Seychelles' Permanent Representative to the United Nations, Ambassador Ronny Jumeau, has reminded a United Nations debate on the pathway to sustainable development that the world's oceans, coasts, and small island countries must be included in the concept of a green economy.

Speaking at the informal debate in the UN General Assembly on the challenges of the green economy held on June 2, Amb. Jumeau stressed that what the small island developing states (SIDS) described as a "blue economy" must be part and parcel of the concept, definition, and development of a climate- and environment-friendly green economy.

Reva Medical, a maker of medical devices in San Diego, wanted to go public last year to raise money to satisfy impatient venture capitalists and finance research for its heart stents.

But it found little investor interest in the United States for an early-stage medical device company that had not yet made a profit.

Reva Medical did what a small but increasing number of young American companies are doing — it looked abroad for money, in Reva’s case the Australian stock exchange.

After an eight-month road show, meeting investors and pitching the prospects of a biodegradable stent, the 12-year-old company sold 25 percent of its stock for $85 million in an initial public offering in December.

Before the Bayh-Dole Act was passed in 1980, the billions of federal dollars sp

ent on scientific research rarely benefited the public through commercial applications. Fewer than 5 percent of government patents were licensed to industry. To push patents into practical use, the law set up a scheme for awarding the rights to institutions, like universities, that have incentive to bring inventions to market.

Since 1980, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, for example, has been granted control of 3,673 patents. A recent study found that companies started by M.I.T.’s graduates, faculty and staff generate annual world sales of $2 trillion.

In a 7-to-2 decision this week, the Supreme Court undermined the act’s purpose by ruling that it does not automatically give a university title to an invention by a faculty member when the research is federally financed.

SCOTLAND’S economy has lost “a generation” of young tycoons, a situation that will hamper its recovery from recession, a new report has revealed.

Fewer aspiring “thirty- something” business leaders are set to follow the successes of billionaire Sir Tom Hunter, the country’s second-richest man, lingerie tycoon Michelle Mone, and Duncan Bannatyne, one of the stars of TV’s Dragons’ Den.

The latest Global Entrepreneurship Monitor of more than 80 countries also says that fewer people are likely to set up in business in Scotland between the ages of 18 and 23 than anywhere else in the UK.

The author of the report in Scotland said he could not understand why rates of entrepreneurial activity north of the Border are weaker for the age group, or why they stop growing beyond the age of 29. The figure plateaus from then until people are 50, when it falls.

I recently asked a room of 40 executives to raise their hands if they thought of themselves as creative. This was a group who had been hand selected from their corporation as the future of the company, the big up-and-comers. Only three hands went up.

It feels as if just about everyone is looking to bring creativity into his or her organization. The theory seems to go that hiring creative people could bring much needed innovation, new thinking, and organizational revitalization. A recent study by IBM demonstrates CEOs' belief that "creativity" is the key to success for their companies in the coming years—more than "rigor, management discipline, integrity or even vision." So, if creativity is the key to the future of business, then why aren't more executives raising their hands?

Iowa businesses with broadband connections are likely to generate more revenue, a new report shows.

Businesses with high-speed Internet connections have median annual revenues of about $600,000, nearly $300,000 more than businesses without broadband, said Connect Iowa, a group partnering with the Iowa Department of Economic Development to inventory and map broadband use.

The report shows that 72 percent, or about 60,000 Iowa companies, have broadband access; 22 percent, or 18,000 businesses, have no Internet access; 6 percent, about 5,000 companies, either use dial-up or are unsure whether their Internet is broadband.

I’m sure that every one of us who has been out in the business world for a few years can look back with perfect hindsight and name a few college courses that we should have taken. What’s more disconcerting to me is that I can name a few that weren’t even offered!

I won’t even try to cover here the ones you didn’t find for your personal life, like managing personal finances and credit. But on the business side, here is my list of useful courses that we wish existed, but as far as I know, still aren’t generally available:

Basic Office Politics. Office politics involves the complex network of power and status that exists within every business, large and small. Don’t you wish that someone had prepped you on how to read the body language, interpret office gossip, and when to hit the delete key on your email rather than the send key?

Hiring the right people is critical for any business but especially for a small company with relatively few employees. Hiring mistakes not only waste time and money, they create a ripple effect that impacts other employees and your business.

Here are five hiring mistakes you absolutely must avoid:

1. Thinking you can change a leopard’s spots.** All employees typically must follow company rules and guidelines, whether formal or unwritten. Still, some people can’t — or won’t. The outstanding salesman with the incredible track record of generating business and terrorizing admin and support staff won’t immediately play well in your sandbox just because you hired him. The kid who works Dracula hours fueled by Mountain Dew and Cheetos won’t magically transform into a model Mr. 8-to-5. For some people the work itself, and how they perform that work, is what matters most — not the job. Don’t think you can change them.

Word has been circulating for months that Tencent has invested US$ tens of millions in Innovation Works, the Chinese startup incubator founded by former Google China head Kaifu Lee. Innovation Works spokesman Wang Zhaohui confirmed part of the speculation last night, saying Tencent did invested in the Chinese startup cradle, but refused to disclose the exact sum.

According to local news, investors behind Innovation Works’ back include HTC, Tencent, Russia-based DST, profound American angel investor Ron Conway and Bloomberg, mayor of New York city. People close to Innovation Works disclosed that the Chinese incubator now owns a fund of over RMB 800 million (US$ 123 million).

TriplePundit has been following the work of Cutting Edge Capital for some time now. The group consists of, among others, Michael Shuman (author of the Small-Mart Revolution), John Katovich, JD (Professor at the Presidio Graduate School), and CEO Jennie Kassen from Cutting Edge Capital. The aim is to help small businesses gain access to capital through crowdfunding. The potential to jumpstart our economy is obvious through this process if one considers the monumental effect that small amounts of capital invested by interested investors have had through organizations like Kiva or the way the Obama Administration changed the game in campaign finance in 2008 by raising large numbers of small contributions rather than becoming beholden to smaller numbers of wealthy investors.

When natural disasters threaten the structural soundness of buildings and essential infrastructure, SENSR LLC, a company in Elkader, Iowa, ensures engineers have the information they need to keep people away from dangerous situations.

SENSR is in the business of measuring dynamics, or more simply, measuring the motion of an object.

SENSR’s equipment is leaving a positive impact on a wide variety of projects around the world- from ensuring the world’s tallest building is structurally sound, to testing the safety of roller coasters across the country, to monitoring the safe transport of important products and packages.

The company services more than 700 customers in more than 40 countries and on six continents.

SENSR’s primary market is in civil engineering and structural monitoring. In this arena, SENSR’s equipment is used to monitor and report data to project managers or engineers related to the integrity of a structure.

“It is important for a lot of industries to understand how movement and vibration impacts them,” said Chris Kavars, President and CEO of SENSR. “For instance, sometimes damage can obviously be seen, but oftentimes we can’t use the naked eye to identify how a structure withstands a natural disaster. This is where our equipment comes in. We help alert people when a structure is changing or behaving in a way it hasn’t before.”

This Mac Conway fellow, you might be wondering, now just who was he again? Yeah, he's the guy who started Site Selection 'n all, but did he ever do anything else? I'm kinda in a hurry here, pal. So just tell me who this dude was like.

Oh, hell, Mac Conway wasn't like anybody. He never followed anyone's footsteps; he couldn't really. He was too restless a spirit, too hell-bent on slashing through the tangle and lighting out headlong for the territory ahead. Moreover, he was that rare human who discovered some bona-fide virgin turf; he even did it repeatedly. And every time he unearthed new ground, he'd start building. Building things nobody'd ever built before.

Only a handful of people ever push themselves that far up the mountain. Few even think about trying. It's too risky, too scary, just too damn hard. Mac Conway was a whip-smart fellow; he clearly saw the abundant perils lurking ahead; they just didn't matter, that's all. What really counted was constantly plowing forward, running full throttle, right up 'til the end.

We have all heard stories from doctors about some medical device company stealing their idea for a new product. Perhaps, there are real medtech bandits on the prowl, but in the vast majority of cases, it’s more a matter of misconceptions and miscommunication.

Critics will point to Dr. Gary Michelson who settled a patent suit with Medtronic for $1.35 billion (with a ’B’). But, this is an example of the exception that proves the rule. Dr. Michelson is the farthest thing from a naive doctor who presented an idea to a company and was screwed.

In actuality, Medtronic sued Michelson for over $200 million, charging that he was marketing to competitors some of his inventions that were previously licensed to Medtronic. Michelson countersued, charging that Medtronic had failed to develop the inventions he had licensed to the Company, was infringing on his inventions and was therefore depriving him of tens of millions of dollars in royalties. Keep in mind that Medtronic was already paying Dr. Michelson $40 million per year in royalties for licensed ideas. One other small tidbit, Dr. Michelson had over 100 U.S. patents covering his ideas that Medtronic licensed as part of the settlement agreement.

Patrick Gallagher, director of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), has named Karen Kerr of Intellectual Ventures to serve on the Visiting Committee on Advanced Technology (VCAT), the agency’s primary private-sector policy advisory group. Kerr—who will serve a three-year term starting on June 1, 2011—brings the body’s number to 15.

Kerr is the Director of Business Development at Intellectual Ventures (IV), an intellectual-property investment company based in Bellevue, Wash. She has over 15 years of experience as a venture investor in early-stage technology companies, working with a broad array of companies in life science, information technology, communications and semiconductors. She has served as an active director or board observer in numerous early-stage companies.

Commencement season is coming to a close, which means a lot of students and recent graduates are leaving town. That might be a good thing if you’re trying to get a seat at Crema Café near Harvard or Flour Bakery near MIT, but it ain’t good for local startups.

The brain drain of Boston-area tech grads leaving for the West Coast is well-worn territory. Talented developers, fresh out of school, are taking high-paying jobs with big companies like Google, Amazon, Facebook, Apple, Microsoft, and Groupon, none of which are headquartered in Boston. Ambitious young entrepreneurs move to Silicon Valley to seek their fortunes—and are sometimes encouraged by their faculty mentors to do so. How can the local innovation community turn things around?

Cultivating local talent is, in fact, one of the main topics being covered at today’s “Building a Better Commonwealth” forum, organized by the Boston Globe.

Is happiness really all that? It depends on how you define it.

The business writers at 24/7 Wall St. have modified a new "Better Life" index, with its multiple measures including "life satisfaction," and added their own economic and political measures. The result is a Top 10 happy countries list that doesn't include the USA.

The new Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development Better Life Index has 11 measures of quality of life including housing, income, jobs, community, education, the environment, health, work-life balance and life satisfaction.

What do Intel, eBay, Google and Yahoo! all have in common? Aside from being four of the most successful U.S. companies, they were all started by immigrants. Consider the case of Andrew Grove, who at age 20 escaped Communist Poland and immigrated to America, where he received his education and started Intel. Today, Intel is the world’s largest computer chip maker in the world, employing some 85,000 people.

Now, what if after receiving his Ph.D. from Berkeley, Grove had been forced to leave the United States because of something as simple as an expired visa? Which welcoming country would now be able to boast Intel as one of its crown-jewel companies, whose innovations have revolutionized the world? Thankfully, Intel is a U.S. company because we let Grove accomplish his dreams right here in America.

What is the best business school in the world?

Businessweek and The Economist say it's the University of Chicago. U.S. News says it's Stanford. Unfortunately they both got it wrong.

Over the past month, we've conducted a survey to find out the true ranking of the top 50 schools. Harvard Business School ranked No. 1, for the second year running.

From today's big BP annual energy study, a great chart of oil prices and key historical events.

Next year they'll have to add "the day that OPEC died" to the chart.

CLEVELAND — Alex Nudelman, a strapping 49-year-old, confidently pushes buttons on a computer-controlled milling machine and suggests it's ready to sculpt a small piece of metal.

His instructor stops him, noting Nudelman has not programmed in all the tools needed to shape the metal block.

A journeyman autoworker who was laid off in 2009, Nudelman is taking a community college class here so he can work on the more sophisticated gear powering the region's growing cluster of medical device makers. If all goes well, he may soon be churning out spinal implants instead of seat brackets.

"I'm trying to compare the new technology with my old experience, and sometimes it's helpful, and sometimes" it isn't, Nudelman says. But, the Russia native adds, blue eyes brightening, "It's the future."