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innovation DAILY

Here we highlight selected innovation related articles from around the world on a daily basis.  These articles related to innovation and funding for innovative companies, and best practices for innovation based economic development.

I was the worst pizza delivery guy. Fraternity guys would chase after me as I was peeling out of their driveways after a delivery. Why? The sauce and cheese fell all to one side. I couldn’t help it. I also never got tips. Wende, my partner in our restaurant delivery business, always got tips. But she was beautiful, blonde, great smile, had personality, etc. And I secretly loved her. I couldn’t compete. I always hoped I would deliver to a frat party where all the girls were running around naked. But that never happened.

We also started a debit card for college kids. From the first day we were open for business we had college kids signing up for our card (there were no credit cards for kids then). And anyone who had our debit card could order food from the 20 or so restaurants in town and we’d deliver, but with a 25% markup.

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Importance of Critical Thinking to InnovationThe more I hear from innovators (some successful and others not-so successful) on the importance of being able to make snap decisions based on intuition alone during critical stages of the innovation process, the more I’m convinced that perhaps, just the opposite may be true. Maybe, what really matters in determining success of the innovation effort is not so much intuition skills but rather, having a more systematic approach–something that resembles classic critical thinking skills. What I’m talking about here is a systematic approach to critical thinking made popular in the 1960s and 70s by researchers such as Charles Kepner and Benjamin Tregoe (just to name a few). These classic methods that link problem solving and decision making have been all but discarded by innovators today because of being deemed too cumbersome, laborious and certainly not suited to rapid demands of the innovation world of today.

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In the venture capital arena, Wisconsin has long been a laggard.

Despite some growth in its venture capital pool during the last 25 years, Wisconsin still ranked just 25th among all states in 2010, with $234 million under management, according to the National Venture Capital Association's Yearbook 2011.

Wisconsin ranks 20th in population, U.S. Census Bureau data shows.

The state's dearth of venture capital has stifled the growth of many young companies, said John Neis, a managing director of Madison's Venture Investors, one of Wisconsin's most active venture capital firms.

"We have so many companies that stall out in their development process or raise inadequate capital and put themselves at a competitive disadvantage because they can't go as quickly as their competitors can," Neis said.

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Donald Trump won’t fire anyone, and there won’t be cameras on hand to record embarrassing mistakes.

But young entrepreneurs with ideas for tech startup companies will be in the spotlight this summer in a new program sponsored by Ohio Third Frontier and Ohio State University’s Fisher College of Business.

The Ohio’s New Entrepreneurs (ONE) Fund will encourage the development of those businesses by creating 10 teams made up of two to five young would-be entrepreneurs — people at least 18 who are either enrolled in college or graduate school or have been in the past three years.

The teams will work for 11 weeks with veteran entrepreneurs, industry experts and investors to come up with promising technology concepts and business models.

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The Securities and Exchange Commission may adopt rules to let internet-age technologies be used in fund-raising.

The agency is considering whether to let fast-growing companies use social networks such as Facebook and Twitter to raise funding by tapping thousands of investors for small amounts of money, the Wall Street Journal reported.

The move is part of a larger review by the Securities and Exchange Commission into whether to ease decades-old constraints on how companies can issue new shares to the public. The new funding techniques, known as “ crowd funding,” could usher in a new era of capital abundance for Silicon Valley’s startups.

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This morning I headed down to Palo Alto with iPad 2 in hand to check in with students and speakers at the Stanford BASES BT National Entrepreneurship Bootcamp. For this event, more than a hundred student delegates from campuses around the country gathered at Stanford for an intensive weekend of workshops and talks given by leading Silicon Valley entrepreneurs and and investors; the speaker lineup included such stars as Sequoia Capital partner Roelof Botha, TiVo co-founder Jim Barton, and Twitter director of corporate strategy Elad Gil. On top of all that, students honed their own entrepreneurial ideas in a business plan competition.

I spent a couple of hours talking with student organizers and delegates at the event and listening to a keynote talk by Marissa Mayer, vice president of location and local services at Google. The video below includes interviews with six student teams, as well as an outtake from Mayer’s talk. (I shot and edited the whole thing on the iPad 2 using iMovie.)

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I remember a little under 20 years ago sitting with a mentor of mine discussing business and ideas to generate cash. Little had I known at this time that I would be a VC 20 years later. I cared even less though about technology. The business idea was to buy a certain plot of land and put up a parking garage. The idea occurred because we had together driven around looking for parking and couldn't find anything. Yet we did see this plot of land with nothing on it, prime real estate near a shopping center and no parking garages open to the public within miles. The country was coming out of it's communist slumber and people were buying cars like mad. Plus stores were going up everywhere in that part of town. Fast forward 20 years and go to that spot. There's a parking garage right where we wanted to build one. Nope, I didn't finance it. F&%K!!!!!!

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A year ago, a headhunter invited Kevin Dinino to interview for a job similar to the executive position he had gotten laid off from in early 2009. But he passed on the opportunity -- as well as two more interview invites he received earlier this year.

After getting downsized, Mr. Dinino, 32 years old, launched his own business, KCD Public Relations in San Diego. Though he spent the first year making just 60% of his previous salary, he's now earning about the same as he did before, and says he's too smitten with entrepreneurship to ever work for someone else again.

"I'm the decision maker," he says. "I don't have to take orders anymore."

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In May 2009, federal Chief Information Officer Vivek Kundra told an auditorium full of venture capitalists that the White House would make it a goal to buy innovative technology from atypical contractors like startups and Silicon Valley Web outfits. Two years later, that kind of outreach is on the rise, but hasn't translated into easier contract wins for the newbies, industry members and observers say.

In the nearly two years since Kundra told that Mid-Atlantic Venture Association conference that the Obama administration was reviewing the procurement process to help technology startups, the General Services Administration has established terms of service with dozens of entrepreneurial developers that have let agencies incorporate new media, such as the location-based social network Foursquare, into their online presences. Also, White House officials issued guidelines in February directing contracting officers to speak with firms on the cutting-edge of the marketplace before writing requests for proposals.

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With the launch of our Big Society Finance Fund, NESTA's Stian Westlake looks at how financial innovation can help the social sector do more and do better.

Can financial innovation help solve society’s ills? You’d be forgiven for saying no and moving on. After all, reckless financial speculation has torpedoed our public finances and left the most vulnerable in society clinging to the wreckage. But the right kind of financial innovation still has a role to play: it can provide the money innovative social enterprises need to expand, the liquidity and the leverage that charities need to tap into commercial finance. In short, it can help the social sector do more and do better.

That's why today is a big day for us. This evening, NESTA is launching the Big Society Finance Fund, an experimental project investing money into some of the most promising social finance projects - each of which we hope can change the UK modestly but for the better. We're also publishing two pieces of research looking at the need for social finance and people's willingness to invest in it.

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The lowly sandbag has improbably — and seemingly eternally — remained the back-breaking brick of choice for anyone in a hurry to erect makeshift barriers during flood season.

But now there is growing competition.

As Fargo, N.D., confronts its third major flood in three years, local governments, businesses and residents are shifting to a number of modern alternatives to hold back the waters of the Red River.

“I’ve seen enough sandbags for a lifetime,” said Alan Kallmeyer, who enlisted dozens of friends and co-workers the last two years for a full day of this grueling masonry, filling and stacking thousands of sandbags around his riverside house.

 

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If your first startup fails, you are about average. Most entrepreneurs fail on at least one attempt. Investors agree that an entrepreneur who has never failed probably hasn’t pushed the limits. What investors look for is not that you never fail, but that you learn from the failure, maintain a positive attitude, and work with integrity on the next one.

According to Harvey Mackay in his book “Use Your Head to Get Your Foot in the Door,” how to rebound from failure or rejection is an essential skill to acquire for success. His bullets are about job hunting, but I believe the principles apply equally well to starting a business:

1. Analyze every failure, but never wallow in one. Failure is a condition that all of us experience. It’s our reaction to our failures that distinguishes winners from losers. A great entrepreneur is like a great racehorse. There’s no quit in them. Defeats are temporary. Heart and class are permanent.

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In this issue we have some good news to report. A government shutdown has been averted for at least a week via another continuing resolution (CR) (the 7th in a series). This is supposed to allow the parties to draft the language for a bill to fund the government through the end of the fiscal year, Sept 30, 2011. They agreed upon a $39 Billion in budget cuts but it is not clear at this time where the cuts will be made.

Don't celebrate too quickly because we may still have to face a battle for the raising of the debt ceiling in the near future.

In this issue:

* Next Week's National SBIR/STTR Conference Ready To Roll!!
* House Releases Its New SBIR Reauthorization Bill

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The business model for medical device startups is said to be in jeopardy, and it’s the topic du jour at conferences everywhere, as entrepreneurs are complaining bitterly about arbitrary FDA regulators and tight-fisted insurers. Much of this industry’s spirit of innovation and entrepreneurship is migrating overseas, it is often said.

Yesterday, I heard all that and more when I stopped by a conference that featured a couple of big names—Beckie Robertson, a veteran med device investor and managing director with Menlo Park, CA-based Versant Ventures, and Rob Michiels, the former president of CoreValve, the Irvine, CA-based maker of an aortic valve device that was acquired by Medtronic for $700 million two years ago. These two talked about the pros and cons of commercializing new medical technologies overseas first, at a conference in Bothell, WA organized by the Washington Biotechnology & Biomedical Association.

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News that the Securities and Exchange Commission is considering easing limitations on the sale of stock by private companies is a further sign that the Obama administration is conducting a sweeping review of the ability of growing, young businesses to tap capital markets.

But unlike the Treasury Department’s interest in improving access to public markets–which has led former National Venture Capital Association Chairwoman Kate Mitchell to form a task force to develop recommendations–the SEC initiative could make staying private more compelling, which is not something the venture industry wants.

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A Calgary entrepreneur has taken his faith in one of this city's prime second home markets one step further.

Steve Brown has invested in an Arizona drywall business that wants to get even more involved in residential construction -the market where more and more Canadians, bolstered by a strong Canuck dollar and low U.S. prices, are looking for recreation or investment properties.

Brown is no stranger to the ups and down of the housing industry.

He's one of Calgary's many builders, suppliers and tradespeople who were just starting out when they were hit by the economic downturn of the 1980s.

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Do serious tech companies still need to be based in Silicon Valley? There seems to be an endless debate about this among founders everywhere. My own startup, Vitrue, turns 5 this week. That’s forever in startup years, and it’s got me to thinking about my friend Ron Conway. Ron invested in Vitrue on October 28, 2006. He’s a true industry legend (noteworthy enough to have his own Wikipedia page) and a long-time Valley resident. At the time, we had several late-night, semi-sober conversations about moving the headquarters to Silicon Valley. Five years later I’m glad I stuck to my guns and kept the company in The Big Peach.

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At the territory level, an initiative such as the “27th region” has recently appeared. This is a public innovative agency whose goal is to help the French regions to change their policy making methods and prepare them to enter a more workable world. Its action is based primarily on a greater involvement of citizens in their choice and is in line with the need to create more relations between territories, management and citizens.

In education, some major French colleges have realized that they had to use every incentive to integrate young people from different backgrounds to those they traditionally welcome. In addition, more and more young French have a positive view of entrepreneurship. In 2009, a survey by the institute OpinionWay indicates that over 50% of young people said they were tempted by entrepreneurial jobs. These young people believe that the ideal company has to carry the values of innovation, team spirit and be at a scale where each employee can be heard.

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General Electric has finished acquiring thin-film solar panel maker PrimeStar Solar and will build a 400-megawatt thin-film solar panel manufacturing plant in the U.S., the company announced today.

The new plant will manufacture thin-filmed solar power panels — photovoltaic cells that are more flexible and can be placed on most surfaces — that capture around 13 percent of the sunlight shining on the panel and convert the sunlight to electricity. The production process uses a cadmium-telluride crystal compound in the photovoltaic cell, which is a cheaper material than the polysilicon materials used in other thin-film solar cells — although it’s less efficient at capturing sunlight.

Most thin-film solar panel manufacturers make photovoltaic cells that capture 15 to 20 percent of the sunlight shining on the panel. Those panels typically use polysilicon materials or some combination of copper, indium, gallium and selenide (CIGS). SoloPower, for example, employs CIGS in its panels and recently closed a funding round worth $13.5 million. GE’s new plant will produce less efficient solar power cells, but they will theoretically be cheaper to produce and the production will be on a larger scale than other, smaller thin-film solar panel manufacturers.

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Growth increases the exchequer’s tax take, reduces the need for welfare as recipients find their way back into work, and increases the size of the economy against which the debt and deficit are measured. Growth is the result of the creation of new jobs that provide consumers and government with goods and services. Once the budget is in balance, growth provides the basis for the real-terms increases in public spending which will pay for improved public services and infrastructure. Without growth, the path back to prosperity and economic security will be far steeper.

Going for growth is a new collection of essays published jointly by ippr, Left Foot Forward and German think-tank Friedrich Ebert Stiftung – an esteemed collection of authors includes ippr’s senior economist Tony Dolphin, NEE panel member Charlie Leadbetter, NEE collaborator Adam Lent and former ippr director Gerald Holtham. The book’s focus is the role of smart government in creating the conditions for growth, and therefore jobs.

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