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innovation DAILY

Here we highlight selected innovation related articles from around the world on a daily basis.  These articles related to innovation and funding for innovative companies, and best practices for innovation based economic development.

The Daily Start-Up: Will VCs Actually Use This Term Sheet?

Last week we mentioned how angel investor and entrepreneur Chris Dixon detailed on his blog the terms he thinks are ideal for first-round financings. Venture capitalist Fred Wison came out in support of the simplified term sheet, writing that the industry needs “to eliminate a lot of bad terms that have caused a lot of harm” and “converge on a set of standard Series A terms that everyone uses.” These posts inspired Adeo Ressi - the founder of The Funded, a site where entrepreneurs rate venture capitalists - to dream up the “Plain Preferred” term-sheet template that “aligns the investor and the entrepreneur incentives.” The Series A term sheet is designed to protect founders and save tens of thousands of dollars in legal fees. Let’s see whether venture capitalists will actually agree to such scaled-down deal terms, and if Fred Wilson and Brad Feld, another VC who supports the idea, will put their money where there mouths are. Earlier this year, Ressi came out with legal documents he believes will protect start-up founders from the “atrocities of investors.” Ressi tells us those founder-friendly incorporation documents are being used by about 50 start-ups….

Video Takes Behind-the-Scenes Look at Economic Bloggers

Some of the country's most widely read economic bloggers share their insights in a newly released video produced by the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation. Economic Bloggers and the Renewal of Entrepreneurial Capitalism , offers the experts' perspectives on the business of blogging, traces the steps leading to the economic meltdown, and gives their views on the role innovation and entrepreneurship will play to lift the global economy out of recession.


Seize the Moment: Tech-based Economic Development for the Next Economy

SSTIs 13th Annual Conference

Oct 21-23, 2009

Overland Park, KS

http://ssti.staging.10floor.com/email/422464.1/LH/www.ssticonference.org

SSTI is so excited about this years conference that were providing Digest subscribers the first peak at the 28-page, full-color brochure while its still on the presses. It will be arriving in mailboxes by the end of the week, but is available now as a PDF by clicking either of the links below or by email request.

Tips on Innovation & Entrepreneurship From Jeff Bezos ...

Listening to Jeff Bezos, founder and chief executive officer of Amazon, is like going to startup school where you learn that failure is part of entrepreneurial growth. Whenever I have talked to Bezos in the past, the things that have stuck in my head have been his willingness to be wrong and his unflinching abhorrence of the status quo. At the Wired Business Conference in New York City, Bezos reiterated some of those points in a conversation with writer Steven Levy.

Government Technology Experts to Examine a New Era of Innovation...

FAIRFAX, Va., Aug. 24 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Senior government and industry officials will examine "A New Era of Innovation" at the Executive Leadership Conference (ELC) of the American Council for Technology and the Industry Advisory Council (ACT-IAC) in Williamsburg, Va., on Oct. 25-27.

The conference will feature government technology experts discussing forward-thinking themes and reviewing the Obama administration's stated priorities of enhancing collaboration, transparency, and accountability.

Icelandic people turn towards more innovation | eNewsWire

Iceland’s economy may be struggling, but regular Icelanders are trying to find new ways to fend for themselves and their families. Innovation centres have been formed in many towns and the low value of the Icelandic krona helps exporting companies.

Some years ago, many firms in Iceland had to watch as the country’s largest banks literally sucked talent from them, with stellar salaries dwarfing those in regular companies.

Venture Model Makeover & Diet Plan-Step One

A lot of people have been asking lately if the venture model is broken. But it seems to me that it’s just decrepit. Like an aging, rotund former football star, the venture industry is scratching its head and realizing that its glory days are long past. The industry collectively doesn’t really know how to handle its new reality. In the heyday, top-quartile funds might have gotten away with treating their important stakeholders arrogantly, but given that even top-quartile firms have not provided great returns over the past 10 years, venture GPs will need to make herculean efforts and adhere to a strict regimen in order to make the upcoming cut. With almost the entire industry needing to raise new funds over the next two years, there may be few survivors. I propose a three-step makeover plan for those paunchy firms that are on the edge.

$2.0 BILLION IN FISCAL 2010 FOR TECHNOLOGY IN PENNSYLVANIA STATE GOVERNMENT

Decrease in state funding offset by federal economic stimulus spending

August 24, 2009 - pjmathison today released its 2009-10 Pennsylvania State Government Technology Investment Forecast, which provides advanced details on more than $2.0 billion in upcoming tech-related consulting, procurement and economic development spending by PA state government for the fiscal year beginning July 1, 2009.

Read more ...

Patents: Horizontal vs Vertical Innovation

I am a long time opponent of patents and Intellectual Property rights (to a great part because of your work), but something always bothered me and that was the ‘innovation’ argument by the patent supporters. I could always see both the sides of the arguments, yet was never sure which side is right. I can see that without patents there is no incentive to develop a technology with a large investment, on the other hand, without patents, there is probably no need of a large investment.

Tools for Innovation I: Normal psychology and economic recovery ...

Business magazines like Forbes, newspapers like the Wall Street Journal, and economic forecasters are united in their belief that economic growth in the US will be driven by innovation. That is, the US and other major economic players will not grow by developing new products and key refinements of existing products that will drive new consumption. This is not news, really. Bringing new ideas to market has long been a centerpiece of economic growth. And that means that Psychology is crucial to the economy.

Sparxoo Top 5: You Might Be an Entrepreneur If...

“Our focus is now on entrepreneurship and innovation as opposed to industry attraction in the old-line sectors,” said Jeff Kaczmarek, president of the Economic Development Corporation in an interview with the New York Times. “In times of economic distress, it’s small business and entrepreneurs who lead the way out of these recessionary periods.”

Next three months will decide our future, says EI chairman

DECISIONS made over the next three months will show whether or not Ireland has a blueprint for the way forward, the chairman of Enterprise Ireland (EI) has said.

Accountant Hugh Cooney said the legislation on Nama, the Lisbon Treaty referendum, and the December Budget after the deliberations of the Taxation Commission and Bord Snip Nua would all arise in the next 100 days.

Posts about venture capital as of August 22, 2009 | Geekfluence

How entrepreneurs finance their company is one of the most critical decisions that they will make during the course of their startup. The structure of their financing will be one of the key drivers of the financial return from their venture.There are financing structures for companies that have small potential and structures for companies that have big potential. There is not a one-size fits all strategy for capitalizing a company.Read the entire post

Barrons Article on Tech IPOs Misses the Importance...

On Monday, August 10, Barron’s ran a story “Does the IPO Market Shun Smaller Companies?”, written by Mark Veverka, asserting that “venture capitalists want to widen the playing field for the underwriters.” The story includes quotes from former National Venture Capital Association (NVCA) chairman Dixon Doll of DCM and investment banker Paul Deninger, who is the vice-chairman of Jefferies & Co. It accurately points out that, when it comes to IPOs, many venture capitalists have mistakenly defaulted to choosing the large investment banks (such as Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, and Credit Suisse) as lead underwriters for their portfolio companies. This practice has created “a near oligopolistic hold on tech IPOs” by these large investment banks. Such market power allows bankers to shapes the profile of those companies worthy of going public to favor the natural demand from their largest clients: short-term trading focused hedge funds and large institutional investors that demand highly liquid public securities.

16th Annual NASVF Conference

Join your colleagues in Oklahoma City and exchange the best strategies and tools for building and managing strategic investment programs and institutions. Newly formed organizations receive the benefit of different viewpoints, while established organizations track new approaches and resources. Participants meet with professionals from outside their local networks, making one-on-one contact with specialized practitioners and discussing new methods of facilitating capital formation. Together we will put early stage investing at the forefront of our economic recovery.

Innovation Yin and Yang by Bret Swanson

There are two key mistakes in the public policy arena that we don’t talk enough about. They are two apparently opposite sides of the same fallacious coin.

Call the first fallacy “innovation blindness.” In this case, policy makers can’t see the way new technologies or ideas might affect, say, the future cost of health care, or the environment. The result is a narrow focus on today’s problems rather than tomorrow’s opportunities. The orientation toward the problem often exacerbates it by closing off innovations that could transcend the issue altogether.