New research—and a request for your insights—on innovation networks around the world

Julie Anixter of Innovation Excellence (IE) recently interviewed Professor Robert C. Wolcott (RW) and Research Fellow Michael J. Lippitz (ML) from the Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University, about their cutting-edge research on the emerging phenomenon of “INets:” communities of innovation leaders who learn from each other about innovation management, primarily through mutual sharing of experiences and new techniques.

Rob and Mike are seeking suggestions from our Innovation Excellence community about INets that should be included in their research.

IE: “Innovation Networks” is a broad term. What exactly are you looking for?

ML: Julie, thank you for asking about our work. We’re excited about what we’re finding and eager to engage Innovation Excellence readers in helping us find innovation networks around the world. We’re seeking a particular type of innovation network, which we’re calling an INet. INets are a form of practice where participants focus on learning how to manage innovation, to build their capabilities for leading innovation and their personal networks. The difference here is that INets are not about making a product or solving a specific problem. They’re about capability and network development. And within that, they are about innovation leaders learning from each other – a peer-to-peer motif, if you will. This does not mean that participants are not interested in specific results. They usually are. But they come to the INet to make themselves better at managing all sorts of innovation projects, to become a better innovator, not to, say, find a supplier to solve a technical problem or find an investor for a particular venture.

New scientific studies continue to escalate the hard work vs. raw talent debate.

One study from Vanderbilt University shifts things in favor of raw talent. Professors David Lubinski and Camilla Persson Benbow discovered that SAT scores at age 12 are a good indicator of your college major and job in the future.

These charts compare 12 year olds at the bottom end of the top quartile for math with a group at the top end of the top quartile for math; in other words, the lesser math nerds versus the super math nerds.

Compared to lesser math nerds, super math nerds were twice as likely to get a doctorate. 55% of the super math nerds earned income equal to or greater than median, versus 46% (strangely less than average) for lesser math nerds. Super math nerds were twice as likely to earn a patent, and around seven times a likely to earn tenure at a top university.

Cancer surgeons strive to remove cancerous cells while preserving as much healthy tissue as possible. Unfortunately, cancer cells are notoriously difficult to identify visually.

A group led by the National Cancer Institute's Hisataka Kobayashi has developed a fluorescent spray that can label cancer cells within a minute. The hope is that surgeons could apply it during or after a procedure to catch any cancer cells they might have missed.

Several research teams have been working on fluorescent labels for cancer cells that could serve as a visual guide for surgeons, but other methods typically take much longer to work.

Ghostery, the browser plugin that allows its users to "track the trackers," just released data on the tags, widgets and analytics on websites that are the worst in terms of slowing page loads to a crawl. Any webmaster worth his or her salt already knows that slow page loads adversely affect Google rank and pageviews, but not everyone seems to have gotten the memo.

Ghostery estimates that if you put all of the top 10 worst "lagtags" on a single website, it would add 22 seconds to its load time.

And while the worst offender on the list, "Avalanchers" appears to be a fairly spammy link-sharing network, number two on the list, Millenial Media, appears to be a reputable "mobile advertising network" with a long list of top-tier clients, including Warner Brothers, McDonald's, and Chrysler.

Attention, overachievers: Don’t fear failure. It could be the key to success.

If you’re taking risks in life, you’re bound to fall flat on your face now and then, and as every successful business owner can attest to, mistakes are part of the game. The smartest among us learn how to become wiser from our failures.

So instead of talking to more success stories, for this installment of our Entrepreneurship 101 series, we decided to talk to five entrepreneurs who launched business ventures that failed. While it took them a while to see the upside of these failures, they shared with us the biggest lesson they learned and how it’s helping them (and can help you) today.

Startups are popping up all over New York City. We compiled a list of nearly 100 companies, accelerators and work spaces and their locations. Together they make a living, breathing map of the startup ecosystem. Most of the startups reside between 34th and 14th streets in mid-town Manhattan. Some creep into Brooklyn and extend as high as the low 50s. But the Flat Iron District and Union Square are the clear hubs for budding entrepreneurs, with accelerators and startup schools like Techstars, Dogpatch Labs and General Assembly all located there.

This past week’s issue of Time magazine is headlined: The Invention Issue, and the lead feature article is called Reinventing the Inventor.

In large font, Lev Grossman writes: “In the age of Steve Jobs, it’s all about perfecting the final product. Nobody remembers the guy who had the idea in the first place.”

It’s a curious statement to make, I thought, so I read on. Grossman sees this as a new and disturbing phenomenon and lays the blame for it squarely at the feet of the late Steve Jobs. He dismisses Jobs as a mere “optimizer.” Grossman imagines a time when we revered our inventors and asks, “When did scientific innovation stop being sexy?”

The economic recovery from the Great Recession of 2008-2009 has been so slow and fitful that the last four years are now being dubbed the “great contraction.” Economic “experts” these days often don’t agree on much, but there is consensus that recessions caused by financial crises like this last one are long-lasting and hard to cure.

State and local governments have been deeply affected and their own financial uncertainties are feeding into the overall economic malaise. The loss of 700,000 jobs in the state and local sector over the last couple of years has offset much of the slow increase in total employment and is a depressant to purchasing power. Overall, the sector’s spending grew by less than 1 percent per year between 2008 and 2010, and is now growing by about 1 percent a year. Tax receipts in many states have not returned to the levels of 2008. Nonetheless, there are more spending (and tax) cuts on the way, as visions of smaller, downsized government are implemented.

Coral reefs on which fish stocks have dropped below 300 kilograms per hectare are likely to collapse and lose their productivity, according to researchers.

They say that this figure provides an indicator of the 'tipping point' for sustainable fishing.

The researchers' conclusion, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) last month (11 October), is based on an analysis of the relationship of fish biomass to the health of coral reefs in more than 300 shallow coral reefs in nine countries of the Western Indian Ocean, including Kenya, the Maldives, the Seychelles and Tanzania.

Robert Krulwich (co-host of the Greatest Science Podcast Ever: RadioLab) writes in his NPR blog of a new book by Toby Lester on the life of Leonardo da Vinci. It never hurts to study the live’s of the great thinkers. All it takes is one good idea, one new habit, to change your life, incrementally, for the better. Here are a few things to think about.

Always keep your notebook on your person. “Lester says Leonardo used to travel with a small notebook hanging from his belt, and “whenever something caught his eye,” he would make a note, or begin “sketching furiously.” “. One sure way to recognize a creative person is her ability to quickly record an idea.

Raising funding can be potentially expensive, as it requires resources, and time-consuming experience. Done correctly, it can yield valuable results and a substantial financial investment to grow your business. Enthusiastic entrepreneurs that want to go this route should be well prepared and display these five key essentials that funders look for when considering investing.

1. Know your market

Clear and thorough market and competitor analysis is the mainstay of any successful business concept — even more so when seeking funding. Understanding who you’re selling to, what pressing need you’re addressing and what competition you’re facing enables the funder to evaluate the potential of your business, and their investment return.

Many of the businesses and entrepreneurs I know still don’t realize that they need to use and understand the Internet, even if their interest is not e-commerce. Maybe you have also heard a lot of Internet terms, but are not sure you can explain how, when, and why they are relevant to your business success. Here is a quick test of your real Internet savvy.

See how many of the following “new” Internet concepts you recognize, and can explain in terms of value to your business. If you have heard the lingo, but most of these are not in your startup business plan, you are already in jeopardy as an entrepreneur:

Blogging. A blog is basically a journal (“web log”) that is published on the web. Business blogs are an extension of your website and can effectively communicate the value of your business. You are now reading one of about 50 million out there already. Blogs composed of video clips are called “vlogs.”

Business Week Magazine said: "The industrial economy is giving way to an innovation and creative economy, and corporations are at another crossroads. Attributes that made them ideal for the 20th century could cripple them in the 21st; they will have to change dramatically. The main struggle of daily business will be won by the people and the organizations that adapt most successfully to the new world that is unfolding."

If there is one thing in the world that is constant, it is change. And currently, we're experiencing a dramatic sense of change from the old ways of doing things to a new, more progressive, more empowered, productive and efficient new business economy. But there's a big problem here: old, traditional media isn't going to enable it. In the words of Peter Finch's Howard Beale character in the motion picture, "Network": "Turn your televisions off! Television is in the boredom-killing business. We deal in illusions, none of this is true."

High school students from Kendari in Southeast Sulawesi and Jakarta have been recognized for their innovative efforts to promote the importance of conserving coral reefs.

Niar, a student at State Senior High School No. 1 in Kendari, the provincial capital, won the sixth annual Young Innovators Contest (KIM), organized by the Indonesian Institute for Sciences (LIPI).

At the awards ceremony in Jakarta on Saturday, Niar described his project as an interactive game for primary school students to help them understand threats to the coral reefs around the province’s Bungkutoko Island.

It’s that time of year again – time to start your holiday shopping. Here are some suggestions for things to get that entrepreneur in your life from the experts and staff at the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business.

“Drive” by Daniel Pink – “This New York Times bestseller is a must-read for any entrepreneur. It’s all about what motivates us to succeed and perform at our highest capacity. It has a lot of great ideas in it that could help any entrepreneur transform his or her life.” – Glen Hellman, board member, Dingman Center for Entrepreneurship

“You are what you eat.” The old adage has for decades weighed on the minds of consumers who fret over responsible food choices. Yet what if it was literally true? What if material from our food actually made its way into the innermost control centers of our cells, taking charge of fundamental gene expression?

That is in fact what happens, according to a recent study of plant-animal micro­RNA transfer led by Chen-Yu Zhang of Nanjing University in China. MicroRNAs are short sequences of nucleotides—the building blocks of genetic material. Although microRNAs do not code for proteins, they prevent specific genes from giving rise to the proteins they encode. Blood samples from 21 volunteers were tested for the presence of microRNAs from crop plants, such as rice, wheat, potatoes and cabbage.

English Language is always evolving and Oxford English Dictionary (OED) makes it a point to keep itself updated with the latest buzzwords if they are worth including in the Dictionary. Earlier this year, Oxford added LOL and OMG to its Dictionary while Retweet and sexting were acknowledged in August.

Some other notable tech buzzwords like Gamification, clicktivism and crowdfunding made the U.S. shortlist this year, while hacktivism, sodcasting and phone hacking made the UK list. However, there’s no guarantee that words on the 2011 shortlist will be added to the OED.

In the past, no one really considered themselves to be an entrepreneur. Sure, people stared businesses, but they didn’t have much support from outside sources. That has changed over the years, though. There are resources for almost everyone who wants to start a business, including men, women, and children. So, why does the failure rate remain so high?

First, many entrepreneurs learn to build a business the way some people learn to swim; they just jump in. They might have the basic skill, or even be very talented at the task at hand, whether it is baking or programming or candlestick making. What they lack is basic knowledge of marketing, management and accounting. Even though there are many resources available, they are too busy doing the task to learn how to do the basics. In this case, ignorance is not bliss; it is a ticking time bomb.

How do you explain DNA to people who are less than interested? Make it fun, of course. Jun Axup, a biochemistry student, has made a DNA plush toy.

The hand-sized plush dolls look more like Saturday morning cartoon characters than anything Axup might encounter under a microscope while working on new cancer drugs.

Crowd funding enables entrepreneurs to raise money in relatively small amounts from large numbers of interested investors.  In the sum, substantial amounts of money (as much as a million dollars) can be raised for each startup company.  Recently, entrepreneurs in many countries have been soliciting investment through “crowd funding” websites designed specifically for fundraising purposes.  But, in the US, only wealthy accredited investors* have been allowed by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to invest in entrepreneurs and their startup companies (without extensive disclosure of the business plan and risks inherent to such new ventures).  Those US residents who do not meet accredited standards have been precluded from investing in startup companies.  The assumption made by the regulators is that accredited investors have the business experience required to choose winners and can afford to lose the money if they are wrong.  Consequently, US regulators have discouraged the selling of equity (shares) through crowd funding websites, so online companies, such as Kickstarter.com, offer the opportunity to donate funds to interesting US startup ventures in exchange for the right to become early product users or simply listed on the new ventures’ websites.