2011 YEARLY

Happy New Year 2012!!

Innovation America's tagline is "The Daily Pulse of Global Innovation". See the impact that Global trends and Innovation are having around the world by watching this short, thought provoking video. I liked it so much that I made it the lead article for the first Monday of 2010! IT IS A MUST WATCH !
Enjoy and Thanks to Tom Mathews for sending it to me.
--Rich Bendis

Why have you been so successful in reaching some of your goals, but not others? If you aren't sure, you are far from alone in your confusion.

It turns out that even brilliant, highly accomplished people are pretty lousy when it comes to understanding why they succeed or fail. The intuitive answer — that you are born predisposed to certain talents and lacking in others — is really just one small piece of the puzzle.

In fact, decades of research on achievement suggests that successful people reach their goals not simply because of who they are, but more often because of what they do.

It's been nearly a year since Formula Capital's James Altucher discussed his theory on why sending your kids to college is a bad idea.

The segment proved to be one of Tech Ticker's most popular...and controversial of 2010. (See: Rethinking College as Student-Loan Burdens Rise)

Dr. Janice Presser, CEO, The Gabriel Institute

Special to InnovationDAILY

I was talking to my friend, Natalie, th

is morning. She's a fabulous consultant, definitely the person you would want for an innovative project that needs crisp organization, reliable follow up, and a good measure of common sense. I had received an email from someone who really could use services like hers, so I forwarded it to Natalie, thinking she might already know the players. I was right. She did. In fact she knew them well enough to say straight out, "No amount of money is worth working with a bad team."

The same holds true when you're on the buy side of the equation. 'Talent experts' constantly remind us that they have access to vast pools stocked with potential employees and consultants. Unfortunately, they fail to mention that sharks also swim in those pools, and that it's very hard to tell the difference between the fish who school in orderly fashion and the predators who bloody the water wherever they go.

Recruiters and staffing agencies provide a needed service. They really want to help you find quality people, and many will even forfeit their fee if there's a breakdown. But if they can't prevent this kind of hiring mistake, here are some things you can do to protect the integrity of your team:

By Rosemarie Truman

I have been doing private sector growth strategy for ~20 years, so when I came across the Kauffman Foundation’s book titled “” I was indeed intrigued. This analysis concentrates on understanding the links and influences among law, innovation and growth, as well as how to effectively advance growth. In addition, having recently completed a comprehensive assessment of all university technology transfer frameworks and performing a subsequent benchmark, I also was eager to review Kauffman’s critique of technology transfer offices. As a result, I focused most of my attention on the section, “Universities and Economic Growth.”

Let’s first discuss a couple key areas that Kauffman’s book very well articulates:

Key Takeaway 1: Kauffman’s book mentions that there are no perfect measures to judge university technology transfer success

Supportive Argument: My team performed a comprehensive assessment of different technology transfer performance management models for universities, examining measures such as FTE productivity only, financial efficiency only, and effectiveness only, and so on, and all of them have opportunities for improvement.  A comprehensive model to measure technology transfer success in universities is needed and also critical, or the wrong behavior will be encouraged, possibly leading to an undesired result, or “suboptimal performance,” as Kauffman references

Everyone is talking about the need to stimulate the depressed economy through job creation, but no one has developed a workable plan that can be implemented quickly. Innovation America, in co-operation with some bright industry and workforce development experts, respectfully submits a potential INNOVATIVE partnership that engages industry, academia and government.

The following white paper describes the "American Innovation Corps" a plan to create 200,000 to 400,000 jobs for unemployed or underemployed recent college graduates, America's next generation of knowledge workers.

There are countless inventions throughout the year, but only a few have the capacity to change the world.

From a sassy digital personal assistant to a mirror of the future, here are our picks for the most impressive breakthroughs in science, technology and medicine.

If you’ve been around long enough, you’re probably aware that most important things in life come about seemingly by accident, chance, or coincidence. Discovering what you were meant to do, meeting your spouse, finding an incredibly unique opportunity or a great job, that sort of thing.

Well, those events are not as random as you might think. Certain behavioral attributes increase the probability of these “happy accidents” occurring. And not only are these characteristics of successful people, they are, I believe, learnable or teachable.

First, here are some examples of what I’m talking about - how important things happen seemingly by accident - followed by five enabling characteristics of successful people:

* Steve Jobs returned to Apple as part of its acquisition of NeXT. A year later, Jobs was once again running the company he co-founded and cleaning house. Eventually, the stars aligned for the greatest turnaround in business history. But Jobs returning to Apple was nobody’s grand design. It just sort of happened that way.

Download the PDF

Getting a job isn't always easy. Sometimes, it's just about being in the right place at the right time.

If you're having trouble landing a job or switching careers, maybe you're not looking in the right city. CareerBliss, an online career resource, analyzed data to determine what cities listed the most job openings per metro-area.

While highly populated areas made the list, there are also a few smaller populated cities like Hartford, Connecticut that are hiring like crazy.

A university’s ability to create and share innovative technology and know-how should be evaluated in a holistic way that includes both academic and commercial activities.  In this article I compare the innovation transfer activities of U.S. research universities in a new, multi-faceted way: by counting and mapping universities according to their ability to

• publish papers
• to generate new inventions
• and to attract industry research funding.

Here is our founding project.  Please download and view this powerpoint. Updated on Oct 6, 2009.

Everyone in the tech world talks about business models. But I’ll bet that if you quizzed a random sample of these people, you’d find that they really don’t know what a business model is. I did just that with my students at UC-Berkeley. Most raised their hands, and MBA student Blake Brundidge’s attempt to answer the question was a valiant one—but none of them really had a clue. The only one who got the answer right was Lionel Vital, a Stanford student gatecrashing my iSchool class.

The reality is that a business model is like the old saying about teenage sex: everyone talks about it all the time; everyone boasts about how well he or she is doing it; everyone thinks everyone else is doing it; almost no one really is; and the few who are are fumbling their way through it incompetently. (Yes, I know things have changed.)

The world is changing fast, and schools are scrambling to keep up by offering new, innovative majors.

With new majors comes the death of old ones. The Chronicle of Higher Education compared the academic fields four year colleges were offering in 1971 to those offered in 2006, and some of the once-notable majors seem to be disappearing quickly.

The literature, math, and science fields have been hit the worst.

Since the economic recession began in 2007, major budget changes have taken place at the state and national level. In many cases this resulted in increased taxes in many states, damaging to success of small businesses.

The Small Business and Entrepreneurship Council recently release its Small Business Survival Index for 2010. The index ranks the climate for small businesses in the 50 states (and D.C.) based on public policy factors that include 38 major government-related, or imposed costs.

Everyone has million dollar ideas, but people rarely act on them.

For entrepreneurs, one good idea can provide an extraordinary amount of hope. Even though the chances of success are minimal, these ideas give people something to aspire to greater than a boring cubicle and a nagging boss. Not to mention, these ideas make some people obscenely loaded.

If you're waiting to act on one of these ideas until you think of something brilliant, don't. In fact, you might want to dumb yourself down a notch. With the Icanhascheezburger.com’s of the world getting acquired for $2MM, it doesn’t take something uniquely awesome to rake in the dough.

Health care will dominate job creation in the next decade, and employment opportunities for college educated workers will grow nearly twice as fast as jobs for high school graduates, according to comprehensive projections from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

"The fastest growing jobs are mostly in health care and consulting," said Michael Wolf, an economist with BLS, which originally produced this report in 2008. "The fastest declining sectors are in low-skill manufacturing with apparel, textiles and fabrics."

One of the most enjoyable (and sometimes complicated) part of working with startups is protecting founders and watching their backs.  Not only are there key contractual issues that must be buttoned-down (like vesting and IP assignments), but there are also a minefield of laws and regulations that must be complied with.

In a world of easy access to online documents, this legal compliance is often overlooked or marginalized by founders, as they attempt to stay “lean” and “scrappy” (and sometimes even handle the legal work themselves or through a web service).  Certain violations of law, however, could lead to founders’ criminal liability.  Here are four sets of laws to watch-out for:

Employment laws.  The most common employment law violations are misclassifying an employee as an independent contractor and/or failing to pay an employee the minimum wage.  Both violations could lead to the same result: criminal liability for the failure to properly pay wages.

When most people think of startup hubs, a few common places come to mind. Even the average non-tech enthusiast knows that Silicon Valley and New York City are startup hubs thanks to stories about Google and movies like The Social Network. And while these places are certainly at the heart of technology, plenty of new startup hubs are blossoming around the world.

1. Delhi, India

India is rapidly emerging as a major world startup hub. In a January 2011 article on five red-hot Indian tech startups, Memeburn notes that India has an advantage over China (another up-and-coming startup hub) in its relatively free, open economy. Additionally, “its high percentage of English speakers and its highly educated new caste of IT whiz kids” make India the “perfect breeding ground” for game-changing technology entrepreneurs.

WASHINGTON, D.C. – To accelerate innovation-fueled job creation and global competitiveness, today the Obama Administration announced a $33 million Jobs and Innovation Accelerator Challenge, an unprecedented initiative to spur economic growth through public-private partnerships in at least 20 regions around the country.

The Challenge leverages existing resources from 16 federal agencies and will award funds to regions that demonstrate the existence of high-growth industries that support a wide range of economic and workforce development activities.

The Obama Administration is committed to smarter use of existing federal resources to foster regional innovation in support of sustainable economic prosperity. Strong industry clusters –like the Research Triangle in North Carolina or Silicon Valley in California – promote robust economic ecosystems and the development of a skilled workforce, both of which are critical to long-term regional success.

“Regional innovation clusters bring together the knowledge and financial resources that America needs to compete in the global economy,” said National Economic Council Director Gene Sperling. “The Jobs and Innovation Accelerator Challenge will help regional innovation clusters produce the next generation of innovative products and drive sustainable economic growth and job creation."

People ask me if they really need ANY business plan, unless they are looking for an outside investor. In fact, a business plan is needed more by you than investors, as the blueprint for your company, team communication, and progress metrics. Things that make it investment-grade for outside investors will also benefit you, since you are the ultimate investor.

First of all, any good business plan should demonstrate that you have done the homework to be an expert in your industry, and in what it takes to build a successful business from your idea. I’ll skip the basics here, and highlight only key elements that investors focus on:

1. Define the problem. Every plan must start with the problem you are solving, not a description of your company and product. Explain in terms your mother could understand, and quantify the “cost-of-pain” in dollars or time. Terms like “every customer needs this” and “next generation platform” are far too soft, and should be avoided.

A quick fyi for TED heads in our audience: Right here, you can find an online spreadsheet that lists 875 TEDTalks, with handy links to each individual video. This evolving Google doc will give you access to more than 265 hours of “riveting talks by remarkable people.” Because the page is updated on a regular basis, you’ll definitely want to bookmark it and keep tabs on the new additions.