Last week, I [Johnathan Ortmans] participated in the NASVF Annual Conference in Oklahoma City where experts discussed again how to ensure that credit crunches do not negatively impact start-up performance. The good news is that those gathering at this conference started from a common appreciation that entrepreneurship cannot be on the sidelines of economic and financial policy. Breakfast speaker Rick Wade, Deputy Chief of Staff to the Secretary of Commerce, noted rigorous research at the Kauffman Foundation that revealed that entrepreneurs drive job creation in the U.S. with firms less than five years old accounting for all net job growth in the U.S. Moreover, job creation from startups is much less sensitive to downturns than job creation in the entire economy, according to research by Kauffman’s Dane Stangler. This may seem counterintuitive. However, this does not mean that entrepreneurs do not respond to business cycles. As Stangler points out, "a downturn might actually act as an extra spur to founding a new company, if the founders perceive that their prospective competition might be weakened." Others see starting a company amid a recession as a way to take their future into their own hands. Perhaps a major economic restructuring actually produces a lot of new unexpected opportunities. What is clearly understood is that entrepreneurs steadily recreate the economy, generating jobs and innovation.

Sep. 20--If it wasn't for an enduring image as the "Smoky City" -- so dubbed by muckraking journalist Upton Sinclair -- Pittsburgh might never have become a center for environmental innovation.

"I think there was a recognition, even in the pre-World War II period, that the city wasn't livable," said Anne Madarasz, director of the museum division at the Senator John Heinz History Center. "It wasn't attractive and, were the steel industry to decline -- and there were some indications it might, even then -- we needed to invest in the city to attract people to live here and businesses to locate here."

TiEcon Delhi 2009,(www.tiecon-delhi.org) one of India’slargest entrepreneurship conference commenced at The Taj Palace, New Delhitoday. The conference was kicked off with a welcoming note by Dr. SaurabhSrivastava Chairman Emeritus, The Indus Entrepreneurs, (TiE), New Delhi followedby an inaugural address by Mr. P. Chidambaram, HomeMinister, Ministry of Home Affairs. Mr P. Chidambaram’s address was followed byan address by Sir Richard Stagg, KMCG, British High Commissioner. The speakersaddressed a delegation of 1000 people attending this session. TiEcon Delhi 2009is a landmarkconference which brings together an array of people from a variety of industriesand societies to debate complex issues and foster new ideas.

Reporting from Menlo Park, Calif. - In what would have been an unaccustomed move for a Silicon Valley venture capitalist not too long ago, Alan Salzman recently flew to Copenhagen to attend a conference on climate change and schmooze government policymakers.

His mission: Explain the role of venture capitalists and their green-tech start-ups in cleaning up the environment.

"All aspects of clean tech bump up against government regulations," said Salzman, whose firm, VantagePoint Venture Partners, has funded such high-profile firms as electric car maker Tesla Motors Inc. and solar power plant developer BrightSource Energy Inc.

SAN JOSE, Calif. – Silicon Valley companies that are debating whether it’s beneficial to work with telecom carriers should recalibrate their expectations in the time it will take to get the service to market, but hold onto the fact that the benefits of scale with operators are huge, said Derek Kerton. Kerton, principal analyst at the Kerton Group, helped organize this week’s TC3, an annual day-long event that connects telecom carriers and applications developers to share best practices in the Silicon Valley.

“Set your watch to telco time,” Kerton told the audience. The development cycle at a carrier can take 18 months, which is long by Silicon Valley standards. But the potential to reach mass scale is immediate: the world’s 20 largest carriers hold 57% of the market, Kerton said, citing Wireless Intelligence data. About 350 telecom companies have a presence in the Silicon Valley, he estimated, employing 200,000 people in the area.

Back in 1986, when Bill Gates was still making sales calls, he pitched my group at First Boston on why we should bet the farm on Windows. Despite the risk involved, we gave his fledgling startup the deal. This wasn’t because of his financial backers (he didn’t even drop any names), but because we believed in his vision and nerdiness. In the same way, Google became a huge success long before the deep pocketed VC’s arrived to ride Larry and Sergey’s coattails. They simply had a great technology and winning strategy.

So I’m miffed by the National Venture Capital Association’s (NVCA) claim that companies like Microsoft and Google “…would not exist today without the funding and guidance provided during their early stages by venture capitalists.” And I’m amused that the NVCA claims credit for creating 12 million jobs and generating $3 trillion in revenue (that’s only 21 percent of U.S. GDP). In the software industry (which includes Internet/Web 2.0), they stake claim to 81% of the all jobs created. Yes, 81%. Can they please give the entrepreneurs who risk their life savings, max out their credit cards and put their families in the back seat a little more credit? We’re not talking about divvying up the company’s stock here, just a pat on the back.

A 3-year-old boy was recently diagnosed with a rare, aggressive, soft-tissue cancer in his bladder. Radiation treatment would have stunted the growth of his pelvic bones, hips and bladder and left him disabled. Radical surgery could remove his bladder, prostate and portions of his rectum. That would have left him impotent, using a colostomy bag, and urinating through another bag in his abdomen.

His parents chose a third option—a new "unproven" therapy where a proton beam precisely targeted the radiation dose so that it didn't cripple their son for life. The boy is now cancer-free and his body functions normally.

I've invented another theorem or "law" of innovation, which suggests that the speed of innovation is inversely proportional to the kinds of innovations you create. If your team creates incremental innovations, then the pace of innovation must be high, and the pipeline kept full. If your team creates disruptive innovations, then the pace can be much slower, with perhaps fewer ideas in the pipeline. This is predicated on a number of assumptions:

The Communication “Reviewing Community innovation policy in a changing world [53 KB]” presents an assessment of the achievements and shortcomings in implementing Community policies in support of innovation in recent years. Together with a series of more detailed Commission staff working papers, it serves as an input to the preparation of a new European innovation plan, as called for by the European Council.

The objective is to put in place new ambitious policies to foster innovation in Europe. The new policy will be presented in the context of the forthcoming post-2010 Lisbon strategy for growth and jobs, taking into account the global economic crisis.

Dear Group:

Good meeting with many of you at ASME earlier this summer.

If anyone is in DC on Tuesday morning and would like to attend this event, please do so. . The National Academies is releasing its report on research parks on Sept. 22 at the Capitol Visitors Center, and Senator Pryor of Arkansas will be speaking as will I on behalf of AURP. [This was organized only late this week so apologize about the lack of advance word.] See attachments

Obsession with the politics of health reform has diverted attention from a huge issue: the decline of U.S. medical innovation.

In March 2009, A coalition of leaders in research, medicine, patient advocacy, academia, education, labor and business leaders anticipated the harmful effects of this diversion. They formed the Council for American Medical Innovation.

Today, Aneesh Chopra, US Chief Technology Officer and Associate Director for Technology for the White House, spoke at a forum held by TiE, an entrepreneurship organization based in Silicon Valley. Chopra was joined by a panel of Silicon Valley execs and VCs, including Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak. Chopra made his debut to Silicon Valley a few weeks ago at the Churchill Club, addressing the future of innovation and Federal investments in technology.

Win when you lose - 10 guidelines for loss analysis – Learning from your losses can yield great dividends, but it’s not easy. Serial entrepreneur Scott Olson offers 10 ways to help you determine what went wrong – and how to avoid it in the future.

Intellectual property rights (IP) is one of the major component of research in many organizations (both profit and non-profit), institutes and academics. Since 1970’s, during which a Canadian non-governmental organization (ETC group) filed two patent applications for the first time on “the world’s first-ever human-made life form”, many companies including academic institutes or universities are encouraging their researchers to protect their findings through IP’s. It is obvious for the researcher to surprise if he looks at the number of patents that were issued since 1970 on various entities over the advancement of science. Despite intense database on inventions and/or discoveries of various scientific organizations, the increasing interests of the scientists to protect their inventions/technology/discovery thorough IP is significantly reducing the accessibility of their findings and there by slowing advances in science. In this review, we are discussing on various components of patenting tools, protection and methodologies as an introductory material for scientists and students for the better understanding of intellectual property (IP) rights. We would like to promote the use of IP’s to protect the technology being theft out for biological terrorism rather than a commercial motif to “Business” the science.

The NASVF conference this week presented a wide array of options and opinions on seed and early stage funding. Representatives of federal, regional, state, and both public and private sector economic development and investment organizations participated on panels. Most felt that their approaches would be successful, but the only things they truly agreed upon was that such investment was both necessary to our future economic growth and harder to get in this economy.

NEW HAVEN — - Despite its lofty ranking when it comes to personal income, Connecticut has been slow to harness the wealth of its most prosperous residents to support technology startups.

A new state plan — endorsed this week by Gov. M. Jodi Rell — would give tax credits to such "angel investors."

Alexander Pope’s 1709 “Essay on Criticism” had these immortal lines “…for fools rush in where angels fear to tread”. He was of course referring to the literary critics of his time and, in his time, implied some one who behaved foolishly rather than referring to a simpleton or someone lacking in intelligence as it does now.

Every entrepreneur, observer, VC, analyst and even bureaucrat will tell you that there’s a severe shortage of true boot-strapping capital. The money required to really start off on the entrepreneurial journey. Friends, family and fools (collectively FFF, rather unfairly but with tongue firmly in cheek) provide the initial emotional and perhaps some monetary support for the budding entrepreneur. It invariably takes more than that to demonstrate the venture is capable of taking off.

So you’ve got the killer social application, community, feature, software. The idea is going to make mint! Now what?

According to IDEA2009 - the conference for social and experience design, held here at MaRS yesterday - you need to design an experience that will make that idea sing with users. For that, Christian Crumlish and Erin Malone, authors of O’Reilly Media’s Designing Social Interfaces, present: 5 Steps, 5 Principles and 5 No-No’s for your killer social media innovation.

Technology blogs TechCrunch and AllThingsD reported that the San Francisco microblogging upstart has raised at least $50 million in a new round of venture capital that values the company at $1 billion.

Twitter, which lets you share your thoughts online — but only if they can be kept to 140 characters or less — has generated a lot of buzz, but not a lot of revenue. ($1,000,000,000 — that's 14 characters right there.)

Food Venture Forum president Jude Conway says last year, nearly all the presenting companies were from the rural Grain Belt. He says this year there is a strong pool of applicants from major cities across the U.S. and Canada.