Last summer I attended a talk by Michelle Rhee, the dynamic chancellor of public schools in Washington. Just before the session began, a man came up, introduced himself as Todd Martin and whispered to me that what Rhee was about to speak about — our struggling public schools — was actually a critical, but unspoken, reason for the Great Recession.

There’s something to that. While the subprime mortgage mess involved a huge ethical breakdown on Wall Street, it coincided with an education breakdown on Main Street — precisely when technology and open borders were enabling so many more people to compete with Americans for middle-class jobs.

A new study by the Center for an Urban Future finds that New York City’s leading universities and scientific research centers have not become catalysts for entrepreneurship and local economic development the way similar institutions have in other regions.

The report argues that this is a huge missed opportunity for New York, given the need to diversify the economy and create new engines of job growth. The study details why New York is falling short, showing that university leaders have not done enough to support start-up ventures.

I started a new blog this week that'll hopefully make my life a bit easier, and might also provide you some useful supplemental info about what's going on in New England's Innovation Economy.

It's called "Read Scott's E-mail: Inside the Innovation Economy Inbox."

Basically, I get way too much interesting e-mail about company launches, product debuts, fundings, executive comings-and-goings, and conferences to ever blog about here, or write about in my column. For much of this stuff, there isn't much that I'd really want to add: if there's a cool event happening, you may just want to know where it is and how much it costs, without any commentary from me. If a company gets $10 million in VC funding, often that's just worthy of noting, without my interviewing the CEO about how great it is that investors have coughed up $10 mil to support his idea.

Industry experts have warned that without strong intellectual property laws, Dubai will never be able to attract companies that will innovate and invest in technology research and development. At a conference organised by Dubai Silicon Oasis during Gitex, speakers said that the emirate has a huge opportunity to attract talent, but it must lay the foundations for that to happen. This includes not just strong intellectual property (IP) laws, but also an understanding of where it wants to sit in the technology eco lifecycle. Japan, it was pointed out, wanted to be at the leading edge of technology and so its investments concentrated on building that market. China, on the other hand, identified the manufacturing base and is now a leader in that field.

WASHINGTON – United States Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship Chair, Mary L. Landrieu, D-La., plans to introduce a bill today increasing limits on small business loans. The bill comes after months of talking with small business owners and lenders and in conjunction with an announcement earlier today by President Obama that new measures were underway to increase small business access to capital and create jobs:

“Since Congress passed and the President signed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, we have taken several steps to support small businesses, including eliminating loan fees – a provision I helped spearhead,” Senator Landrieu said. “These changes have helped to give more small businesses the capital they need to stock their shelves and pay their employees. But as President Obama said today, we must do everything in our power to aid our nation’s innovators and job creators to ensure their success and our nation’s future competitiveness.

Oct. 22 (Bloomberg) -- New York is the most attractive city for business and innovation, outranking London, Paris and Tokyo, according to Japan’s Mori Memorial Foundation’s second Global Power City Index.

The survey covers 35 of the world’s major cities and provides a “comprehensive power” ranking, according to the foundation, which was started by Taikichiro Mori, the founder of Mori Building Co., Japan’s largest privately held developer.

I have always known this, but it has become 100% apparent that so much of success is dependent on the quality of talent that you have leading the ship. Talent is an interesting thing to define: talent isn’t experience, talent isn’t age, talent isn’t about the same skill set (all CEOs, etc.). To me, the best team consists of a strong combination of the following characteristics:

The federal government remains the largest source of academic R&D funding, but its share has dropped from 64 % in FY 2005 to 60 % in FY 2008, according to a new report from the National Science Foundation. The top five universities in federal R&D funding for FY 2008: Johns Hopkins University ($1.68 billion including JHU's Applied Physics Laboratory); University of California, San Francisco ($885 million); University of Wisconsin, Madison ($882 million); University of Michigan, all campuses ($876 million); University of California, Los Angeles ($871 million). The institutions constituting the top five have remained the same since FY 2004.

The Ministry of Environment, Science and Technology is in the process of preparing a Science, Technology and Innovation Policy Document. A draft copy of the document has been submitted by Consultants and the first review meeting was held recently.

It is the Ministry’s desire to share the document with the general public with the view of eliciting comments and other inputs. We would, therefore, be most delighted if you could spend some time to read this draft and provide your input by November 15, 2009.

Saying New York is poised to lead the way in the high-tech economy of the future, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) Tuesday launched Innovation Agenda, a five-part economic plan she says will help generate future jobs for a highly skilled workforce.

Innovation Agenda -- which includes an investment in science, technology, engineering and math education and legislation to promote the growth of business incubators and research institutions -- is designed to prepare teachers and students toward developing into "the innovative leaders that New York needs to compete and win the global economy," Gillibrand said from her Washington, D.C., office.

CANBERRA -(Dow Jones)- The Australian Government on Wednesday unveiled details of a A$196 million fund to commercialize ideas and create jobs.

Minister for Innovation, Industry, Science and Research Kim Carr described the fund as a "radical new program" that will tailor assistance to applicants' needs rather than fitting an applicant into a program.

Marc Gunther: This is Marc Gunther. I'm at the GE Global Research Center in Niskayuna, New York -- that's near Albany -- and I'm joined by Kevin Skillern. Kevin is Managing Director of Venture Capital for GE Energy Financial Services -- that's a unit of GE Capital. He overseas GE's Venture Capital Portfolio in Cleantech companies.

Kevin, tell me just as we get started, why is GE in the Venture Capital business and talk a little bit about your portfolio in general terms before we talk about a couple of the specific companies.

The Obama administration on Wednesday said it will use leftover funds from the $700 billion financial bailout to help small businesses.

The new plan would use some funds from the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) to increase lending at smaller and more community-based banks.

Over the past few years, it’s become pretty clear that the United States has been slipping from a global innovation leader to a follower, behind innovation super powers like China, India, Singapore, Finland and now, according to the latest World Economic Forum report, Switzerland.

Innovation, technology and business experts are all calling for a more valuable education system, better intellectual property laws and tax credits for companies that invest in innovation.

In June, I wrote about “The Innovation Movement,” a campaign launched that month by the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) to ensure that the U.S. Congress passes innovation-friendly legislation.

When it comes to talking with their kids, parents say the topics of math and science are harder to discuss than drug abuse, according to a survey of 561 adults who have children ages 5 to 18. The survey was conducted online between Sept. 23 and 28, 2009 by Penn, Schoen and Berland Associates on behalf of Intel Corporation, and is reported to have a margin of error of +/- 4.14 percent. The survey found that although more than 50 percent of parents rank math or science as the subjects most critical to their children’s future success, they report discomfort talking to their children about these subjects. In fact, nearly a quarter of parents who admit to being less involved in their child’s math and science education than they would like say that a key barrier is their own lack of understanding of these subjects. On top of this, last week, the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) revealed that fewer than 40% of fourth-graders and eighth-graders in the United States are proficient in math.

Sovereign wealth funds will be invited to invest alongside the government in a £1bn vehicle to finance venture capital funds as part of broader "strategic partnerships" with the UK technology industry, according to Lord Drayson, science minister.

Fresh from visiting investors in the US and Europe, Lord Drayson has found "encouraging" feedback on the new fund of funds, announced by the government in June to aid the ailing venture capital industry. He is confident of turning the UK's initial £150m contribution into a £1bn fund - the biggest of its kind in Europe.

Wonderful World Of Web 2.0 - The Web 2.0 Summit is in full swing and already generated a bit of news in its first day - if you consider anything a Twitter executive says as news. While CEO Evan Williams disappointed bloggers once again by stopping short of disclosing any revenue models, he did say he “deperately” wants to rid of Twitter’s “suggested user” list, which offers suggestions on which users to follow. The list was launched last year and includes a wealth of celebrities, social media stars and brand-name companies who have benefited greatly by attracting thousands of users. Instead, Williams said, he’s looking to replace that list with a feature that will let people build their own lists of users to follow. Also at Web 2.0, Morgan Stanley’s Mary Meeker claimed the economy is improving and projected a coming mobile boom (see her presentation here), General Electric chief Jeff Immelt unveiled a handheld ultrasound machine, PayPal revealed it’s embracing outside developers, and Mark Pincus of social-gaming company Zynga predicted we’ll see an economy built around social-media apps.

Since 1976, AAAS has published a comprehensive annual analysis of R&D in the president's proposed federal budget, making timely and objective information available to the science and engineering communities and to policy makers. AAAS Report XXXIV: Research & Development FY 2010 includes the political context of budget proposals; analysis of major funding trends; analysis of funding for research by theme, major agency, and discipline; and nearly 40 tables. The full text of the 273-page report from the AAAS R&D Budget and Policy Program is available online in PDF format and hard copies may be ordered.

AAAS Releases Report on US R&D Budget for FY 2010

I've read several books about innovation, and am reading another which I'll review shortly here on the blog, which talk about the importance of combining disparate skills or capabilities when innovating, or holding two diametrically opposing ideas and finding the happy medium. What should be obvious is that one of the most important skills from an innovation perspective is the act and insight of synthesis.

This is a real challenge, because most people are taught to break down problems into smaller, finite pieces and solve the smaller problems. We also work as specialists, with deep understanding of our core capabilities and knowledge, but often with little insights or knowledge beyond our education or jobs. So most people don't use synthesis skills on a regular basis, and are probably prone to avoiding synthesis since synthesis requires introducing a number of new and possibly unknown factors which may simply make the problem larger and more difficult.

The Institute of Biomedical Engineering, Imperial College London, has been honoured with a top prize for innovation at the prestigious Times Higher Education (THE) Awards 2009. The Institute was named overall winner in the category of "Outstanding Contribution to Innovation and Technology". The awards were announced at a gala ceremony at the Grosvenor House Hotel in London on Thursday 15th October.

Now in their fifth year, the Times Higher Education Awards are the leading awards for the higher education sector, created to recognise, celebrate and reward the highest standards of excellence and talent in UK academia. This year the awards attracted over 600 entries from more than 130 higher education institutions.