Innovation America wishes you a Happy, Healthy, Prosperous and most importantly an INNOVATIVE New Year!

As we look forward to a New Year , it is also important to reflect on some of the highlights of 2009 that we can build on. Today's innovation DAILY is a special issue that features the most popular articles from  (iD) in 2009. We thank you for your loyal following and hope that you will continue to enjoy our focus on Global trends on Innovation in the new year. We welcome any comments or suggestions you might have to improve our content and hope you share our newsletter with your friends and networks.

Keep Innovating in 2010.

Rich Bendis

OBAMA ADMINISTRATION INNOVATIVE SMALL BUSINESS JOB STIMULUS FINANCING PLAN AND PROGRAM RECOMMENDATIONS

As Submitted by Richard A. Bendis, President, Innovation America and Vice Chair NASVF

The tricks to success change all the time, but the keys to failure are consistent. Serial entrepreneur Jerry Kaplan put together this list in a lecture in Stanford University’s entrepreneur thought leader speaker series in 2003 – but it’s as relevant today as it was then. Hubris, greed, lack of clarity and dumb hiring mistakes continue to be the biggest problems in the start-up world.

Representative Glenn Nye (D-VA) has introduced H.R. 3738, the "Small Business Early-Stage Investment Act of 2009," to create an early-state investment program to provide financing to support small businesses in targeted industries, e.g., energy technology, clean technology and environmental technology.

The bill would authorize $250 million to create a program within the Small Business Administration, with grants to be distributed through the existing venture capital network. Qualifying for a grant under the program requires:

• Read more...

I [Bruce Nussbaum] invite everyone to read President Obama’s new Innovation Strategy document and see for yourself if it adds up. To me, it is a list of priorities, important priorities to be sure, that are just stitched together in one document and called “innovation.”

It is chock full of talk about information technology, sustainability, open markets, and clean energy, stuff engineers from Silicon Valley love to champion. I champion all that too. It is chock full of all the reasons why the US is in danger of losing its economic preemience. This, too, I applaud for its veracity. But these pieces don’t add up to a national innovation strategy.

Anthony Townsend, Institute for the Future
Alex Soojung-Kim Pang, Institute for the Future
Rick Weddle, Research Triangle Foundation
IFTF Report Number SR-12361

The model of self-contained research parks and incubators that dominated the last fifty years of technology-based economic development is being challenged by deep shifts in the global economy, science and technology, and models of innovation. This paper describes fourteen emerging trends that will set the context for technology-based economic development in the coming decades. These trends are used to develop three scenarios for the future of technology- based economic development over the next two decades. In the first scenario, an incremental evolution of the research parks model takes place in a world of rapid, but steady and predictable change. In the second scenario, entirely new networks of R&D space emerge in a “research cloud” that challenges current models to adapt, sometimes dramatically. The third scenario, the research park models is in rapid decline as R&D becomes highly virtualized and parks’ legacy cost structure makes them obsolete for young firms. We conclude by highlighting the strategic implications of these scenarios for existing and future parks and economic development.

The UK Department for Business, Innovation and Skills has taken the next step in setting up the UK Innovation Investment Fund (UK IIF), a venture capital fund of funds to support the UK's technology companies. Capital for Enterprise Ltd. will release the Request for Proposals (RFP) for prospective Fund of Fund managers for the UK UF. The RFP is a key milestone in delivering the fund as it sets out the parameters for the fund and details the information expected from prospective Fund of Fund managers. The RFF will ask potential Fund Managers to target the sectors of the future, such as life sciences. Low carbon, digital and advanced manufacturing. Success in these sectors is key to the UK Government's industrial strategy to create highly skilled jobs as Britain emerges out of the global downturn . The RFP will also ask Fund Managers how they will raise money from private sector investors to create the largest technology Fund in Europe.

SAN FRANCISCO - EDITOR'S NOTE -- One in a series of stories assessing how last fall's financial meltdown and the Great Recession have changed our lives.

Our economy sure could use the Next Big Thing. Something on the scale of railroads, automobiles or the Internet -- the kind of breakthrough that emerges every so often and builds industries, generates jobs and mints fortunes.

Silicon Valley investors are pointing to something called cleantech -- alternative energy, more efficient power distribution and new ways to store electricity, all with minimal impact to the environment -- as a candidate for the next boom.

My big insight about innovation these days would make Nobel Prize winner, Niels Bohr, proud.

"Now that we have met with paradox," explained Dr. Bohr, "we have some hope of making progress."

Innovation is full of it -- paradox, that is.

On one hand, organizations want structures, maps, models, guidelines, and systems. On the other hand, that's all too often the stuff that squelches innovation, driving it underground or out the door.

State and local business organizations have launched a venture-capital "fund of funds" that aims to raise up to $200 million to finance small high-tech Arizona companies that aspire to become the future Microsofts and Googles of the world.

The private fund, which could begin releasing money by mid-2010, will zero in on innovative startup firms in areas such as information technology, life sciences and solar that can create high-paying, high-quality jobs.

India Venture Capital & Private Equity Report – indian.startups.in

India Venture Capital & Private Equity Report – trak.in

Dimensions of Innovation in Entrepreneurship by Chris Evdemon –sgentrepreneurs.com

TC50 DemoPit Startup AskYourTargetMarket Simplifies Market Research –venture.name

Examining the Journal’s Fisker story – thedeal.com

(Cornell Study) What Entrepreneurs Want From VCs: Independence And Faster Feedback – thefaredge.com

Gore Backed Car Firm Gets $529 Million U.S. Government Loan –americanpatriotjournal.com

Sorry for the long hiatus – exciting things in Rochester –rochesterstartups.com

Commerce Dept Launches New Programs to Help Entrepreneurs –techpolicycentral.com

Friday Q&A: Sherrill Neff, founding partner of Quaker BioVentures –technicallyphilly.com

Posts about venture capital as of September 26, 2009

China is embarking on a new, parallel path of clean power deployment and innovation. It is the Sputnik of our day. Unfortunately, we’re still not racing.

Most people would assume that 20 years from now when historians look back at 2008-09, they will conclude that the most important thing to happen in this period was the Great Recession. I’d hold off on that. If we can continue stumbling out of this economic crisis, I believe future historians may well conclude that the most important thing to happen in the last 18 months was that Red China decided to become Green China.

Yes, China’s leaders have decided to go green — out of necessity because too many of their people can’t breathe, can’t swim, can’t fish, can’t farm and can’t drink thanks to pollution from its coal- and oil-based manufacturing growth engine. And, therefore, unless China powers its development with cleaner energy systems, and more knowledge-intensive businesses without smokestacks, China will die of its own development.

LOS ANGELES, Aug. 4 (Xinhua) -- A two-day Green Tech Connect Forum was held from Monday to Tuesday in Pasadena, California to help drive green innovation and commercialization in the United States.

It is the first time the South Coast Air Quality Management District has ever hosted such a forum to help establish a partnership between green tech developers and investors.

In a classic episode of “The Simpsons,” the owner of convenience store Kwik-E-Mart, Apu, is being held up at gunpoint and shouts to a policeman in the store for help. The cop, Chief Wiggum, retorts, “Hey, I got problems of my own right now,” as his tie is pulled slowly into a hot dog rotating machine.

”Oh boy, this is going to get a lot worse before it gets better,” Chief Wiggum dejectedly declares.

I couldn’t help but think of that line this morning while listening to several veteran venture capitalists discuss the unsettling state of the venture industry in front of dozens of hopeful start-up CEOs at today’s VentureWire Technology Showcase.

Professors from Harvard Business School, Insead and Brigham Young University have just completed a six-year study of more than 3,000 executives and 500 innovative entrepreneurs and have identified five skills that drive innovation: