I recently participated in a panel discussion hosted by the Economist Corporate Network in Singapore about innovation in Asia.

I started my portion of the discussion by sharing three observations about what I had found unique about innovating in Asia: its unbelievable diversity, both between and within countries (and sometimes even cities); the historical focus of many Asian organizations on replication and cost reduction; and Asia's inconsistent infrastructure (Singapore is amazing, but don't try to schedule more than two meetings a day in Mumbai).

But what I really wanted to discuss were the three biggest trends I see affecting innovation in the region.

Grabbing market share through muscle, not innovation, has served Microsoft and other leading enterprise behemoths well: they play in a $250 billion-plus industry that asymmetrically favors a few vendors. But not surprisingly, this model has not been particularly effective in producing technology breakthroughs -- rather, it has stifled innovation within incumbents' organizations, as well as the broader industry by making the barrier to entry impossibly high. And it has certainly hasn't served customers well. For decades, they've dealt with complicated integrations, infrastructure that's too hard to maintain, overwhelmingly expensive technology, and services and support that overpower the price of the original system by a factor of five to ten.

DES MOINES, Iowa — A statewide program launched Tuesday that is meant to give a boost to Iowa startup businesses by linking entrepreneurs with the people and resources that could help them succeed through professional and networking organizations and events.

StartupIowa will create a network of organizations meant to make it easier to connect startups to resources, the Des Moines Register reported (http://dmreg.co/slvS1p ).

Debi Durham, the director of the Iowa Economic Development Authority, said StartupIowa "will connect the dots and bring all the resources entrepreneurs need to bear.

Another startup accelerator is debuting in LA today—Amplify. With the backing of some well-known Hollywood and Silicon Valley names, the Venice Beach-based incubator is launching a $4.5 million incubator and fund. Investors include Mark Burnett (Apprentice, Survivor), Brian Grazer, Jarl Mohn, Accel Partners, BV Capital, Greycroft Partners, Rustic Canyon, Tomorrow Ventures (Eric Schmidt), Tim Draper, Gordon Crawford, Vivi Nevo, Paige Craig, Diego Berdakin and Tom McInerney.

The accelerator, which is being managed by Paul Bricault and Richard Wolpert, will be looking to incubate and invest in companies at the intersection of technology and entertainment.

How many of us have dreamed of leaving our current jobs to do what we really want to do? And yet, not many of us have actually left the safety of what we do daily unless forced out by layoffs and downsizing.

Why is that? I would argue it’s due to one or more of these reasons:

• We haven’t taken the time to identify a vocation that would serve our passion.
• We lack a plan to make a successful exit.
• We are paralyzed by a combination of our workload, fear of leaving the world we know, and concern about how we will do financially.

President Obama today announced that Commerce Secretary John Bryson would join National Economic Council Director Gene Sperling as co-chair of the White House Office of Manufacturing Policy. The Office of Manufacturing Policy is part of the National Economic Council in the White House and works across federal government agencies to coordinate the execution of manufacturing programs and the development of manufacturing policy.

Since the bottom of the recession in 2009, manufacturing production has grown 14 percent while real goods exports have grown 29 percent. Over this same period, U.S. manufacturing has added over 300,000 jobs, the first time the sector has experienced sustained job growth in over a decade, but more must be done to revitalize American manufacturing.

"Supporting the manufacturing sector will further our ability to innovate at home and compete around the world while generating more high-wage American jobs," Secretary Bryson said. "Since day one, President Obama has been focused on supporting the entire United States manufacturing sector but especially small and medium sized businesses on the cutting edge of advanced manufacturing. We are introducing an 'all hands on deck' approach that coordinates all of our assets - public and private, federal, state, and regional."

To read the full White House announcement, please click here.

Asian is moving towards the remaking of the innovation landscape, I have no doubt about that. Over the next ten years or so, along with a number of other wealth generating activities, the centre of gravity for innovation will shift increasingly towards the East.

I have been lucky to see part of this taking shape in my 15 odd years being based in Asia until recently. For twelve years I was based in Singapore and it is still, like all of Asian, on my advisory radar. Innovation in Asia is quite different; here are some of the dynamics. Others will follow.

Lehigh University, Philadelphia University and Thomas Jefferson University were each awarded $200,000 in the fourth round of the University City Science Center’s QED Proof of Concept Program, the Science Center announced Dec. 12, 2011. It was the first time any of the three universities have received a QED award. The QED Program is designed to facilitate commercial investment in early-stage life science technologies with high potential in the healthcare industry.

The projects receiving awards include a fabric that resists bacterial contamination developed at Philadelphia University, a portable device for delivering oxygen to critical care patients developed at Lehigh University, and a breakthrough diagnostic test for pancreatic cancer developed at Thomas Jefferson University. The projects were selected from 10 finalists by an independent group comprising industry and investment professionals.

Being an entrepreneur in India is finally becoming cool, say the founders and investors in the burgeoning startup tech scene in Delhi. That new caché is in contrast to decades of the mindset that young business people should strive to work for large branded conglomerates and avoid taking risks creating new ventures or joining early stage tech firms.

The sentiment was repeated throughout the weekend at a startup business competition called Startup Weekend Delhi, which featured 15 teams that spend 54 hours hashing out web and mobile startup ideas, culminating in back to back 5 -minute pitches before judges on Sunday night. Some of the winners of the pitch-fest included a cell phone incentive program around sanitation company Poop Rewards, a new type of gesture-based kiosk from Kinesis, and a mobile app to test glasses on a photo of faces called Spexy.

On Friday, a dozen of Silicon Valley's top women designers gathered at 500 Startups for a sold-out mini-symposium on everything from design best practices to how best to chart careers. The event, titled "Women in Design," was put on by The Designer Fund. The idea behind the gathering, Designer Fund cofounder Enrique Allen tells Fast Company, is to "inspire the next generation of designers through storytelling."

Among the heavy hitters: Kate Aronowitz, Director of Design at Facebook; Nancy Broden, a design lead at Twitter; and Janice Fraser, cofounder of LUXr and former founding partner at Adaptive Path.

If you toss this foam-covered ball skyward, an accelerometer inside determines when it has reached its maximum height. At that moment, 36 cameras are triggered simultaneously, creating a mosaic that can be downloaded and viewed on a computer as one spherical panoramic image. The ball was created by researchers at the Technische Universität Berlin after one of them, Jonas Pfeil, labored to create panoramas while on vacation in Tonga. On that trip, he tried a cumbersome process that required snapping pictures in different directions and stitching them together later in a photo-editing program. Now he hopes to license the camera-ball technology for commercial production.

Dear SBIR Insider,

We have some very encouraging news for you on the status of SBIR reauthorization, but contrary to what you may have read, SBIR has NOT been reauthorized.

We have been deluged with calls and emails tonight by those who said they read in another newsletter that SBIR was reauthorized. Although a deal was struck this afternoon, SBIR reauthorization has not yet happened, but we're closer than we've ever been in this iteration of the reauthorization process.

YOU DID IT! (or, many of you did it..)

An agreement between the Senate and House on SBIR/STTR reauthorization has been reached. Reauthorization is in the form of negotiated modifications to an amendment offered to the Senate's version of the National Defense Authorization Act for 2012 (NDAA), by Senator Mary Landrieu (D-LA), chair of the Senate Committee on Small Business & Entrepreneurship.

With recent jobs reports showing a glimmer of hope, professionals from all generations are gearing up to seize the next big career opportunity after years of stagnation.  But, over the last half decade, the path to career success has been fundamentally redefined, and more and more, professionals of all ages and from diverse industries are finding that an entrepreneurial mindset is a prerequisite to advance.

So how did we get to this point? And what can you do to stay ahead of the curve?

Over the past few years, there has been a fundamental shift in the economic paradigm. Previous generations generally built “lifelong” careers at one company or at least in one particular field. In many cases, that career demanded that they simply meet the expectations of their bosses in order to advance. The result: Even relatively passive employees could find significant career success.

Most e-health initiatives have yet to deliver on the benefits so often claimed for them. That's because e-health isn't just about putting in place the necessary technology infrastructure. Rather, it needs to be seen as an ecosystem that incorporates not just technology but also all stakeholders, the services involved, an adequate financing model, and the necessary governance policies and regulations. And it must be customized to reflect local condition.

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In the comments to last week's Burn Rate post, I was asked to share some burn rates from our portfolio. I can't do that. But an alternative suggestion was to write a post suggesting some reasonable burn rates at different stages. I can do that and so that's the topic of today's post.

The following applies to software based businesses, and most particularly web and mobile software businesses. It does not apply to hardware, life sciences, and energy startups. It is also focused on startups in the US. It costs less to employ teams in many other parts of the world.

Working from home isn't the magical experience many office-goers think it is. Distractions are abound, and sometimes it's hard to get any work done at all.

So what can you do to your working space that will help you be more comfortable and productive?

We've put together eight tips that will help you improve your home office. Take a look:

Released recently by the Council of Ministers of Education, Canada (http://www.cmec.ca) the Pan-Canadian Assessment of Mathematics, Reading and Science (PCAP) showed some interesting shifts in performance. During 2010, 32,000 Grade 8 students (secondary II in Quebec) in 11 jurisdictions completed the assessment, which primarily focused on math with minor assessments in science and reading. Results are encouraging and concerning at the same time, and warrant discussion.

Overall, the news is very good with 91% of Canadian students performing at expected levels in math and almost half performing above their expected level. Ontario students did very well and were top performers in all three categories. While there was no gender difference in math performance, girls significantly outperformed boys in both reading and science.

The mobile landscape of 2012 is ripe with possibility. Globally, it’s estimated that 5.3-billion people have mobile phones. This means that there are more people picking up a mobile phone every morning than lifting a newspaper. Increasingly, it’s not only to make calls and send texts either — mobile data traffic is trebling every year.

Mobile devices such as tablets and smartphones became the highest-selling consumer electronic device category in 2011, amounting to 115-million units in Q3 alone — according to one report, beating out PC, laptop, and netbook figures combined. With the growing popularity of smartphones and the increasing dependence on mobile devices, it’s only natural that everyone will want to take their mobile strategies for next year to a whole new level.

Since its introduction into the business language by Henry Chesbrough in 2003, ‘Open Innovation’ has become a phrase synonymous with independent group interaction and the outsourcing of creative ideas. Open innovation covers a wide range of business activities, so it would be prudent to define the various different practices, their advantages and their shortcomings;

Open Source Innovation or Crowdsourcing This involves the release of information for the general public or a member forum to comment on, solve, or provide further information. Released information can take the form of specific calls for innovative solutions, experimental data or general areas of interest. The incentive to innovative often comes from a cash prize or a development contract. The advantage of this method is the outreach to a wide audience of potential solvers, however, this can lead to large amounts of information which require filtering and analysis to pick any promising leads. Intellectual property can also be a sticking point using crowdsourcing and many schemes have blanket agreements to ensure that all relevant IP is signed over.

The fuzzy front end of innovation confronts you with a lot of questions. For the new edition of my book ‘Creating innovative Products and Services’ I have posted a question on front-end innovation struggles to innovation practioners in more than 20 linkedin groups. The response was massive. I made a list of forty reasons why people struggle starting innovation in their companies in daily practice.