Ottawa-based CATAAlliance and its national spokesperson, Sir Terry Matthews, president & CEO of Wesley Clover released a Venture Capital (VC) Blueprint for Canada to succeed as an ‘innovation nation.’ The VC Blueprint reviews different mechanisms and models for urgent adoption in Canada to accelerate the success of start-ups to enterprise flagships.

“The financial ecosystem necessary to support the development of future global tech industry leaders requires a wide range of financing from ‘seed’ through ‘early stage’ through ‘later stage’ to achieve financial self sufficiency and business success, with job growth,” says Matthews.

Waterloo, Ontario. President Barack Obama couldn’t bear to part with his BlackBerry. Oprah Winfrey declared it one of her “favorite things.” It could be so addictive that it was nicknamed “the CrackBerry.”

Then came a new generation of competing smartphones, and suddenly the BlackBerry, that game-changing breakthrough in personal connectedness, looks ancient.

There is even talk that the fate of Research In Motion, the company that fathered the BlackBerry in 1999, is no longer certain as its flagship property rapidly loses market share to flashier phones like Apple’s iPhone and Google’s Android-driven models.

I'm asked this question all the time. Is it team? Is it the idea? Is it product? Is it market?

The answer is that it is all of them and most importantly it is the way they all come together in a single company. Why is this the right team to do this? Can they package their idea correctly for the market? Is the market ready for their product?

This is a great question, asked and answered, sometimes insightfully, more often not, thousands of times.  One problem I have seen with the answers to this question that tend to be less than insightful is that they are offered by people who have never been entrepreneurs, and so the answers can be overly academic, pedantic, or abstract in nature.  I have had many folks ask me (or simply opine unsolicited) whether my success as an entrepreneur was due to my success in becoming a Navy SEAL officer.  In short, the answer is no.  I know several former SEALs who have become successful entrepreneurs to varying degrees (Mark Divine, Mike Johnson, Alden Mills

If only it were as simple to grab attention, anyone’s attention, like the little girl in the picture is doing.

In grade school, I remember raising my hand to get my teacher’s attention whenever I knew I had either the right answer or something I really wanted to get off my chest and share with my class. I used to raise my hand so often that I my teacher wouldn’t call on me to give the rest of the room a chance to participate. That bothered me, but it also made me get clever when it came to raising my hand. I would twirl my hand in a circle over my head, like a helicopter. I’d make my arm as long and lean as I could get it and if I caught my teacher’s eye, I’d immediately use my pointer finger to point down on myself and sometimes I’d even raise both hands and shake them around.

In an increasingly global marketplace, economies must find new ways to adapt and grow. Innovation is the engine of that growth and productivity the key to increasing standard of living. Today’s policies and investments will lay the foundation for continued and continual innovation that will support the economy and society we envision for British Columbia in 2035 and beyond.

New technologies and emerging sectors such as clean technology, digital media and life sciences are most often associated with innovative thinking and future economic growth. Often dubbed the “economy of the future,” they represent a significant opportunity to diversify the economy and share in growing world markets. B.C. is well-positioned to build on early strength in these areas, and should strive to remain at the leading edge through a focus on industrial research and innovation that further boosts our standing in these important sectors.

I’ve been directing or advising innovation and commercialization efforts in Silicon Valley for most of my career. While the popular stories we tell about innovation usually focus on eureka moments and brilliant individuals, anyone involved in successful innovation knows that getting a new product to market is often more about convincing smart people to back your idea, corralling lots of different agendas, aligning incentives, and navigating bureaucracies.

I was reminded of this very important difference between invention and impactful innovation when I attended the One Mind for Research conference at UCLA recently. One Mind for Research is a new nonprofit that serves as a catalyst for discovering and delivering breakthrough cures for brain disease, co-founded by Garen Steglin, a successful VC and CEO, and Patrick Kennedy, former Congressman and nephew of JFK, and now led by Pete Chiarelli, U.S. Army General (retired).This was a gathering of top university neuroscientists, celebrities like Glenn Close and Maria Shriver, foundations, industry senior executives, government officials, patients, and advocates.

Future scientists and technology professionals, not governments, will develop the innovations that most benefit society, online educator entrepreneur Sal Khan told MIT's 2012 graduates during his commencement speech Friday.

"The positive revolutions will not be started by generals and politicians. They'll be started by innovators like you," said Khan, a 1998 graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge.

Some would place Khan and the nonprofit online education venture he founded, Khan Academy, into this category. The organization offers, for free and to anyone with a Web connection, approximately 3,000 videos Khan created and narrates off camera explaining a range of topics mostly in the science and math fields. In the videos he writes on a virtual blackboard, drawing notes and diagrams to accompany the lessons, and uses Web services, like Google Maps, to help teach. Some of the many lessons on Khan Academy's YouTube Channel include videos on the big bang theory, chemistry and home buying in addition to topics on U.S. history and civics.

Many aspiring entrepreneurs are looking to the Internet as an opportunity to get rich quick, instead of a place where you can start a business you love, for very little capital and minimal technical expertise. The reality is that if you build a business you love, you may in fact make big money, but if you start a business to get rich, you will probably fail.

In my experience, there are good reasons for starting a business, and good ways to go about it in the new online world, but even entrepreneurs with good intentions often don’t have a clue on key principles to follow for this rapidly changing platform.

We all know that New York City is for the most part, Silicon Valley of the east. Some of the top Startups and technology innovators are being born in the city that never sleeps. We’ve covered a slew of great New York Startups like Sonar, Edaman,FourSquare and plenty more.

We learned t TechCrunch Disrupt NYC that unlike the Valley which encompasses several areas in the region like San Francisco, Menlo Park, Sunnyvale, Mountain View and countless others, the New York tech scene is united on one front a segregated on the other. Each area within New York, like Manhattan, Brooklyn and now even Harlem has their own thriving tech hubs.

Marcus Mayo and Brian Shields are two Harlem based entrepreneurs who are trying to unite the Harlem startup scene and invigorate its infrastructure by launching a new startup incubator called IncubateNYC.

Springboard is a well-known and highly regarded accelerator programme that has operated in London and Cambridge. Now it is branching out into mobile, offering ten founders in any area of mobile services or technology money and mentorship. The cash comes from ten angel investors, most of whom are themselves successful entrepreneurs.

The angels include Russell Buckley, who sold Admob for $750 million, Harry Dewhirst, who sold Amobee for $321 million and Ben Barakas, co-founder of Admeld, which was sold for $400 million. Support will come from over a hundred carefully selected mobile, technical, financial and business mentors.

Escape the City, which helps people leave 'unfulfilling' corporate jobs, is favouring social lending rather than institutional investment to help it grow, and has topped £500,000 inside 15 days.  

Speaking exclusively to GrowthBusiness, co-founder Rob Symington says that when the business embarked on its fundraising efforts it was not aware of the crowdfunding system. But he believes that funding the business with a large pool of micro-investors fits in with its brands and the way it wants to develop in the future.  

Escape the City began as a newsletter when Symington and his co-founder Dom Jackman were still working as management consultants. After leaving their jobs two years ago, the two bootstrapped the business with £15,000 each in savings until they felt it was the right time to seek external investment.

Two months ago, Columbia's economic development agency got some new neighbors.

Photo by August Kryger Lem Hunter, left, meets with Virginia Wilson, director of the Small Business and Technology Development Center, on Friday at the SBTDC’s new offices in the Fifth and Walnut parking structure. The SBTDC, funded by the U.S. Small Business Administration, shares conference and training rooms with its neighbor — Regional Economic Development Inc.

The program used to be housed solely on the MU campus, but REDI director Mike Brooks saw an opportunity to form closer ties with the organization, which offers counseling and classes to aspiring entrepreneurs. REDI, funded by public and private entities including the Tribune, paid for the build-out of the SBTDC's new offices and shares its conference and training rooms with it.

A STEADY rain was soaking the windows of La Guardia Airport when Nancy Thode, an elite frequent flier with Delta Air Lines, approached a gate agent with a pressing question: Had her request for an upgrade cleared?

Glancing at her computer, brow furrowed, the agent was not encouraging: “You are No. 13.”

But with a nearby video monitor showing that more than half of the 26 first-class seats were already claimed, Ms. Thode knew her chances were slim. “If somebody comes — diamond, platinum or gold,” the gate agent pointed out, “they’re going to get it.”

I’m Sonia Kapadia and I’m going for it all.  I’m an entrepreneur, business woman, wife, and soon to be mom.  I’m definitely not the stereotype you see in the tech world these days, and I don’t think I’ll fit that pattern anytime soon, but I’ve been working hard at trying to break the mold and build a successful startup.  In this column, I plan to talk about the intersection of being a woman entrepreneur and balancing family life.  It hasn’t been easy, and I certainly don’t have all the answers, but I’m excited to share my journey with all of you.

One of the issues I’ve been struggling with these days is what am I going to do when the baby comes?  I get this question from others on a daily basis.  And I receive all sorts of unsolicited comments from others either encouraging me that things will be fine: “You can make it work”, or discouraging me saying: “Well your business will surely suffer,” or “Sounds like you’re going to take some serious time off for awhile.”  It’s a fair question to ask I guess and I try not to get offended when others are pessimistic about me not being able to balance come Baby K’s arrival.  Because you see, I’ve been working full force on Taste Savant, my first baby, for the last year.  And as my belly is getting bigger, I haven’t been slowing down, but instead have been speeding up.  So it begs the question: What will I actually do when this child comes?

When they picture the modern American entrepreneur, many people imagine Mark Zuckerberg-types — young, tech-savvy, fresh out of college. But when it comes to successful entrepreneurship, the best years of life may be after 50.

According to a survey by the nonprofit Kauffman Foundation, Americans aged 55 to 64 start new business ventures at a higher rate than any other age group, including twentysomethings. In 2010, the survey said, 23 percent of new entrepreneurs were aged 55 to 64, up from 14 percent in 1996.

What is a life without creativity? I believe a life free from creativity is a life free from joy. Our creativity is the essence of who we are. We have a responsibility to ourselves and to the world to feed from our personal well of inventiveness and imagination. But what can you do when your inner artist eludes you? Here are 24 creativity quotes that may bring her out to play. “

• The chief enemy of creativity is good sense” – Pablo Picasso 
• “Think left and think right and think low and think high. Oh, the thinks you can think up if only you try” – Dr. Seuss

"Stop competing on price and start competing on imagination," Josh Linkner told attendees at the Inc. Leadership conference in Miami on June 8. Linkner, who founded online promotions company ePrize and is CEO of Detroit Venture Partners, is no stranger to out-there tactics: He once dreamed up a fictional competitor (called "Slither") that forever beat his company to new clients and sales goals. The threat of Slither forced it to cook up new ways to evolve its products and increase business.

At the conference, Linkner shared a few ways entrepreneurs can boost their teams' creativity, and use big ideas to beat out big competition:

Get Curious. Ask three questions again and again: "Why?" "What if?" and "Why not?" "It forces you to challenge conventional wisdom, and imagine what can be, rather than what is," Linkner said. He has his team ask "The Five Why's," an exercise where they starts with a question facing their business, answer it, and then questions the reason for that answer. It's akin to a five-year-old's questions about the blue sky, he says. It can lead to finding insights that are hiding in plain sight.

Rich Bendis and Dr. Mark Rohrbaugh will discuss a new Entrepreneur-in-Residence (EIR) program financed by BioHealth Innovation (BHI) which places a full-time, experienced, serial entrepreneur inside the National Institutes of Health (NIH), Office of Technology Transfer. This EIR is designed to be an active partner with research institutions to source, fund, and grow high-potential, early-stage products through project-focused companies. The entrepreneurs in the program support the formation of new companies based upon innovative discoveries in the areas of drugs, vaccines, therapeutics, diagnostics, and medical devices from the intramural research programs at the NIH and Food and Drug Administration (FDA), as well as from universities and businesses. The EIR will find, evaluate, and support the development of new start-up companies based upon technology license agreements from technology transfer offices or equivalent units within the research institutions.

BHI, a new regional private-public partnership focusing on commercializing market-relevant biohealth innovations and increasing access to early-stage funding in Central Maryland, announced on March 26, 2012 its selection of Todd Chappell as the first Entrepreneur-in-Residence (EIR) for BHI at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Office of Technology Transfer (OTT). Mr. Chappell, a venture capital-backed entrepreneurial leader and inventor with more than ten years of experience in molecular biology research, drug development and life sciences business strategy, will help support the development of new start-up companies based upon OTT technology license agreements. As the first EIR, Mr. Chappell – who will have dual responsibility to both BHI and NIH – will assist OTT in the evaluation of existing technologies, provide an entrepreneurial perspective to OTT in its evaluation of new licensing proposals from start-up companies, advise OTT on opportunities for new ventures based on NIH/Food & Drug Administration (FDA) technologies, assist with developmental strategies, and mentor scientists to help ensure their research becomes commercially valuable.

A lot has been happening over at Facebook in the last few months. Yes yes, we all know about their (un)successful IPO and how much fun it is to watch their share price dip and soar.

But really, there are some other things happening over at the big blue social network. Zuck got married, it rolled out promoted posts, Facebook overtook Google as the most popular website in the world… wait, what? Yes, Facebook and Google alternated between first and second place in worldwide traffic ranking a few times in the last month (according to Alexa). Google is back on top at the moment, but it just goes to show that Facebook’s glory days aren’t over quite yet.