Pension and sovereign wealth funds are set to be among the investors in the UK government’s planned £1 billion ($1.7 billion) Innovation Fund for the life science, cleantech and digital sectors.

The fund was launched by Prime Minister Gordon Brown in June 2009, with an initial government investment of GBP 150 million ($248 million).

The Instinct Japan Opportunity Fund launched on December 1. The fund is being managed by a new firm of alternative investment managers called Instinct Capital based in Sydney, Australia.

Instinct comprises of two principals -- Fred Eechaute, who is the Investment manager, and Stephen Good, the business manager. They are joined by Anita Lam who is the trading/operations manager. The former two have worked together at Mizuho Securities in Japan, while Eechaute has also worked with Anita Lam at DKR Oasis.

On a November afternoon, a dozen executives from companies including investment banks Rothschild and Goldman Sachs (GS) and tech research firm Gartner (IT) ringed a conference table in a brownstone on New York's Upper East Side. They were there to learn how U.S. businesses could develop products more cheaply and quickly by borrowing strategies from India. Speaker Navi Radjou, who heads the recently formed Centre for India & Global Business at England's Cambridge University, summed up his advice in one word: jugaad.

A Hindi slang word, jugaad (pronounced "joo-gaardh") translates to an improvisational style of innovation that's driven by scarce resources and attention to a customer's immediate needs, not their lifestyle wants. It captures how Tata Group, Infosys Technologies (INFY), and other Indian corporations have gained international stature. The term seems likely to enter the lexicon of management consultants, mingling with Six Sigma, total quality, lean, and kaizen, the Japanese term for continuous improvement.

Eerie parallels to the desktop PC's history suggest that smartphones have reached boring sameness -- or completeness of capability -- even faster

In June 2007, the iPhone instantly obsoleted all previous smartphones (the BlackBerry and Palm families), finally approaching the promise that carriers and device makers had been making about the mobile future for a decade: Real Web access. A touch UI -- that rotates. Accelerometer and location detection. E-mail and instant messaging. Photos and music. A year later came the App Store and the tens of thousands of apps -- from games to time-wasters to serious business tools -- that also made the iPhone into a computing device.

Creativity serves as the chief currency of the emerging economic age.

As such, a “creative class” of some 38 million people has become dominant in American society, driving fundamental shifts in the work habits, values, desires, and everyday lives of many others.

Those assertions marked the beginning of an influential 2002 book, The Rise of the Creative Class, by urban studies theorist Richard Florida.

For the past day and a half, several Senior Administration officials and I joined leaders from the public, private, and non-profit sectors to discuss the role of innovation in achieving sustainable economic growth and quality jobs. We wish to extend our thanks to the Aspen Institute, Intel, the PBS News Hour with Jim Lehrer, and Democracy: A Journal of Ideas, for bringing people together on this important Presidential priority, reflected in President Obama's Strategy for American Innovation.

DES MOINES, IA (December 2, 2009) — Priorities on state and federal issues to stimulate Iowa’s economy were presented by the Iowa Chamber Alliance at a news conference today at the State Capitol. The Alliance, a non-partisan coalition representing 17 chambers of commerce and economic development organizations throughout the state, advocates an economic development agenda to grow the state’s economy through support of proactive programs that stimulate economic growth for the state and its residents.

“During the past year, the global economic downturn has affected everyone including the State of Iowa and the people who live and work here. Now is not the time to retrench economic development efforts but strengthen them. The Iowa Chamber Alliance will continue to provide leadership on issues and strategic policy recommendations to stimulate economic growth in Iowa,” said Debi Durham, Iowa Chamber Alliance Chair, and President of the Siouxland Chamber of Commerce. “The Alliance calls on the Iowa legislature to address key issues which include continuing to balance the state budget each year, preserve Iowa’s business foundation and business climate, consider a pilot program to extend the length of the school day and/or year and continue strategies for sustaining and revitalizing our communities. We are committed to creating an environment conducive to business success which leads to job expansion and increased state and local revenues.”

How selflessly cool is Google? Every now and then the company removes from consideration one of its superhuman job candidates, to avoid an over-concentration of brilliance. Google, you see, doesn't want to become a black hole of awesome.

Google VP Bradley Horowitz explained things at the annual Supernova conference in San Francisco the other day. He said the company intentionally (and selflessly!) leaves some brainpower outside its walls, according to the Register.

Tim Rowe, the founder of the Cambridge Innovation Center, may be the only CEO in the whole building who doesn’t have his own desk.

To be accurate, he’s got half of one: he shares it with his assistant Midori Williams. But he probably won’t have it for long, as he and Williams happily pick up and move whenever a CIC tenant needs the room. Last week, they were on the 14th floor. This week, it was the 5th.

Individual angels are increasingly giving way to pooled investments in start-ups.

Looking for an angel investor in your new business? You’d better try to find more than one. While dealmaking is down only 3%, angels are forking over a lot less. Angel investment dollars fell 26% in 2008 to $19.2 billion, split among 55,500 deals, according to the University of New Hampshire’s Center for Venture Research.

Try seeking out an angel group or syndicate. The number of them is growing as more individual investors look to spread the risk by pooling their money. Moreover, angel groups and syndicates -- made up of two or more groups that coinvest -- are plunking down much higher amounts than stand-alone angel investors. A survey of Angel Capital Association members found that the average pooled investment in 2008 was $281,000, whereas individual angel investments ranged from $10,000 to $200,000 per start-up.

Hundreds of business leaders gathered in Miami to discuss how to nurture the emerging biotech sector of Florida's economy.

Biotechnolgy research is on the rise in Florida, but the state needs to lure venture capital away from other well-known tech corridors, like Boston, Austin, Texas and the Silicon Valley in order to become an industry powerhouse.

The Greater Miami Chamber of Commerce and Gunster Attorneys at Law hosted a luncheon at Jungle Island in Miami Wednesday to spread that idea to more than 500 business leaders from around the state. Groups like the Burnham Institute for Medical Research in Orlando, Max Planck Florida Institute and Scripps Florida in Jupiter, and the University of Miami's Miller School of Medicine boasted about their accomplishments and growth forecasts and rallied the audience to collaborate to grow the sector.

Free Survey for Entrepreneurs raising capital. See how you compare to over 100,000 other entrepreneurs who took this same survey!

12.02.2009 – Stratford, CT – December 2, 2009, VentureWorthy would like to give you the opportunity to find out whether your business is ready for Angel or Venture Capital funding through this free survey at www.VentureWorthy.com. In this tough economic environment, raising capital may be harder then before, but VentureWorthy provides you with the tools and resources to make your business a success even in these economic times. VentureWorthy has been providing entrepreneurs with this survey for over 9 years.

IBM is opening an innovation center in the Philippines to fuel technology growth in another emerging market.

Big Blue is opening the center in Quezon City in metropolitan Manila. Like recently opened centers in Kazakhstan and Vietnam, this one is aimed at helping local businesses and academic communities to build technology skills. IBM hopes to spur innovation in digital infrastructure projects in banking, energy, telecommunications, transportation, retail and government. Such centers are a big deal in emerging countries and they signal that the country is ready for technology investment.

Paul S. Otellini, President and Chief Executive Officer of Intel Corporation, has accepted the invitation of the Task Force on American Innovation to serve as its new chair. The task force, an alliance of America’s most innovative companies, leading research universities, and major scientific societies, was founded in 2004 to advocate stronger, sustained federal investment in basic research in the physical sciences and engineering. APS is a founding member of the task force.

CDFA recently hosted the Advanced Tax Increment Finance Course in Washington, DC. At this course, Marc Hughes of Jefferies & Co. and Laura Radcliff of Stifel Nicolaus gave an overview of TIF and discussed the current issues affecting the use of this development finance tool.

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Whilst writing a comment on a blog about blogs (and whether they are useful social entrepreneurship resources), I listed a few blogs that I find useful as a resource, as places of debate, or for inspiration. And then it occurred to me that it might be useful to share them.

There is a widely-circulated list of the top 50 social entrepreneur blogs here, but only 2 were UK-based (this SSE blog and Rod Schwartz's below). Mine's UK-focused, but includes some relevant international blogs as well. Cue the music, and in no particular order:

Do you consider yourself innovative? Are you willing to step away from the status quo to try something new and different? If this isn’t how you typically operate, you may benefit from introducing more innovation into your daily life. Not only will it help you avoid burnout, but it can spark new opportunities for personal and professional growth.

Innovation occurs when you introduce a new idea, a new process or a new way to look at an old activity. Although it may seem simple, being innovative is not always easy. If you struggle with conceptualizing and executing new and different ideas, there are several mindsets that can help you focus on innovation. If you’re ready to try something new, here are some ways to allow more innovation and room for growth in your business and personal life.

Booz & Company's 2009 edition of the Global Innovation 1000 report finds large R&D spenders are keeping the pace when it comes to developing new products and services despite fiscal challenges presented by the economic downturn ... '

' ... In the face of a severe global recession, the world’s 1,000 largest publicly traded corporate research and development spenders increased R&D budgets in 2008, affirming the critical importance of innovation to their corporate strategies, according to Booz & Company’s Global Innovation 1000, the global management consulting firm’s fifth annual analysis of global innovation spending. R&D spending at these firms rose 5.7 percent in 2008, a slower rate of growth than the prior year’s 10 percent increase, but in line with the group’s 6.5 percent increase in worldwide sales. More than two-thirds of the companies included in this year’s Global Innovation 1000 maintained or increased R&D spending in 2008, even though a third of the companies reported a financial loss for the year ... '

Just over a month ago I [Lisa Barone] detailed 10 things to do before launching your blog. That post covered how to generate initial buzz, getting your social accounts in order and how to begin promoting content before you really even have any. It was all the technical stuff you want to have in place before you start blogging. However, there was one important thing that post didn’t cover. It didn’t talk about how to define the tone or “voice” of your blog. Your blog voice is what defines you in your industry and in the blogosphere. So how do you know what kind of tone or writing style is right for you?

Well, here are 5 things to consider when determining “your sound”.

A lot of emphasis is placed on the importance for entrepreneurs of innovation and creating your own market. Certainly, you are better off coming up with something novel than knocking off an existing product.

But being first-to-market is far from a guarantor of success. Many major markets are dominated by products and companies that came late to the party -- sometimes very late.