One of the fundamental errors many would-be innovators make is assuming that the hardest part of innovation is coming up with an idea. That’s actually the easy part. No matter how much work you have done, no matter how careful your analysis, the only thing you can be sure of is that your first idea is wrong in some meaningful way. Ask any venture capitalist or successful entrepreneur. They will tell you the gulf between the first idea and the right idea is often wide. Or listen to the words of the great American philosopher and boxer Mike Tyson: “Everybody has a plan, until they get punched in the face.”

Like it or not, you are going to be punched in the face. So how can you take your punches yet keep standing? One tendency can be to turn innovation into an academic exercise. That is, to develop even richer PowerPoint slides, create more refined financial projections, and develop even finer customer segmentation models. Unfortunately, analysis has sharply diminishing returns, especially when you are targeting new or nascent markets that are notoriously difficult to measure.

Irvine-based Tech Coast Angels was among the most active groups of professional investors in early-stage companies in 2011, according to a new report on angel investing. The first-ever Halo Report is issued by CB Insights, Silicon Valley Bank and Angel Resource Institute “to raise awareness of early-stage investment activities by angel investment groups. California had more deals and dollars invested than any other state, according to the report. More than one in five (21%) of the deals and almost a third (30%) of the money were invested in Golden State firms. (Click on the map or pie chart below for a larger view.)

Continuing our series on The Board Of Directors, this week I'll talk about the role of the Board Chair.

The Board Chair runs the Board Of Directors. He or she is a Board member with the same roles and responsibilities as the other Board members. But in addition, the Board Chair is responsible for making sure the Board is doing its job. The Board Chair should make sure the Board is meeting on a regular basis, the Board Chair should make sure the CEO is getting what he or she needs out of the Board, and the Board Chair should make sure that all Board members are contributing and participating. When there are debates and disagreements, the Board Chair should make sure all opposing points of view are heard and then the Board Chair should push for some resolution.

The Board Chair should be on the nominating committee and should probably run that committee. I do not believe the Board Chair needs to be on the audit and compensation committees, but if they have specific experience that would add value to those committees, it is fine to have them on them. Either way, the Board Chair needs to be on top of the issues that are being dealt with in the committtees and making sure they are operating well.

AUTM and USPTO Announce Joint Initiative Deerfield, IL — The Association of University Technology Managers (AUTM) and the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) announced a joint program today during the AUTM Annual Meeting in Anaheim Calif. The USPTO/AUTM Patent Examiners Training Initiative aims to foster the development of relationships between patent examiners and innovators/scientists to better understand technologies and examination challenges; as well as to seek solutions.

The USPTO/AUTM Patent Examiners Training Initiative will enhance the USPTO’s current training program, the Patent Examiner Technical Training Program (PETTP). Launched in 2010, the PETTP updates supervisors and senior patent examiners on technical developments, the state of the art, emerging trends, maturing technologies, and recent innovations. PETTP provides the patent examiners, working directly in the various technology sectors throughout the USPTO, with necessary training from scientists and experts.

Last week, startup accelerator Y Combinator turned 7.

Paul Graham writes about its founding on the company blog.

In March 2005, Graham's wife Jessica did not like her job.  She worked for an investment bank in Boston and was looking to leave.

Graham, who made money selling a web application he developed called Viaweb, decided to create a job for her.

The two discussed the initial idea for Y Combinator on a walk home from dinner.  Graham would put $100,000 into the project and Jessica would quit her job to work for the new early stage investment firm.  Two of Graham's friends, Robert Morris and Trevor Blackwell, gave the couple $50,000; Y Combinator began with $200,000.

This week, possibly as soon as tomorrow, the Senate is likely to pass the JOBS (Jumpstart Our Business Startups) Act. It has already passed the House, and most of the influencers in Silicon Valley are in favor of the bill. It will certainly change the way the Valley works. But not for the reasons many people think.

The JOBS Act is a collection of bills that were rolled up into one act in the House: H.R. 3606. The Senate was working on variations of some of the components included in 3606, but sources say that the most likely outcome is that 3606 is what will pass in the Senate without substantial changes. Here are the bill's key provisions and how they will impact Silicon Valley.

I’ve noticed that some entrepreneurs seem to have no trouble attracting investors, while others with a great business plan struggle with it. The reality is that angel investors are humans, and personal traits often make or break the relationship, even before the investment is considered.

On the top line, angel investors look to invest in entrepreneurs that have an almost unwavering passion and sense of urgency. In the business, this is commonly called “fire in the belly.” If you don’t have it, you probably won’t succeed, even with funding.

Everybody is looking for ways to spur the development of new businesses. But everybody seems to have a different idea on how exactly to go about doing that.

One popular strategy is to try to encourage investment in start-up businesses by offering tax credits to angel investors, those wealthy individuals who provide the funding that gets many new companies through their first years.

Nearly half the states in the country offer such credits, and several more are actively considering putting tax credits for angel investment in place.

But do they work?

Across the country, schools are rushing to introduce entrepreneurship classes. Self-help books for business founders are topping the best-seller lists.

All of which is rekindling an age-old debate in the business world: Is entrepreneurship a skill that can be taught, or one you have to develop by doing?

Education proponents argue that if you can teach people general skills that are useful in business, you can instill lessons about running their own companies, too. What's more, the proponents argue, research in the field of entrepreneurship has improved by leaps and bounds in recent years, so educators can do much more to help entrepreneurs avoid common problems.

Advancements in mobile will have a positive effect on emerging markets. That’s been true for some time and, if the chatter both at the recent Mobile World Congress and around the tech scene is anything to go by, it will continue to be true for the foreseeable future.

There is a definite increase in awareness of emerging markets and the potential for massive growth in mobile therein. People increasingly believe that the next couple of billion connections will be in emerging markets, resulting in a substantial investment in upgrading networks and mobile infrastructure in these countries.

The importance of the transformative nature of mobile and its ability to lift people from poverty is exciting. We are seeing a strong trend towards everyone in the industry, including big brands, taking responsibility to ensure the public is connected. An interesting statistic is that for every 10% increase in broadband penetration there will be a 1.4% growth in the GDP for lower income economies.

1. "If at first, the idea is not absurd, then there is no hope for it." - Albert Einstein

2. "If you do not express your own original ideas, if you do not listen to your own being, you will have betrayed yourself." - Rollo May

3. "An idea that is not dangerous is unworthy of being called an idea at all." - Oscar Wilde

4. "Ideas are like rabbits. You get a couple and learn how to handle them, and pretty soon you have a dozen." - John Steinbeck

5. "The way to get good ideas is to get lots of ideas and throw the bad ones away." - Linus Pauling

"Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid."

- Albert Einstein

Someone recently told me that the time he spent unemployed was the best six months of his life.

"What did you spend your time doing?" I asked.

"I learned about things I was interested in, read a lot of nonfiction books, spent time with people who inspire me, played music, practiced leaning into fear, and spent a lot of time observing how people overcome fear," he said. "But then I had to get a real job."

"Is your real job aligned with exploring these interests and leaning into fear?" I asked.

"Ummm... no. I work in analytics," he said.

Something is stirring in the boardrooms of British industry. You heard it at Davos. Peter Mandelson is onto it, and last week Vince Cable joined in. The scale of the structural economic crisis facing the western democracies after the crash of the consumerist boom is driving radical new thinking.

As western governments confront the structural and debt crisis legacy of the credit-fuelled boom in the City, retail and housing, industrial policy is "in" again. But as the chancellor finalises his budget, the industrial policy business wants to see today is unrecognisable from the discredited corporatism of the 1970s. It's an ambitious, modern, entrepreneurial vision of a "rebalanced innovation economy", and – as Mandelson acknowledged – today's industrial activism is being shaped by a new generation of Conservative ministers.

In this latest in a series of articles on the innovative use of experimental business laboratories for high-expectation entrepreneurs, the authors focus on the networking benefits of business lab experiments. Distinguishing between ‘Robinson Crusoe’ types, whose tendency is to operate in isolation, and ‘Lemuel Gulliver’ types, who rely on interaction with others, they suggest that engaging Crusoe entrepreneurs in the open participatory environment of the experimental laboratory encourages them to discard their bad habit of working in a closed environment in favour of interaction and sharing. This, the authors argue, is an essential change in light of the evolving process of innovation, which is moving from a closed process through an open one towards a future in which competing innovation networks become the norm. They demonstrate the nature of contemporary entrepreneurship and innovation by drawing analogies from physics and the article closes with a case study of their theory in practice.

Download the PDF

I have just returned today from the Global Entrepreneurship Congress (GEC) in Liverpool where a weeklong festival of entrepreneurship floated powerful ideas about everything from seeding startup communities to smarter national top-down policies. This week I take a quick look at last week’s GEC and why it matters as a symbol of the democratization of entrepreneurship.

Hosted by Liverpool Vision, Global Entrepreneurship Week and the Kauffman Foundation, the Congress was a powerhouse of entrepreneurial excellence welcoming famous British entrepreneurs like Richard Branson, the leaders of delegations driving entrepreneurship who flew in from 125 countries and many of the top thought leaders from the likes of the Kauffman Foundation.

According to a recent article from the Wall Street Journal, Chicago has recently become home to a number of co-working spaces and incubators, for entrepreneur-types who are looking for places to establish their technology ideas in physical spaces.

Pointing to the successes of Groupon and GrubHub, the WSJ article mentioed a list of newly formed incubator spaces for developers and entrepreneurs alike. Listed here are some of the newer and more popular ones:

1871: The name comes from the Great Chicago Fire of 1871, and this collaborate workspace will host an impressive 50,000 square feet of space inside the Merchandise Mart for creators of about 100 startups. For those chosen, the spaces will have areas for desks, access to conference areas for around $400 a month.

The reshaping of the modern workplace also involves new approaches to innovation. Here, executives at Google, General Electric and DreamWorks Animation summarize their companies’ paths to creativity.

At Google, Entrepreneurs Have to Think Bigger

DAVID LAWEE Vice president for corporate development at Google:

Innovation is the defining feature of enduring companies. At Google, we foster individual entrepreneurs and pursue innovation systematically. If the company vision is aligned with the entrepreneur’s passion, and we can give the entrepreneur sufficient freedom to execute, that’s when the magic happens. This is never left to chance.

Celebrities are increasingly getting their fingers in tech companies, including such well-known ones as Facebook and Foursquare. Huffington Post rounds up 23 Hollywood VIPs who dabble in tech on the side:

Leonardo DiCaprio: He invested $4 million in Mobli, a real-time visual media platform, last October. Selena Gomez: The singer/actress contributed $750,000 to mobile app Postcard on the Run last November. Justin Bieber: Gomez's boyfriend is also trying to do good with his investment: He contributed money to mobile app PhoneGuard, and also warned about the dangers of texting while driving for the company.

Vision has been a hot button in management theory for a number of years, with much lip service being given to the imperatives of managing for the long term. Is managing for the long haul enough to remain competitive in an increasingly interdependent marketplace?

Depth of vision is well and good, but breadth of vision is equally important, says Ron Adner, a professor of strategy at Dartmouth's Tuck School of Business and a long-time student of the causes of innovation success and failure.