On paper, open innovation sounds unassailably appealing. Why should your organization have to innovate on its own? Why not attempt to mine the hearts and minds of your customers and other external stakeholders?

But as with most things in business, the dilemma is in the details of execution. Which is why we were thrilled to find the blog of Stefan Lindegaard (@lindegaard), a Copenhagen-based author, speaker and strategic adviser. Lindegaard has posted several compelling pieces on 15inno.com about the execution challenges of open innovation and the lessons that executives — at companies like General Mills, Lego, P&G, Philips, Psion, Siemens, and Unilever — have learned in the process. Here’s a sampling. We encourage you to click over to 15inno.com to learn more.

This just caught my attention and I think it is such an innovative idea. Leave it to the Nigerians to change things up. While the rest of the world is putting plans in place to build their various tech cities, Nigeria’s tech hub in Lagos, has decided not to. According to the latest project by Lagos’ innovation hub ccHub, the city is concerning itself with a tech neighbourhood (hat tip: White African) rather than a whole city.

The initiative runs under that of the i-HQ Project, an industry led initiative that aims to accelerate the growth of technology innovation and entrepreneurship in Nigeria.

Have you already filled out your NCAA brackets and looking for more? The folks at the U.S. Census have come up with a “population bracketology” interactive game that tests your knowledge of state and local populations.

The objective is to pick the larger population between two states or metro areas. When you have opposing states picked for the next round, pick again, until you end up with just two states, just like the finals for NCAA. See how close you come to a perfect score of 63.

A program that invests in healthcare and life science research projects that can demonstrate proof of concept, typically coming out of universities and medical institutions, is getting a $500,000 investment from Philadelphia’s economic development arm. The new investment is designed to bring more capital to entrepreneurs in Philadelphia at earlier stages, according to a press statement.

The source of the investment is Philadelphia Industrial Development Corporation’s Penn Venture Fund. Through the fund it will invest up to $500,000 in the University City Science Center’s QED Program, the country’s first multi-institutional proof-of-concept funding program for healthcare and life sciences technologies. The investment is to be allocated up to $100,000 at a time across five project rounds, starting next year.

Despite the statistics on high failure rates or the many news stories about business closings, many do survive and thrive. They survive so long and do so well that they, at times, outlast their owners’ energy and interest in the company. Figuring out how to exit a business usually brings up a lot of emotions for business owners. After all, they’ve poured their time, energy, heart, and soul into making it grow and helping it succeed. Of course the thought of exiting the business makes owners uncomfortable — both personally and professionally.

In my mind, being in a position to dictate your own exit strategy should be the highlight of your career because it epitomizes the entrepreneurial dream: Go into business, be successful at it, and leave under your own terms. Unfortunately, that’s not always the case. Many owners are reluctant to make plans to walk away, and thus, they leave too many critical decisions to chance.

I’m a young CEO. I started my company while I was still in college at Brigham Young University (BYU). I was part of BYU’s Collegiate Club National Championship soccer team in 1999. Playing soccer, starting my own business and being a full-time student taught me the importance of maintaining balance in life. It didn’t take long to learn that certain activities can dominate life even when you have the best intentions. When one activity consumes your life, other areas tend to suffer.

Playing soccer (or any other competitive sport for that matter) was a great stress reliever for me. It’s something I’ve done since I was a little kid and something that I still do today (though my skills have deteriorated over the years). I found that when school and my business were eating away at me and causing me stress, the soccer field became my escape. After a practice or game, I’d come away with a clear mind. I found that it was usually after stepping way from work or school to play soccer that I’d come up with the solution to a problem or have clarity on a whatever project I was working on.

As small business owners, the mobile phone is one of our most important tools. So important, that we may forget that “anywhere and everywhere” is not our office.

And as your business grows, it’s not just your own behavior with a cell phone you have to think about. You also have to make sure your employees exhibit professionalism, stay safe and present a positive public image of your business while using mobile devices.

It’s been a little over six months since we moved our headquarters into the city of Philadelphia.  And boy has a lot happened since then:

We announced the Dorm Room Fund here in Philadelphia.  We received interest from over 700 students to serve on the investment committee.  We selected 11 students.  And they have already begun to make investments at a rapid pace!  So far they’ve committed over $150K for investment into 8 companies founded by Philadelphia-area students. We’re so happy with the traction that we’re seeing here in Philadelphia, that we’re even expanding the Dorm Room Fund to other cities.

Manufactured sapphire—a material that’s used as transparent armor on military vehicles—could become cheap enough to replace the glass display covers on mobile phones. That could mean smartphone screens that don’t crack when you drop them and can’t be scratched with keys, or even by a concrete sidewalk.

Sapphire, a crystalline form of aluminum oxide, probably won’t ever be as cheap as Gorilla Glass, the durable material from Corning that’s used to make screens on iPhones and other smartphones. A Gorilla Glass display costs less than $3, while a sapphire display would cost about $30. But that could fall below $20 in a couple of years thanks to increased competition and improving technology, says Eric Virey, an analyst for the market research firm Yole Développement. And since sapphire performs better than glass, that price could make it cheap enough to compete, he says.

Traditional marketing says you have to “push” your message out to customers, over and over again, to get you remembered. A more effective approach in today’s Internet and interactive culture is to use “pull” technology to bring customers and clients to your story. You pull people in by providing new content with real value on your website at least every few days.

Guy Kawasaki, in his book “Enchantment: The Art of Changing Hearts, Minds, and Actions” provides some in-depth recommendations on the “how to” of pull technology. Here are some of his recommendations for web sites and blogs that I particularly recommend to entrepreneurs and startups:

The era of VCs investing in successful consumer Internet startups such as eBay led to a belief system that seemed to permeate many enterprise software startups that hiring sales or implementation people was a bad thing.

“We want low-touch or zero-touch businesses” was the mantra.

I believe it’s flawed.

The AUTM Eastern Region Planning Committee invites you to suggest topics for the AUTM 2013 Eastern Region Meeting which will take place in Boston, a region flourishing with academic research institutions and innovative companies, large and small. 

Our theme for the meeting is: 

Where Cells Meet Bytes - On the Boston Common Finding common ground between biology and information technology

Topics that are suited to this theme will be given special consideration.

Ever had a great idea but not known where to start to bring it to reality? Or you've had a great idea and went through hell to bring it to fruition? Ben Kaufman experienced the latter — he founded Mophie, the iPhone juice pack case, in 2005.

To launch Mophie, Kaufman had his parents re-mortgage their house, but once he had money is his hands, he realized there were more hoops to jump through — manufacturing, supply chain, retail and more.

This is the first in a series of collaborations with readers of this blog. The painting is by Annie Lawrason. The words are excerpted from Full Moon at Sunrise. This image will appear in the soon-to-be completed slide show version of the book. If you are an artist, photographer, or illustrator and want to contribute one or more of your creations for inclusion in the slide show (to be sold on the WOPG.org eStore), let me know.

Blink  . . .  and ten years pass by.  It’s now 2023.  A brand new generation of business and institutional leaders is taking the reins.  The world has continued to shrink and is much, much smaller.  Technology has continued an unabated, unchecked progression; what is now futuristic has become commonplace.  Complexity is the daily norm, and change the only constant.  Opportunities, problems and grand challenges abound.

Here's a cool breakdown of how many upsets typically happen in the NCAA Tournament from FanSpeak. The takeaways: About 80% of 2-6 seeds win in Round 1 About 62% of the 2-6 seeds who have been upset in Round 1 have been either 5- or 6-seeds There are typically four or five 2-6 seeds who get upset in Round 1 every year

In 2011 the National Science Foundation started a program named I-Corp. The purpose of the program is to “identify NSF-funded researchers who will receive additional support – in the form of mentoring and funding – to accelerate innovation that can attract subsequent third-party funding.” NSF just announced an expansion of the program (see news items below).

I tend to have a dim view of federal programs designed to encourage entrepreneurship. In my experience the way most federal agencies operate is the antithesis of entrepreneurial, so how can they effectively encourage entrepreneurship. I’m also opposed to programs that assume they can train academic researchers to run a startup and raise serious VC funding in a few weeks. Most entrepreneurs who succeed with that have had decades of brutal, real-world experience.

Like many sports fans across the country, five groups of physicists at the University of Maryland are filling out their brackets to predict the winners and losers in the NCAA men's basketball tournament. While most people use a strategy to guide their picks — such as relying on advanced basketball knowledge or identifying the cutest mascot — this Maryland method relies on quantum physics.

David Hucul, a graduate student, came up with the idea. Last year, his quantum picks performed surprisingly well against picks from other people in the laboratory.

As an Industry Analyst my role is to identify trends, market forecasts and publish my findings in research reports. As such, Industry Analysts are different than Financial Analysts, which I’m not. While I cite where I’ve found the data in the comments, I can’t ascertain the accuracy of some of these sometimes 3rd party data sources. Note that the 2012 revenues are reported at a different time from the employee headcount was likely reported (Q1, 2013) The following is not to be considered for investment purposes.

One of the biggest mistakes you can make in your career is not understanding that there are certain codes and rules to abide by in the workplace. If you're not careful, you may even lose opportunities because others are put off by your lack of professionalism. To get a better idea of the office etiquette you should be aware of, we caught up with Catherine Palmiere, president of recruitment firm Adam Personnel, and Lyudmila Bloch, business etiquette coach at World Class Business Etiquette and author of "The Golden Rules of Etiquette at The Plaza."