Maryland’s biotechs continued to leave their mark on the industry at this week’s global convention in Boston, with several executives claiming prominent board positions and a new report showing the state outpacing national growth in life science employment.

More than 15,000 executives and others were expected at this year’s Biotechnology Industry Organization International Convention, which started Monday and ended Thursday. More than 31 state companies sought the world’s attention at the Bio Maryland 2012 pavillion, which the state also had at last year’s convention in Washington, D.C.

Officials from the St. Louis County Economic Council (SLCEC) will hold a grand opening of the Helix Center Biotech Incubator on June 25.

The $7.5 million incubator, at 1100 Corporate Square Drive in Olivette, will offer 17,000 square feet of lab and office space to early-stage life science firms. The center, operated by SLCEC, is being funded through a $2.5 million federal grant and a $5.1 million grant from St. Louis County.

As the up-and-coming vice president and CEO candidate for a Fortune 500 technology corporation sat before the CEO for his annual review, he was baffled to discover that the feedback from his peers, customers, direct reports, and particularly from board members placed unusual emphasis on one potentially devastating problem: his listening deficit. This executive was widely considered among the best and brightest in his company, but it was evident that this issue needed immediate attention if he ever hoped to advance to the top spot.

He wasn't alone in that regard. My knowledge of corporate leaders' 360-degree feedback indicates that one out of four of them has a listening deficit—the effects of which can paralyze cross-unit collaboration, sink careers, and if it's the CEO with the deficit, derail the company. But this doesn't have to be the case. Despite today's fast-paced business environment, time-starved leaders can master the art of disciplined listening. Conventional advice for better listening is to be emotionally intelligent and available. However, truly good listening requires far more than that. As you move toward truly empathetic listening, consider these tips:

Being an Entrepreneur is not sexy most of the time. In fact it’s usually more like the life the guy who lived off of $30 a month crashing on AOL’s couches than the booze-filled rage-fest depicted in media like “The Social Network.” So why do people take the plunge with no guarantee of anything in return?

1. You’re Not afraid of failure: “Don’t be afraid to be wrong. The learning comes from the failure. And, you will fail 99 times for one success. Learn from the missteps and move forward.” -Fitist

2. You’ve realized that it’s a real job: “I went to college, because that’s what everyone does.  At Brown I took a few entrepreneurship classes, and they showed me that being an entrepreneur was a viable alternative to becoming a doctor, lawyer, consultant etc… After that I knew the startup world was for me.” – Priceonomic

Four new Entrepreneurs In Residence (EIRs) have joined the BioGenerator, a nonprofit subsidiary of BioSTL, to create, lead, and support new bioscience companies St. Louis.  The EIRs will work with existing start-up companies across the region to further their growth and with researchers and entrepreneurs to launch new enterprises.

In just the last two years, BioGenerator’s new programs for pre-seed funding (Spark Fund and i6 Project) and shared laboratory facilities (Accelerator Labs), along with its historical seed funding program, have supported the creation of 17 new bioscience companies in St. Louis, validating the rich supply of bioscience innovation locally.  These new EIRs will help to advance the growth of existing companies and assist in the creation of additional regional startups.

An entrepreneur recently wrote to me wondering how to deal with a situation that had arisen just after funding had been raised. The entrepreneur had raised money from a group of investors after multiple rounds of discussions and based on a business plan with specific milestones. Apparently, in the first board meeting after the fund raise, some of the investors wanted changes to the strategy and goals of the company. Other investors were generally neutral. The entrepreneur who still believed in the plan agreed to was naturally confused.

Investor-entrepreneur relationships are of course paramount to the successful building of a startup. A journey that starts off, ostensibly almost, as an adversarial one during the fund raising process what with the questions, arguments, skepticism and diligence becomes, well at least should, a shared one post funding. Both the investor and the entrepreneur stand to gain – financially and credibility wise – only if the startup succeeds. It is hard for one to win at the cost of the other in most cases – though there have been exceptions to this rule. It is unhealthy therefore to let the adversarial momentum carry forward post funding.

Is it worth daring to be great? No buzzwords, no ambiguity, just a simple question that couldn’t matter more.  Business model innovation starts by realizing you are contributing to a movement that is bigger than you. It’s global, self-organizing, and transformative. Lead by letting go. The first and most important step in the business model innovation process requires a change in perspective for both you and your organization. Looking through the lens of your current business model will most likely result in incremental changes at best. Business model innovation requires a different perspective. It requires a different set of lenses to examine new opportunities. It starts by realizing transformational opportunities are bigger than you and your organization. Business model innovation must be treated like an epoch journey with all the wide-eyed enthusiasm of a young child exploring new territory for the first time.

A new pilot program that aims to ramp up businesses in Upstate New York is underway, and many are getting on board.

Called the GRE Regional Economic Gardening Program, this pilot program is the first of its kind in the state and functions as a technical resource for companies looking to expand.

The program is headed by Greater Rochester Enterprise (GRE), a local public-private partnership that markets the Greater Rochester region to outside businesses as a place to grow competitively in the private sector.

Arguments about the value of patents have heated up over the past few years. Software patents in particular have come under increasing scrutiny from thought leaders in the start-up ecosystem, yet later-stage companies like Facebook continue to pay huge sums to acquire patent portfolios.

Just how much attention are start-ups paying to patents? Rather than speculate, we decided to go straight to the data. We pulled information from CrunchBase and the USPTO to build a patent activity database of over 12,000 funded technology companies. Then we plugged it into RJMetrics, a tool that makes data more understandable and actionable for online businesses. Here’s what we found:

The Washington state economy received a welcome boost today with the launch of a university-focused venture fund that aims to invest nearly $20 million over the next four years in promising start-ups spinning out of the University of Washington and other research institutions across the state. The W Fund, which officially closed on May 31, was announced today by the Fund's managing directors.

Investors in the W Fund include leading venture capital firms and law firms, well-known entrepreneurs of technology and life science companies, and the Washington Research Foundation. The University of Washington is investing private, donated money and the W Fund is also leveraging federal stimulus monies garnered with support from the Washington State Department of Commerce.

What makes a dominant biotech hub? It comes down to five workforce sectors, according to Battelle: agricultural feedstock and chemicals; drugs and pharmaceuticals; medical devices; research, testing and medical labs; and bioscience-related distribution.

Battelle’s new jobs report released at BIO this week outlined not only the national and state-by-state job growth in all these sectors, but which parts of the country also have notable clusters of specialized jobs. Shake out all their data and only seven states have the magic combination of both a large employment base and a specialized concentration of jobs in at least two of the five sectors. Three states can lay claim to three of the five.

Looking to address harsh criticism from its own inspector general that has been painfully slow in getting important technologies out of the lab and into commercial applications, NASA today said it has opened a revamped Technology Transfer Portal which aims to streamline the way the space agency handles that business.

Not unlike its efforts of the past, NASA said the new tech portal simplifies and speeds access to the agency's intellectual property portfolio, much of which is available for licensing. The site features a searchable, categorized database of NASA's patents, a module for reaching out to a NASA technology transfer specialist and articles about past successful commercialization of NASA technology. Historical and real-time data for NASA's technology transfer program also are available.

"Discontent is the first necessity of progress."--Thomas Edison

Our impact on the world depends on our ability manage urgency. Right now, I'm not doing so well. On my flight racing over to Honduras, my mind is wandering: What should I do first? Write a blog post? Prep for next week's workshop? Watch a movie? I'm in a state of paralysis, which John Kotter, the Harvard Business School guru of change leadership calls "false urgency," and I like to call "destructive urgency." There are three types of urgency:

1. Complacency: You make no effort because you think things are fine.

2. Destructive urgency: You are stressed, worried, know things must change but you don't know what to do, so you waste your time looking busy but achieving little.

It's easy to get obsessed with the super-fast, real-time cycle of online news. But don't forget that the Web is a massive treasure trove of information about any topic. With just a bit of work, you can set up tracking and get regular updates about topics you're passionate about. In this how-to article, we share our tips on topic tracking.

Google Alerts Let's forget the 'S' word for a minute: Social. You just want to track the latest news about a specific topic, so how do you do it? Easy, you set up a Google Alert.

One of the biggest challenges that prospective entrepreneurs face is generating enough money to get their business off the ground. While bringing on investors has always been an option, another financial backing opportunity know as crowdfunding was technically against the law for small businesses. Crowdfunding is a subsidizing method whereby a large group of individuals combines financial resources with relatively small amounts of money, to help raise capital for a new business venture. In the past only wealthy investors with large assets could invest in small businesses. New legislation known as the CROWDFUND Act aims to make equity crowdfunding a legal and viable option for investors and small businesses in the United States.

When the Martin Trust Center for MIT Entrepreneurship announced their Founders’ Skills Accelerator pilot, 129 teams applied in less than a week. And although their enthusiasm was motivating, the “downside” was that only 10 teams were admitted into the program.

So, just over three weeks ago, the Martin Trust Center’s Managing Director Bill Aulet tapped MIT Sloan student Philip Cohen on the shoulder and said, “I’ve got this big open space and I’m looking to do something with it. What do you think?” When Cohen asked what his vision was, all he remembers Aulet saying is, “I want you to do what you feel needs to be done.”

A decline in the population of emperor penguins appears likely this century as climate change reduces the extent of Antarctic sea ice, according to a detailed projection published this week.

The study, led by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), with co-authors from the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) and other organizations, focuses on a much-observed colony of emperor penguins in Terre Adélie, Antarctica. The authors conclude that the number of breeding pairs may fall by about 80 percent by 2100.

Something odd is happening in the world of patents: The American and European systems are starting to look more alike – and that has big implications for invention, trade and the economies on both sides of the Atlantic.

Recent change in US patent law, combined with changes underway in the European Union, “creates some opportunities,” says James Pooley, Deputy Director General of the Geneva-based World Intellectual Property Organisation. “We have a moment in time to shift the nature of the (international patent) debate from positions grounded in history to positions grounded in best practice.” That could lead to more patent reform across the globe – and a much-needed boost for world trade.

Long-term strategic partnerships between universities and industry that run for 5 to 10 years are the most productive at driving innovation, according to a study published today by the Science|Business Innovation Board AISBL, a not-for-profit scientific association create to improve the climate for innovation in Europe. 

Successful industry-university partnerships also require strong support by university rectors and top management, as well as teams on both sides capable of “crossing boundaries” and bridging the cultural divide between business and academia, the study concluded.

The Limited Liability Company (LLC) has become a hot business structure in the startup world. Savvy small business owners often opt for this structure over a traditional corporation, as the LLC offers personal liability protection without the red tape, paperwork and formalities that can be burdensome for a young startup, small business or solo entrepreneur.