I've been thinking lately that Boston's Innovation District is really composed of four distinct neighborhoods, when it comes to clusters of innovation-related companies. So I created the Google map below.

You have to squint really hard to ignore all of the great financial services, fishing, and brewing activity that takes place in the district. It's also home to Au Bon Pain's headquarters, a working dry dock, the Boston Convention and Expo Center, and a couple of vast parking lots.

Innovation is inherently multidisciplinary. Successful innovation requires harmony; that is, a high degree of communication, collaboration and cooperation. This article explores what is meant by innovation harmony and how to go about achieving it.

I recently attended my son’s winter concert band performance.  As part of his introduction, the conductor advised the audience that the definition of ‘harmony’ is ‘when two notes are playing together simultaneously’.  A more formal definition is ‘the study of harmony involves chords and their construction and chord progressions and the principles of connection that govern them’ (Dahlhaus, 2007).

The Los Angeles-based accelerator Science launched its third product today: a monthly subscription service Wittlebee, which will sell boxes of children's clothing.

The product may not seem all that new or interesting impressive, but the pace at which Science has been launching new companies is pretty amazing: three in the last week.

The last two were Meundies, which delivers underwear, and EventUP, which is like Airbnb for events.

I was heartened this month to see that the Private Equity Growth Capital Council launched a multi-million-dollar education and public affairs campaign on the Internet highlighting the basics of private equity. Hopefully, this will address a general lack of understanding about private equity, which, among other things, is too often confused with venture capital.

This misperception was in the spotlight last month, when Republican and Democratic attacks focused on Mitt Romney’s time as the head of private equity firm Bain Capital. The message was that Romney was a “vulture capitalist,” defined as an investor consumed with maximizing profit, often by terminating hundreds, sometimes thousands of jobs. Romney is not and was not a vulture capitalist, a mean-spirited, derogatory term sometimes used to describe venture capitalists (VCs). Romney was a private equity investor, one who specialized mostly in leveraged buyouts.

John Frankel is the head of FF Ventures, an early-stage venture capital firm that includes some of the web’s hottest startups in its portfolio, including Hashable, Klout and IndieGoGo.

Check out our interview with Frankel to learn what motivates him as an investor, why he’s so attracted to early stage companies and his thoughts on where the next tech bubble will manifest.

Dubai: The Abu Dhabi University is set to launch the UAE’s first biotechnology incubation initiative to support research commercialisation to transform Arab patents into marketable products.

The plans were announced on Tuesday after an agreement was reached by the university and medical research and product development company, AccuVis Bio – financed by the Khalifa fund.

“ADU is building a full eco-system for innovation and entrepreneurship through ADU Enterprise,” said Dr Nabil Ebrahim, Chancellor of ADU. “Its objective is to incubate and  commercialise research outcomes and establish technology based enterprises.”

Alex Andon’s interest in jellyfish went beyond his fascination with their hypnotic, graceful movements. Where most people would admire the sea life and leave it at that, Andon saw an entrepreneurial opportunity.

In 2008, he designed a special aquarium with regulated water flow that would prevent the water pump from sucking the delicate jellyfish into the pump. He assembled the first tank in his garage and started marketing his tanks.

“Yes, we would like to invest”. The magic words that any startup owner loves to hear. Your idea is no longer just a seed in the back of your mind; it is about to be watered allowing it to blossom into the reality you always knew it could be.

After the celebratory high fives and handshakes followed by the compulsory boozy lunch with your new best ‘investor’ friend, a term sheet or funding agreement arrives to formalise your relationship. The agreement is rather lengthy and contains some legal jargon; defining exactly when is the last day of the month, is important. Other than that it seems pretty straight forward. I mean how complicated can it be, you give us money, I work hard, and we skip and dance together while we share in the super profits, right?

Every two or three years, VC’s gear up to raise money for their next fund. They create a pitch deck, come up with a list of investors actively investing in venture capital funds, make sure they get introductions to them from trusted sources — or go direct if they already have the relationship, and pitch the investment strategy and how they plan to provide better returns than the industry average. Sound familiar?

For established funds with a solid track record (an established team with a specific investment style and realised returns on previous investments) it can be as easy as going to their existing investors to get new “commitments”. If you are raising a first time fund then you have to take an entirely different approach.

The post-reauthorization future of SBIR and STTR is not totally clear but is now coming into focus. As most of you know, SBIR/STTR reauthorization is now law (P.L. 112-81) and one thing we know for sure is that our programs are now authorized to run through the end of fiscal year 2017 (September 30, 2017).

Don't expect to see many major changes anytime soon. As we described in our last issue, the SBA must first develop updated policy directives (PDs) for both SBIR and STTR programs (see www.zyn.com/sbir/insider/sb-insider1-04-12.htm ). The policy directives provide the guidance to the agencies as to how the new laws and statutory mandates will be followed.

This issue of your SBIR Insider will report on the progress and future projections of the policy directive efforts. We were fortunate to have a "sit down" with Mr. Sean Greene, SBA Associate Administrator for Investment and Innovation, who is leading the SBIR policy directive efforts in the SBA. He offered some valuable perspective as well as the ordinals that are being employed to create the new SBIR and STTR policy directives

The official start date for your startup is the date you incorporate the business. This is obviously important for tax purposes, but may also dramatically influence how potential investors, customers, and competitors look at you.

My rule of thumb expectation is that it should take two months to set up the legal entity, six months to finalize the business plan, and by the end of the first year have a prototype product ready for customers. At this point every potential investor will listen. Timelines which vary dramatically from these will be questioned, and need to have good explanations.

Do you see yourself as a creative person? Our current standardized approach to teaching and learning tends to slot students students into silos—art-school types on one side and analytical thinkers on the fast track to law school on the other—so our society has a pretty limited understanding of what being creative actually means and what it looks like across disciplines. Creativity expert Michael Michalko, author of Creative Thinkering: Putting Your Imagination to Work has developed a list of 12 things most people aren't taught in school—but should be—about creativity.

Memphis Bioworks Foundation and Innova have launched ZeroTo510, an accelerator program to help entrepreneurs bring medical devices and companies to market.

Applications are due April 5, and through a competitive process, six startups will be selected to participate in a 12-week, mentor-driven program that will include instruction and hands-on activities to guide entrepreneurs through the process.

Y Combinator is the investment firm that pioneered the current Silicon Valley vogue for investing seed money ($18,000 on average) in nascent startups and then helping them turn their ideas into companies. The partners, all successful entrepreneurs, offer individualized attention during a three-month program held each winter and summer in Mountain View, California. But the secret of YC’s success--more than 25 of its grads have been acquired and the firm has fostered breakout stars such as Airbnb and Dropbox--is its network. "One of the lone­liest things in the world is starting and running a company," says YC alum Matt Brezina, who went through the program in 2006. "YC puts a bunch of like-minded people together to support each other."

I am sitting in a bakery minutes from my house, steps away from the train station, watching still-sleepy counter workers shuffling brioches and muffins to a rising flow of customers. I shouldn’t be here. I should be on that train now leaving the station, heading into New York City. But a midnight Skype session with a client in China followed by an all-night wrestling match with three young kids kicking and rolling completely disrupted my morning schedule. I missed my train.

In the car speeding to the station, I finally came to terms with the fact that I was not going to make it. I passed through the denial, anger, acceptance process. It took me a full ten minutes to get over it and come up with my new plan: spend 45 minutes of unexpected free time in a quiet café to write this post.

Owners of startup companies are surprisingly optimistic about 2012, according to the first Kauffman/LegalZoom Startup Confidence Index released today by the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation and LegalZoom. More than one-fourth of the respondents said they plan to hire additional staff in 2012, and twice as many of them expect the economy to improve or stay the same (68 percent) as those who expect it to deteriorate (31 percent).

The Kauffman Foundation sponsored the survey in conjunction with LegalZoom, the nation's leading provider of online legal document services and legal plans to young companies. The findings are based on 800 responses to a nationwide survey in January 2012 distributed via email to LegalZoom clients who formed their entities within the last twelve months.

The Startup Confidence Index is the first in a series of quarterly surveys to gauge entrepreneurial confidence.

Download the Infographic

Next Wednesday night, I'm hosting a roundtable discussion between Brooklyn innovation community stakeholders on how to make this side of the river a better place to create, build businesses and grow.  There's no specific agenda or goal, other than to bring together all of the people that have an interest in this great community and its ability to incubate cutting edge and creative ideas.

From 2005 to 2009, I was fortunate enough to be part of a small group of New York City innovation community leaders that sowed some of the seeds of the thriving tech hub we have today.  At the time, though, we didn't know what we know now.   Honestly, it was a fair bit of hand waving and maybe a little smoke and mirrors--saying in 2005 that we had a ton of startup-ready tech talent.  Now, it's actually true.  Now we can honestly say that NYC is a great place to build a venture backed company.

One of the most important questions you will be asked by potential investors is how your solutions beats the competition, not just today, but over the three to five year life of their investment. There is no perfect answer to this question, but there are many wrong answers which will immediately jeopardize your credibility.

The concept is called “sustainable competitive advantage.” A good answer might be “We have several patents on the base technology, which is so robust that we expect to roll out new products every year for the next ten years, always staying a step ahead of our competitors.” That implies competitive now, a strong barrier to entry, and the potential to stay in the lead.

Brazil is known for its supermodels, but what about its social innovation models? Besides the economic boom, the country is finding a new groove in the field of digital collaboration and activism.

Last year, I moved from New York to Rio de Janeiro, where Purpose has opened its first overseas office. I have met with local innovators and interacted with all kinds of people on the streets, at the beach, and in botequins (informal bars). These experiences have all enriched my work in social innovation. Besides stimulating my creativity, immersion in a different culture and working in a foreign language have heightened my sense of mindfulness and empathy, reminded me of the virtue of humility, and taught me a few things about what it means to innovate.

From the start of 2007 through the third quarter of last year, Ben Franklin Technology Partners of Southeastern Pennsylvania participated in 38 percent of the rounds of venture capital raised by companies in the five-county Philadelphia area that were classified as early-stage or seed/startup investments in the MoneyTree reports issued over the period.

That was the finding most emphasized by the state-funded economic-development organization in a report it issued today on its performance over the past five years. The report, “Performance Profiles, 2007-2011: Five Years of Success,” is available on Ben Franklin’s website (http://www.sep.benfranklin.org/).