Sheetal Mehta, founder of Innovative Social Ventures, has won many awards such as: Asian Women of Achievement; was listed in the 35 under 35 of Management Today and awarded for her Public Services this year at the Jewel Awards. She has just launched Shanti Microfinance which takes technology and microfinance to entrepreneurs in slums in India. Here, she talks to The NextWomen about her experiences in business and microfinance:

Tell us about yourself and your experiences in business?

I am a Canadian who has lived in the United Arab Emirites, San Francisco and the UK. I have a background in technology and venture capital – I initially started my career in banking in the Middle East and later went on to join Microsoft Corporation where I set up their Venture Capital Strategy. Later, I expanded that initiative into EMEA.

I [Jeffrey Phillips] love those truisms that people use to describe a situation. Strangely they are usually based on obvious failures, but perhaps it's simply easier to teach people based on failure than success. Some relatively well-known truisms include:

You can lead a horse to water but you can't make him drink
You can't push a string uphill
Time waits for no man

I'd like to add one about innovation. While we like to say that everyone can innovate, its probably also safe to say that

You can't force a disinterested person to innovate

HTDC started working on this document in anticipation of the State's need to have a coherent implementation plan for establishing Hawaii's innovation economy last year. This document evolved as we also accommodated the needs of other economic development practitioners and industry members hungry to find out about other states' best practices as well as their need to have all the recent Hawaii studies and publications and their recommendations related to the innovation sector in one place.

The draft of this document has already aided the EPSCoR subcommittee tasked with coming up with a framework for a State tech plan, and this version has been submitted to a newly organized "tech coalition work group" by some members of the legislature who wanted to reach out to the industry to provide a constructive venue to hold discussions for best practices to plant the seeds for the innovation sectors prior to January 2010.

President Obama’s visit to China this week inevitably invites comparisons between the world’s two leading powers. You know what they say: Britain owned the 19th century, America owned the 20th century, and, it’s all but certain that China will own the 21st century. Maybe, but I’m not ready to cede the 21st century to China just yet.

Why not? It has to do with the fact that we are moving into a hyperintegrated world in which all aspects of production — raw materials, design, manufacturing, distribution, fulfillment, financing and branding — have become commodities that can be accessed from anywhere by anyone. But there are still two really important things that can’t be commoditized. Fortunately, America still has one of them: imagination.

To improve science and mathematics education for American children, the White House is recruiting Elmo and Big Bird, video game programmers and thousands of scientists.

President Obama will announce a campaign Monday to enlist companies and nonprofit groups to spend money, time and volunteer effort to encourage students, especially in middle and high school, to pursue science, technology, engineering and math, officials say.

YARMOUTH, Mass. — Dave Lamoureux’s kayak, named Fortitude, must be the only one in Massachusetts registered as a motor vessel. That’s because a powerboat registration is required to get a permit to fish for tuna here.

Apparently, it never occurred to the authorities that someone might be crazy enough to want to catch a bluefin while sitting in what amounts to a floating plastic chair and enjoying what Melville called a “Nantucket sleigh ride.”

Bendis is also a kayaker and states that this is "crazy innovation!"

If an educated work force is the nation's human capital, business is seeing a lot of subprime these days.

Graduation rates are dismal in many school districts. Teachers are bailing out of the profession. Parents are frantic at the lack of options. Chancellors are clashing with unions. And student performance pales next to the competition abroad. Business often can't find the talent it needs in the work force that our education system produces.

The CEO Council considered a range of remedies. John Bussey, chief of the Journal's Washington bureau, moderated discussions by the education task-force as it considered what five priorities to recommend. Here are edited excerpts of those discussions.

Our Network continues to grow in substance and scope...

In the meantime, take the opportunity to welcome 13 new E100 from 10 countries added to our Global Knowledge Leadership Map – now representing 190 from 67 countries! Take a look at their capabilities and aspirations to see how they dovetail with your own.

Richard Bendis (USA) is Founder of Innovation America - www.innovationamerica.us. He serves as a Senior Fellow with the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) and on committees, such as The White House, the National Governor’s Association (NGA), the National Academies (NAS), the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), the American Academy for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and the Council on Competitiveness.

Nov 19, 2009 (Congressional Documents and Publications/ContentWorks via COMTEX) -- SBCOE | Quote | Chart | News | PowerRating -- Washington, D.C. - Congresswoman Melissa Bean joined Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner and Small Business Administrator Karen Mills at a Small Business Financing Forum today to discuss methods for improving small business access to credit.

"Many small businesses' credit lines have been reduced or eliminated over the last year, leaving businesses struggling to access affordable capital to fund business growth," Bean said. "Small businesses drive roughly 80 percent of job creation in the country, so I appreciate the Administration's efforts to think outside the box to explore new ideas for increasing credit access as we strive towards economic recovery."

OBAMA ADMINISTRATION INNOVATIVE SMALL BUSINESS JOB STIMULUS FINANCING PLAN AND PROGRAM RECOMMENDATIONS

As Submitted by Richard A. Bendis, President, Innovation America and Vice Chair NASVF

Curtis R. Nelson Shares 30 Years of Business Experience—Simplifying the Keys to Growing Any Business, Complete with Personalized Score Card

CEDAR RAPIDS, IOWA—NOVEMBER 18, 2009—Entrepreneurs to seasoned business executives are the target for Curtis R. Nelson’s new book, The Recipe for Business Success. The book, now available online at www.recipeforbusinesssuccess.com, is a compilation of decades of proven business practice and theory into one, easy-to-follow “Recipe.” Filled with real-world stories that drive home the learning experience, The Recipe is designed to be a strategic analysis tool, applicable to the start-up or the Fortune 500® board room.

From Barcelona to Seoul, urban science parks are being built to lure the best minds and the industries of tomorrow

In its heyday decades ago, Olivetti employed nearly 3,000 workers in a hardscrabble section of Barcelona making typewriters. Drop into the former factory today, and you'll likely find young professionals perched on comfy foam couches talking business in a mix of languages amid brightly painted walls and exposed wooden beams. Glass-enclosed conference rooms are filled with students taking seminars on how to write business plans or develop marketing campaigns. Tacked to a bulletin board next to the canteen are news reports about the latest venture to snag investors.

Reopened three years ago as a high-tech business incubator, the four-story concrete-and-glass structure now hosts 55 startups creating everything from bike helmets with built-in air bags to an online audio-search service that some analysts think might be "the Google (GOOG) of music." The converted factory also houses the home office of 22@Barcelona, which oversees a sprawling science park of university campuses, research institutes, and corporate labs that boosters hope will turn the Mediterranean city into one of the world's great creative hubs.

In the go-go days of the mid-2000’s, Richard Florida was king, and the creative economy was going to lead us to cafe-cultured prosperity. Here in the central Puget Sound, not only did we take credit for all our smart people, we actually hired Richard Florida to come and help us develop strategies to capitalize on these resources. But you don’t really hear too much about that these days. What happened to the creative economy?

Obviously, the “Great Recession” has taken the wind out of the sails of a lot of investment in the amenities that help cities attract and retain high demand workers. Cultural institutions are struggling, bookstores are closing, and paying too much for a latte is gauche. Not to mention the huge cuts going on locally and nationally in education that keep us from producing the STEM field degrees that power a lot of that high tech innovation.

The next time someone throws the "does it scale?" line at you, show them this diagram and ask them to be more specific - what sort of scaling was it they were worried about, exactly? Another tidbit, "The Microsoft UK Education team has a dozen people in it (surprised?) who are focused full-time on education..." - and with even more in North America, I would expect to see a lot more of blogging and writing out of them. Where are they? Ray Fleming, Microsoft UK Schools News Blog, November 20, 2009.

When Dave Kellogg arrived at Sequoia Capital on that day in early October 2008, "the last chair in the room was in the front row," he recalled. "My penance for being a little bit late."

Kellogg is the CEO of Mark Logic, a startup that helps business clients make sense of the chaos of unstructured data. He wound up with an excellent seat for an auspicious moment in Silicon Valley lore — the "R.I.P. Good Times" briefing that drove home the severity of the financial industry crisis for the startup economy. Initially intended exclusively for leaders of companies backed by Sequoia's investments, it would be inadvertently leaked by one CEO and sail around the Web like an early Halloween ghoul.

In the late sixties it had become clear that most of the world’s seas and oceans were being exploited by over-fishing. Soil was being degraded and eroded throughout the planet. National habitats were being destroyed and the area of tropical rain forests, which have a direct effect on climatic conditions, had been reduced by half since the middle of the century. As a consequence, several species of plant life and animals were in the process of becoming extinct. Pollution had also started raising its ugly head and dumping of waste into the sea, and on land greatly contributed to the poisoning of the environment. Hazardous chemicals and radio active materials were being dumped into rivers all over the world and, together with sewage and oil spills, rendered lakes and semi-enclosed seas more vulnerable, therefore having a more direct effect on people’s health. As a result, billions of people are suffering daily from air pollution caused by acid rain and ozone depletion, both of which have become major contributors to global and regional problems.

Here’s the latest from VentureBeat’s Entrepreneur Corner:

5 ways VC firms can stop shooting themselves in the foot – Venture Capital firms drill the need to create basic credibility into the companies they invest in – but often fail to take their own advice. Laura Grimmer, CEO of Articulate Communications (which works with VC firms), lists five things they could do to build a better pipeline of prospective portfolio companies.

After VC cash? Show ‘em what you’ve learned – When the time came for Cafepress to seek its second round of funding, the company went about it in a slightly different way. Serial entrepreneur Steve Blank, a longtime board member of the company, offers a look at how they did it – and what the reaction was from investors.

As Global Entrepreneurship Week comes to a close in the US and 88 countries around the world, U.S. President Barack Obama has issued a proclamation supporting those efforts, proclaiming November 16 - 22 to be a national Entrepreneurship Week. In doing so, Obama called "upon all Americans to recognize the important contributions of entrepreneurs to our economy."

The statement comes as thousands of organizations are in the midst of hosting events designed to inspire young people to unleash their creative ideas and turn them into job-producing, sustainable businesses.

A program that would make Iowa a center of medical innovation was kicked off Friday by state leaders and Richard Gephardt, the former congressman from Missouri.

"This is the most exciting thing I've ever done. I've come out of every one of these meetings just uplifted with what can happen here. It's really optimistic, it's possible, doable and feasible," said Gephardt, chairman of the Council for American Medical Innovation.

WASHINGTON, DC - The seed capital industry has revaluated return expectations and fund-raising outlooks, according to a new national survey conducted by the Fox School of Business and the National Association of Seed Venture Funds(NASVF).

Survey respondents indicated that most are planning to make an exit within the next six months, and that they expect four times the return on capital from that exit. In addition, more than half indicate they are in the process of securing follow-on funding over the next six months.