Looking for an example of a well-crafted, well thought-out crowdfunding campaign?

Look no further than the ARKYD 100, billed as the world’s first public space telescope. With the help of a hefty, crowdfunded $1.5 million, we might soon see the world’s first public space telescope – the product of the most successful crowdfunded campaign for a space project to date.

Chances are that if you’re reading this you’re engaged in the civic innovation space, even if you don’t use that term explicitly.  Perhaps you’re a technologist who hopes to create civic tools based on datasets publicly released by a city.  Maybe you’re a local government staffer who seeks to create greater efficiencies in service delivery based on a comprehensive evaluation of performance metrics.  Perhaps you’re a community organizer pushing for the adoption of more participatory models of governance in local government.  Or you might be a foundation professional hoping to leverage your investment in a community initiative by soliciting matching grants from local businesses.  Maybe you’re a resident passionate about increasing social connectedness between neighbors.

Innovation writing often resembles religion – always in search of one true reason or belief. Do we need to practice open innovation? Are we susceptible to the innovator’s dilemma? Should our R&D spend equal 4 or 5% of turnover? Most discussions tend towards one of these explanations rather than a portfolio; one true but simple meaning rather than complexity.  I was reminded strongly of the mono-theism of innovation when I read Bruce Upbin’s piece recently, “Debunking The Narrative Of Silicon Valley’s Might”.

Bruce retells Mariana Mazzucato‘s view that the real engine of innovation is Government. Counter-intuitive, right! But shouldn’t we worship in Silicon Valley, anyway?

Researchers at the U.S. government’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory have built flexible solar cells using a thin and pliable kind of glass from Corning, the company that makes the glass that covers iPhone screens. The new solar cells could make rooftop solar power far cheaper.

Based on tests by Corning, which makes a product called Gorilla glass for iPhone screens and which announced the flexible material, called Willow glass, last year, shingles made from such solar cells could last for decades on a roof—even weathering hail greater than three centimeters in diameter. Conventional solar panels are heavy, bulky, and breakable, which makes them expensive to transport and install.

Intel came to dominate computing by consistently beating others at packing transistors ever more densely onto chips for desktop computers and servers. Today, even as the PC market shrinks and the giant company struggles to convince phone and tablet makers to use its chips, Intel spends $10.1 billion on research annually. Justin Rattner, who has been the company’s CTO, recently met with Tom Simonite, MIT Technology Review’s senior IT editor, to argue that this investment will help Intel’s mobile chips overtake those of its competitors and create new businesses. Last Thursday, Rattner announced he was stepping down as Intel’s CTO to take personal leave. He plans to return to the company in a different position.

The article states that this trend is exasperated by the mismatch between the skills young people offer and the skills employers need, resulting mostly from “poor basic education”. “Necessity” is causing the world to attend to this disturbing trend, evidencing the need for systemic changes in the education “education-work-employment paradigm!”

Perhaps, it could also create the possibility of getting businesses, academic institutions and governments to work together, within an innovative eco-system context, to develop young people as potentially Start-Up business entrepreneurs! Now could even be the time to initiate an educational and societal “right hand turn” whilst there is so much global financial and geopolitical instability and massive amounts of technological disruptions! Forcing organizations and governments to adapt and redesign their traditional structures, in their search for more innovative, global, high tech, cost effective and resilient business operating models!

The first Plantagenet king of England, Henry II, is important to contemporary small business owners because he founded the legal system that paved the way for modern entrepreneurship.

Ambitious and intelligent, Henry’s consolidation of the 12th century British Isles under his rule created the need for order. While his reforms were more for his political expediency than to empower the people, they actually gave birth to the English Common Law, which replaced feudal practices such as trial by ordeal.

Does an agreement in principal on a term sheet amount to a contract?

A number of cases have considered the question whether an agreement in principle on a term sheet amounts to a contract of some sort. For example, assume an investing entity backs out of financing a start-up company. The start-up company claims that the investing entity had made binding legal promises in the term sheet, including particularly the promise to invest money, and should be liable in the event of breach. Generally, the relevant cases have arisen in the context of a lender-creditor relationship; indeed, the cases concerning promises at the preliminary stage are grouped under the general heading of "lender liability," upon which there has been a good deal of commentary. An illustrative case that raises the alarm systems of investor's counsel if Judge Duffy's opinion in Penthouse International Ltd. v. Dominion Federal Savings & Loan Assn. In that case, since reversed by the Court of Appeals, Dominion Federal was held liable to the applicant debtor for $112 million in lost profits for failure to fund its promise to advance a $35 million participation in a loan made by another lender to construct an Atlantic City casino. If one construes the term sheet as equivalent to a lender's commitment letter, then the problems are apparent, including particularly the zany measures of damages that juries award in cases such as Penthouse International and Texaco v. Pennzoil. On the other hand, there may be a recent defendant oriented trend building in reaction to stretches such as Judge Duffy's. Thus, the Seventh Circuit in 1989 held against the notion that a letter of intent is a binding contract,  the letter of intent being expressly conditional on acceptance by the boards of both corporations, which in the defendant's case did not occur. The district court made findings that the parties did not intend the letter of intent to be a binding obligation. The court also rejected, again on the specific facts, the allegation that the defendant had failed to negotiate in "good faith."

Revolution Ventures, the early-stage venture capital arm of Steve Case's Revolution LLC, has filed paperwork with the Securities and Exchange Commission for a planned $150 million fund. Named in the SEC filing are Case and managing partners Tige Savage and David Golden. Revolution Ventures II LP, as it's named in the filing, follows the formation in 2011of Revolution Growth, which invests in more mature, later-stage companies. Revolution Growth, led by Case, Donn Davis and Ted Leonsis, is operated separately from the venture unit.

The top 25 countries may be the same -  albeit in a different order from past years – but this year’s Global Innovation Index, produced by INSEAD, WIPO and Cornell University shows there is no short-cut to successful innovation: it takes continued development of talent, sustained investment, institutional support... and the right mindset.

That accounts for some of the major position shifts in this year’s top ten countries. “The U.S. is one of the countries which, in spite of the crisis, has maintained its level of investment in research and development and in innovation-related sectors. We see, for instance, a remarkable increase in spending on computer software which is directly applied to research and innovation,” said Bruno Lanvin, Executive Director, INSEAD European Competitiveness Initiative & co-author, Global Innovation Index Report. The USA moved up from 10th place last year to number five this year.

Dreaming is fun because a dream can be anything. There are no rules, no approvals necessary and no one you have to impress or satisfy. You can turn off the safeties, play in traffic, and generally indulge in anything you want.

Businesses are built on dreams. Such dreams are unrestricted and creativity is free to flow. The fantasies that can be aroused are full of spectacles of wealth and the freedom such wealth seems guaranteed to create. There’s the gratification of receiving respect and accolades from powerful and accomplished people, and the self-satisfaction of controlling one’s own destiny. This is the temptation and the snare of starting your own business.

Seed capital is the funding required to get a new business started. This initial funding, which usually comes from the business owner(s) and perhaps friends and family, supports preliminary activities such as market research, product research and development (R&D) and business plan development.

Female entrepreneurs in the United States benefit from more than just their own personal strengths and aspirations—they also benefit from an environment that is more open to women-led startups than any other country in the world. A new index released last month in Turkey at the Dell Women’s Entrepreneur Network conference compared 17 countries across 30 indicators that foster high-potential entrepreneurship. For those hoping for a silver bullet issue to focus policy efforts, there isn’t one.

The Gender GEDI (Global Entrepreneurship Development Index) pairs indicators into 15 pillars—such as startup skills, cultural support, competition and product innovation—that explore each country’s entrepreneurial environment, ecosystem and aspirations of its nascent founders.

The free flow of skilled human capital was identified as a top priority at an Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) senior officials innovation meeting I led in Medan, Indonesia, this past weekend. The approval therefore by the U.S. Senate last Thursday of its version of immigration reform legislation was met with keen interest. Why is this legislation so important for the United States?

For more than a decade now, U.S. policymakers have failed to address the nation’s broken immigration system. This year has seen a plethora of different groups – representing business and the technology industry, labor unions, farmworkers, educators, youth groups, religious organizations and many others from both sides of the aisle – watching closely to see if lawmakers can overcome tough party divides.

WHEN AMAZON OPENED ITS WAREHOUSE IN THE FORMER COAL-MINING TOWN OF RUGELEY, ENGLAND, RESIDENTS THOUGHT THE COMPANY MIGHT BRING BRIGHTER ECONOMIC PROSPECTS. AS PHOTOGRAPHER BEN ROBERTS HOPES TO SHOW, THAT’S NOT EXACTLY WHAT HAPPENED.

Shining blue and bright above a subterranean labyrinth of hollow shafts, a warehouse sits upon the abandoned remains of a coal mine that once defined this working-class English town. It is as bright as the mines are dark, as vast as the shafts are claustrophobic, as clean as they are filthy. This warehouse represents a future of shopping that does to brick-and-mortar retail what it has already done to the coal mine that used to thrive in its place: Bury it without filling the hole it left behind.

The unconscious-thought effect (UTE) occurs when people are better able to make complex decisions after a period of distraction rather than immediately or after a period of conscious deliberation. This finding has often been interpreted as evidence of unconscious thinking. In two experiments, we provided the first evidence that the UTE is accompanied by enhanced memory for the gist of decision-relevant attributes and demonstrated that the cognitive demands of a distraction task moderate its effect on decision making and gist memory. It was only following a low-demand distraction task that participants chose the best alternative more often and displayed enhanced gist memory for decision-relevant attributes. These findings suggest that the UTE occurs only if cognitive resources are available and that it is accompanied by enhanced organization of information in memory, as shown by the increase in gist memory.

When I made the transition two years ago from working with a 100 year-old organization — one I had called home for almost eight years — to working with companies sometimes less than 100 hours old, I assumed I would see tremendous differences.

In my early career, I had experienced the textbook definition of outdated management thinking that centered on hierarchy and lack of trust.

Drexel University is creating an entity called Drexel Ventures to boost its efforts to commercialize inventions by its faculty and students. The new organization will oversee a seed fund and business incubator; identify and support business-development opportunities; expedite intellectual property licensing; and connect the university with entrepreneurs and funding sources.

Thanks  Cynthia Morris for taking the time to do this. And, as the sun shines in my world again, I’m happy that others are spreading the love around.

When Congress passed President Obama's JOBS Act in March 2012, one of the most intriguing provisions would enable crowdfunding—the ability for large groups of anonymous investors to fund startups. More than a year after the law was passed, however, the provision remains tied up in red tape waiting for the Securities and Exchange Commission to pass rules that would allow for crowdfunding investment on a large scale.

Already, companies have dipped their toes into crowdfunding through websites such as Kickstarter, Indiegogo, and AngelList, with an anticipated $5 million to be raised this year, nearly double the amount in 2012. That's nothing compared to the bonanza expected when the SEC opens up the floodgates for nonaccredited individual investors to directly acquire equity in private companies—and for companies to directly solicit the public without having to jump through the hurdles usually required in a venture capital presentation.