We are writing to advise that the New Jersey Economic Development Authority (EDA) on November 14 announced the names of 75 emerging biotechnology and other high-tech companies that have been approved for the Technology Business Tax Certificate Transfer Program under the State's 2012 Fiscal Budget Year.

Conceived of and advocated for by BioNJ in 1999, this competitive program enables companies to sell New Jersey tax losses and/or research and development tax credits to raise cash to finance their growth and operations. Earlier this year, Governor Christie and the Legislature agreed upon a plan that restored the pool under the Tax Certificate Transfer to its 2010 level of $60 million after a cut to $30 million in 2011. BioNJ advocated strongly for that increase.

"Access to funding, particularly in the continuing difficult economic climate, remains the most critical issue affecting the growth of biotechnology companies today," said Debbie Hart, President of BioNJ. "We are grateful that the Governor and the Legislature's support of the Tax certificate Transfer Program has now been realized through the provision of needed financial resources to companies that are working in New Jersey to discover and develop innovative medicine and therapies directed at meeting unmet medical needs."

In a press release announcing the awards, the EDA highlighted Advaxis, Inc. of Princeton and Emisphere Technologies of Cedar Knolls. Please CLICK HERE to read the EDA press release and obtain the full list of participating companies.

Yours in BioNJ,

Debbie Hart

President

Montgomery County, Human Genome Sciences Inc.    , MedImmune    , Johns Hopkins University    , the University of Maryland    and Adventist HealthCare    are all putting up funding for a regional biotech partnership — the most concrete step yet in a long-deferred mission to connect the region’s life sciences sector to itself.

Officials have been quietly laying the groundwork for BioHealth Innovation Inc. (BHI) since 2009, although its goals are far older. The regional nonprofit is envisioned as a sort of intermediary between biotech, academia, government and investors — with the hopes of multiplying life sciences investment, commercializing more scientific discoveries, and linking scientific and business talent, among other goals.

The data on entrepreneurial activity presents a mixed picture in the United States according to the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) 2010 National Entrepreneurial Assessment for the USA, conducted by Babson College and Baruch College.

“The picture of entrepreneurial activity in the U.S. painted by this report continues to exhibit elements of light and dark. While some improvements have occurred, the extent to which the economic downturn affected entrepreneurial activity remains unclear. Many trends in entrepreneurial activity have persisted, particularly the rates of opportunity and necessity entrepreneurship. These trends merit further examination, as they are likely to affect the economic wealth of the country,” said GEM researchers.

Key Findings

Early Stage Entrepreneurs

• Total early-stage entrepreneurial prevalence rate showed a small decline from 8.0% in 2009 to 7.7% in 2010.
• Yet early-stage entrepreneurs are positive thinkers -- 23.3% expect to create more than 10 jobs with 50% growth over the next 5 years.
• New value in social ventures - start-up entrepreneurs are increasingly focused on both social and economic goals suggesting a growing commitment to social entrepreneurship strengthened with a realistic commitment to an economic model.

Download the PDF of the full report.

KinderTown is a newly launched app store for parents which offers a curated collection of kid-friendly applications. What makes the store unique is that it only includes apps which have been deemed to have “substantial educational value” for kids three to six years old. In order to evaluate the apps’ quality, each app is first reviewed by early childhood educators, then tested by parents and kids before admission.

At launch, KinderTown’s app store is available as a universal app that works on the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch. When you launch KinderTown, you can filter the app selections by platform (iPhone, iPad or Universal), recommended ages, subject matter (e.g., math, language, art, science, etc.) and price (free or paid).

America has succeeded as a nation of inventors inspired by a vision for a better future. Americans pride themselves on our most precious resources — our land, our people, and our innovation.

At the center of this innovation has been agriculture. John Deere’s cast-steel plow, first marketed in 1836, provided a more efficient way for farmers to clear their land in the Midwest, thus increasing farmer productivity and encouraging migration to the Great Plains in the 19th and 20th centuries.

Today’s 21st Century technology features tractors that are operated by satellites and advanced scientific research that is responsible for the seeds farmers cultivate.

James Bessen, Jennifer Ford, and Michael Meurer of BU School of Law have written a phenomenal paper titled The Private and Social Costs of Patent Trolls. Rather than be politically correct and refer to NPE’s simply as “non-practicing entities”, they cut through all the noise, define what a patent troll is, and go through a detailed and rigorous analysis of the private and social costs of patent trolls. Some highlights from the paper follow:

Regarding money:

• From 1990 – 2010 NPE lawsuits are associated with $500 billion dollars of lost wealth to defendants.
• In the past four years, NPE lawsuits are associated with an average of $80 billion per year of lost wealth to defendants.
• Very little of this loss wealth represents a transfer to inventors.

Agriculture Secretary Vilsack Announces Economic Development Funding to Create Jobs, Economic Opportunity and Strengthen Rural Communities

AMES, IOWA - Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack announced the selection of 35 rural microdevelopment organizations for loans and grants to support rural business development, create jobs, and strengthen local communities. Business organizations in 22 states and the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico will receive support.

"A strong rural America and a strong agricultural industry go hand in hand," said Vilsack. "These investments will bring increased economic opportunity to rural residents and communities. They will help organizations expand job and economic opportunities in rural communities across the nation."

There’s a big debate these days about whether the government simply spends money or invests it. Republicans tend to say the government spends money, which is presumably bad for the economy, while Democrats tend to say the government invests money, which is presumably good for the economy.

If only it were that simple. In truth, the government sometimes just spends money -- which can be good in the short term and bad in the long term. And then sometimes the government invests it -- although the investments don’t always pay off.

So, in bad times like these, what should the government do? In particular, what, if anything, can state and local governments do? Will spending or investment make any difference to the economy in the short run? How about the long run?

Jobs. Gates. Ellison. McNealy. A generation ago, they changed the way we live, work and communicate with each other.

Those are the kinds of names that sprang to mind when I first saw the lineup for GigaOM RoadMap, and I thought about the new generation of entrepreneurs that we’re seeing spring up right before our eyes. There’s a whole new set of revolutionary applications and technologies that are being launched today, and a whole new generation of whiz kids leading that charge.

As a branding and design consultancy, there are few things more exhilarating than being involved with a startup. But I have also seen some recurring challenges. Namely, when a client is starting a business, everything is top priority, and it is often easy to think "logo" and "design" should come later.

Putting aside the fact that a brand is much more than a logo, we acknowledge that there are cases in which the success of a business does not depend at all on its branding. These are typically businesses that have a proprietary offering (usually technology) that’s so strong and so unlike anything that’s come before that people will use it regardless of how it looks and makes them feel. Or, you’re a monopoly.

Most startups are not well led--that's the nature of most new business ventures, everyone is learning as they go along. But there are some common best practices to keep in mind, which I describe in this week's episode.

Launch privately and then publicize.

With all the focus The Brainzooming Group put into producing the “Building the Gigabit City:  Brainzooming a Google Fiber Roadmap” report, it will definitely appear as a blog topic again in the next few weeks. Collaborating with Social Media Club of Kansas City on Building the Gigabit City was tremendously rewarding. It was also intense (especially leading up to last week’s report release and press conference) and a fantastic learning opportunity for stretching the Brainzooming strategic thinking exercise methodology in our largest in-person brainstorming session ever.

I am already envisioning a variety of blog posts on Gigabit City and Google Fiber-related topics, including:

Lessons in risk taking for someone who is risk averse – As a cautious business person, it surprisingly took me less than one minute to decide we should partner with Social Media Club of Kansas City on something REALLY big tied to Google Fiber.

If you need financing for your business, angel investors could be just what you’re looking for. Here are 10 tips for finding angel capital.

1. Understand angels. Angels are private investors or groups of investors who invest in small businesses. Unlike venture capitalists, who invest and manage other people’s money, angels invest their own money.

2. Determine whether your business is a good fit. Angels often fund companies in the early stages, before they are ready to qualify for bank loans or venture capital, explains SBDC Business Advisor Nina Grooms-Lee.

3. Know how much capital you need. Angels typically fund anywhere from a few thousand dollars to $2 million, says SBDC Business Advisor Mike Grimshaw. If you need more than $2 million, angel investors may not be the right choice for you.

Premium ContentClick on Premium Content on the Featured navigation bar for information. Connecting the dots on grant proposals. Helping secure professional training. Networking. Loan packaging. Getting businesses up and running from little more than an idea and rough business plan.

Those are run-of-the-mill tasks for the Nebraska Business Development Center, which helps thousands of Nebraska businesses each year with those issues and others. The numbers show that each year, the center is expanding its influence slowly, methodically and organically.

Consider this: In 2009, the development center recorded an overall "impact" — a measure of all lending, job creation, investments and sales by the businesses it helps, among other factors — of $324 million. In 2010, that number grew to $420 million.

Google is falling in line with other global companies and plans to establish a startup incubator for Israeli startup companies, scheduled to become operational next August.

Google will rent an entire floor at the Electra office tower in the heart of Tel Aviv. The initiative is scheduled to begin operating at the same time Google Israel headquarters and its R&D center move into the Electra tower as well.

The incubator will endorse 20 startups at a time which will rotate every few months. Google stresses that the technological incubator will be separate from the R&D center and operate as a community in its own right.

This map highlights the 25 countries that have sent the most students to the U.S. in 2010-11.

Up until recently, making offensive comments online was a bit like peeing in a crowded swimming pool, cheeky and somewhat satisfying, but ultimately there was little risk of being exposed. These days, however, it seems the law may be catching up and nowhere is the swimming pool of fervent opinion more crowded than in social media. In that vein, here are 5 legal disaster stories from the blogosphere:

The High Court of Victoria wants to be friends

In Victoria, Australia, police were not having much luck preventing an alleged Facebook bully from harassing what few friends he had left. After unsuccessful attempts to contact him through the usual means, they were allowed to serve a court order on the young gent via Facebook. They made a video of a police officer reading out the restraining order and simply inboxed him. Oh look, new notifications!

As more and more of us realise the importance of developing an online strategy, an obvious question pops up: Where to start? And as with any business strategy processes, it’s important to get a clear idea of where you are, where you want to go and how you intend getting there.

Flourishing in this environment requires an adaptable, flexible and responsive strategy that continually monitors and measures reactions to campaigns outcomes in a manner that allows the brand team to respond accordingly and timeously.

The use of mobile phones in providing health services is well documented. In countries like Kenya and South Africa, SMS reminders are used to remind Aids patients to take their medication. Other projects use mobile to educate people about malaria and help manage diabetes. That’s all well and good, but a number of these projects are the preserve of NGOs, who are reliant on continual funding to keep going.

As with any kind of public funding, there is a danger that it will run out. This means that NGOs cannot always sustain M-Health projects. One way of getting around this is by encouraging entrepreneurship in the mobile health sector.

The internet has fundamentally changed the way people learn and shop. A business website is the central component of reaching potential customers, educating them, and convincing them to buy. Almost every business, whether B2B, B2C, non-profit, local, or global, needs an online presence to reach buyers in the internet age. After all, a company’s website is its virtual storefront.

But having a website alone isn’t the key to great results. Instead, it’s the ability turn your website into an inbound marketing machine. We now need to consider integrating search, social media, content, blogging, and more with our websites. Gone are the days where all it took was a URL, fancy Flash graphics, and an expensive advertising campaign to temporarily boost traffic.