Recently I spoke with a group of executives from a $3 billion division of a large industrial company. They were faced with a mandate from the chief executive to expand the firm's service revenue from 20 percent to 33 percent. That's almost $400 million in new revenue, yet when I asked how many people were on the team, the leader replied meekly: "Two."

This isn't good enough—and yet it's a systemic problem for those looking to implement innovation initiatives, particularly within large organizations. The fact is, the days when innovation was focused primarily on technological breakthroughs and new product development are gone. Fast-paced environmental shifts require constant change in systems, people, and processes. Organizational flexibility and agility are now critical capabilities for any corporation trying to lead. So any executive looking to innovate needs to invest significantly in a way to support the change needed to make that revenue become a reality.

Cody Gate Ventures, a venture capital investment group has selected Rochester, NY as the site of three new start-up, venture-funded companies from its portfolio. The three companies are Intrinsiq Materials, Quintel Technology, and Omni-ID. Combined the three companies plan to hire 250 full-time employees who will specialize in research, development, and manufacturing of advanced technology products. In addition to creating jobs, Intrinsiq, Quintel and Omni-ID will also make a significant capital investment in the Rochester Region through the purchase of machinery and equipment, and through ongoing capital expenditures and operating expenses. The jobs will be located at the Eastman Business Park.

“We chose to expand in Rochester because of the high-quality of its skilled workforce,” said Cody Gate Ventures U.S. Managing Partner Michael Summers. “We consider ourselves to be an innovation firm, and Rochester has a long history of innovation. We have already established substantive synergies with a number of the great companies and universities that are located here. Those opportunities for collaboration combined with Rochester’s connectivity to world-class research and development facilities, and the great facilities at Eastman Business Park, make the Rochester Region the perfect place for these three companies to grow.”

“This huge win for the Greater Rochester Region’s economy is the result of the dedication and teamwork of Greater Rochester Enterprise; Empire State Development; the State of New York, specifically State Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver and State Assemblyman Joseph D. Morelle; Monroe County; and the City of Rochester,” said GRE President and CEO Mark S. Peterson. “The 250 jobs that are coming here are high-paying, highly-skilled jobs for three companies who will greatly benefit from our top-ranked knowledge workforce.”

WATCH OUT "ROCHESTER IS ON THE MOVE"...........RICH BENDIS, PRESIDENT AND CEO INNOVATION AMERICA

Last month ICF announced the Intelligent Community of the Year for 2010.  Today, we're opening the nominations for the 2011 Intelligent Community Awards.  Nominations for the Smart21 Intelligent Communities of 2011 will be accepted through Friday, September 24, 2010.

The Smart21 awards are presented to communities or regions with a documented strategy for creating a local prosperity and inclusion using broadband and information technology to attract leading-edge businesses, stimulate job creation, build skills, generate economic growth, and improve the delivery of government services.  Evaluation of nominations is based on ICF's Intelligent Community Indicators, which provide the first conceptual framework for understanding all of the factors that determine a community's competitiveness and point to its success in the Broadband Economy. In addition, the selection of the Smart21 is guided by an annual theme.  The theme for 2011 is Health and the Intelligent Community.

You will find complete nomination criteria, information on the selection process, profiles of previous winners, and a nomination form on the Awards Nominations page of the ICF Web site.

The award winners are announced in three stages: 

• The Smart21 Communities of the Year will be announced in mid October at a ceremony taking place in Suwon, South Korea, the 2010 Intelligent Community of the Year
• In January 2011 during PTC'11 in Honolulu, Hawaii, The Top Seven Intelligent Communities  will be announced
• And in May 2011 during ICF's annual Building the Broadband Economy Summit, we will unveil the 2011 Intelligent Community of the Year

What better way to enjoy your customized dress shirt than to nibble on your customized chocolate bar? I mean, you’re wearing a nearly one-of-a-kind shirt, why should you be burdened with the same chocolate bars devoured by all the other chumps in Abercrombie shirts? Chocri has you covered with CreateMyChocolate.com. You want white chocolate with banana chips and blueberries? Sure! Or how about dark chocolate with peanut butter chips topped with marzipan carrots? You got it!

Chinese Acrobatic Dance

Ann Arbor SPARK will join three other regional economic development efforts in Southeast Michigan to speed and support business development.

The creation of the Business Accelerator Network of Southeast Michigan, to be announced today in Warren, comes as a result of a three-year, $3 million grant from the New Economy Initiative For Southeast Michigan.

Ann Arbor SPARK joins Automation Alley in Oakland County; the Macomb-Oakland University INCubator; and TechTown in Detroit in the collaboration.

“We’ll learn from each other, partner and … do everything we can to create a robust entrepreneurial ecosystem throughout Southeast Michigan,” said Michael Finney, CEO of Ann Arbor SPARK.

SPARK’s role will be to extend the business acceleration services it already provides, including mentoring, funding and coaching.

A reader asks: We’re a bootstrapped startup in the Valley, and we’re getting some serious traction. Now we’re seeing interest from potential investors and we’re also trying to negotiate a couple of partnering agreements. Unfortunately, nobody on our team has any experience negotiating deals. Got any tips?

Answer: As you’ve already likely discovered, you’ve got a pretty big hole in your management team – one that’s worth filling fast. Negotiating is never an easy process. That said, there are a few things to keep in mind when you start putting the deal together.

Freeing our economy from its dangerous addiction to fossil fuels and averting the calamitous risks of climate change will require a major technological transformation in the way we produce, transmit, and consume energy. Inventing, developing, building, and deploying these new technologies will require a new era of American technological innovation. The result will be new industries and jobs, along with more clean energy and less pollution.

The good news is that we know that innovation is a fundamental driver of economic growth, and America has led the world in innovation for the past two centuries—from the mechanization of textile manufacturing in the late 18th century to the invention of the Internet in the late 20th century. Innovation is America’s first and greatest competitive advantage—or, as President Obama said “it’s in our DNA.” Twenty-first century clean energy technologies are already being designed, built, marketed, and installed to replace more than a century’s worth of entrenched fossil fuel infrastructure, and a recent report by the Department of Commerce indicates that there are nearly 2 million clean energy jobs in our economy today, with more on the way.

The value of writing a business plan is often debated in the entrepreneurial community.

For every successful business that was launched with a well-thought-out business plan, it seems you can find an equally successful one that was launched with nothing more than some scribbles on the back of a napkin. In fact, the contrarian approach may be the one you hear most about — i.e., entrepreneurs dismissing a business plan as something they wrote and then stuffed in the bottom of a drawer.

Palo Alto Software founder Tim Berry (a contributor here at Small Business Trends) recently reported on some new data showing the value of business plans.  Palo Alto did a survey that asked thousands of its Business Plan Pro software users questions about their businesses, goals and business planning. The responses showed that those who completed business plans were nearly twice as likely to successfully grow their businesses or obtain capital as those who didn’t write a plan.

5 Fatal Mistakes That Hold Back Start-up Business OwnersThe definition of a sale is when preparation and opportunity meet on the same day. In business, it helps to understand that customers are working to minimize risk when they enter into contracts with small businesses. Some small business owners often loose opportunities because of bad habits and not recognizing that certain things must be in place before they start marketing their products and services. These issues speak directly to trust and credibility for a business owner.

Here are the top five mistakes that hold back start-up entrepreneurs:

1) Not Appreciating Social Intelligence

This is the mistake that small business owners make the most.  Having proper social skills and being in tune with your surroundings will take you a long way in business.

Here are some examples of poor social intelligence:

• Do you have a tendency to talk too much at networking events, or worse, share too much personal information? No one except the banquet manager cares about how hard it was to find a parking space. Keep your networking chat smart.
• Are you dressed like someone that has an executive presence? Or, like you should be serving the meal at the event. Everyone should have signature colors and at least three killer outfits. Men, the tie color and the shoes are very important.

The technology icon stands before a crowd, holding in his hands a prototype that embodies his vision for the future of computing. It's a touch-screen tablet that is thinner than a magazine, has all-day battery life, and sells for less than $800.

But the icon wasn't Steve Jobs and the tablet wasn't the iPad. It was Bill Gates, speaking in 2005 to a crowd of Windows hardware makers in Seattle. The technology enabling such a device was still a few years off, Gates said, but it was time to start working toward that vision.

A year later, Microsoft detailed Project Origami, an effort to commercialize Gates' vision by adding a touch interface on top of Windows XP. Yet, the technology still hadn't caught up with the vision.

To read the full, original article click on this link: How Microsoft foresaw--and still missed--the iPad | Beyond Binary - CNET News

Author: Ina Fried

Venture capital funding took a nosedive in 2009 but is set to come back, especially in the Internet sector, as entrepreneurs look for business opportunities in cloud computing, Web security and social networking.

"Now that the economy has begun to show signs of improvement, we expect to see dollars flow more freely back into those sectors that offered the most promise before the recession began," said Mark Heesen, president of the National Venture Capital Association (NVCA).��

Venture capitalists invested a total of $17.7 billion in the U.S. in 2009, the lowest level of dollar investment since 1997, according to the MoneyTree report by PricewaterhouseCoopers and the NVCA. The collapse of credit markets after the failure of banks like Lehman Brothers in 2008 forced business to stop making capital expenditures on IT, and blocked exit strategies such as IPOs and mergers and acquisitions for venture capitalists.

MENLO PARK, CA--(Marketwire - June 7, 2010) -  Venture capital database VentureDeal is pleased to announce the release of complimentary Venture Capital Funding Quarterly reports.

Covering the first quarter of 2010, the reports provide a combination of notable venture capital transactions involving venture capital companies and startups, insights into trends by industry sector and aggregated data.

Written by VentureDeal staff, the current reports released for Q1 2010 may be found by clicking the links below:

•  Alternative Energy - Clean Technology - Energy - Environmental PDF Report

•  Biotechnology - Pharmaceutical - Medical Devices PDF Report

•  Internet - Digital Media - eCommerce - Software PDF Report

•  Telecom - Wireless - Mobile - Communications PDF Report

Organizations such as professional service firms, technology startup companies and venture capital firms derive benefit from new perspectives on industry trends, discovering new companies being funded and which venture capital firms, angel groups, private equity firms and venture lenders provided the financing.

To view all reports, visit: http://www.venturedeal.com/Reports/Default.aspx.

Whether you buy into the hype or not, it’s plain fact that 3D is everywhere these days. From movies and games to laptops and handhelds, pretty much every screen in the house is going to be 3D-capable in a year or so, even if you opt not to display any 3D content on it. Those of you who choose that path may stop reading now, and come back a little later when you change your mind. Because if you have kids or enjoy movies and games, there will be a point where you’re convinced, perhaps by a single standout piece of media, that 3D is worth it at least some of the time.

But 3D isn’t as easy to get used to as, say, getting a surround-sound system or moving from 4:3 to widescreen. Why is that? Well, it’s complicated, but worth taking the time to understand. Moreover, like any other new technology, 3D is not without its potential risks, and of course studies will have to be done to determine the long-term effects of usage, if any. For now, though, it must be sufficient to inform yourself of the principles behind it and make your own decision.

We’ve been developing a theory of business over the last few years, based on our work with a number of companies. The theory is less about innovation tools and techniques and more about the structure of a firm’s workforce. What’s become apparent is that the mix of skills drives a lot of innovation success. While you can take a fairly conservative culture and rally it to an occasional innovation effort, that conservative organization will revert to its comfort zone over time. To innovate consistently and effectively, a firm needs a supportive culture, a committed management team and the right mix of skills, interests and perspectives to sustain innovation.

Are you over 40 and wondering if it’s too late for you to write your Great American Novel?

Hey, don’t worry.

Despite New York Times Book Review editor Sam Tanenhaus’ essay last week on the “essential truth about fiction writers,” that they “often compose their best and most lasting work when they are young,” you may still have time to create your masterpiece.

And that goes for those of you whose creative muse inhabits a non-literary field, say, painting or composing or even biology.

“I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life.  And that is why I succeed.”

WITH the Bay Area Council opening its first overseas office in Yangpu District, local entrepreneurs and companies will have access to some of the biggest high-tech multinational firms in the world, Fei Lai reports.

This week the spotlight is on Yangpu District, focusing on building its economy around innovative industries. The district has attracted the Bay Area Council of San Francisco, California, to open its first overseas office in Shanghai.

"The office opening is part of a long cooperation between the Bay Area Council and Yangpu in support of our innovation urban development plan," said Chen Yin, Party secretary of Yangpu District. "Yangpu's emphasis on technology, innovation and a transformation to business through financial supports and services makes the Bay Area an obvious partner."

Located in the district's Knowledge and Innovation Community, the council's office now serves to encourage trade and investment between China and the Bay Area, and assist Bay Area companies in bringing bright minds and technologies to bear in China's development.

The U.S. House of Representatives recently passed a bill to close the carried interest "loophole" for private equity investors. Currently, these investors pay capital gains tax rather than income tax on the upside they receive if their investments do well. Most private equity investors don't favor the new legislation, as it severely increases the tax they will pay on their profits.

The legislation will affect both buy-out investors and venture capitalists. (Many people, including many in the press, misuse the term "private equity" to refer only to buy-out investing, but strictly speaking, it applies to both.) Venture capitalists buy minority positions in young companies they think will grow quickly; buy-out investors buy most or all of companies they think can be turned around by fixing a few basic things.

In the early days of a startup it’s common and necessary for the founder(s) to be involved in every decision. From the strategic to the mundane.

Some love it and others do it out of necessity. 

But as the company grows the founder(s) have a decision to make. Do they keep a very tight reign or do they delegate responsibility across the company?

And the question is how and when do they make those decisions.

Unfortunately there isn’t a good general answer that works for every situation.