Horizon 2020 is a key pillar of Innovation Union, a Europe 2020 flagship initiative aimed at enhancing Europe's global competitiveness.

Funding provided by Horizon 2020 will be easier to access thanks to this simpler programme architecture, a single set of rules and less red tape. Horizon 2020 will mean: drastically simplified reimbursement by introducing a single flat rate for indirect costs and only two funding rates - for research and for close to market activities respectively; a single point of access for participants; less paperwork in preparing proposals; and no unnecessary controls and audits. One key goal is to reduce the time until funding is received following a grant application by 100 days on average, meaning projects can start more quickly.

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If I see one more mind-numbingly trite platitude masquerading as leadership advice, I’m going to puke.

“Give your energy to things that give you energy.”

“Learn enough to begin and then learn as you go.”

“How can we create our preferred future?”

Who are these people that write this kind of useless fluff? Probably former TV evangelists. I’d be willing to bet that nobody who sits around spewing this kind of garbage all day long has one day of real management or leadership experience.

And I’d also bet that not a single one of the tens of thousands of people that follow this sort of nonsense are real managers or leaders in the real world. They’re probably all leadership frauds - I mean experts - following each other on Twitter like dogs chasing their tails.

At 11am EST today (Nov 9, 2011), key officials from the National Science Foundation (NSF), led by NSF Director Subra Suresh, will present a live webcast about the Foundation’s new Creative Research Awards for Transformative Interdisciplinary Ventures (CREATIV) — a “pilot grant mechanism under the Integrated NSF Support Promoting Interdisciplinary Research and Education (INSPIRE) initiative, to support bold interdisciplinary projects in all NSF-supported areas of science, engineering, and education research.”

The goals of the CREATIV grant mechanism are to create new interdisciplinary opportunities that are not perceived to exist presently; attract unusually creative high-risk/high-reward interdisciplinary proposals; and provide substantial funding, not limited to the exploratory stage of the pursuit of novel ideas. Importantly, CREATIV is open to all NSF-supported areas of science, engineering, and education research, including computing.

From the NSF’s Dear Colleague Letter (DCL) issued ahead of today’s webcast:

The INSPIRE initiative was introduced … with the fiscal year 2012 NSF budget request to Congress. (At the time, Suresh said): “INSPIRE is aimed to encourage cross-disciplinary science. INSPIRE will help to break down any disciplinary barriers that may exist within NSF and encourage its program managers to use new tools, collaboration modes and techniques in the merit-review process to widen the pool of prospective discoveries that may be hidden from or circumvented by traditional means.”

The portrait of today’s worker is undergoing a fundamental shift. Fueled by advances in cloud-based, social and mobile technologies, companies are choosing to gain agility and savings by leaning on an always-on virtual workforce of contingent workers.

According to Freelancers Union, there are approximately 42 million Americans who make their living independently — that’s 30% of the workforce.

Forget about a traditional 9 to 5 at the office. Workers in this new gig or freelance economy find that they need to become their own marketing experts, accountants, sales and IT gurus. And somewhere along the way, small business providers, contractors and freelancers need to grapple with selecting a business structure.

Scientists in the lab and in the field are closest to cutting-edge research. But at top scientific journals, it's professional editors who ultimately decide what gets published. A new journal scheduled to make its debut next year aims to change that by putting scientists in the editors' chair.

Called eLife, it will cover a wide range of life sciences, "from computational biology on one end to clinical science on the other end," says its editor in chief, Randy Schekman.

As I have mentioned before, one of my real passions is Human Evolution. I often think about what I would do differently in terms of degree choice if I had the option. I think some of my peers might have picked a degree that had a little more job security at the end! I would probably do biological anthropology, Archaeology or something along those lines. Don’t get me wrong, I love my degree and I love the sheer possibility that I might work in Journalism in the future, but there is something incredibly attractive about learning about how our ancestors lived, interacted, developed etc. Imagine being the first person to see a skeleton, piece of jewellery or remains of a settlement for tens, even hundreds of thousands of years. Such a discovery has recently been made, which for such a small artefact can tell us an incredible amount about how our ancestors lived. That artefact is a simple fishhook – 42,000 years old.

50,000 years ago our species (Homo sapien) was making a defining journey across Asia, colonising areas of the coast and moving inland as they travelled by boat all the way to Australia. Globally evidence of fishing before 12,000 years ago is rare. Many caves which were inhabited prior to 12,000 years ago contain mollusc shells, shark and fish remains; however there was no direct evidence of advanced fishing skills. It was unknown if this was because rising coast levels had hidden all evidence of this behaviour from current archaeologists, or simply because these early humans didn’t fish.

The challenge for the president and CEO of Gatineau-based CogniLore Information Solutions was identifying someone whose money was not already otherwise engaged.

"There is a lot of interest, but a lot of the local angels are tied up in investments that were made several years ago and are waiting to see whether there will be a payoff or some type of return," he said.

The head of the local technology firm hopes that will will change this week.

There’s a widespread perception that cleantech venture capital must be tanking compared with VC overall. That perception is wrong.

In yesterday’s post, we looked at the amount of capital that’s been invested in cleantech start-ups to date. Today, we’re going to look at what that money is returning. This may seem like a topic of interest only to start-up investors, but it’s important to entrepreneurs too: Without returns, the money spigot eventually gets shut off.

Some of the Silicon Valley's most important companies, including Intel, Google, and Yahoo, were cofounded by immigrants. Yet America's creaky immigration system makes it difficult for talented young people born outside of the United States to come to the Bay Area. There have been various proposals to make it easier for immigrant entrepreneurs to come to the United States, but they've made no progress in Congress.

So a new company called Blueseed is seeking to bypass the political process and solve the problem directly. Blueseed plans to buy a ship and turn it into a floating incubator anchored in international waters off the coast of California.

The National Institutes of Health is launching the electronic Research Materials catalogue (eRMa) to streamline the federal government's technology transfer process. This project addresses one of the important directives in a Presidential memorandum related to the commercialization of federal research and support for high-growth business potential. eRMa was designed and developed by the Office of Technology Transfer (OTT) at NIH with support from the NIH's National Cancer Institute Center for Cancer Research.

More than 6,000 researchers at NIH laboratories help to drive the research and discovery process. These NIH researchers make unpatented materials available to companies through internal use licenses executed by the OTT to support the continued advancement of scientific research. Examples of materials include mouse models used to develop new cancer therapies and cell lines used to test new therapies for chronic diseases, such as high blood pressure. An NIH internal use license is a contract that governs the transfer of tangible research materials from NIH to a company for commercial research use.

AstraZeneca has committed an additional $100 million to its venture capital arm, MedImmune Ventures, increasing the total capital under management to $400 million. MedImmune Ventures is an evergreen venture capital fund that focuses on equity investments in private companies in the areas of biopharmaceuticals, medical and healthcare technology.

"With the additional funding from AstraZeneca, we look forward to expanding our investment activities globally and across therapy areas. We believe that in the current financial environment, there is a growing role for corporate venture capital funds such as MedImmune Ventures," said Ron Laufer, Senior Managing Director, MedImmune Ventures.

As the approach of 2012 inspires entrepreneurs to launch new ventures and start the next chapter in their business plans, Entrepreneur magazine reveals 10 emerging markets and business opportunities ready to be seized. At a time of high market saturation, these sectors offer opportunities still on the upward trend for business owners looking to make their mark, expand their agendas, and position their companies for growth.

"It's time for business owners to step back, refocus and take a look at their companies with a fresh perspective," says Amy Cosper, VP and editor in chief of Entrepreneur magazine. "The top trends are indicators of business strength and areas of opportunity. Examining how they are working for others today can influence how other entrepreneurs can adapt and enhance their companies for the future."

It seems that people who are unhappy with what they have accomplished over the course of 5, 10 or more years almost always make statements that suggest a lack of natural ability. They often conclude that they don’t “have what it takes.” It’s the classic case of focusing on differentiating factors of successful people rather than the similarities.

I’ve often been asked, “Why did you found ZestCash in Los Angeles?” This is polite code for “You’re an idiot. There are no good software engineers outside of Silicon Valley. You can’t build a technology company anywhere else.”

Robert Solow won a Nobel Prize in Economics for arguing that labor is the source of comparative advantage. If it is possible to address Silicon Valley’s comparative advantage in engineers, then technology companies must acquire talent equivalent to that in Silicon Valley to succeed.

INNO-Grips monitors international developments in innovation policy. A network of correspondents from more than 30 countries worldwide reports regularly about the launch of new initiatives and other relevant events in their country. Their news reports are published on the INNO-Grips website. This article features a selection of news from some of the countries covered.

Bulgaria. The Bulgarian Association of Consultants in European Programs (BACEP) has highlighted the need to speed up the evaluation process for innovative projects, and is focusing on the problems created by the long timeframe for project assessment. BACEP has delegated board members to participate in permanent working group meetings (MEET) established to conduct a comprehensive evaluation of innovative projects under the OP “Competitiveness” 2007-2013.

Innovation-based economic development is key to driving job creation and economic growth in communities around the world. Recent economic impact studies show that university research parks are making significant impacts on their communities.

“University research parks and technology incubators are poised to create high-wage jobs by attracting companies to their region and growing new startups,” said AURP President Harold Strong.

High-wage jobs are just one of the many impacts that the Purdue Research Park Network is making on Indiana. According to a recent economic impact study, the Purdue Research Park Network is responsible for a $1.3 billion annual impact for the State of Indiana and “more than 4,000 high-tech, high-quality jobs paying an average annual salary of $63,000 – 65 percent higher than the Indiana average.”

Let me start off by saying that in the natural order of things, girls appear to be the preference. They tend to make up 51% of the population overall, because men tend to do stupid things and die off before they're 40. So if you trust in nature, nature is saying that the world is a better place when there are more girls around than boys. It's not just me saying girls are better.

I myself have two daughters, a 9-year-old and a 6-year-old, and I've learned from those girls how to be a better man. If I'd had a boy, then there'd be two shitty versions of me. The last thing I need to do is fail twice with two different people: me and my son. But I benefit from an uncomplicated relationship with my daughters--I get to observe how great they are. I'm always learning from them, and they are well-mannered with far better living habits than I have. When I get up in the morning, for instance, they're already dressed, with their teeth brushed and looking nice. I'm not capable of any of that.

Nebraska has long lagged behind the rest of the nation when it comes to financing for startup businesses.

More than one ranking has put the state near the bottom -- or in some cases at the bottom -- in venture capital funding. And other forms of financing such as angel investments and seed capital also can be hard to find.

But that may be changing.

Within the past few months, nearly $60 million in new public and private funds has become available for startup and other small businesses.

Twenty years after German reunification, Berlin is Germany's political capital, a cultural metropolis, an attractive business location and one of Europe's leading centers for science and research. Life sciences and health care industries have been one of the main focuses of the innovation policy in Berlin-Brandenburg for more than 10 years now.

Today the German Capital Region is among the leading biotech locations in Europe. Oliver Rakau, analyst at Deutsche Bank Research and author of the study "Deutschlands Biotechnologieregionen. Konzentration setzt sich fort" (Germany's Biotechnology Regions. Concentration Continues) states: "Berlin-Brandenburg benefits strongly from having the largest number of research facilities by far. They provide considerable advantages for technology transfer and staff recruitment. The region therefore has excellent preconditions for sustained growth."