Government was taking steps to utilise innovative traditional knowledge, Science and Technology Minister Naledi Pandor said.

"[We] are to make a big deal around scientific exploration in indigenous knowledge," Pandor told a conference on intellectual property rights in Johannesburg.

"Indigenous knowledge is a key part of our innovation technology."

Working for a start-up is hard enough. Trying to wittily describe ”the unique entrepreneurial culture that sets their company apart and inspires them to go to work each day” - in 140 characters or less - is equally challenging.

That was the task set by the National Venture Capital Association and job board StartUpHire, which asked for Twitter-esque submissions from start-up employees in celebration of Global Entrepreneurship Week.

You can find more than 100 of them here, and submit your own. Many of them aim to be funny, some inspire, though quite a few are simply advertising their start-ups or didn’t seem to understand the objective. Here are a few of our favorites. (Post yours at the aforementioned link, and if it’s interesting enough, we’ll add it below.)

The San Diego area is the home of numerous cleantech businesses that are developing innovative green cars (Aptera, V-Vehicle Co.), developing alternative fuels (GreenHouse International, Synthetic Genomics Inc., Sapphire Energy), finding alternatives to petrochemicals (Genomatica, Verdezyne), and providing renewable energy and energy efficiency solutions (KEMA, Kyocera, Envision Solar).

Assisting our growing cluster is a network of non-profits, trade groups, government agencies, universities, and investors who share a common interest in cultivating a green economy. These groups collaborate on many projects, strengthening our vision for more green businesses, jobs, and investments in cleantech innovation. But while they share common goals, local green groups are also distinct in many ways and often compete for money, members, and media; their varying perspective, focus, message, membership, and goals can be confusing. If you’re an entrepreneur, how can you find support for the green innovations you hope to commercialize? Where do investors look for opportunities and advice? Where can founders find the resources they need to move their ventures forward?

There are scores of articles in every major newspaper and every major magazine comparing India with China on various economic progress indicators. There are even books written about Tiger of India pitted against Dragon of China. To those who base their opinions on such reports, articles and books, it looks as though India is posing a strong completion to China, when in fact every measurable economic indicator suggests that China is clearly leading India on all fronts. Moreover the gap between these two countries is only widening with each passing year. And yet, many Indian commentators continue to complacently believe that India has some edge somewhere when in fact none exists.

The tone of these reports and analysis comparing India with China suggest that India is actually inching towards China. That is not the case. In reality China is leaving behind India by a bigger margin every year. It is becoming tougher and tougher for India to catch up. In the last few years, Chinese have built the biggest dam on the planet, built the longest bridges, built the fastest cities, built their own planes, submarines, ships, magnetic trains, and even the highest railways while India continued to lay another layer of asphalt on its decrepit roads after each rainfall.

Shares of Sunnyvale Internet security company Fortinet soared more than 30 percent Wednesday in its first day of trading on the Nasdaq, raising hopes that long-dormant Silicon Valley public offerings may be stirring back to life.

It was the first public offering in 20 months for a tech company with a Silicon Valley address, and the reception may encourage other valley startups to follow suit in coming months.

"This is what investors have been waiting for," said Bob McCooey, Nasdaq vice president of new listings.

The closing plenary session of the first World Innovation Summit for Education - WISE has produced a number of ground-breaking outcomes that signal the beginning of a new era in global collaboration on education. WISE concluded with a declaration of 10 core education priorities, an announcement of two initiatives and a renewed commitment to the three main areas of focus for WISE in the future.

Held in Doha, Qatar and attended by 1,000 influential opinion leaders from diverse sectors across the globe, the Summit, through its theme of "Global Education: Working Together for Sustainable Achievements" has created a new dynamism towards addressing the most challenging educational issues in the 21st century.

As I [Bob Sutton] blogged about awhile back, this week, Perry Klebhan, Alex Kazaks,Huggy Rao and I are running rather intense executive program called Customer-Focused Innovation. As you can see from the schedule, we are keeping the 21 executives in the program mighty busy. We kicked off with a tire-changing exercise led by Andy Papa, who among other things leads the pit crews at Hendrick's Motor Sports, where one team established the all time CFI speed record, changing in a tire on a NASCAR racing car in under 13 seconds. Yesterday, the group spent the day at the Tesla dealer in Menlo Park talking to owners, potential customers, people in sales and marketing at Tesla, and people who didn't like the idea of owning a Tesla at all. In the picture above, the two executives on the left are interviewing George Kembel, the d.school's executive director (he is the tall guy facing the camera) and the group on the right is interviewing one of the Tesla salespeople (the woman in black with sunglasses in her hair).

WASHINGTON, Nov. 18 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- United States Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship Chair Mary L. Landrieu, D-La., today joined Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, Small Business Administration (SBA) Administrator Karen Mills, other policymakers, lenders, and small business owners at a forum on small business financing. The forum explored new ideas and strategies for expanding access to financing for small businesses.

"Now that we have stabilized Wall Street, we must jump start Main Street," Sen. Landrieu said. "We can do this by making sure small businesses have access to the capital they need to keep their businesses alive and growing during these tough times.

Anthony Townsend, Institute for the Future
Alex Soojung-Kim Pang, Institute for the Future
Rick Weddle, Research Triangle Foundation
IFTF Report Number SR-12361

The model of self-contained research parks and incubators that dominated the last fifty years of technology-based economic development is being challenged by deep shifts in the global economy, science and technology, and models of innovation. This paper describes fourteen emerging trends that will set the context for technology-based economic development in the coming decades. These trends are used to develop three scenarios for the future of technology- based economic development over the next two decades. In the first scenario, an incremental evolution of the research parks model takes place in a world of rapid, but steady and predictable change. In the second scenario, entirely new networks of R&D space emerge in a “research cloud” that challenges current models to adapt, sometimes dramatically. The third scenario, the research park models is in rapid decline as R&D becomes highly virtualized and parks’ legacy cost structure makes them obsolete for young firms. We conclude by highlighting the strategic implications of these scenarios for existing and future parks and economic development.

Business Times - 18 Nov 2009

Siemens' solutions hub testament to S'pore's ability to be home for innovation

By JOYCE HOOI

SENIOR Minister Goh Chok Tong reiterated yesterday the importance of the three-pronged 'host to home' strategy in adapting to the demands of a post-crisis world.

'While Singapore will continue to be a good host for businesses, we want companies to see us as their 'home' as well, specifically as home for business, home for innovation and home for talent,' Mr Goh said, in reference to the 'host to home' strategy championed by the Economic Development Board to keep the best of talent and businesses here.

BEIJING, Nov 19, 2009 (AsiaPulse via COMTEX) -- ERC | Quote | Chart | News | PowerRating -- China and the US agreed to establish a clean energy research center in a joint statement signed on Tuesday after talks between Chinese president Hu Jintao and US president Barack Obama.

A protocol was signed between China's Ministry of Science and Technology, the National Energy Administration and the US' Department of Energy.

The research center will prioritize three topics including energy efficiency in buildings, clean coal, and clean vehicles. It will have one headquarter per country, with public and private funding of at least US$150 million over five years evenly split between the two countries.

Well, it´s interesting that this nation is capable in so many areas. Historians tell us that jewish farmers produced 3 times more output on the same fields, compared to their parent palestinians that have been living there in earlier days.

A new book shows a new dimension of this capable folk: "Start-up Nation: The Story of Israel's Economic Miracle". Author Dan Senor explains: 'Israeli society has some built-in - and some hard-earned - advantages. It is these advantages that facilitate Israel's generation of more start-up companies than Japan, China, India, Korea, Canada and the UK, as well as Israel's boasting the second highest number of companies listed on the NASDAQ stock exchange, after the United States itself.

Factors That Lead to Success

Despite their impact on the economy, relatively little is known about entrepreneurs' backgrounds and motivations. A study released by the Kauffman Foundation in July, titled "The Anatomy of an Entrepreneur," led by co-authors Vivek Wadhwa, University of Akron's Raj Aggarwal, University of California's Krisztina "Z" Holly, and former BusinessWeek tech editor Alex Salkever aimed to discover who American entrepreneurs are and what makes them tick. To do so, the team surveyed 549 successful business founders from high-growth industries between August 2008 and March 2009. Now, the team is back with a second report, "The Making of a Successful Entrepreneur," in which respondents answer questions about the factors that contributed to their companies' success. Flip through this slide show for Wadhwa's thoughts on the most compelling data.

From: Federal Technology Watch

The US Chambers Global Intellectual Property Center (GIPC) has released a report highlighting different methods of technology diffusion, the process of providing technology to other nations, while hailing intellectual property (IP) as a key to advancing green technologies to the developing world.

Lorrie Vogel is the general manager of Nike Considered, Nike’s in-house sustainability think tank. She holds a degree in Industrial Design from Syracuse, and numerous patents. Her work in innovating around sustainability has helped put Nike on Fast Company’s Fast 50 list multiple times. Considering how aggressive Nike’s sustainability goals have been, it’s even more impressive that they are on track to meet their targets.

Sustainability is second only to performance when ranking the critical factors of a product. Nike is committed to making their entire collection as environmentally responsible as possible. Lorrie Vogel spoke at the Opportunity Green conference in Los Angeles, explaining some of the ways Nike is meeting these targets. In this phone interview, Lorrie expands on some of the points she touched on in her presentation. The conversation is split into two articles, in order to go deeper into the many changes that need to happen to increase use of recycled and organic materials in apparel and footwear. We begin with a discussion about materials, and conclude with the human element needed to ensure these changes occur in a timely manner.

Often criticized as fair-weather investors who come at the peak and exit at the valley of market cycles, corporate investors have an advantage over their venture capital peers when it comes to investing in Chinese start-ups: they can - and often do - invest in the local currency.

Delegates of the 28 selected firms for China’s ChiNext watch a screen showing the share prices during the listing ceremony in Shenzhen. Venture and private equity funds are now clamoring to receive approvals in China so that they can be classified as local investors and avoid onerous approval processes and restrictions on the types of investments they can make.

Listening to the rhetoric about how the federal government needs to spend big to make sure the U.S. stays on technology’s cutting edge, I wonder if big carrots are better than baby ones.

Over the last 26 years, Pennsylvania’s Ben Franklin Technology Partners program has done a lot with a little state money. Mark Heesen, president of the National Venture Capital Association, recently praised the program, which provides young technology firms with small investments to nudge them ahead to where a venture capital firm may want to invest.

U.S. vs. China: Working Together on Global Warming?

Global warming is a problem that spans the entire world, but when it comes to figuring out how to stop it, the burden will largely fall on two countries: the U.S. and China. The U.S. is the world's largest historic carbon emitter, responsible for putting more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere over the past century and a half than any other nation. China recently surpassed the U.S. as the top emitter and will be responsible for more greenhouse gases in the future than any other country. "These two countries hold the key to sustainability or catastrophe," says Jake Schmidt, international climate policy director for the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC).

If that's the case, it might seem as if the world is headed toward catastrophe. Over the weekend, world leaders at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit made explicit what had long been expected — that a legal, global treaty to reduce carbon emissions was no longer possible at next month's U.N. summit in Copenhagen. The deadlock between the U.S. and China is a big reason: Beijing expects Washington to take the lead on cutting carbon, but the U.S. won't sign on to a deal that doesn't including measurable action from the Chinese. From that perspective, climate change is one more competition between the world's reigning superpower and its No. 1 challenger. (Read "Is There Any Hope for Agreement at Copenhagen?")

Findings from recent researches carried out by Accenture, a global management consulting, technology services and outsourcing company, said Innovation is a top priority for companies seeking to grow in aftermath of the economic downturn, but flaws in managing innovation may hinder their progress”.

Additionally, nearly nine out of 10 respondents (89 percent) said that innovation is as important, if not more important, than cost reduction to their company’s ability to achieve future growth.

Lahle Wolfe's article Do You Have What it Takes to Become a Successful Woman Entrepreneur? (About.com Women in Business) got me thinking about entrepreneurship in general.

I write about entrepreneurship from a research perspective in Thinking of Starting a Small Business?. Perseverance, initiative, competitiveness, and self-reliance all were rated highly by entrepreneurs themselves as the "necessary" qualities for success.