A new innovation report by Grant Thornton International (GT), a consulting and advisory firm, examined the thoughts and attitudes of business executives globally towards innovation. The report is based on a survey conducted by the renowned Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU).

In the GT 2009 report, the role of customers, along with the attitude of companies to their customers, emerges as a defining characteristic. "No longer simply passive recipients of goods and services, customers now help to shape the future of their own consumption." They are now the leading source of innovations globally (41 per cent), more important than anything inside companies, including research and development.

In the previous decades, most large corporations have practiced glocalization: developing products in rich countries, then distributing them around the world, adapting the products slightly for different local markets.

According to Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth professor Vijay Govindarajan, these days of glocalization may be drawing to a close. He wrote in the recent Harvard Business Review article, “How GE is Disrupting Itself“:

President Barack Obama said the U.S. must be a leader in alternative energy innovation to ensure continued economic growth and national security and to confront the peril of climate change.

Obama, speaking Friday to students and faculty at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, said worldwide energy supplies are getting scarcer while demand continues to grow. He urged them to extend the U.S. legacy of innovation to meet that challenge and called on Congress to pass comprehensive energy legislation.

Inventors Digest magazine selected the four winners of its national and Carolinas youth innovation essay contests, after evaluating some 400 submissions from across the country.

The contests, part of National Inventors Month last August, sought essays that best articulated what technology, tool, product or service would shape our lives in 2059.

Winners of the national contests each will receive laptop computers, a year’s subscription to Inventors Digest, their essays published in the December 2009 issue of the magazine and on this Web site, a possible appearance on the Emmy award-winning television series Everyday Edisons, a T-shirt and brain-teaser game. Winners of the Carolinas regional contests each will receive iPods courtesy of the Charlotte Observer and Charlotteobserver.com, and other prizes. Congratulations to:

A consortium of Irish executives who hold senior roles in some of Silicon Valley’s most prestigious technology firms are building an all-island US$100-million venture capital fund to ensure Ireland achieves breakthrough success stories.

The Irish Technology Leaders Group (ITLG) is a group of Irish and American senior executives in Silicon Valley who are committed to ensuring that Ireland remains not only attractive for mobile investment by US technology giants but also that Irish entrepreneurs can grow global businesses.

Are you an entrepreneur, engineer, researcher, business person, developer, university student or professor, with an idea or project that has the potential to become a disruptive technology or innovation? Do you see this project as potentially powerful, when targeted at an existing, or emerging, market? Have you developed a business plan or mission statement, and begun to build a successful team?

Gov. Rick Perry today credited the Texas Emerging Technology Fund (ETF) with helping strengthen Texas’ economy by attracting innovative companies, research dollars and jobs to the state. The governor spoke at the Gulf Coast Innovation Conference and Showcase, where he announced ETF investments in three Texas companies.

“Since its inception, the ETF has galvanized the research environment in our state by harnessing Texans’ amazing ideas and encouraging even greater efforts to inquire, innovate and invest,” Gov. Perry said. “These investments make a difference not only by creating cures for diseases, therapies for afflictions and technologies that make life easier, but also by growing our economy and creating jobs that allow Texans to earn a living and support their families.”

The State Science and Technology Institute (SSTI) announced the winners of its 2009 tech-based economic development awards.

The SSTI gave awards in six separate categories to nonprofits that initiated successful programs to sustain the nation’s position as a global leader for innovation and competitiveness at a ceremony in Overland Park, Kansas. Values emphasized included impact, strategic value and ability to replicate.

Noted management consultant Peter Drucker used to say that entrepreneurship is the exclusive province of the entrepreneur. Entrepreneurs see problems others do not and find novel solutions. Someone close to a particular problem is the most apt entrepreneur, and in community college education the two people closest to the challenges that get in the way of success are faculty members and students.

According to these two men, it takes more than smarts to be an entrepreneur. You must be able to deal with pressure. They also mention a new book they will be writing together titled, “The Midas Touch”.

While you are here, don’t forget to follow me on twitter to receive the latest updates.

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.