Iowa State University will be establishing the Advanced Manufacturing Innovation Network with a $250,000 grant from the U.S. Economic Development Administration’s 2013 University Center Economic Development Program Competition. The grant was awarded to the ISU Extension and Outreach Center for Industrial Research and Service.

“The EDA University Center Program is an integral component of Iowa State University’s effort to drive innovation-based economic development and job creation in Iowa,” said CIRAS Director Ron Cox.

A novel type of wireless device sends and receives data without a battery or other conventional power source. Instead, the devices harvest the energy they need from the radio waves that are all around us from TV, radio, and Wi-Fi broadcasts.

These seemingly impossible devices could lead to a slew of new uses of computing, from better contactless payments to the spread of small, cheap sensors just about everywhere.

Mad Men. Who doesn’t love this show? There are a number of lessons that this show can teach people in the advertising and marketing industry. The show has certainly turned perceptions about the ad industry on its head. In between the cigarettes and alcohol infused conversations of Mad Men however, there are some key lessons for startups.

So here are some pearls of wisdom from the crew over at Sterling Cooper & Partners:

You hear it all the time: Small business is the engine of U.S. job creation, so they need tender loving care, like special tax breaks and other goodies. This narrative is wrong. Census Bureau data show that small businesses destroy almost as many jobs as they create. Now comes the Kauffman Foundation with an insightful report showing that not all small businesses are equal-opportunity job destroyers. High-tech startups are different. Unlike small businesses overall, they create net new jobs.

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Go for a jog, and RunKeeper tracks your progress. Go for a bike ride, and a range of cycling apps can help maximize your workout. Take that skateboard or surfboard out for a spin, however, and solid digital accoutrements suddenly become hard to find.

A new Kickstarter project aims to change that. The campaign seeks to raise $150,000 to fund Trace, a gadget that would give action-sports enthusiasts new ways to track and compare their tricks and stunts. So far, it's off to a smashing start, with the campaign raising more than $75,000 in its first three weeks.

It says a lot about the enhanced status of the entrepreneur that one of the best-selling books of 2011 was the biography of Steve Jobs. This success was, of course, partly due to the huge popularity of iPods, iPads, iPhones and other products made by Apple, the company Jobs came to embody. But it is also indicative of the increasing fascination with and glorification of “the entrepreneur”. Suddenly, it seems, everybody wants to be one. Moreover, commentators, policymakers and even politicians of all sorts hail entrepreneurs as the saviours of the world economy.

Whether you’re just starting out, founding your first company and looking for tips, or a seasoned veteran in search of some inspiration, there are a handful of entrepreneurs who are actively writing, posting, and sharing their thoughts on the entrepreneurial journey and the various aspects thereof.

I’m not just talking about those who tweet an inspirational 140 characters every now and then, I’m talking about entrepreneurs with an active blog or website that they use as a platform to share insights, both practical and candid. This list comprises those who do ‘personal branding’ best, and share their ‘thought leader’ acumen with the rest of us, so we can be become better entrepreneurs ourselves.

About nine months after the travel planning site Kayak was acquired by Priceline for $1.8 billion, cofounder Paul English is dialing down his day-to-day involvement. English announced at a company meeting earlier this month that from now on, he'll serve as part-time chief technology officer.

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It's a push to start new businesses in Rochester, and now the Mayo Clinic Business Accelerator is looking toward the future.   The accelerator started five months ago, and it's already reached capacity with 16 tenants. "This provides that opportunity for people to get together and hopefully learn from each other," said James Rogers, with Mayo Clinic Ventures.   It started as an initiative to help start-up businesses, and now Mayo Clinic's Business Accelerator Program is doing some accelerating of it's own.

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Chris Redlitz, co-founder of The Last Mile, which brings entrepreneurial skills to soon-to-be-released prison inmates, talks about the importance of teaching students how to pitch. As an example of this skill, program participant Heracio Harts then delivers a powerful demonstration of nailing the pitch.

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Heidi Roizen provides tips for giving good pitches. First, focus on getting to the next step. The day you come in for an hour-long meeting, she says, plan on a 20 min. presentation (no more); get to the value proposition in 5 minutes; be articulate; manage the meeting; show experience and establish credibility.

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Kate Mitchell, managing director of Scale Venture Partners, uncovers the questions that she considers when evaluating a pitches from entrepreneurs. The key questions focus on opportunity and market size, and whether idea is actually a company, a product, or just a feature.

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The story of Blackberry underlines a new truth about the competitive landscape we live in: success or failure isn't a function of a good product or service, or a well-run, cost effective company with a sound capital structure. It also requires an effective strategy to manage your ecosystem.

This was Blackberry's failure. The company had become complacent about its remarkably loyal customers and didn't recognize the threat posed by rival ecosystems. Like many established firms before it, Blackberry blew the opportunity to become a nodal player and leverage the energies of its complementors, in the way that Apple does with its apps.

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The Office of Technology Transfer (OTT), Office of the Director (OD), the National Institutes of Health (NIH), invites industry organizations (including corporations, partnerships, limited partnerships, and industrial development organizations); public and private foundations and nonprofit organizations to solicit research proposals from scientists across the NIH Intramural Research Program (IRP) for multiple focused research projects under a the NIH Cooperative Research And Development Agreement (CRADA) Program. This CRADA Program is an extension of collaboration opportunities solicited by NIH or developed on a one-on-one basis. As such, it is consistent with PHS Technology Transfer policy and the public health mission of the NIH. These collaboration opportunities are structured under the authority of 15 U.S.C. 3710a--Cooperative Research and Development Agreements. Note that the CRADA mechanism does not permit the transfer of funds from the NIH to a collaborator but does permit the collaborator to provide funding to the NIH researcher.

In many communities around the North America, parents and students are beginning the annual rite of passage of preparing for school. As early as this week, school buses will be rolling, and parents are getting their kids ready to go.

In the days of yore, preparations would have entailed buying folders, paper and pencils. Today, the expectation for parents who want to give their kids every advantage is to load them up with as much technology as possible, especially at the elementary-school level.

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Having sat through countless pitches, I can attest that many of them fall flat – and it's not always because of the idea or product. Rather, my biggest red flags have more to do with delivery and style than content. The good news is that these are relatively simple pitfalls that can be easily avoided.

Turnoff #1: Dwelling on the backstory I've seen founders spend half their pitch describing what they've done in the past and where they've gone to school. Yet, I'm far more interested in what a founder is doing today and where they are headed tomorrow. It's fine to offer background that is relevant to why you started this current business, but keep it short.

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“It amazes me how many companies cannot follow the simple practices that lead to a strong product, great culture, and innovation. How much of it do you think has to do with unrealistic growth expectations out of the gate for so many startups and growing small companies?” Joseph Dressler, a reader with a management role in a media company, recently emailed me with this query. It's a great question. It’s true that millions of dollars of investment have been poured into companies that were not ready to deliver on the growth that they promised. The result has been that some founders have gotten the axe -- and, in the worst-case scenarios, companies have been shut down. There are a number of reasons for this, including:

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A novel type of reactor could cut the cost of nuclear power by as much as 40 percent, making it far more competitive with fossil-fuel power plants. Designed by General Atomics, a San Diego–based company, the reactor could also be safer than existing reactors and reduce nuclear waste by 80 percent.

General Atomics has been working on the reactor for five years. Now it is trying to win several hundred million dollars in funding from the U.S. Department of Energy, which the company says would be crucial to commercializing the technology. At least one other new design aims to substantially reduce the cost of nuclear power, but it’s from a startup with limited funding (see “Safer Nuclear Power, at Half the Price”).

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What is my path to entrepreneurship?  I'm too cantankerous and pig-headed to be employed by anybody and I make a terrible employee and so that’s how I became an entrepreneur. 

I had started a company before business school exporting U.S.-made pet food to Japan, which is pretty funny actually when you think about it and I was coming out of business school and ended up interviewing at GE Capital of all places in their investment arm and I sat down and they gave me a 12-page questionnaire to fill out while I'm waiting for the interview. I have no patience whatsoever for 12 page questionnaires.

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Wondering how to make the best use of open innovation to drive your company forward? Concerned you may not be maximizing the paradigm’s potential? Then, check out this new report Open Innovation: Enhancing Idea Generation Through Collaboration.

The paper has identified 11 open innovation best practices based on research into how leading companies are tapping external sources of expertise.

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