Chinese Gov't pledges strong support for innovation-based SMEs during downturn

BEIJING, Aug. 31 (Xinhua) -- Science and Technology Minister Wan Gang said Monday China's government would provide strong support for small-and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to help them tide over the current economic downturn.

"The most effective way to withstand the impact of the global economic meltdown is to accelerate technological innovation, the new economic growth engine," Wan said in a signed article on the front page of Monday's Study Times, run by the Party School of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China.

Dividing equity between founders

A friend asked me recently if I knew of any good guidelines for dividing up equity between founders, and specifically what to do in the case when a co-founder provides seed capital.

NYT: Op-Ed Contributors Stopping Start-Ups

VARIOUS pieces of legislation now making their way through Congress would require private pools of investment capital to be registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The goal is to curtail abuses and protect the public from questionable practices. The proposed laws would cover the range of funds that deal in derivatives, auction-rate and mortgage-backed securities, highly leveraged transactions and a slew of other instruments so complicated as to defy description.

Connecting the Developing World | RESON

The GSMA reports that there are well over 4 billion cell phone subscriptions worldwide. Over 50% of the world’s population has a cell phone now. Think for a moment about your cell phone: what it means and how you use it. Would you miss it if it were lost? I rely on my cell phone which I use as a phone, calculator, alarm clock, weather person, calendar, and research tool. I write notes to myself, notes to others, track my finances, schedule meetings and organize my time. I program my phone which, in return, programs my life.

CNN: Innovation: Getting beyond the breakthrough

New research by the Deloitte Center for the Edge, part of tax and consulting firm Deloitte, paints an ominous picture: The return on assets for U.S. firms has fallen to almost a quarter of 1965 levels despite continued improvements in labor productivity.

McKinsey Innovation Heat Map

McKinsey has partnered with the World Economic Forum to create an “Innovation Heat Map,” by identifying factors that are common to successful innovation hubs. As part of this effort, they have examined the evolution of hundreds of such clusters around the world and analyzed over 700 variables, including those driving innovation (business environment, government and regulation, human capital, infrastructure, and local demand) along with proxies for innovation output (for example, economic value added, journal publications, patent applications) to identify trends among the success stories.

Australia desperately needs a virtuous cycle of innovation ...

It says much about the schismatic nature of Australia’s economic strategy that the Federal Government invited public submissions on how to build a clever country in the same week that it signed a $50B gas export contract with China. Jordan Green outlines his vision for Australia’s knowledge economy.

WSJ: Qiming Joins Growing List Of VC, PE Firms Mulling Yuan Fund

Chinese venture firm Qiming Venture Partners has added an executive director and venture partner to its staff as it considers a move to enter the country’s venture market with a local-currency fund.

Janet Yu, who joins Shanghai-based Qiming as an executive director, previously worked as the general manager in the fund investing department in China Binhai New Area Venture Capital Guiding Fund, according to her biography published on Qiming’s Web site.

BusinessWeek Blog on Corporate Tax Reform:
Turning Corporate Taxes into an Innovation Spur

As Michael Mandel has written in BusinessWeek, the current U.S. recession is due in part to a shortfall in innovation and competitiveness.  Those lags, in turn, can be traced to the U.S. corporate tax code.  U.S. statutory and effective corporate tax rates are high compared to those of other nations.  Moreover, the code provides only minimal incentives for companies to invest in the building blocks of innovation: research, new capital equipment, and labor skills.  It is time to redesign the tax code to help turbocharge the U.S. innovation engine.  Doing so will improve U.S. competitiveness, not only by reducing international tax differentials, but by also spurring more domestic investment in research and development, productivity-enchancing capital expenditures, and worker training.

Read the BusinessWeek Blog.

Innovation boost for UK business as companies invited to bid for £6m investment

British businesses have been invited to bid for a total of £6m of investment in a drive to boost technological innovation across the UK. The government-backed Technology Strategy Board is working to encourage UK business to continue to innovate through the recession, in order to be in a strong position as the economy starts to recover.

Boston Innovation Culture 4 -- Equity Culture

A few posts back I reported on work I’ve done comparing innovation in Boston and California. I argued that Silicon Valley beats Boston by a mile in it’s “recombination” capability: quick focus of energy and resources on new opportunities like the PC and the internet. Recombination is enabled by three things: an entrepreneurial community, “open” systems, and an equity culture. [There is a link to the complete presentation, Strengthening the Massachusetts Innovation Culture, at the end of this post.]

What Tweaks Me…

So I am just sitting here in the rain – actually I am in our house and it is raining outside – just thinking about a couple of things that really tweak me. Here is my current Top Five list…

Non-profits test out new analytics software for social investing

A style of investing that takes cues from the traditional venture capital industry while aiming to solve global problems like hunger, poverty and health care, social venture capital sits on a delicate line between seeking financial return and having tangible social impact.

NASA Selects 16 Small Business Research and Technology Projects

The SBIR program selected 12 proposals for negotiation of phase II contracts, with a total value of approximately $7.2 million. The awards went to 12 small, high technology firms in nine states.

The STTR program selected four proposals for negotiation of phase II contract awards, with a total value of approximately $2.4 million. The awards went to four small high technology firms in four states partnered with three research institutions in three states.

Seed is the new Series A for VCs

It shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone that VCs have, over the past few quarters, been reluctant to put term sheets down on new investments. Most venture folks have instead been preoccupied with tending to their portfolio companies, either ensuring that their most promising companies have enough capital and resources to weather the downturn, or trying to sell off the others.

French for Entrepreneur

Could the French fondness for a single job for life be giving away to a new spirit of entrepreneurialism? The number of new private businesses launched in France is soaring. June saw an all-time record, and figures in July were only slightly off that pace. French officials estimate that by the end of 2009 France will be about half a million new firms better off. In 2008 just 328,000 small companies were created, and in 2007 the figure was 321,000.

Digital 21 - Entrepreneurship: Cultivating the art of the start

Now that we have realised the false economy that comes with selling houses to one another, the nation is in a fight for economic survival and amongst the 430,000 people now on the live register there are surely entrepreneurs who can be encouraged to establish their own businesses.

But small businesses, which are the lifeblood of the Irish economy, are battling against a situation whereby the banks that their own Government has bailed out are refusing credit. This does not bode well for entrepreneurs who need to access start-up capital. So creative means must be identified as a matter of urgency to ensure that access to seed capital and supports to enter overseas markets exist.

Govt committed to supporting R&D

Ms Ayittey said this in a speech read on her behalf at the opening of the Fourth Biennial National Delegates' Conference of the Senior Staff Association of the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) at Bunso in the Eastern Region. The Minister said government was committed to ensure increase in agriculture production so as to achieve food security and employment. She commended the CSIR for its contribution in agricultural research in respect of varietals trails, crosses research techniques, yield improvements and pest control.

Entrepreneurship as a Safety Net

Is entrepreneurship the new safety net? In a viewpoint column this week, Chris Farrell suggests that corporate careers have become more uncertain than ever, and young people are looking to microenterprises for stability.

Corporate loyalty used to work both ways, with loyal employees being rewarded with long-term job security. That model began to fall apart with mass layoffs in the 1970s, Farrell notes. Now that pay cuts and furloughs — once shunned even by corporations laying off workers — have become commonplace, he suggests, workers see less value and stability in corporate careers. Along with bolstering savings, workers are looking to microbusinesses as a hedge against the risk of layoffs or pay cuts:

Venture capital clocks in at €111m to June

ALMOST €111 million in funding was raised by Irish firms in venture capital in the first half of the year, according to figures released by the Irish Venture Capital Association (IVCA) yesterday.

Second-quarter investments, which totalled €57.2 million, were up slightly from the first quarter when €53.4 million was raised.