Recently in the New York Times, the adventurer David Roberts wrote a wonderful piece describing how mountaineering has changed. In the old days, he said, you were truly ‘out there’: your life depended on your ingenuity and your stamina. If you made bad calls, you were gone. Help was not at hand. By contrast, today explorers and climbers, thanks to GBS, satellite phones and helicopters, expect to be rescued - even though some rescues end up costing more lives than they save. The implication of his story was that mountaineering had become soft and selfish with the expectation that help at any cost would always be available.

Mountains and Managers

You could say the same of business. Big banks, like Citi and Bear Stearns, could take stupid risks because they expected to be, and were, bailed out - even though their rescue cost - and is still costing - everyone else dearly. Similarly executives leading major corporations like Merrill Lynch may not know how much risk they’re incurring, they may have little or no idea how to get themselves and their teams out of the mess they’ve made, but they walk away, enriched at the expense of others.

I mentioned in my first blog on Kauffman’s “Rules for Growth” that there would be a follow-up blog focused on Kauffman’s characterization of university performance as “sub-optimal”, given “innovations developed by university faculty could be commercialized more quickly and effectively.” While, at heart, I believe any organization can be improved in theory, we’re exploring here the rationale Kauffman provides for this “sub-optimal” performance.

Kauffman outlines three reasons for believing university technology transfer is sub-optimal. We will focus on the first of these reasons in this blog. The first reason Kauffman provides for university “sub-optimal” performance is that FDA Drug approvals have declined. At the same time, federal research dollars have increased from $20 billion in 1993 to $30 billion, for this “reason”, university technology transfer is “sub-optimal.” I guess the point is, you have more federal money, but FDA is approving less.

Download the PDF

Last week marked the first anniversary of the Innovation Union flagship initiative, one of the cornerstones of the Europe 2020 strategy for growth and jobs, prompting the European Commission to summarise progress to date. A more comprehensive progress report is promised by the end of November.

Top of the list is the recognition of the importance of innovation and of the Innovation Union flagship initiative by the Member States.  On 4 February 2011 - at the first European Council to place innovation at the top of the political agenda - EU leaders recognised the Innovation Union initiative as crucial for economic growth and backed a series of proposals designed to promote its formation.

Later in February came the announcement of Horizon 2020 the successor to Framework Programme 7 (FP7), with a pledge to increase investment in research, innovation and education under a single and simple framework. The Commission launched a wide consultation on major improvements to EU research and innovation funding to make participation easier, increase scientific and economic impact and improve value for money.

The steady drumbeat of bleak venture reports in the biotech industry is continuing this week with some fresh analysis from BioWorld which shows a whopping 60% plunge in third quarter investing. Not only was there a quarter to quarter nosedive, but BioWorld also notes a 48% drop in venture financing from the same period in 2010.

FierceBiotech reported a pair of disturbing VC reports last week. The bellwether Prospect Venture Partners abandoned its attempt to put together a $250 million fund, citing a lack of investor interest in high-risk developers. Prospect is now reportedly holding on to its cash reserves to back its existing portfolio and won't be supporting any fresh upstarts. And the National Venture Capital Association (NVCA) highlighted a venture survey noting that 39% of the VCs have pulled back from U.S. deals, turning to developers outside the U.S. which don't have to deal with the FDA--an agency that has come under enormous pressure to make over its approval process.

Sure there’s lot of political talk about job creation, but let’s ignore what the politicians have to say. Instead, I want to look at what it would really take for small businesses, long touted as the “engine of job growth,” to start hiring again.

Actually small businesses do want to hire. In fact, 40.7 percent of those surveyed in an ongoing study of privately owned businesses conducted by the Pepperdine Private Capital Markets Project and Dun & Bradstreet Credibility Corp are planning to do so in the next six months, compared to 38.1% who have no plans to hire and 21.2% who are uncertain.

The Michigan Pre-Seed Capital Fund through the Michigan Strategic Fund and supported by the Michigan Economic Development Corporation in collaboration with the Michigan SmartZones have established a microloan program  to support innovative, high-growth start-up companies in the state as they near commercial viability but are not ready for outside funding. The focus is on companies that are creating innovative ideas and solutions in the areas of:

Advanced automotive, manufacturing, and materials Alternative energy Homeland security and defense

FARGO – Listen to political rhetoric, and you’ll hear job creation is what’s going to save the national economy.

Fargo entrepreneur Doug Burgum says small start-ups and local investment are the keys to doing just that.

Arthur Ventures, Burgum’s Fargo-based early-stage investment group, has funded six companies since 2008. The businesses have grown jobs locally, regionally and nationally in the expanding fields of health care and technology.

But to keep that trend going, it takes continued interest and investment.

Millions of Chinese flooded the popular micro blogging site Sina Weibo to tweet their condolences on the death of Steve Jobs over the past two days. They also raised the question: Why isn't there a Steve Jobs in China?

The tone of the resulting discussion was almost unanimously pessimistic. As is always the case on the Chinese Internet, the discussion quickly moved to talk about the problems in China's political, economic and legal systems. Wang Wei, chairman of the Chinese Museum of Finance, tweeted, "In a society with an authoritarian political system, monopolistic business environment, backward-looking culture and prevalent technology theft, talking about a master of innovation? Not a chance! Don't even think about it."

Admit it! You always wanted to be a rock star belting out tunes while adoring fans groveled in the mosh pit. Or maybe it was a movie star surrounded by great actors and with an Oscar to boot. Of course, the svelte look of a fashion model always danced before your eyes as you stared at your reflection in a mirror. And then there were those of you who aspired to be top dog in the commercialization of university research … we pause to reflect on this dissonant chord and to paraphrase a hit tune by Nancy Sinatra: were those boots really made for walking?

No one grows up wanting to lead a university office of technology commercialization – well, maybe there are a few hardy souls out there with vision. Indeed, such a career path didn’t even exist in my youth! But exist it does and it’s one of the top new professions in America demanding the highest of skills. Unfortunately for universities, it’s a profession that has grown up so quickly that we face a dearth of top-quality people to fill the rapid growth in positions. How did we get to this situation and what does it mean to be a leader of technology commercialization at a university?

Something like how video purportedly killed the radio star, the Internet and the economic crisis is murdering the creative class today, according to a provocative essay in Salon by Scott Timberg. “This creative class was supposed to be the new engine of the United States economy, post-industrial age, and as the educated, laptop-wielding cohort grew, the U.S. was going to grow with it,” he writes. “But for those who deal with ideas, culture and creativity at street level -- the working- or middle-classes within the creative class -- things are less cheery. Book editors, journalists, video store clerks, musicians, novelists without tenure -- they're among the many groups struggling through the dreary combination of economic slump and Internet reset. The creative class is melting, and the story is largely untold,” he adds. “The Creative Class Is Evaporating” is the way our sister site, The Atlantic Wire, summed it up.

Kudos to Timberg and Salon for focusing attention on the plight of struggling artists, musicians, and writers during this devastating economic crisis. I welcome Salon’s coverage of this critical issue and very much look forward to reading the rest of the series. But in focusing on such disparate events as the closing of chains like Borders and Tower Records, the decline of independent record stores and book shops, and the mass layoffs at print newspapers, he misses the forest for the proverbial trees.

BRUNSWICK — Lawmakers, businesspeople and educators praised a new economic development program called Blackstone Accelerates Growth during an event Friday at the former Brunswick Naval Air Station.

"This is a watershed moment in the economic development history of (Maine)," said U.S. Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, who spoke at the event. "(This initiative) can spark the creativity and entrepreneurship that are so essential to our state."

"One challenge is growing startup (companies) into larger engines of job creation and economic growth," said U.S. Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine. "This initiative will help plant the seeds."

Every entrepreneur needs to be honest about their strengths and weaknesses, and realistic about their reasons for choosing the startup route. For any entrepreneur, even the best business opportunities, if entered for the wrong reasons, will likely fail. Some of these reasons seem obvious, so forgive me for restating, but I still hear them too often.

Statistics show that at least 50% of new startups fail within five years, and many of the survivors eventually fail. If you don’t want to be part of these statistics, consider all the alternatives to starting your own business, especially if you have one of the following perspectives:

Medtronic hypertension device tops Cleveland Clinic medical innovations. The device, which Medtronic acquired through its $800 million acquisition of Ardian earlier this year, is called the Symplicity Catheter System. It works via a process known as renal denervation, or ablation of the nerves that line the renal arteries, and could represent a way to control resistant hypertension without drugs.

ADVERTISEMENT Envoy Medical hearing aid video goes viral; 2 million+ views in a week. Sarah Churman, 29, posted the video of her hearing her own voice for the first time on her sloanchurman YouTube account. In five days the video has gathered more than 2.1 million views on YouTube and the video (and Esteem) were featured everywhere from The Washington Post to The Huffington Post.

Innovation is Like Love, aptly described by those old posters I used to see at my dentist’s office, “if you love something, set it free, and if it comes back to you, it’s yours…”  Same thing for innovative university technologies, novel methods and creative people.  Here’s a poster that should hang in campus hallways:  “If you want innovation to take place, set it free, and if it comes back to you – well – it’s not precisely yours, but at least you’ve succeeded in introducing genuine value to the rest of the world….”

So what’s the problem?  The problem is that innovative university research is not set free.  Currently, university technology commercialization strategies rest on the assumption that university research is most commercially appealing when managed as potentially lucrative, university-owned intellectual property.  The current approach to commercializing university inventions is due for an overhaul.  Yet, universities and federal agencies continue to invest money and resources in initiatives and programs that merely re-hash the technology commercialization model we already have, one built on the assumption that more, not less, central control over university research is needed to increase its commercial  uptake.

There was some venture capital activity in the cleantech/green energy sector in the third quarter of 2011.Energy storage led the way in what turned out to be a $2.23 bn quarter for venture capital in this space. Let’s take a look at the details:

1. Capital raised: The ‘energy storage’ sector was the top-grosser in the quarter, raking in $514 mn in venture capital and leading the second-largest grossing sector, solar, by a wide margin (solar had $350 mn in proceeds). Boston-Power was good for $125 mn of the energy storage total.

Code red: The future of venture-capital investment in med-tech start-ups is bleak, says a new report from the National Venture Capital Association.

The survey of 156 firms—about half of whom have 10 to 29 active healthcare portfolio companies—found that 39 percent of VCs plan to decrease the amount they invest in biotechnology and medical device companies over the next three years. Another 39 percent said they already had reduced investment in those sectors.

The big culprit: The expensive, time-consuming process of getting the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's approval. By far the largest percentage of those surveyed (61 percent) cited regulatory concerns as the reason they planned to shy away from these types of investments. Thirty-eight percent named reimbursement concerns, and 35 percent fingered the financial markets. (Respondents could choose more than one reason.)

It’s easy to think of most entrepreneurs as big-thinking creative types, who are always innovating and taking big risks. The truth is that most of us are just everyday people who by luck, fate or circumstance have decided to work for themselves. Maybe we lost our jobs, maybe we couldn’t find the right opportunity, or maybe we just got fed up with the corporate way. In any case, we’ve taken matters into our own hands and decided that we would be our own best bosses. That doesn’t mean the decision was easy or absent of angst. But now that we are on the other side most of us will tell you that we’d never go back. We’ve tasted the freedom of entrepreneurship and are hooked. We’ve also realized that there is room enough for lots of entrepreneurs and that everyone has the opportunity to create their own style of entrepreneurship. We want you to join our ranks! So for those of you that are still contemplating the leap, let us share with you the questions we think you should be asking yourself. If the answers are yes, then a business just may be in your future!

The new Iowa Economic Development Authority Board will help redesign the state’s incentives, find better ways to spark innovation, and explore ways to improve worker skills.

Debi Durham, the state’s economic development director, told board members who will oversee the authority that they will help reshape the state’s job-creation efforts and push Gov. Terry Branstad’s goal of creating 200,000 new jobs and increasing family incomes 25 percent over the next five years.

Durham said the agency and board will work together to craft a new $25 million to $30 million incentives program that will go to lawmakers next year for consideration; look at ways to certify worker skills, adding that “a high school diploma isn’t enough;” and create a new nonprofit group that will lead the charge for creating a $100 million seed fund to spark innovation in the state.

In an effort to coordinate with President Obama’s jobs bill, a collaboration of Pittsburgh business, education, and non-profit leaders announced a job creation partnership Thursday.

“PowerUp Pittsburgh” is focused on increasing technology- and innovation-based jobs in neighborhoods throughout Pittsburgh that are underserved and show little growth.

Each year, the NFTE National Youth Entrepreneurship Challenge (presented this time by MasterCard Worldwide) is a testament to the passion and creativity of our young entrepreneurs. Held on Thursday evening at the Hudson Theatre inside the Millennium Broadway Hotel in Manhattan, 31 extraordinary students representing 29 businesses from around the country made the trek to New York City and competed for $10,000 in startup funds. We are so proud that Hayley Hoverter from Los Angeles, CA whose business, Sweet (dis)SOLVE, was recognized by our panel of top judges from Ernst & Young, MasterCard Worldwide, FUBU, Bank of America and BET among others as this year's first place winner.