesses and the employees they may hire.

It’s that time of year when we begin looking ahead to the coming year. In fact, with 2010 drawing to a close (can you believe it?), it’s that time when business owners begin looking ahead to the coming decade. If you want to know what the next 10 years have in store, take a closer look at a new report from Intuit.

Intuit 2020 Report: 20 Trends That Will Shape the Next Decade builds on more than five years of research led by the Institute for the Future and Emergent Research. It is the first in a series of reports looking at key trends affecting consumers and businesses in the coming years. Subsequent reports will drill down into specific trends and industries, but the current report presents a broad overview.

Creating a business plan is the best indicator of whether your business will grow. Planning doesn't have to be difficult or take weeks of your time. The 1 HOUR PLAN for GROWTH will help you create a clear and compelling plan that fits on a single page in about an hour.

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As Silicon Valley events go, it was an irresistible draw: Marc Andreessen, Web wunderkind turned venture capitalist, interviewing Michael Ovitz, former superagent and co-founder of the Creative Artists Agency.

The conversation between the pair of icons, staged last month in a packed conference room in the offices of Andreessen Horowitz—Silicon Valley's newest, hottest venture capital firm—turned out to be a lovefest. Ovitz, the most powerful man in Hollywood before his career imploded in the mid-1990s after a disastrous stint at Disney (DIS), called his friendship with Andreessen "one of the single most important relationships in my life." Andreessen, co-founder of Netscape, the Web browser company whose 1995 initial public offering kicked off the Internet era, said he modeled his VC firm on CAA. "A lot of what we're trying to do with Andreessen Horowitz is based on what Michael was doing at CAA and his theories about how to build a high-quality service firm," Andreessen said.

The Burn: Being led astray as a result of blindly accepting “well-intended” advice

The Diagnosis: After starting my first business at age 15 and watching it grow quickly only to fail less than 24months later, I became fascinated by the workings of success. Why do some people and businesses succeed while others don’t? This question consumed me.

For almost a decade now, I have been interviewing successful individuals (businesspeople, athletes, artists, musicians, and the extraordinarily fulfilled) to discover the formula for success. While there were certainly some common themes among my findings, perhaps the most surprising and consistent discovery was how often the advice was really quite poor.

Of course, it is still wise to seek feedback, but I dare to make a bold and cautionary claim: Most advice is bad advice. This is so because of three fundamental factors…

On the 21st of October a one day conference entitled “Re-setting science and innovation (in NZ) for the next 20 years” was held in Wellington. The conference was organised by the New Zealand Association of Scientists in collaboration with Victoria University’s Institute of Policy Studies and featured presentations from many of the big players – the Minister for Research, Science and Technology, New Zealand’s Chief Science Advisor, the President of the Royal Society, high flying researchers, all providing their perspectives on science and innovation in New Zealand.

In this report, I will try and summarise the key themes emerging from the talks, describe some highlights, low points, and conclude with some of my own observations.

BioRegio STERN Management GmbH has won the second competition for strengthening regional clusters in Baden-Württemberg, under which the Baden-Württemberg Ministry of Economic Affairs will provide up to €200,000 for the “Engineering - Life Sciences – Automation” (ELSA) cluster initiative, which aim to bring together the life sciences and engineer-driven industries, over the next two years.

BioRegio STERN Management is a skills-sharing network that provides support and media services to the biotechnology and life science companies in the cities of Stuttgart, Tübingen, Esslingen and Reutlingen and the Stuttgart and Neckar-Alb regions.

The aim of the ELSA cluster initiative is to link existing life sciences clusters with those from technology and engineer-driven sectors including automation technology, mechanical engineering and automotive supplies.

There’s been a lot of heat generated in the blogosphere lately about the shortage of women entrepreneurs in technology and what’s behind this problem—or if it truly is a problem, or if it even exists. While many experts were weighing in on the differences between male and female startup founders, one expert decided to investigate.

Former entrepreneur-turned-academic Vivek Wadhwa, who blogs regularly on TechCrunch, and his team analyzed the backgrounds of 652 founders of tech industry startups, as well as 549 founders of companies in other fast-growing industries. “Our research focused on successful startups—those that had made it out of the garage, had employees, and were actually generating revenue,” writes Wadhwa on TechCrunch. Here’s what they found:

The average age of a successful tech startup founder is 39; for other high-growth companies, it was 40. Overall, company founders were typically married; had two or more children; had six to 10 years of work experience.

Be envious of any person who has inherited their fortune, and appreciative of those who have earned it.

But what about the wealthy who aren't people at all? There are pets that are richer than 99% of the world. They pay to get pampered, live in resorts, have spiritual counseling, and eat steaks every night.

These ten pets own more money than most people know what to do with. The funds are in their own names, giving them the freedom to spend as they please. And most received the wealth from generous and often reclusive owners (Who else would give money to an animal!).

According to reports, Google is offering its employees a 10% pay increase for 2011 and $1000 holiday bonuses company wide. Digg layoff refugees are met with open arms by enthusiastic HR vultures. Companies in existence for two months are getting acquired for their teams. Ask.com engineers are getting job offers on Twitter the second news that they are on the market breaks.

Wait a minute, since when are Ask.com engineers such a hot piece of property?

Well, since the Silicon Valley engineering drought of 2010. GigaOm’s Om Malik brings up the shocking statistic that job postings in the IT industry have increased 69% since October of 2009. Plentiful availability of seed funding has made it easier to start a company and engendered a culture where doing your own thing is the only badass move. Read: “If I’m going to work for someone else, it better be a pretty damn good offer.”

I've now been one week on the road in my expedition to find the world's most arctic startups. I'll be honest: it feels like much longer. I am now on my way to Trondheim from Tromsø and have added over 2500 kilometres to the trip meter of the trusty Land Rover. It has given me a unique perspective into the lives of the real travelling salesmen. Each night I have slept in a different location. Each day I've driven for hours on end, with my life travelling with me. Weather conditions have varied from sunny and green, to icy, dark and snowy. I've crossed the Arctic Circle twice and even entered Sweden by mistake.

Everything has not gone has planned — things never do — but the thought of capturing more inspiring stories and fabulous ideas pushes me ever onwards. The highlights have been seeing the Lappeenranta University Entrepreneurship Society put together their first meetup, enjoying the entertaining pitches in Oulu and meeting Kim Arthur of Playfish, in Tromsø. But equally the sheer beauty of the places I have seen is such that my mind can only barely take it all in. Each bend feels like it hides yet another missed photographic opportunity.

Formal agreement has been reached for the first tranche of the UK Knowledge Economy loan from the European Investment Bank, which will provide £150 million for higher and further education, science parks and incubation centres. Further funding will be available next year as additional projects are identified and overall investment in projects supported by the UK Knowledge Economy loan is expected to reach more than £2 billion.

The programme is part of the European Investment Bank’s broader engagement to support and strengthen the UK’s knowledge economy. Eligible projects include campus redevelopments and relocation and construction of specialist science park and start-up company incubator facilities. The investment support programme will be spread over 18 months.

We have enjoyed an amazing run in the web startup and investing space over the past five or six years. In this sector of startupland, company creation is up, investment is up, there are plenty of success stories, and not all of them are based on quick flips and takeouts. There is real revenue flowing through web companies and many web startups formed in the last five or six years are operating profitably. It has been good to be a web entrepreneur and a web VC, and I think it will continue to be for quite some time.

However, there are a few storm coulds out there that we need to be watching. In particular, I think the competition for "hot" deals is making people crazy and I am seeing many more unnatural acts from investors happening. If it were just valuations rising quickly, I'd be a bit less concerned. But we are also seeing large deals ($5mm to $15mm) getting done in a few days with little or no due diligence. Investors are showing up at the first meeting with term sheets. I have never seen phases like this end nicely.

Even with all of the massive economic problems that the United States is facing, if the government would just get off our backs most of us would do okay. In America today, it is rapidly getting to the point where it is nearly impossible to start or to operate a small business.

The federal government, the state governments and local governments are cramming thousands upon thousands of new ridiculous regulations down our throats each year. It would take a full team of lawyers just to even try to stay informed about all of these new regulations.

If an IPod is shuffling in the forest, and nobody is around to hear it, does it make a sound?

This is a standard philosophical riddle that raises questions regarding observation and knowledge of reality. Alexander T. Jackson, one of the great minds of the 20th century, may have said that, “View points of this riddle differ based on the perceived definition of the word ’sound’, often confused with the definition of the word ‘hearing’.”
A $300 Ipod is shuffling in the forest and nobody is around to interact with it, does it have value?

This philosophical riddle also raises questions regarding observations and knowledge of reality. Viewpoints in this riddle differ based on the perceived definition of the word ‘money’, often confused with the definition of the word ‘value’.

To this question, Wall Street would say “Yes”, but Main Street would say “No”. In fact this brings into question the order of how we assign value in our world.

The Maine Technology Institute (MTI) has developed an SBIR/STTR (Small Business Innovation Research and Small Business Technology Transfer) Technical Assistance Program to encourage entrepreneurs and small business to participate in the federal SBIR/STTR Program. The SBIR/STTR program is designed to encourage small businesses to perform leading edge technology-oriented research and development leading to the commercialization of new products or services.

National SBIR/STTR website
www.zyn.com/SBIR

SBIR World Web Site (sponsored by NSF)
www.sbirworld.com

U.S. Small Business Administration
www.sba.gov

SBA Technology Resources Network
www.tech-net.sba.gov

Fabian Hansmann (MBA ‘06D) has taken a novel approach to entrepreneurship. His organisation, FoundersLink, fulfils the core entrepreneurial functions of identifying opportunities and building a team, a process normally done by the entrepreneur. But then it matches business ideas and opportunities with aspiring entrepreneurs, and also tries to raise funding.

“We bring the concept and then we find entrepreneurs to start up and run the business,” says Hansmann. “In other words, we make the ‘Big Bang’ happen. After this magic moment, an incubator could come into the picture and a venture capitalist after that.”

Hansmann describes this concept as ‘venture creation,’ a term (as far as he knows) no one else has ever used in this context.

After soaring in the second quarter, venture funding in Silicon Valley companies flopped back to earth in the third quarter -- but is still on track for the full year to meet or exceed 2009 levels.

Analysts said the spike in the second quarter was largely due to two big cleantech deals, and that despite the big drop in the third quarter, the valley's startup industry is continuing its steady rebound from the recession.

"This was a recovery year," said National Venture Capital Association Vice President Emily Mendell. "Last year was a really hard year with a lot of challenges. Now, the money is going to start to flow a little more."