Mauro loves his pink lion. One Saturday afternoon last spring, he and his wife, Elisa, front-runners for the title of Minnesota's most glamorous Italian transplants, stumbled onto an eclectic sale in a parking lot on the outskirts of St. Paul. As soon as he saw the white stone statue of a regal lion, Mauro didn't hesitate forking over a few hundred bucks. He knew exactly what he wanted to do with it. "I painted it fluo (as in fluorescent) pink myself," he says. And he put it in his front yard for all to see.

Mauro Porcini is the resident design guru at 3M, the materials-science conglomerate based in St. Paul. Throughout the company, he's simply known as Mauro--a renaissance man who's transcended his last name. Although most of his Midwestern colleagues pronounce it MORE-oh, it actually rhymes with WOW-whoa, which is also the typical reaction to the flamingo-colored sculpture that now resides across the street from the Oak Ridge Country Club. The club had been lion-free for 90 years until Mauro moved from Milan in 2010 to Hopkins, a Minneapolis suburb dotted with low-pitch ranch homes like his. "The neighbors stop and take pictures," he says, smiling as he gazes at his yard one night in June. In his mind, Mauro says, the beast roars, "This house is owned by a designer, someone who likes to think in a different way!"

When people ask me what open innovation is, I suggest they should view open innovation as a philosophy or a mindset that they should embrace within their organization. This mindset should enable their organization to work with external input to the innovation process just as naturally as it does with internal input.

In a more practical definition, open innovation is about bridging internal and external resources and acting on those opportunities to bring better innovation to market faster.

It does not really matter whether this external input is in the form of open innovation, crowdsourcing, user-driven innovation or co-creation (read later in this post). It is “just” about getting more external input.

It's tolerably well known that newspapers and magazines bank the obituaries of the ailing famous. When Steve Jobs died last Wednesday, the encomia appeared with unsurprising haste. But I had nothing prepared. Ever since Jobs announced in 2004 that he had had surgery to remove a cancerous tumor from his pancreas, editors had urged me to get something down. (Only last week, an editor at Technology Review proposed that I might review Jobs's life as if it were a book or a tablet computer.) But I always demurred. It seemed ghoulish. Besides, I wanted Steve to live forever, because I loved him.

I had grown to love him even though our relationship (such as it was) had always been chilly. On at least two occasions, I know I pissed him off.

The brief – launched in Brussels yesterday (6 October) by the Lisbon Council – claims that the 20th century logic that required large foreign talent pools to achieve a global reach has been ‘stood on its head’ and larger companies are now bogged down in bureaucracy and overstaffing, with slow decision-making processes.

“The result is that large companies are under pressure to deliver more with less – a fact which may well account for the jobless economic recovery we have seen in 2010 and 2011,” the brief says, claiming such large companies will be incapable of delivering the jobs that politicians hope for.

By contrast, it claims that SMEs which utilise the internet and new business platforms can enter the global markets with a minimum of bureaucracy and overheads.

You might think a debate over a supposed "theory of everything" — between a surfer-physicist and a rock climber-mathematician, no less — would get some attention outside of scholarly circles.

But when Skip Garibaldi, a mathematician at Emory University, refuted a unified field theory proposed by A. Garrett Lisi, a physicist and surfing enthusiast, Garibaldi did not get much play in the popular press. Lisi floated the theory in 2007. His paper had not been peer-reviewed, but the Daily Telegraph nonetheless wrote it up, and The New Yorker profiled Lisi. Lisi was also invited to give a TED talk about his theory.

When Garibaldi published (with Jacques Distler, a particle physicist at the University of Texas) a rebuttal in a peer-reviewed journal, neither publication came knocking. The mainstream press, it appeared, would happily abide a Maui-dwelling iconoclast looking to upend the scientific establishment with a heady idea, but had little patience once the narrative turned into a wonky debate about the finer points.

It is a sign of things to come.  According to a June 2011 study from the McKinsey Global Institute, the “jobless recovery” may be America’s new reality.  From the end of the last World War through the 1980s, it took an average of 6 months for employment to recover from recession.  But after the 1990-91 downturn, it took 15 months.  After the “dotcom recession” of 2001, it took 39 months.  If recent trends continue, it could take 60 months – five years – for employment to recover from the 2008-10 recession.

Other industrialized nations experience the same pressures.  But because they tend to protect employment more, things play out differently.  In Europe and Japan, high unemployment is concentrated among the young, whose entry into the job market can be delayed for years, and among temporary workers, who make up an increasing percentage of the workforce.

Matt Blumberg, CEO of our portfolio company Return Path, wrote an interesting post last week about the differences between building a company and building a business.

I've been an investor and board member of Return Path for over a decade and I've witnessed the company fail with its first product/business and then through a series of acquisitions build a very strong business and company. Matt and his team built the company first then the business, which is backwards, but it worked.

The software industry was a trailblazer in the field of open-source innovation. Savings to users were estimated at about $60 billion a year, according to a 2008 study by The Standish Group International. Open-source collaboration has now spread to the biopharma industry, among others.

For biotechnology and pharmaceutical businesses, the open-source model holds potential for advancing drug discovery faster and at lower cost than the model now in place. The current system emphasizes developing and protecting proprietary intellectual property, then spending years and additional dollars undergoing reviews with the aim of securing an FDA approval. The cost of developing a new drug has escalated to an all-time high of $1.3 billion, the Tufts Center for the Study of Drug Development said in January.

What was more important in Texas' economic history: the opening of Dallas/Fort Worth Airport in 1974, or the approval of Interstate 35 in 1962? The wave of corporate relocations to the Lone Star State in the 1980s and '90s, or the opening of Alliance Airport in 1989?

Texas economist Ray Perryman has thought long and hard about those and other events, and last week he shared his Top 10 list with a Fort Worth audience of economic development officials at the Worthington Renaissance hotel.

Here's a rundown of the most significant developments during the past 50 years, with one each from 10 broad categories meant to encompass all the aspects of the state's economic development.

Finland is a global leader in the number of researchers per capita, R&D investment and innovation, according to the Global Creativity Index published by the Martin Prosperity Institute.

Finland is ranked as the best in the world for technology and talent in the Global Creativity Index (CGI) published by the Martin Prosperity Institute. The GCI assesses the prospects for sustainable prosperity across 82 nations according to a combination of underlying economic, social, and cultural factors —Technology, Talent, and Tolerance. It also compares the GCI to a series of other metrics of competitiveness and prosperity—from conventional measures of economic growth to alternative measures of economic equality, human development, and happiness and well-being. Overall, Finland is ranked third in the Global Creativity Index.

JILIN CITY, China — Wang Jianping and his wife, Shue, are a relatively affluent Chinese couple, with an annual household income of $16,000 — more than double the national average for urban families.

They own a modest, three-bedroom apartment here in this northeastern industrial city. They paid for their son to study electrical engineering at prestigious Tsinghua University, in Beijing. And even by frugal Asian standards, they are prodigious savers, with $50,000 in a state-run bank.

Christopher Bonanos has written an excellent essay for the New York Times about another man who blended art and science to produce extraordinary products: Edwin Land of Polaroid.

Steve Jobs idolized Edwin Land, and it's clear he learned a lot from him.

Like Jobs, Land dropped out of college. Like Jobs, Land obsessed about function and form. Like Jobs, Land scoffed at the idea of "market research." (Both men believed that consumers don't know what they want until they see it.)

For millions of diabetes sufferers, life is a constant battle to keep their blood sugar balanced, which typically means they have to test their glucose levels and take insulin throughout the day. A new generation of “artificial pancreas” devices may make tedious diabetes micromanagement obsolete. In healthy people, the pancreas naturally produces insulin, which converts sugars and starches into energy. People with type 1 diabetes, however, do not produce any insulin of their own, and those with type 2 produce too little. All type 1 and many type 2 diabetics have to dose themselves with insulin to keep their bodies fueled—and doing so properly requires constant monitoring of blood sugar because appropriate dosages depend on factors such as how much patients eat or exercise. Stuart Weinzimer, an endocrinologist at Yale University, has devised an artificial pancreas that combines two existing technologies: a continuous glucose monitor, which uses an under-the-skin sensor to measure blood glucose levels every few minutes, and an insulin pump, which dispenses insulin through a tube that is also implanted under the skin. The glucose sensor sends its data wirelessly to a pocket computer a little bigger than an iPhone that is loaded with software developed by Minneapolis-based Medtronic. The program scans the incoming data from the glucose monitor and directs the pump to dispense the correct amount of insulin.

What do a wedding officiant, an accountant and a former computer hacker have in common?Not much, it turns out — and that’s precisely the challenge, says Carter Ferrington, who started the Dupont Circle Business Incubator in August. In two months, Ferrington has assembled a mix of entrepreneurs who are starting businesses or beefing up existing ones. There is Peter Frampton of Accounting Comes Alive, which teaches people to make sense of balance sheets. And J.J. Scheele, who owns Dog Walking DC and handles up to 70 dogs a day. Joining them is a duo who produces weekly podcasts, a couple with a flower shop and a rent-licensing expert.

The gig: Alfred E. Mann, 85, is an aerospace and biomedical entrepreneur who founded 17 companies over six decades and became a billionaire philanthropist.

Niche man: Although he had no formal business training, Mann has demonstrated a knack for capitalizing on investment opportunities. His secret: Identify an unmet need and come up with a technology to fill it.

The result has been a string of companies with names like Spectrolab, Heliotek, MiniMed and Advanced Bionics. Mann has developed pacemakers, cochlear implants, insulin pumps and other devices.

Attention all South Carolina life sciences entrepreneurs: a $200 million venture capital firm is visiting Charleston next month and it's looking for worthy investments.

But to secure a meeting with Durham, N.C.-based Hatteras Venture Partners at the Nov. 9-10 SCBIO Creating Wow! in Life Science Conference, you must apply by Friday.

SCBIO CEO Wayne Roper hopes to receive many more applications than the few he's received so far "so we can let them choose the very best technology that they can find in South Carolina."

Amber Cameron knows the performance of her business is rather unusual.

“I was cash-flow positive in my first month and I have been ever since,” Ms. Cameron says. But coming from her it doesn’t sound like bragging. Instead, there is a quiet confidence behind the words of the Saskatchewan entrepreneur.

MORE RELATED TO THIS STORY Ready to hire someone new? Not so fast Lack of leadership spelled doom for HST Luvali's coup, and conundrum Ms. Cameron opened the Radiant Skin Clinic in Moose Jaw in March of last year. The clinic offers several treatments, ranging from chemical peels to hair removal to Botox. By the end of the first year, it had treated 300 clients; now its customers have topped the 1,000 mark.

Every year, the biggest ideas in health care are presented at the Mayo Clinic’s Transform conference in Rochester, Minnesota. I was there this year to present a pre-conference workshop with a Continuum colleague on everyday creativity, and another pair of Continuum designers gave a main-stage talk entitled, “Patient Centricity: A design identity crisis.” Also on the lineup were John Hockenberry and Roger Martin, bigwigs from J+J and GE Healthcare, and practitioners from the top-tier design and innovation firms. Many cutting-edge ideas were presented, along with some spirited debate on the hot topics of delivering care and the role of technology.

Here are my top five conference takeaways on the future design of health care.

First off, I keep running into the fact that…

The fall 2011 solicitation is NOW OPEN!

With $6 million appropriated by the General Assembly during the 2011 Session, the Commonwealth Research Commercialization Fund (CRCF) seeks proposals that advance science- and technology-based research, development, and commercialization in Virginia and strengthen collaborative partnerships among the Commonwealth’s public and private colleges and universities, and between academia, business, and industry.

Technology sectors eligible for CRCF funding are identified in the recently released Commonwealth Research and Technology Strategic Roadmap, which establishes priorities for industry and research areas worthy of economic development and institutional focus.

Like so many nations that have recently gone through major restructuring over the past 10 years, Serbia is looking to its young entrepreneurial minds to shape a new nation as it marches toward economic recovery. However, while Serbia has embarked upon several structural reforms—especially in the banking sector and in employment regulations—it has yet to successfully tackle corruption, bureaucracy and a weak judicial system. These are holding back its economic potential.

Serbia is no different than other nations freshly embracing capitalism. I stopped here in Belgrade today in the run up to Global Entrepreneurship Week to talk to students and entrepreneurs full of promise and optimism about their capacity to make a difference in their country as future job creators. Many I met with this evening seemed motivated to be the entrepreneurial drivers of new economic growth. One group of students walked me through an array of ideas capitalizing on opportunities they see with Serbia having low labor costs combined with excellent language and IT skills.