University research is a big business for many schools.  It certainly worked out pretty well when Stanford licensed the search technology that Larry and Sergei had been working on back to them at Google.  They netted more on that deal than Fordham has in it's whole endowment (but still, go Rams!).

On top of that, most of a school's major donors are likely to be entrepreneurs in some way.  You just don't wind up with $25 million to name a dorm unless you've gotten equity upside in something.

With nine out of ten executives reporting that it is near impossible to innovate in today’s economic climate, it is clear that a new model needs to be put in place to drive economic growth and improve quality of life. Around the world, companies are adopting new approaches to innovation. General Electric (GE) reveals three key findings from their “Global Innovation Barometer”, a study of almost 3,000 senior executives from at least 22 different countries that specialize in innovative strategy and/or decision-making. The results of this 2012 study are designed to help entrepreneurs and business leaders optimize their use of resources, deliver improved technologies and produce more with less.

Government support sparks innovation

Barometer results suggest that companies’ R&D budgets are at a higher risk when businesses sense a negative shift of government policies that support innovation. Beth Cornstock, senior vice president and chief marketing officer of GE believes that “investing in innovation is a critical piece of global competitiveness (and) governments and businesses both need to do their part to shore up the fragile innovation ecosystem.”

Passion is what makes our work happen. We seek passion in the management teams of prospective clients. We exhibited passion in responding to pressing regional economic development needs by finding a way to expand the Ben Franklin TechVentures business incubator despite severe cuts to our budget. But the key to harnessing the incredible power of passion is to temper it. A modicum of real-world prudence provides balance and must be integrated into planning and implementation. All of us must “let reason hold the reins.”

The Ben Franklin Technology Partners significantly increases the success rate of the highest-potential early-stage technology companies. We provide start-ups with access to seed capital, business and technical expertise, and a proven network of expert resources. We also help develop and implement productivity improvement strategies for established manufacturers through technological innovation and process improvement that allow the companies to be more globally competitive. Our job is to identify and evaluate opportunities, to select the most promising ones, and to provide client companies with crucial resources as they wage the war to prosper in today’s markets.

The region formerly known as Iowa’s Technology Corridor has been renamed Iowa’s Creative Corridor (ICC) to better represent the area’s unique convergence of art, science and technology. The new name and logo were unveiled Friday morning at an event held at Kirkwood Community College.

Considered one of the nation’s leading economic development regions, ICC emphasizes creative innovation and support that allows individuals, businesses and organizations to transform their future, their company, their industry or even the world.

Iowa’s Creative Corridor stretches from Iowa City to Cedar Rapids along I-380 and is home to more than two dozen municipalities, multiple higher education facilities, the world-famous Iowa Writer’s Workshop, dozens of arts organizations, nearly 30 Fortune 500 companies and more than a dozen international organizations.

A $1 million challenge grant announced today will help JumpStart Inc. (www.jumpstartinc.org) bring a new model for engaging residents in fostering entrepreneurship to 20 additional cities.

The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation (www.knightfoundation.org) is supporting the JumpStart America Initiative (www.jumpstartamerica.org) as a way to involve new leaders in their community's economic future. Part of the Startup America Partnership (www.startupamericapartnership.org), the community-focused effort builds on regional public, private, philanthropic and institutional partnerships to spur the creation of new jobs by developing, identifying and supporting high-impact entrepreneurs.

It is not known exactly how many universities are engaged in technology transfer activities. One indicator is that over 230 U.S. universities and nonprofit research institutions are represented in the Association of University Technology Managers (AUTM). Among those universities that are active, one can observe a variety of structures and sizes. More significant than the structure of those offices, however, is their mission.

The mission of university technology transfer/licensing offices is to transfer research results to commercial application for public use and benefit. The office seeks and receives reports of inventions from investigators; reports the inventions to sponsors; decides whether to elect title for inventions developed with external funding; files patent applications; markets those patents to industry, negotiates and administers license agreements. The technology transfer office is also responsible for oversight of patent prosecution, recording of income and disbursements, and yearly reports to the government.

The HMSGlobal.com website has an interview with Henry Chesbrough at the World Economic Forum.   Recognized as the father of Open Innovation, Chesbrough coined the term in his 2003 book of the same name that has gone on to revolutionize how businesses approach the subject of innovation. Chesbrough discusses the next hottest area of Open Innovation, the biggest roadblocks to innovation and other topics.

In 2003 Martìn Casado found himself with no small challenge on his hands: he needed to reinvent the technology that underpins the Internet. It had been developed decades earlier and was proving unsuited to an era of cyberwarfare.

Casado, then a researcher at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, had been approached by a U.S. intelligence agency with a thorny problem. Computer networking technology allowed intelligence agents and other government workers worldwide to stay connected to one another at all times. Field agents could instantly share data seized in a raid with experts anywhere in the world. But the fact that so many computer networks were enmeshed also aided enemy hackers. Once they gained entry to one system, they could hop across networks to search for other treasures. The agency (Casado won't say which one) told him it wanted to keep its large network but reserve the ability to temporarily close off parts of it for crucial transmissions, creating a data equivalent of the dedicated telephone hotline that used to link the White House and the Kremlin.

IBM's Watson supercomputer reached a milestone in artificial intelligence last February when it beat two Jeopardy! champions. Millions watched, and while some experts dismissed it as a publicity stunt, IBM said Watson would soon be helping doctors diagnose illness, and hinted at talks with gadget companies about Watson helping consumers with questions.

As IBM prepares to celebrate the first anniversary of the televised contest on February 16, though, it is not yet offering the question-answering system for sale. Although limited trials using Watson technology are underway in health and financial services businesses, the AI prodigy is having its biggest impact by pulling in new customers for existing business products—as IBM persuades them to organize their data into formats that an AI like Watson can better understand. IBM has created a slogan, "Ready for Watson," to help sell its products that way.

I had the opportunity to interview GE‘s Chief Marketing Officer, Beth Comstock, recently as she was on her way to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. With the Global Innovation Barometer for 2011 just out, I wanted to probe a bit further on what some of the key takeaways were and to get some of her insights on the importance of governments and other members in creating thriving innovation ecosystems.

Here is the text of the interview:

1. Why did you create the Global Innovation Barometer? What were you hoping it would tell you?

At GE, we innovate on a global scale, every day. We thought it would be interesting to explore how executives in different countries view innovation and compare how those views align with how we see the world.

Facebook’s IPO has innovation and entrepreneurship in the news. And the face of Facebook is Mark Zuckerberg. The 27-year old Zuckerberg reinforces the image that many, if not most people, have come to believe is what an innovator looks like – techie and young.

Youth seems to be the major characteristic that dominates the mythological profile of an innovator. Noted venture capitalist Vinod Khosla (who is 57 years old) is quoted in the Washington Post as saying “People under 35 are the people who make change happen…People over 45 basically die in terms of new ideas.”

In San Francisco cafes and bars, even on the street, I overhear people talking about their startup ideas, business plans, and goals. And there are tons of incubators, Angels, wannabe Angels, VC firms, making investments in startups.

And there’s lots of money being made, especially among the Super Angels, the incubators such as Y Combinator, the micro-VCs, and people such as Jeff Clavier, Dave McClure, who have made fortunes selling startups to larger companies. Sometimes startup teams can go from seed to exit in under a year.

For the investors, making dozens of $10K to $25K seed investments, can be tremendously lucrative.

Skip college, work at a startup. That’s the idea behind a new two-year program called Enstittue that started accepting applications Tuesday.

As newspaper headlines about recent college graduates read along the lines of “educated, unemployed and frustrated” and the average college student takes on a record-breaking amount of crippling debt (on average, $25,250), the program isn’t the first to suggest that there might be something remiss with our certification system.

Enstitute has, however, proposed a somewhat unusual solution.

Dwolla founder Ben Milne heard the question more than once while crossing the country pitching his tech startup to potential investors: Will you move the company from Iowa?

Milne said no. While he acknowledges his defense of Des Moines might have cost his company money, the 30-year-old entrepreneur says finding a good match for the company was more important to him.

Why is a prominent game investor betting on health-related startups?

We checked in with Mayfield's managing director Tim Chang after we learned about his obsession for the quantified self movement, where people use gadgets to keep track of their health and fitness.

Chang made the 2011 Forbes Midas List of Top 100 Dealmakers, but in his free time you can see him on-stage performing with rock bands Coverflow and BlackMahal.

Gayle Laakmann McDowell worked at four of today's biggest tech companies, Apple, Google and Microsoft.

She wrote a book, The Google Resume, about how to land a job at the companies and what makes candidates stand out.

Some of the rumored tricks, like having a perfect GPA, are mostly hot air, says McDowell. Others, like attending an elite university, do determine how attractive candidates are to the Google and Apple.

President Obama is urging Congress to support legislation to expand tax cuts for small businesses and free up capital for startups.

His proposed “Startup America Legislative Agenda,” would eliminate taxes on capital gains in investments in small businesses and provide a 10 percent income tax credit on for new hires or to spur job-creation, double the deductions a startup business could take from $5,000 to $10,000, and extend 100 percent first-year depreciation for qualified property. The President will offer details of his proposals in the fiscal 2013 budget that will be submitted to Congress on February 13.

Every company I’m involved in keeps track of numbers. Daily numbers, weekly numbers, monthly numbers. Ultimately, all the numbers translate into three financial statements – the P&L, Balance Sheet, and Cash Flow Statement. While these numbers are sacrosanct in the accounting and finance professions, they are lagging indicators for most startup companies. Important, but they tell the story of the past, not what is going on right now.

I’ve formed a view that every young company should be obsessed about three magic numbers. Not two, not five, but three. Before I explain what those numbers are, I need to tell a story of how I got to this point.

My brain works better with numbers than graphs, so over the years I’ve conditioned most people I work with to send me numbers on a regular basis. Words are good also, but I love numbers. Early in the life of the company I request numbers daily. Some of this is for me; most of it is to try to help the entrepreneurs build some muscles around understanding the data and how to use it.

Too many entrepreneurs develop a new product without regard to market demand, then build an entire strategy based on creating a need, rather than acting on an existing market need. Investors characterize this approach as a “solution looking for a problem.” These don’t get funded.

The best startups find a way to drive the market with their technology, rather than push their new technology-driven ‘solution’ on the marketplace. An example of market-driven technology is the basic automobile, but combining a car with an airplane is technology looking for a market.

As the state’s flagship university, UConn conducts ground-breaking research, works to better the lives of Connecticut’s residents, and educates students who will become tomorrow’s leaders and scholars.

What tends to be less apparent is the vital role that a top public university such as ours also plays in contributing to our region’s economic well-being. As a leading higher education institution, UConn is also responsible for fostering the kind of innovative thinking that will ultimately lead to the creation of jobs and thriving new business ventures.