We always hear how smart and creative the Valley is. It’s home to hundreds of startups, thousands of apps and billions of dollars in venture money. You might think from all the hype that it has a lock on innovation.

Not true. Companies in old-line industries — little brand names like Goodyear, which reaped $21 billion in net sales last year;  Brown Brothers Harriman, the country’s oldest and largest private bank; Whirlpool, the appliance conglomerate behind the Whirlpool, Amana, Kitchen-Aid, Jenn-Air and Maytag brands; and the Mayo Clinic, the 150-year-old hospital to the stars – know a little something about innovation too. Or they probably wouldn’t still be around.

In today’s hyper-competitive market, a burning question for most companies is: “How can we achieve a significant and sustainable competitive advantage in order to retain our customers?” After all, keeping existing customers is five times less expensive than finding new ones. That’s good business in anyone’s book.

Traditional competitive factors like product design, technology and distribution channels are harder to sustain in a super-fast, mega-networked world. In fact, the good old “Four P’s of Marketing” – product, price, promotion and placement – are having much less impact for companies competing in today’s marketplace.  A fifth “P” – people – has become an increasingly important competitive factor. Consider this, about 70% of customers’ buying decisions are based on positive human interactions with sales staff. Add to this the fact that 83% of the U.S. gross domestic product comes from services and information which are created and delivered by people. The bottom line is that people buy from people, not companies. So, your people – and the performance they deliver – are the defining competitive advantage for your organization.

Have you ever wondered what separates people that are struggling to make a living online and entrepreneurs that are successful? Many people seem to believe that it’s due to them knowing a few tricks or strategies that the average Internet marketer isn’t aware of. However, it’s more about mindset and how they approach Internet marketing altogether. Here are five “secrets” that successful entrepreneurs can attribute their success to.

Secret #1: They Focus on One Strategy at a Time

The problem with many Internet marketers is that they try to do too many things at once. They’ll spend some time trying to build a social media campaign, move on to search engine optimization, and then go back to promoting their blog. Successful entrepreneurs succeed because they focus on mastering one strategy at a time. They’ll invest the time and money necessary to succeed in one area such as SEO or blogging. They’ll continue at it until they can get it to work rather than switching to another strategy when they come across failure.

In these changing times, the concept of Open Innovation is one that we at AstraZeneca have fully embraced.

By sharing new ideas and enabling scientific innovation to cross boundaries between companies, academia, government and non-profit organizations, we can accelerate new ideas into innovative medicines.

An Open Innovation discussion at BIO

I will discuss the importance that AstraZeneca places on Open Innovation today at this year’s BIO International Convention. An interactive session will include a panel discussion and presentations of cases studies of notable Open Innovation success stories.

For those who have been working in the field of social entrepreneurship for a decade or more, as we have at the Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship, 2013 is starting to feel like a watershed year. Don't get me wrong: we still have enormous hills to climb in changing mindsets, improving enabling environments and correcting market failures. But I think it's worth pausing for a moment and taking stock of the global trends.

Governments as diverse as the US, Colombia and India have created new agencies with robust mandates to promote social innovation, including direct reporting lines to the president (or the prime minister, in the case of India). Senegal, the United Kingdom and Canada have created national task forces to assess the social innovation policy environment and make recommendations for reform. And with today's announcement by the Peruvian Ministry of Development and Social Inclusion to launch a task force to promote social innovation, Peru now joins their ranks.

The New Venture Challenge Championships at the University of Colorado, which wrapped up last week (see Xconomy’s coverage here), were magic. An April snowstorm did not deter more than 200 individuals from the community from packing the finals. Few things inspire like seeing entrepreneurs—especially students—solve problems by creating new companies. And the teams were great. Really great.

As a colleague said to me in a moment of post-event euphoria, “This is why we do what we do.”

National Innovation Summit and National SBIR Conference, Washington, D.C., accelerating the commercialization of American innovation featuring hundreds of technologies, start-ups, labs and federal agencies.

The National Innovation Summit & Showcase (NISS) will take place May 12-16, 2013 in National Harbor, MD, just outside Washington, D.C. Organized by TechConnect and in support of the White House and Congressional call for innovation commercialization initiatives, the National Innovation Summit and Showcase delivers the world's largest showcase of the Nation's top innovations.

We have been reporting on the format of teh "Seeks Solution" conferences before. The idea is both simple and surprisingly effective: turn a scientific conference upside down: Skip the presentation of successful research and undertakings and focus, together, on what is really interesting for everybody: challenges yet unsolved.

The event in question is, of course, the by now fairly popular series of "Seek Solutions" conferences.

Since the first conference in Quebec, things have evolved and been refined. Christophe Deutsch of En Mode Solutions, the organization now planning and executing solution-seeking conferences in innovative hubs around the world, has kindly agreed to answer some of our questions on the concept, its evolution and the future - and how you can be part of it.

When someone asks me for the best way to fund a startup, I always say bootstrap it, meaning fund it yourself and grow organically. Bootstrapping avoids all the cost, pain, and distractions of finding angels or VCs, and allows you to keep control and all your hard-earned equity for yourself.

A few years ago I interviewed a serial entrepreneur, Rich Christiansen, who has done almost 30 businesses wholly by bootstrapping. He published a book with Ron Porter, titled “Bootstrap Business”, that provides a wealth of practical examples and advice on this subject.

Do you ever wonder why cars aren't called "horseless carriages" anymore? Today's cars are just as horseless as they were a century ago. Horselessness is standard equipment on most new and late models, both foreign and domestic.

Framing the question this way may seem a bit absurd; yet, it's a playful reminder that innovation does not emerge out of nothing. New innovations evolve from historical, iterative processes. The automobile developed out of, and in opposition to, concepts associated with the horse and carriage. This was the familiar frame of reference when the automobile first emerged. Early automobiles extended and adapted the accustomed 19th century understanding of locomotion.

Jaron Lanier, an early internet pioneer, recently spoke with FT Business about the new digital economies, and why free information is not a good idea. Lanier says he was one of the first in advocating digitizing the music industry and he used to argue that free music would enable artists to make money from live shows and merchandising.

As the executive chairman of one of the biggest tech companies on the planet, Eric Schmidt seems well-placed to do some crystal ball gazing. So what does he think will be major trends in the future? Self-driving cars, Google Glass and mobile operating systems named after desserts? Not quite. In the run up to the launch of his new book ‘The New Digital Age’, co-authored by Google Ideas director Jared Cohen, the two Googlers gave CNN a few predictions about what would be big news in the world of tech for years to come. They stressed that the technology means nothing unless it is adopted by people, and how they use it will make all the difference.

From a small business perspective, the proposed Fiscal Year 2014 budget unveiled last week by President Barack Obama gets mixed reviews.  Critics say the budget does not do enough to alleviate the tax burden on small businesses.

Small Business Reaction to Obama Budget

Three key areas of concern are: minimum wage, taxes, and entitlements / pensions.  Let’s look at the range of reactions to the President’s budget to these points.

When Ray Kurzweil met with Google CEO Larry Page last July, he wasn’t looking for a job. A respected inventor who’s become a machine-intelligence futurist, Kurzweil wanted to discuss his upcoming book How to Create a Mind. He told Page, who had read an early draft, that he wanted to start a company to develop his ideas about how to build a truly intelligent computer: one that could understand language and then make inferences and decisions on its own.

The Biotechnology Industry Organization (BIO) is pleased to announce the election of Rachel King, President and CEO, GlycoMimetics, Inc, as the new Chair of its Board of Directors for the 2013-2014 term, and the election of David Pyott, Chairman, President, & CEO, Allergan, Inc., as its new Board Secretary. BIO also is pleased to announce the re-election of Mark Skaletsky, Chairman & CEO, Fenway Pharmaceuticals, Inc., as Board Treasurer, and the election of 19 Directors to serve on BIO’s Board Executive Committee for the new term. In addition, BIO welcomes the election of eight new members to its Board of Directors, voted upon at this year’s 2013 BIO International Convention.

Download the PDF for more information.

The state's venture capital firm says it has preserved 378 jobs and opened the door for another 278, according to a recent report submitted to state lawmakers.

The West Virginia Jobs Investment Trust presented a report on the West Virginia Capital Access Program to the Senate Economic Development Committee during the final weeks of this year's legislative session.

The report detailed the lending made through the Capital Access Program, which is designed to help equip small businesses with the capital they need to invest, expand and create jobs.

You’ve probably heard about some outrageously cool ways to charge your mobile phone before. The solar charger for when you go camping, for example. You could probably find at your local gadget shop. Nokia’s wireless charger meanwhile has, since the release of the Nokia Lumia series, made a big splash but the buzz quickly dissipated. Most of these innovations you’ll discover on Kickstarter which makes these crazy gadgets rather exclusive by nature. Others you’ll find in areas where the need for a reliable alternative to your traditional “plug-in-the-wall” charger is much greater than the novelty of a Kickstarter gadget.

Marc Andreessen, CoFounder and Partner of Andreessen Horowitz, delivered the closing keynote address at the Second She ++ Women in Technology Conference today at Stanford. The keynote was moderated by Ruchi Sanghvi, VP of Operations at Dropbox and the first female engineer at Facebook.

Marc and Ruchi discussed what Marc was excited about in technology, whether innovation is dead, the relative importance of technical founders, whether pursuing a startup is overrated, how Silicon Valley has developed through the years, and concluded with a word association game.

So, you’ve built yourself a nice little product. Maybe you’ve raised a small friends-and-family round; maybe you’re still bootstrappin’ on your own. Either way, now you’re looking to raise at least a million dollars to help with the next steps.

While there’s no perfect formula for stuff like this, these stats from AngelList’s Ash Fontana are a pretty good indication of the metrics you should be aiming for.