So, you not only come up with a great medical device or drug that will improve or save lives, you spend years getting your product through clinical trials. And, finally, it’s approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Now, your product is ready to launch.

But one major issue highlighted at a panel discussion at Biotech 2011 was the multitude of things that can go wrong when medical device and drug companies launch a product. Here are just a few of them. The lifespan of a drug or device can be decided in the first few months of its launch, several panelists noted.

I had been planning to talk in today’s column about the shortcomings of the Google Chromebook, which are numerous. But I’m in too good of a mood this week to play the critic, partly because of a terrific Silicon Valley event that I attended Tuesday night called Get Bigger! With Vinod Khosla. So instead, I’m going to tell you about the event itself, which featured the legendary Sun Microsystems co-founder and venture investor on stage with the CEOs of six early-stage startups.

Microsoft hosted the event at its Mountain View campus, and Joyce Park of 106 Miles, an increasingly active and important group of engineer-entrepreneurs based in and around Silicon Valley, was the organizer. Park—who is the co-founder with Adam Rifkin of stealth startup PandaWhale, but is perhaps better known for being the first person ever fired for blogging—came up with an unusual and refreshing format for the session. In six 15-minute bursts, Khosla alternately quizzed and advised the CEOs about their business strategies. In the process, he provided a wonderful glimpse of how his own mind works when it comes to evaluating investment opportunities and mentoring startup founders.

(Einhdoven, the Netherlands & New York City, USA – 21 October, 2011) - The Intelligent Community Forum (www.intelligentcommunity.org) announced today its highly anticipated list of the Smart21 Intelligent Communities of 2012.  The announcement was made by ICF Co-founder Louis Zacharilla at an event hosted by 2011 Intelligent Community of the Year Eindhoven in The Netherlands.

Each year ICF defines a theme that guides the nominations for the Intelligent Community of the Year.  The 2012 theme is Intelligent Communities – Platforms for Innovation.  Innovation is one of ICF’s five permanent Indicators, which are used to judge communities seeking award status.  However the special theme focuses on how Intelligent Communities create uniquely powerful innovation ecosystems on a foundation of information and communications technology.

The surge of trading activity in the stock of private companies such as Facebook and Groupon could soon run up against its natural limitation: It’s not entirely clear what happens after those boldface names advance to the big leagues.

SecondMarket These are the companies showing the most demand on SecondMarket’s platform. The field of dealers offering these off-exchange services to accredited investors has become crowded of late, thanks in part to the social-media glamour names. But critics say the pipeline of companies beyond these highflying names is rather thin, putting the sustainability of these private markets into question.

Lapses in memory can lead to embarrassing mistakes, especially in the professional world.

Consider the debacle that Autonomy got into last month, when its CEO Mike Lynch claimed that he didn't remember ever approaching Oracle about a potential acquisition. Oracle not only refuted the statement, but said it still had the PowerPoint slides to prove the meeting occurred.

We live in a world that is constantly changing. Anything can happen. It’s still very early days in this market and it’s always in transition and flux. I recall the dark days of Apple Computing and today its market cap is through the roof. RIM’s new operating system, it bodes well for the product, the company and for the Waterloo Region, where the headquarters of RIM is located. There is a lot of negativity in the press about RIM these days, but as I travel the world on business ventures, I see a lot of confidence about RIM’s product and its security

Weak demand, concerns about the economic outlook and turmoil in financial markets have kept many would-be entrepreneurs on the sidelines, recent data show.

The latest Commerce Department figures reveal that 196 businesses were started in the fourth quarter of last year, up from 182 in the previous quarter but still below pre-recession levels.

Business formation has likely slowed since then as the U.S. budget deficit, the Arab Spring protests, Japan's earthquake and Europe's deepening debt crisis roiled financial markets and raised fears that the world economy could dip back into a recession.

With an eye toward creating new jobs and improving the economy, the Obama Administration wants to expand the ability to quickly and efficiently transfer science and engineering breakthroughs from the laboratory to the commercial marketplace.   To accomplish this goal, earlier today the Obama Administration announced two new initiatives to help U.S businesses create jobs and strengthen competitiveness in the global economy.  The new initiatives continue a week long theme where President Obama has showed a willingness to take whatever executive action he feels he can in order to attempt to spur job creation.

Most people who are even a little bit concerned about their cholesterol know that there is a “good” kind—known as HDL—and a “bad” kind—known as LDL. Research has shown that the higher the amount of HDL and the lower the amount of LDL in the blood, the less likely a person is to suffer a heart attack or stroke. As for the one in six Americans with unhealthy cholesterol levels, well, they can always hope to change their luck with a cholesterol-changing medication or two. Or can they?

Two major clinical trials in the past three years have greatly complicated the picture for these and perhaps other folks. The first study, from 2008, shows that lowering LDL levels does not always decrease the risk of having a heart attack. Similarly, results from the second study, released in the spring of this year, show that raising HDL levels does not always translate into fewer heart attacks or strokes.

Whenever I’m discussing a challenge — oh, all right, whenever I’m whining about something — my wife only lasts about 30 seconds before she says, “Okay, I get it. What are you going to do differently?”

Hearing the same thing time after time could be pretty irritating… except she’s right. The only way to overcome a problem is to do something differently.

But here’s an even better approach: Instead of waiting until you’re forced to make a bad situation better, why not turn a decent situation into a great one and tackle your challenges head on?

We have only two ways out of our current global economic mess: innovation and inflation. And as the saying goes, we should hope for the best (more innovation) and prepare for the worst (higher inflation).

Looking across the world, the underlying problem is that borrowers--households and governments--have taken on debt that they can't afford to pay back, given the current rate of income and economic growth. In the U.S, too many homeowners are struggling with mortgages that far exceed the value of their homes and cannot be repaid from their current incomes. In Europe, Greece and perhaps other countries have issued bonds that they cannot pay back unless growth unexpectedly skyrockets.

What Bo Fishback calls his “baby company” is growing up fast. Zaarly, the company Fishback and colleagues Ian Hunter and Eric Koester founded in March and launched in May, announced today it has landed a $14.1 million first round of venture funding. Plus, it snagged one of the highest-profile people in the tech world—former eBay and current Hewlett-Packard chief executive Meg Whitman—as a board member. The money and the guidance from such an e-commerce veteran will be key for Zaarly, based in San Francisco, since it’s taking on two of the most entrenched companies on the web.

“It’s a Craigslist and eBay play for sure,” Fishback, 34, and Zaarly's chief executive, told Portfolio.com. “Both of those companies have left the door open.”

In an experiment on rats, European researchers have proved that eating strawberries reduces the harm that alcohol can cause to the stomach mucous membrane. Published in the open access journal Plos One, the study may contribute to improving the treatment of stomach ulcers.

A team of Italian, Serbian and Spanish researchers has confirmed the protecting effect that strawberries have in a mammal stomach that has been damaged by alcohol. Scientists gave ethanol (ethyl alcohol) to laboratory rats and, according to the study published in the journal Plos One, have thus proved that the stomach mucous membrane of those that had previously eaten strawberry extract suffered less damage.

I’ve been a corporate lawyer for more than 17 years, and there are certain fundamental legal mistakes that I’ve seen startups repeatedly make (many of which surface when investors are conducting their due-diligence investigation).

Accordingly, I thought it would be helpful to provide a simple checklist for startups that includes links to indepth posts for a more detailed discussion.

Startup checklist:

1. Form a corporation, not an LLC (see post here) or a partnership (see post here).

2. Incorporate in Delaware and qualify the company to do business in the state in which its principal office is located (see #2 here).

Every year, graduate students and faculty at U.S. research universities invent more than more 20,000 new devices, methods, drug molecules, and other novel technologies.  Will the America Invents Act  and our new “first to file” patent system impact how universities manage this ever-growing stockpile of university inventions?  Right now, the jury is divided.  The professional organization for university patent managers and several U.S. research universities praise the new law, believing that it will “harmonize the U.S. patent system enabling U.S. inventors to compete more effectively and efficiently in the global marketplace.”    In contrast, several universities strongly condemn the changes, claiming that changes to patent law will “make things much harder for University-based inventors and university tech transfer (commercialization).”

In search of expert and concrete advice, I spoke to Mark Nowotarski, a registered US patent agent, inventor of 17 U.S. patents, and President of Markets, Patents and Alliances.

New York University and its partners are excited to respond to the City’s request for proposals for a new school of applied sciences in New York. At the heart of this proposal is an academic program to investigate and develop solutions to the challenges that face cities around the world.

Known as the Center for Urban Science and Progress (CUSP), the program will be tied to five cities on three continents, and will position Brooklyn as the epicenter of global thinking about how cities around the world can:

•          become more energy efficient;

•          reduce congestion and pollution;

•          use increasingly vast amounts of data more effectively and quickly to make decisions and to inform their citizens;

•          enhance safety and security;

•          and ensure a high quality of life.

KRAKOW - The European Institute of Innovation and Technology said it is launching a contest to reward entrepreneurs in its knowledge and innovation communities, in an effort to encourage more enterprise in Europe. The contest is organised in cooperation with Science|Business.

The Budapest-based EIT, a three-year-old European Union initiative, said it will pick a winning venture next year from among each of its three Knowledge and Innovation Communities, or KICs. The groups – in the fields of ICT, sustainable energy and climate-change technologies – are large consortia of universities, companies and research organisations that operate across Europe, and are intended to be innovation hubs. The groups began work in 2010, but already include numerous small companies and entrepreneurs.

Finland’s publicy-funded R&D  organisation, VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland has joined forces with Molecular Sciences Institute (MSI) in California to establish a new research centre, the VTT/MSI Center for Bioengineering.

The centre will focus on developing novel strategies for improving the production of bio-based chemicals and proteins at an industrial scale and on novel quantitative tools for the detection of toxins, chemicals and biomarkers of disease.

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M., - October 26, 2011 – Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack today announced the selection of 36 organizations in 26 states and the District of Columbia for grants to help rural cooperatives and small businesses expand, create jobs and strengthen their capacity to serve rural citizens and communities. Rural Housing Service Administrator Tammye Treviño announced the recipients on behalf of Secretary Vilsack.

"These grants help cooperatives support local projects and initiatives that create jobs and improve rural economic conditions," Vilsack said. "As we celebrate National Cooperative Month, USDA is proud to continue its support of local and regional efforts to bolster these cooperatives and help them bring increased value and economic opportunity to rural residents."

Today, the Skolkovo Foundation, the Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology (SkTech), and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) embarked on a new endeavor in international cooperation in higher education, research and innovation at SkTech, a new graduate research university in Skolkovo, Russia. At a ceremony this afternoon at the RUSNANO International Nanotechnology Forum in Moscow, Skolkovo Foundation President Viktor Vekselberg, SkTech founding President Edward Crawley, and MIT President Susan Hockfield signed the agreement to collaborate in building capacity in education, research and entrepreneurship programs at SkTech.