If the United States truly wants to boost the economy and narrow its ginormous trade deficit, then medical technology would seem like a good place to start.

Minnesota’s bread and butter industry generated a $5.4 billion trade surplus last year, one of the few American industries to do so. Which is why Obama Administration officials visited Medtronic Inc. (NYSE: MDT) Friday, to encourage small to medium medical device companies to pursue emerging overseas markets like China, Japan, Eastern Europe and Latin America.

Ever since President Obama announced his National Export Initiative (NEI)- an ambitious plan to double American exports in five years- during his State of the Union address in January, top trade officials have been crisscr0ssing the country, “targeting high growth, high potential sectors like medical devices,” said NEI Director Courtney Gregoire.

“Our economic recovery requires that we continue to reach outside our borders,” Gregoire said.

Like a cable TV news show free-for-all replete with raw emotion and derisive accusations, the creative class has recently been confronted with a lively debate between two of its most influential members, the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation and the Association of University Technology Managers. They may not be household names, but the disagreement between the two organizations highlights an important public policy issue that must be addressed in order to strengthen America's leadership in innovation, economic growth, and job creation.

Academic researchers should be "unleashed" from the "inefficient, monopolistic" technology transfer offices at their universities, leaders from the Kauffman Foundation suggested in a Wall Street Journal op-ed last November. They then applied the coup de grâce in a January-February 2010 Harvard Business Review piece by calling for "any inventor professor to choose his or her licensing agent—university-affiliated or not—just as anyone in business can now choose his or her own lawyer."

RICH BENDIS PRESIDENT AND CEO OF INNOVATION AMERICA ,HAS THE PRIVILEDGE OF SERVING AS A BOARD MEMBER OF THE SCIENCE CENTER IN PHILADELPHIA, THE OLDEST AND MOST SUCCESSFUL URBAN SCIENCE  CENTER IN THE UNITED STATES.

Cheered on by some of Gainesville's most successful innovators, Gainesville startup company Tutor Matching Service received the first $50,000 Cade Prize for Innovation on Friday night.

The company was chosen from more than 100 inventions from throughout Florida, most from the Gainesville area.

The prize will help the company market its Facebook application that matches students and educators from around the world based on students' learning strengths.

Eight universities and think tanks have all converged on four policy principles to enhance technology innovation in the effort to mitigate climate change, says a new report released earlier this week by the Clean Air Task Force and the Consortium for Science, Policy, and Outcomes (CSPO) at Arizona State University.

The report, "Four Policy Principles for Energy Innovation & Climate Change: A Synthesis" (PDF) combined the recommendations made in eight studies conducted by universities like Harvard and MIT as well as think tanks like the Brookings Institution and the National Commission on Energy Policy to create the following four policy principles:

1. Recognize that innovation policy is more than R&D policy

2. Pursue multiple innovation pathways

3. Recognize CO2 reduction as a public good, and pursue energy innovation through a public works model.

4. Encourage collaboration on energy innovation with rapidly industrializing countries.

On June 18th, leaders from many of the Greater Rochester area’s leading innovation organizations will be coming together for a unique and powerful collaboration event.  The “Digital Rochester Innovation Jam Session” will bring together many of our region’s most influential leaders to identify solutions to the largest barriers to building a vibrant innovation economy in the greater Rochester area,” said Josh Bouk, President of Digital Rochester and Senior Vice President of Veramark Technologies. “Xerox has been, and continues to be, a global leader in technology innovation and a strong supporter of the Upstate New York region.  So we are thrilled that they have partnered with us to create the first ever “Digital Rochester Innovation Jam Session.”

The Digital Rochester Innovation Jam Session, sponsored by Xerox, will draw together:

• Large enterprise. Executives who drive the research and technology development efforts through global R&D efforts.
• Research universities.  Leaders of our regional research institutions that are driving IP creation and licensing
• Serial entrepreneurs. Those men and women who have repeatedly proven to have the vision and leadership to drive new business creation and technology commercialization.
• Funding partners. The leaders of investor and venture organizations that focus on seed and mezzanine investments.
• Supporting organizations and government. Leaders from the organizations and agencies that support economic development and technology commercialization efforts at the local and state level.

RICH BENDIS, PRESIDENT AND CEO OF INNOVATION AMERICA WILL PARTICIPATE IN THE DIGITAL ROCHESTER INNOVATION JAM SESSION THIS WEEK.

In an April blog post, "Want to be an entrepreneur? Drop out of college," Caterina Fake identified a number of successful tech founders who had quit school. The co-founder of Flickr (YHOO) and Hunch then argued that aspiring entrepreneurs should drop out of college and apprentice.

While Fake's headline is provocative, the data don't support her assertion. Statistically speaking, entrepreneurs are more likely to be successful if they graduate college than if they don't.

Education Increases Entrepreneurs' Performance

A 2008 study by Vivek Wadhwa, Richard Freeman, and Ben Rissing that surveyed chief executive officers and product development heads at more than 500 high-tech companies showed that "education provides an advantage in tech entrepreneurship." Specifically, the companies founded by college graduates had twice the sales and employment of the companies founded by people who didn't go to college, on average. These numbers are consistent with many other studies that show that founder education reduces business failure rates and increases profits, sales, and employment.

How would you like to be part of a 90-day startup accelerator program, that could result in start-up financing for your business idea?

The coIN Loft, Delaware’s first coworking space, has invited entrepreneurs from Delaware and the immediate surrounding regions to apply to be a part of BetaFish, which will result in five businesses receiving up to $8,000 in seed capital.

As the world’s greatest soccer players take to the fields at the FIFA World Cup in South Africa, many are wearing jerseys made almost entirely from plastic bottles rescued from landfills in Japan and Taiwan.

It is, if nothing else, good publicity for Nike, the maker of the jerseys and the official sponsor of nine teams, including the United States, Brazil and Portugal.

Yet what many might view as a gimmick is also part of a broadening effort by the company to incorporate sustainability, or environmentally responsible practices, into its product design. Around the globe, a growing number of manufacturers are including more recyclable or biodegradable components into products.

David Park and Eric Bahn are earning more at their startup, called Beat The GMAT, than they ever did in the corporate world. Every penny of profit from the business goes directly into their bank accounts. They enjoy being their own bosses; have become experts in sales, marketing, customer support, computer programming and graphic design; feel good about helping students gain admission to business school; and are grateful that they can spend their time doing things rather than discussing things—because they don’t answer to anyone. Why should they sell their business and be back to working for companies like Intuit or McKinsey & Co., they ask?

Ryan Sit, who runs a website called Picclick.com, feels the same way. His visual sales site attracts 300,000 unique visitors per month and generates millions in product sales for eBay and Etsy sellers—netting him a healthy six-figure income. He works from home and spends as much time as he wants to with his two small children and wife.  Ryan cherishes the freedom to do anything he wants—like experimenting with new website ideas. The last thing he wants to do is to raise capital or merge with a bigger company. “You become a slave when you are funded, and having lots of employees is just a pain”, Ryan says.

American Automotive Policy Council - America's auto manufacturers — Chrysler Group LLC, Ford Motor Company and General Motors Company — are committed to investing and keeping jobs here in the United States and delivering the most advanced and green technologies to U.S. consumers.

We will strengthen U.S. manufacturing by building the next generation of environmentally-friendly products consumers expect, and investing in plants, research, and people here in America.

Lack of funding for startup ventures is stunting the growth of Colorado's biosciences sector, industry leaders and entrepreneurs said.

Promising drug treatments and medical products are being developed more slowly or abandoned and some small companies are closing because of lack of capital, they said.

"There isn't enough capital coming in to fund all of the good deals," said Denise Brown, interim executive director of the Colorado BioScience Association. "Our whole pipeline of innovation is going to be stymied unless we come up with a new model."

The problem is national, even global, in scope. But it's being felt acutely in Colorado's biosciences community of mostly small companies served by a dwindling handful of local venture-capital firms.

Social capital, intellectual capital and creative capital are the factors of production for the Innovation Economy; next economic paradigm. Few people realize that Silicon Valley arose from a perfect storm of social capital from the 1960’s, the music and arts scene of the same era, and the proximity of academic centers Stanford and Berkeley. The Bay area corporations may have been the beneficiaries, not necessarily the originators of innovation.

Creative Capital remains the least understood, yet most important element of the Next Economic Paradigm. As we continue our march into the regime of social media it is imperative that we understand, support, and develop this critical factor. We cannot “take it for granted” that creativity exists and will always exist. It must be recognized, developed, and integrated into the fold of Social Media.

A global shift towards a vegan diet is vital to save the world from hunger, fuel poverty and the worst impacts of climate change, a UN report said today.

As the global population surges towards a predicted 9.1 billion people by 2050, western tastes for diets rich in meat and dairy products are unsustainable, says the report from United Nations Environment Programme's (UNEP) international panel of sustainable resource management.

It says: "Impacts from agriculture are expected to increase substantially due to population growth increasing consumption of animal products. Unlike fossil fuels, it is difficult to look for alternatives: people have to eat. A substantial reduction of impacts would only be possible with a substantial worldwide diet change, away from animal products."

The environmental, economic and personal tragedy unfolding on the Gulf Coast is a clarion call to the country to redefine, expand and embrace the idea of sustainability.

For most Americans, "sustainability" conjures up images of granola-eating tree-huggers wearing hemp clothing and making extreme choices to reduce their carbon footprints.

We think the Deepwater Horizon's enduring legacy could be a new understanding of sustainability, rooted in economic realism and accepted across much of the political and economic spectrum.

Some people, ahem, are predicting a big resurgence in business software. Given how outdated most tools are, that’s probably a safe bet –  whether it happens now or in the next few years. While software as a service and open source have plugged many holes, most large companies still run themselves on one of two companies: Oracle or SAP. That can’t last forever.

But the amazing thing is, when it comes to small business software, the market is still pretty wide open, with most businesses still running themselves on pen-and-paper or Excel spreadsheets. There is a reason that Intuit has managed to keep a stranglehold on small business software—because it is hard to build and even harder to market to such a huge, fragmented market with so many different needs. Especially when the revenues per customer are necessarily puny.

A green global economy will require much high recycling rates of specialty metals like lithium, neodymium and gallium, says a new United Nations report.

These metals, needed to make wind turbines, solar panels and hybrid car batteries, are scarce in nature and expensive yet only about 1% of them are recycled, according to preliminary findings by the U.N. Environment Program (UNEP). It will publish the final version later this year.

Unless recycling increases dramatically, the report warns that specialty and rare earth metals could become "essentially unavailable for use in modern technology."

Companies are recognizing that not only are their customers talking about them online, but their employees are as well. Subsequently when companies jump into social many establish corporate guidelines for employees use of all things social.

Companies are just realizing that the social web has new implications for communications internally and externally. Their reaction is to try to control it.

What is sustainable food without the appetite to go along with it? Have you ever eaten really, really wonderful chocolate? How about a delicate cheese or a not-so-delicate cheese, one that costs the world and has a taste that is goaty but profound? In this coming season of wonderful abundance, as the local food crops begin to thrive and the delicacies just keep on coming, it's important to consider moderation. Yes, in the midst of abundance, moderation in appetite is something to savor as well.

Why moderation? Well, we have abundance, but sometimes our appetites do not lean towards the most sustainable food on the menu. Our restaurants and grocery stores are full of cheap food that is cheap for the body as well. It's loaded with fats, including trans fats. It's full to the brim with white sugar and high fructose corn syrup. Many convenience foods are processed and created in bulk from inexpensive ingredients. Yes, we can eat a lot but it does not mean that we eat well, and it does not mean that this food is a sustainable diet for the planet either.

It's hard sending a text message with arms full of groceries or while wearing winter gloves. Voice control is one alternative to using your fingers, but researchers are also working on other hands-free ways to control mobile devices. A team at Dartmouth College has now created an eye-tracking system that lets a user operate a smart phone with eye movement.

Eye tracking has been used for years, primarily as a way for people with disabilities to use computers and to enable advertisers to track a person's focus of interest. "The naturalness of gaze interaction makes eye tracking promising," says John Hansen, an associate professor at the IT University of Copenhagen in Denmark who works on gaze tracking. "Most of the time we are looking at the information we find most interesting."