Open innovation is clearly taking root in just about every industry, as organizations strive to create openness in their innovation and business processes. We see companies increasing their ability to leverage internal and external solutions yet struggle with building the right processes and tools to extract maximum value from the new solutions. (See NineSigma’s new OI Scorecard Survey Report  for more information). Among the factors that can make or break an open innovation program is intellectual property. We have come to realize in working with our clients and solution providers, collaborators can  enjoy all of the benefits that open innovation has to offer only if they understand the issues associated with intellectual property (IP).

A lot has been written about the Series A Crunch.  The gist of the argument is that the number of seed financings have gone up (with the advent of incubators such as Y-Combinator, TechStars, and Excelerate, as well as a new generation of Super Angels, who may or may not be hanging out at Bin 38), but the number of Series A financings have remained relatively steady.  Ergo, the percentage of companies that can’t raise a Series A must be going up.

The fifth annual Otis Report on the Creative Economy of the Los Angeles Region quantifies what Cultural Weekly readers already know – and gives us good sound-bites for cocktail party and funder conversations.

•    The creative economy produces in excess of $200 billion in total sales and receipts, and is one of the largest employment-generators with over 640,000 direct and indirect jobs.

WHY can’t Americans tap into the ingenuity that put men on the moon, created the Internet and sequenced the human genome to revitalize our economy?

I’m convinced we can. We are in the early phases of the next big technology-driven revolution, which I call “consumer health.” When fully unleashed, it could radically cut health care costs and become a huge global growth market.

Over the past few years, innovations like electronic health records and the use of mobile computing devices in hospitals have begun to improve medical care delivery. Consumer health information Web sites and online disease support groups have made millions of people active participants in their own health care.

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. — Larry Page, Google’s chief executive, so hates wasting time at meetings that he once dumped his secretary to avoid being scheduled for them. He does not much like e-mail either — even his own Gmail — saying the tedious back-and-forth takes too long to solve problems.

Mr. Page has never been more impatient than he is now. He is on an urgent mission to pull Google through a midlife crisis that threatens to knock it off its perch as the coolest company in Silicon Valley.

Founded in 1998, Google is not yet 15, but in tech years, it is an aging giant that moves a lot slower than it did when it was a hot start-up. It is losing employees to the new, hotter start-ups, and is being pushed around by government regulators and competitors like Facebook, Apple and Amazon, which are all vying for people’s online time.

Do your employees seem a little—well, lackluster—lately? Have you noticed they just don’t seem to have the enthusiasm they used to? It’s not just your imagination. A recent Gallup poll found that 71 percent of American workers are either “not engaged” or “actively disengaged” from their work. Just 30 percent are “engaged,” or involved in and enthusiastic about their jobs.

What’s most interesting about this study to me is that the very workers you might expect to be most engaged are least so. Gallup found that:

• Workers with some college education are significantly less likely to be engaged at work than are employees with a high school diploma or less;

“With the pace of change accelerated for most people, the importance of following a process becomes an important, critical and really effective tool. The process is as important as the results it produces.” ~ Deborah Shane

How does anyone navigate change, be it business or personal? Whether it’s changing jobs, lifestyle, health or where you live, the unexpected is part of our lives today in a more relentless way then ever before. I’m thinking of real examples of people I know who have been thrown into the unknown. That unknown is producing some extraordinary outcomes because each one is following a process.

I’ve often wanted to let people see what a VC pitch is like to help new entrepreneurs have a better sense of what it’s like to present.

Obviously having a camera on will add a small bit of an artificial result because I don’t want to ask as much confidential information and with the camera on people are obviously a bit nicer.

But this interview is fairly authentic. If you like it I’ll do more and continue to strive for authenticity.

So here are Sahney Nager & Ryan Weber of Smarketplaces. I really like them. But I also asked some tough stuff.

* Walter says there should still be some limits to it

* US House of Representatives has passed crowdfunding bill

NEW YORK, Nov 9 (Reuters) - A new capital-raising method known as crowdfunding is a good idea, but it needs more restrictions to ensure that investors are protected, a U.S. securities regulator said on Wednesday.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and Congress are reviewing potential regulatory changes to promote small companies' access to capital.

Acting on behalf of the Honourable Denis Lebel, Minister of Transport, Infrastructure and Communities and Minister of the Economic Development Agency of Canada for the Regions of Quebec, Jacques Gourde, Member of Parliament for Lotbinière–Chutes-de-la-Chaudière, today announced that the Quebec Biotechnology Innovation Centre (QBIC) has been granted funding to pursue its mission.

"Our government is pleased to lend its financial assistance to the Quebec Biotechnology Innovation Centre," said Mr. Gourde. "This support organization for innovative life sciences and health technology startups makes an important contribution to economic growth and job creation in the region."

I recently spent some time with a long time friend and entrepreneur who I’ve funded in the past. He’s working on a new company which I think is really neat and I’m already a user of. He called me for feedback on his fundraising strategy as well as to see if it’s something that we’d be interested in investing in.

It’s outside our themes and different than the type of business we invest in. Given our long relationship and the fact that he’s an awesome entrepreneur, I squinted hard at one of our themes, turned my head sideways, and decided to take a look. We spent a few days applying our process to it (each partner touches it and we give each other real time qualitative reactions) and quickly realized that it really wasn’t something for us as it was far outside anything that we felt like we could help much with beyond money and moral support (which my friend is going to get from me anyway.)

With the federal government and states scrambling to figure out ways to jump-start the economy, creating jobs seems like a politician's main job these days.

One tried (if not true) method has been for states to offer incentives to businesses to relocate from another state; or as an ode to our dismal economic times, offer incentives so a company doesn't take its jobs and leave. That's what happened recently when the O'Malley Administration offered about $9.5 million to keep Bechtel Corporation from moving its Frederick, Maryland manufacturing facility to Virginia and saving about 1,250 jobs.

So, you’ve launched a company, but you want to go in a different direction regarding the logo, name and maybe even some product features. A full relaunch is not easy, but it could be the “X factor” that drives your startup to success. Mashable spoke with Cassie Lancellotti-Young, VP of marketing at Savored — a restaurant reservation site that launched in 2010 as VillageVines — and Luke Brassinga, a principal at social media marketing firm Likeable Brands.

The benefits of working at Google are even bigger and better than we could have imagined.

Google engineer Steve Yegge just posted a long account of all the amazing things Google does for employees. And even after having read two books on Google, and closely following the company for years we were blown away by what we read.

In San Diego, Connect is the non-profit organization that reaches into most corners of the local innovation community. Connect likes to say that it has assisted in the formation of more than 3,000 technology and life sciences companies in the area, and more than 50 cities around the world have emulated its programs for mentoring entrepreneurs and supporting startups.

Under CEO (and San Diego Xconomist) Duane Roth, Connect began issuing a quarterly report in 2009 to provide a more comprehensive measure of the relative health and wealth of San Diego’s innovation economy. Connect also hired a full-time lobbyist early last year to represent the interests of San Diego’s innovation community before legislators in both Sacramento and Washington, D.C.

It’s like something out of a thriller: A long-lost glimpse of an industry genius is found buried in a garage shortly after his death.

That’s the story behind “Steve Jobs: The Lost Interview,” an extended cut of an interview with Jobs by tech journalist Robert Cringely for the 1995 PBS special “Triumph of the Nerds.” Master tapes of the interview were lost in the 90s during shipment from London to the U.S., but months ago Triumph director Paul Sen discovered an unedited VHS copy in his garage.

GlaxoSmithKline Inc. (GSK) today announced the launch of the GSK Canada Life Sciences Innovation Fund, a new national $50 million fund that will significantly advance the commercialization of scientific innovation in Canada by investing in early stage breakthrough research. The fund will identify strategic investment opportunities within Canada's life sciences industry including academic and health institutions, translational research centres and start-up companies. The announcement was made today in Toronto at an event hosted by GSK in Canada President and CEO, Paul Lucas and Dr. Moncef Slaoui, GSK's Global Chairman of Research and Development.  The event was attended by federal and provincial government representatives and leaders from Canada's life sciences community.

Calls-to actions are extremely critical components of effective lead generation, and the language you use in your calls-to-action is probably the most important element you can optimize to improve their click-through rates. Crafting the message, however, can be time-consuming and challenging. So let's review some best practices for writing a compelling call-to-action across different places on your website and various stages of your sales cycle!

1. Convey Value

Your CTA should answer the question, “What’s in it for me?” Think about the top two or three benefits of your offer, and try to list them in order of priority. Then, pick the most critical one, and shorten it to just a few words. In that way, you will highlight the key point of engagement and ensure there is alignment between your ad and the offer.

(KANSAS CITY, Mo.) Nov. 10, 2011 — In a beleaguered economy, the country needs entrepreneurs – the nation's job creators. Fortunately, a recent poll shows that the so-called millennial generation – those ages 18-34 – are an entrepreneurial bunch. A few key barriers are holding them back, especially the economy.

The nationwide cell phone and landline survey, conducted by the Young Invincibles in conjunction with Lake Research Partners and Bellwether Research and funded by the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, polled 872 millennials on their thoughts about the economy and entrepreneurship. With the world getting ready for Global Entrepreneurship Week, Nov. 14-20, hearing what young people think about starting businesses is especially timely.

"This poll reveals a generation that is enthusiastic about entrepreneurship, and that is good news for the U.S.," said Carl Schramm, president and CEO of the Kauffman Foundation, "Fifty-four percent of the nation's millennials either want to start a business or already have started one. They recognize that entrepreneurship is the key to reviving the economy."

East London is getting a lot of love today. The prime minister has visited Tech City, the ill-defined area that is home to a cluster of new media, design and software start-ups, and pronounced it a roaring success.

It is a year since David Cameron unveiled the plan to put the spotlight on east London, and in particular the area around the Old Street roundabout, and turn it into something that would have Silicon Valley looking nervously over its shoulder.

Here's what he said in a speech in November 2010 about his government's ambitions for Tech City:

"Our ambition is to bring together the creativity and energy of Shoreditch and the incredible possibilities of the Olympic Park to help make east London one of the world's great technology centres."