The Johns Hopkins Technology Transfer Office (JHTT) is the University’s intellectual property administration center, serving Johns Hopkins researchers and inventors as a licensing, patent, and technology commercialization office and acting as an active liaison to parties interested in leveraging JHU research or materials for academic or corporate endeavors. SNNLive spoke with Wesley Blakeslee, Executive Director of Johns Hopkins Technology Transfer Office at the BioMaryland booth at the BIO International Convention 2012 in Boston, MA.

In this interview, Mr. Blakeslee discusses what the Technology Transfer office does at Johns Hopkins University, gives a brief overview of some of the exciting discoveries happening currently at JHU, and concludes by explaining why Maryland is the place to do business for the Healthcare and Life Sciences sector. He begins by stating, “The Technology Transfer office at Johns Hopkins is the office that commercializes the inventions of the University. Part of the University mission is to bring the benefits of discovery to the world, and that’s the part of the mission that we concentrate on because, as you know, at Universities, they make discoveries…when we get a technology from an inventor, we try to find a commercial partner that will take that technology, and turn it into a product that will benefit someone.”

Board members from the Startup America Partnership share their advice on how to start and grow a business. http://whitehouse.gov/startupamerica

Writing in the current issue of Forbes contributo Victor W. Hwang asks:   "Why should we give a damn about ecosystems?" It's a question worth asking, Hwang says, noting that "For entrepreneurs and innovators slogging away building real companies and inventions,  the whole thing seems so abstract, so remote."   Below is an abstract of an essay Hwang wrote for his firm's  Global Innovation Summit, which happens next week in Silicon Valley (www.innosummit.com) and which he calls our “Davos for doers.” 

A new book titled Jugaad Innovation looks at lessons from emerging markets in frugal innovation for multinational corporations. Here's our chat with co-author Simone Ahuja, one of the three authors on this project (along with Navi Radjou and Jaideep Prabhu).

For readers who aren't familiar with jugaad, could you please briefly describe it?

Jugaad is a Hindi word meaning an innovative fix. It's an improvised solution using ingenuity and resourcefulness, often due to very limited resources.

IT’S 11:26 a.m. in California and Tim Ferriss, who has turned his personal tactics for streamlining life’s chores and savoring its pleasures into best-selling books like “The 4-Hour Workweek” and “The 4-Hour Chef,” is timing himself to see how fast he can get from his house to his departure gate at San Francisco International Airport.

Using Uber, a cashless car service, and Clearcard, a fast-pass for airport security, he zipped from home to gate in 20 minutes. A friend making the same flight spent 33 minutes on the security line alone.

Governors said they plan to put aside partisan politics to work together over the next few days to deal with issues like the implementation of federal health care reforms and the need to create more jobs in states across the country.

Three governors held a news conference this morning to kick off the National Governors Association meeting in Colonial Williamsburg.

Host Gov. Bob McDonnell, R-Virginia, joined NGA Chairman Gov. Dave Heineman, R-Nebraska, and NGA Vice Chairman Jack Markell, D-Delaware, at the event in the Old Capitol.

The first year of my startup was, without a doubt, the most educational period of my life. There is so much you can’t possibly know about running a business until you’re actually doing it. The mistakes, trials, and successes of that first year left me with a plethora of lessons.

As someone who started a company on my own, I was solely responsible for everything. That meant I had to manage administrative elements, marketing plans, sales, accounts payable, receivables, payroll, business models, you name it. Each and every aspect of my business depended on me like a small child

When running a business, some entrepreneurs don't know how to act. Some think they get the best results when they are feared. Others want to be loved, but are concerned with being seen and/or becoming a pushover.

In either case, including variations of each, entrepreneurs who run companies must mentor their employees in order to get them to excel.

Typically, when people think of mentoring, two things come to mind: someone outside of the company showing an employee the ropes, or some kind of apprenticeship program.

I guess we can all agree that going to college is not mandatory to becoming a successful entrepreneur.  There have been several entrepreneurs who grew multi-million dollar businesses and never stepped a foot into a lecture hall.  However, despite all the tedious tuition bills, college is not as useless as you may think.  If utilized very well, college could possibly be the most rewarding experience you could get if you are an aspiring entrepreneur.  Here are some tips on how you can learn to become an entrepreneurial leader while in college.

Do your research.

If you are not in a university yet, then you must know that it is extremely important to do you research if you plan to get a bachelor degree.  If you are interested in studying entrepreneurship, then look for schools that offer degree plans in that subject. One way of doing this is by going to entrepreneur.com.  They have a list of the best schools for entrepreneurship.  Even if you do not plan to study that subject, do research on what schools offers the degree plans that best fit the industry you plan to go into.

The Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) and Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) Programs have funded great companies like Qualcomm, Genzyme, and iRobot in their earliest days.  These federal programs are what help our entrepreneurs grow, succeed and create jobs, and the Obama Administration has made its success a priority. 

The good news is, the program was reauthorized for six years by Congress and signed into law by President Obama at the end of 2011.  Since then, the Small Business Administration has been working diligently on the detailed rulemaking necessary to implement the reauthorization.

In February 2008, Leah Busque was headed out to dinner with her husband when she realized they were out of dog food. She had no idea that that simple need at that specific moment would eventually lead to her creating a business providing thousands of work opportunities.

She registered for the domain name for TaskRabbit.com that night and four months later left her job as an IBM software engineer to start the San Francisco-based online tasks marketplace.

Amid the reality shows, celebs behaving badly, and the negative news stories, we rarely hear about the positive things black folks are doing each and every day. Thankfully, we aren’t buying into the hype, and some, like CLUTCH, love shining a light on the members of our community who are excelling in their fields.

This year, The Network Journal rolled out its annual list of 40 brilliant black innovators in business, politics, and academia. This year’s list includes honorees from companies like L’Oréal (Aida Moudachirou- Rebois), Bloomingdale’s (Nicole Cokley), General Motors (Brooke Ellis), NBC Universal (Sharita Brantley), and the 135th Street Agency (Shante Bacon), as well as those from academia and the non-profit sector, like Dr. Janna Andrews, assistant clinical professor of radiation oncology at the SUNY Stony Brook Winthrop University Hospital.

Silicon Valley is a concept that is hard to replicate, so Europeans should instead strive to build ecosystems for innovation that rely on investment, talent, leadership and risk, high-tech guru David Parekh tells EurActiv.

A mechanical engineer by training, David Parekh is vice president of the US-based United Technologies Research Center, the research and development arm of United Technologies Company. He spoke to EurActiv Editor-in-Chief Daniela Vincenti.

Can Europe build an innovation excellence centre like Silicon Valley?

Silicon Valley is a concept that is hard to replicate, especially in other places, because within 50 miles you have top universities, like Stanford and Berkeley, and start-ups. It is that culture that created the Googles, the Hewlett-Packards of the world. Facebook, which started at Harvard, moved there to Silicon Valley.

European Alliance of Innovators is currently busy organizing the International Summit “Internet as Innovation Ecosystem”, which will take place in Riva del Garda, Trentino Region, (Italy) from October 4 through 6, 2012.

By bringing together a wide range of stakeholders and actors involved in the development and implementation of innovation and future Internet technologies, the three-day Summit will be a real opportunity for participants to discuss the featured topics and gain international acclaim.

Dave Balter, the CEO of BzzAgent, founder of Smarterer, and an active angel investor has a guest post up on OnStartups about his approach to angel investing. It’s titled Shorter Flights at Lower Heights: The Right Way To Angel Invest and is definitely worth a read if you are an angel investor.

I have a different strategy that has some overlap that I’ve written about at Suggestions for Angel Investors.

The bottom line for both posts is simple: Don’t act like a VC investor – you are playing a different game.

Our mission in the Office of Veterans Business Development is to support the men and women who have returned home from active duty and are interested in starting or purchasing their own business. 

Veterans already over-index in entrepreneurship.  Nine percent of all U.S. firms are owned by veterans.  More than 2.4 million veteran-owned businesses employ more than 5.75 million individuals.  So we know that providing greater access and opportunity to these veteran-owned small businesses will strengthen the American economy and help create jobs. 

You’ve probably heard about the controversy surrounding employers asking job applicants for their Facebook user names and passwords as part of the background check process. It sounds shocking, but it happens – particularly among law enforcement entities – but even among private sector employers who feel they have a reason to go that extra step to weed out potentially undesirable employees.

Unethical as it may seem, what does the law say about this?

Small businesses are known for their philanthropic gestures. In fact, surveys suggest that 75 percent of small firms donate to charities each year, averaging a contribution of six percent of their profits. Women-owned businesses tend to donate an average of 10 percent of profits, and those with the highest revenues are, not surprisingly, the most generous. (Source)

Contributing to a worthwhile cause has many benefits beyond the act of goodwill itself. It gives local business owners an opportunity to embed themselves in the community and network with other donors. And, of course, there are tax deduction benefits.

The Michigan Pre-Seed Capital Fund announced this week that it has invested $600,000 in three tech startups: Flocktag, Larky, and FreeStride Therapeutics. To date, the Michigan Pre-Seed Capital Fund has invested $16.5 million in 75 Michigan companies. While Flocktag and Larky both want to leverage customer satisfaction and their hunger for discounts, FreeStride Therapeutics is working on treatments for bone-related conditions. Flocktag and Larky received $250,000 each, and FreeStride Therapeutics received $100,000.

Ann Arbor, MI-based Flocktag, which has eight employees, was founded by Adrian Fortino (who also started University of Michigan spin-off Shepherd Intelligent Systems and San Francisco-based ride share startup Sidecar) and David Lin a year and a half ago. Lin owns the Bubble Island beverage shops in East Lansing and Ann Arbor, and Fortino says Lin’s challenge as an independent restaurant owner was to fight against the encroachment of Starbucks and other “big box” entities. “The whole point is to get businesses in tight geographical areas to share customers and fight big box stores,” Fortino says. “We’re encouraging regional independence.”

Michigan is taking its next step this summer in gardening its homegrown venture capital industry, launching the Pure Michigan Venture Development Fund.

The state has spent the last decade investing tens of millions of dollars into its venture capital industry, providing matching funds for local VCs and training for early investment professionals.  "Trying to develop a venture industry requires a long-term effort," says Mike Flanagan, manager of equity capital programs for the Michigan Economic Development Corp. "Michigan has been at it for 10 years and needs to keep at it."