March 20-22, 2013, Washington Convention Center, Washington DC.
For more information: http://ncet2.org
To register: http://ncet2.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=543

Innovation America subscribers can avail of a $200 registration discount by using this discount code: "innoam" (without quotes)

Now on its 7th year, the conference is organized annually by the National Council of Entrepreneurial Tech Transfer (NCET2.org). The Government Co-Hosts are the National Science Foundation (Division of Industrial Innovation and Partnership) and National Institutes of Health (Office of Tech Transfer). The Angel Capital and Venture Capital Sponsors are the Angel Capital Association (ACA) and the National Venture Captial Association (NVCA).

The University Startups Showcase and Conference features two new innovations this year:

• Thursday, March 21: CORPORATE REVERSE SHOWCASE - Hear from major Global 1000 companies as they talk about technologies and strategic alliances they seek from university startup creation officials and university startup entrepreneurs. A very efficient and productive model for Global 1000 companies to find exactly what they are looking for from the $35 billion in annual federally funded research and over 600 university startups created at universities each year.
• Friday, March 22: UNIVERSITY STARTUPS & SBIR COMPANY SHOWCASE - This year we created a University Startups & SBIR Showcase to highlight the very best university startups and SBIR companies. This showcase is specifically created to catalyze transactions with the Global 1000, VCs, angel investors and SBIR program managers at the conference. Annually, universities receive $35 billion from the federal government to conduct cutting-edge research from which universities create approximately 600 university startups each year.

If you wish to know more about the conference and showcase, please visit http://ncet2.org or email us at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

As disruptive innovations enter the market with faster velocity and increased firepower, entrepreneurs are finding themselves dealing sooner and more intimately with the law.

Sometimes, the innovation is just too new, creeping out consumers and lawmakers who hurriedly work to ban it. Few people remember, for example, that the day after Scottish scientists announced in 1996 the successful clone of a sheep named Dolly, President Bill Clinton issued an executive order banning the use of federal funds for cloning in the U.S and urged Congress to outlaw the technology. (Before that, it had been a subject only for science fiction novels.)

Data on newly formed companies and their founders are hard to come by, but a vital component to measuring economic health. In an effort to learn more about the challenges facing today's entrepreneurs, LegalZoom and the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation surveyed 1,431 business owners who formed their companies through LegalZoom in 2012.

Perhaps the most interesting finding is that 60 percent of entrepreneurs in the sample spent more than six months working on their business idea before forming their entity. This highlights the blurry boundaries between paid employment and self-employment, demonstrating the necessity for public policy to be flexible in recognition of this economically vital stage of business creation.

Paul Capital, a private equity firm focused on secondary market transactions, has acquired 18.2 percent of a fund managed by the Brazilian technology venture capital firm Ideiasnet, paying 79 million reais ($40 million).

The purchase is Paul Capital’s second in Brazil, according to Duncan Littlejohn, managing director at Paul Capital.

The fund, known as FIP 1, is one of two managed by Ideiasnet, based in Rio de Janeiro. It invests in companies in digital media, e-commerce, mobile and software. Other American partners it has brought on include Liberty Media, which acquired 5 percent of Ideiasnet in 2012.

The Michigan Economic Development Corp. Wednesday announced Michigan Strategic Fund investments of $2.76 million into six growing technology companies through the Pure Michigan Venture Match Fund.

Gov. Rick Snyder said of the investments in a statement: “We are confident that by co-investing in these companies, all of which have secured private investments, we are bridging a capital gap and helping entrepreneurs develop promising technologies to grow into new innovation companies.”

Accenture Managing Director Jeanne Harris says she’s waited her entire career–since the late 1970s–for technology that allows companies to store, access and manipulate enormous amounts of data in a way that can truly change how business gets done.

That day appears to be here. Using the latest storage, databases and analytical tools, corporate managers can now, at least in theory, make better, faster and more informed decisions, she says, but she doesn’t see that happening.

As financing for emerging medical technologies becomes harder to come by, corporate investors have been growing more active, in many cases filling a void where adventuresome, early-stage investors used to be.

GE Healthymagination Sue Siegel, chief executive of GE Healthymagination. General Electric, which has several investing divisions, including a $250 million fund for backing new innovations for health care, is a case in point. GE Healthymagination, as the fund is known, is opening a new office among the venture firms of Sand Hill Road in Silicon Valley, hiring investors from top firms and putting money into play.

New studies reveal the ill effects of sleeplessness with incredible precision, to the point that tweaking sleep patterns may be the next frontier in goosing creativity and productivity.

If you haven’t already noticed (perhaps due to lack of sleep), sleep research is kind of a big deal these days.

Hundreds of studies, thousands of test subjects, and millions of dollars have been poured into the science of sleep over the past decade, and with good reason: Americans are terrible sleepers and we don’t like it very much--as evidenced by the 25% of Americans who take sleep aids every year. In this week’s New Yorker, Elizabeth Kolbert’s “Up All Night” traces the history of our modern--and troubled--relationship with sleep, discovering that more than half of American adults “experience a sleep problem almost every night, and nearly two-thirds complain that they are not getting enough rest during the week.” More likely than not, you are nodding off at your desk right about now.

Now that 25 European countries have reached agreement on creating a single European patent, someone has to design the system that runs it. And the first question is: what should a European patent cost?  

A select committee made up of representatives from the 25 European countries that signed the unitary patent treaty last month and the European Patent Office (EPO) will meet on 20 March at the EPO in Munich to begin debating that question.

“The success of the new unitary patent depends largely on our capacity in the coming months to fix an appropriate level for annual fees,” said EPO President Benoît Battistelli, in an interview with Science|Business. He expects the total administrative cost of filing and maintaining an average European unitary patent, including patent office, translation and legal fees to come down by roughly 70 per cent.

Google famously gives its employees all kinds of perks ranging from free food to personal massages in the office. Now a company called AnyPerk wants to help small businesses dip their toes into the same pool. For $5 per employee. companies can offer perks like discounted movie tickets, discounts on DirectTV and Dish Network service, and even free coupons for Costco. The full list is pretty extensive – you can view it here.

In light of the recent ban on working from home imposed by Yahoo’s newest CEO, Marissa Mayer, it’s got the debate up and running once again: is it better to work from home or at the office?

When thinking about startups, I’d like to add my two cents and argue that running a young company remotely is a very real and attractive option for many an entrepreneur. Not only because the technological tools exist to share and collaborate on documents, communicate in real time (even face-to-face) and meet those all important deadlines, but also because there are practical advantages to running a startup remotely.

By remote startup I’d like to work with the definition of ‘location independent’, not necessarily just ‘working from home’. Lets have a look at seven reasons why you should run your startup remotely.

Innovation in healthcare is becoming a key trend in many emerging market countries as well as developed markets. It makes sense too: it’s a quick and easy way to access medical information, provide education for patients and give doctors the opportunity to collaborate on challenging medical cases.

A panel at the MENA ICT conference in Jordan, which describes itself as the premier tech event in the region, explained that in the last few years health care innovation has grown in five key areas.

“There has been great adoption which has great demand for cutting edge technology to be developed in the field,” says Ashraf Arafeh, general manager at Cisco Systems, Jordan and Palestine.

Ahh, the future. That mystical place filled with robots and flying cars… and hopefully your businesses. Things are moving incredibly fast when it comes to technology, as trends which never existed before (think BYOD and that thing called social media) are increasingly becoming just another part of every day life. Think about it: ten years ago Facebook didn’t exist — now there are legions of postings for social media strategists, managers and gurus populating jobs boards. You can log into work from the other side of the globe and give presentations from your smartphone. What will be possible in the future?

Financial services and consulting company Deloitte sheds some insight in its annual tech trends report, which seeks to do a bit of educated crystal ball gazing to figure out the key technologies which will experience significant adoption rates in the next 18-24 months. The topics are devised based on current research and conversations with industry experts, but they only get added to the list if there are at least three key companies already implementing the technology in their everyday business, so it’s not all totally science fiction.

A local expert provides five recommendations on a topic useful to small business owners. This week, entrepreneur Mary Ellen Dorey talked to staff writer Hanah Cho about ways to smooth the transition from corporate life to entrepreneurship.

Marketing is the foundation of any brand. Without a good marketing campaign you’ll never be able to achieve your goals and visions for your project. Whether you are a one-person army or have a team of workers aiding you, these 10 essential marketing skills are ones you need to familiarize yourself with.

1. Perfect Your Story

Without a good story you won’t gain any interest from customers, clients, partners, etc. The way you convey your story will be how your audience perceives you and your company. Think of how you want people to see your company and write your story accordingly.

Sitting at a table with no more than her laptop, Judi Otton had all she needed to grow her new company.

Otton was working at New Haven’s The Grove, a coworking space of one of four entrepreneurship incubators, or “hubs,” across Connecticut receiving funding from Gov. Dannel Malloy’s new Innovation Ecosystem project. The Innovation Ecosystem, which the governor’s office revealed last October, is a $5 million public-private initiative intended to spur economic growth in Connecticut by supporting small businesses and entrepreneurs through a number of programs. Besides funding the “hubs,” which are located in New Haven, Hartford, Stamford and Storrs, the Innovation Ecosystem will provide mentoring and assessment services meant to support entrepreneurs statewide.

Winning over recruiters and potential bosses can be hard enough. Now there’s something else job seekers have to woo: an algorithm.

A San Francisco startup called Gild has created a program that evaluates and scores software developers on the work they have publicly released. Tech recruiters can use this “Gild score” to see through the top-tier degrees, vague descriptions of skill sets, or polished testimonials of well-connected programmers whose coding skills may be below par. Less-obvious candidates, such as a junior in college who has been building great apps since she was 16, might rise into view instead.

So you’ve got a great idea, and want to get going straight away. That’s great, but bringing an idea to life can be a bit of a challenge. Don’t fret though, that really should be the absolute last thing that throws you off getting started. While spending time working on getting SuperSimpleSurvey off the ground, we learned a few pretty hard lessons and thought it would be good to share them.

Every startup needs access to capital, whether for funding product development, for initial rollout efforts, acquiring inventory, or paying that first employee. Most entrepreneurs think first of bank loans as the primary source of money, only to find out that banks are really the least likely benefactors for startups. Thus “creative” really means maximizing non-bank financing.

While sizing up the alternatives, I couldn’t help but pick up a new book by Karlene Sinclair-Robinson with the creative title of “Spank the Bank: The Guide to Alternative Business Financing.” She plumbs the range of possibilities she has gained through personal experience as an entrepreneur, and as the “queen of business financing” in the financial industry.

With the recent success of companies like Flyclops, Final Form and Cipher Prime, mobile game-making is carving a niche in the city's creative economy. Now the community needs a home-base -- enter Nathan Solomon, founder of Philadelphia Game Lab, a combination co-working space and incubator.  

"Over the past ten years, with alternative distribution channels, the industry as a whole is much more interested in actual creative stuff," says Solomon. "Philadelphia's not in a really great position to pull together teams of over a hundred people, but we are in a really good position to pull together people who have technical expertise and creative drive, and want to make their own games."