HARRISBURG, Pa., Sept. 29, 2011 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- As promised in his budget address, Governor Tom Corbett today announced he has created a new Governor's Advisory Council on Privatization and Innovation to explore if any functions now performed by state government might be better and more cost-effectively performed by the private sector.

"We have an obligation to taxpayers to find new and innovative ways to make government more efficient," Governor Corbett said. "This panel will further evaluate potential privatization, public-private partnerships or managed-competition opportunities with the ultimate goal of streamlining government and saving taxpayers' dollars."

Renée Winsky, chief executive officer of the Technology Council of Maryland (TCM), has been elected to the board of trustees of SSTI. Prior to joining TCM in 2009, Winsky served as the president and executive director of the Maryland Technology Development Corporation. An SSTI member since 1999, Winsky has been a speaker at SSTI conferences and accepted the 2008 Excellence in TBED award for Commercializing Research Category on behalf of the Maryland Technology Transfer Fund. She previously held positions at the Information Technology Association of America, the National League of Cities and its affiliate, and the National Association of Telecommunications Officers and Advisors.

Global mobile app downloads will reach nearly 18 billion this year with sales of $15.1 billion, nearly triple last year’s revenues, according to Gartner Research.  How much of that $15.1B went into the pocket of carriers (versus Apple and Google)?  We would expect that number to be close to zero!

Having missed the first wave of mobile ecosystem value creation, global telcos are coming to Silicon Valley in droves, looking to partner with entrepreneurial companies that are developing innovative technologies that might complement their networks.  15 of those telcos disclosed what they were looking for at the Sept 15, 2011 Telecom Council Carrier Connections (TC3) meeting in Mt. View, CA.  Several of the telcos presenting were paired with partner startup companies to discuss their collaboration and process of engagement.  This provided the audience with selected case studies of how startups could work with carriers to pursue meaningful partnership opportunities.

Mineral-rich states, often those with tiny populations, have had the strongest state budgets in the nation over the last decade, according to a new study from a Virginia-based budget research and advocacy organization.

Wyoming, North Dakota, West Virginia, Texas and Alaska had the largest "total funds surpluses" during the 2000s, the study by State Budget Solutions concludes. By contrast, the states with the biggest "total funds deficits" during that time were Wisconsin, Oregon, Ohio, Hawaii and California.

Donn Rubin will tell you it’s not very flashy.

“We’re not trying to build an empire here,” he laughs.

A nondescript Clayton storefront on Forsyth Boulevard seems an unlikely place from which to run an imperial entity anyway. Yet for the dozens who gathered Tuesday afternoon to celebrate the birth of the organization Rubin now runs -- BioSTL -- there was plenty of excitement.

“We have lots of companies being formed, lots of things going on,” Dr. William Danforth, chancellor emeritus of Washington University, told the assembled group. “One of the things we lack is sufficient funds to give the right help to companies that are starting up and enough money to invest in those startup companies.”

Nokia plans to drastically reduce its workforce by another 3,500 positions, the company announced today.

The slashed jobs will be added to the 4,000 jobs Nokia already announced it would cut in April. At that time, Nokia said it would cut 4,000 positions by the end of 2012 and transfer 3,000 jobs to Accenture.

On Wednesday, Amazon's Jeff Bezos introduced the Kindle Fire tablet. The Fire, priced at $199 and lacking many of the features of Apple's iPad, garnered a mixed response from analysts. On the one hand, they noted that Barnes and Noble and many of the Android-based competitor tablets should be worried. On the other hand, the consensus was strong among market observers that Apple should not be concerned at all and that it should keep on doing exactly what it's doing — making more powerful tablets. Many analysts believe that Amazon failed to unveil the iPad killer that many anticipated the Kindle Fire could be.

After all, how could the Kindle Fire kill the iPad? It has no camera, no microphone, limited memory (8 GB), a dramatically smaller app pool, and no mobile broadband. The majority of market observers reckon there is no way that it could slay the giant.

It’s hard to be a health IT investor.

Bloated valuations. Fat investing rounds. Big new funds ready to spend. It’s enough to make you say bubble. And it’s harder than ever to find the hidden (read: low cost) health IT and mobile health gems that will make for the next big exits.

Then again, how can promising startups be heard against the din of billions in federal dollars fueling a health IT craze that’s churning out scores of other startups?

Triangle Group, the largest tire manufacturer in China, and A3T, a new research and development company, will partner with The University of Akron (UA) and the University of Akron Research Foundation (UARF) on rubber research, technology development and licensing.

Mr. Yuhua Ding, chairman of Triangle Group in Weihai, China, signed an agreement with Dr. Luis Proenza, President of The University of Akron, on Aug. 19 to engage in research collaborations with UA and UARF, beginning in the next few months.

The signing of this Master Collaboration Agreement was celebrated by approximately 50 people representing UA, Triangle Group, the City of Weihai, and the City of Akron at a ceremony held in the Goodyear Polymer Center on the campus of UA.

Connecticut launched the nation’s first state-leveraged venture capital program 35 years ago. Today, more than 30 states have similar funds, including many of Wisconsin’s neighbors and peers.

The story of Connecticut’s success in building its supply of venture capital is among the reasons why Wisconsin should also embrace a bipartisan approach to developing sources of capital for its high-growth, early stage companies.

Connecticut has nearly 3.6 million people versus Wisconsin’s 5.7 million, but it routinely outperforms Wisconsin when it comes to landing its proportional share of venture capital. Since roughly the time Connecticut created the “Connecticut Product Development Corp.” to leverage private investments, about $6.6 billion has been invested in 502 in-state companies. Over that same period, $1.2 billion in venture capital has been invested in 166 Wisconsin companies.

The environment for today’s small business is more volatile than ever. Aspiring entrepreneurs are faced with several new challenges: obtaining a loan continues to become more difficult, banks are refuting any application with less than two years worth of a track record, and credit card rates are continuing to rise. Is this the worst of times or maybe it is the best of times?

While all this volatility is indeed challenging, at the same time, the marketplace for small business owners is actually more dynamic and exciting than ever. Thanks to the convening power of the Internet, social media, and online transactions, getting capital for your start-up is actually easier than it seems.

If anyone can preview the future of computing, it should be Alfred Spector, Google's director of research. Spector's team focuses on the most challenging areas of computer science research with the intention of shaping Google's future technology. During a break from a National Academy of Engineering meeting on emerging technologies hosted by his company, Spector told Technology Review's computing editor Tom Simonite about these efforts, and explained how Google funnels its users' knowledge into artificial intelligence.

TR: Google often releases products based on novel ideas and technologies. How is the research conducted by your team different from the work carried out by other groups?

Spector: We also work on things that benefit Google and its users, but we have a longer time horizon and we try to advance the state of the art. That means areas like natural language processing [understanding human language], machine learning, speech recognition, translation, and image recognition. These are mostly problems that have traditionally been called artificial intelligence.

The National Society of Hispanic MBAs (NSHMBA) and Nationwide Insurance have organized a specialized program on entrepreneurship to teach potential and current business owners how to be successful despite continuing economic challenges.

NSHMBA and its partner will address noted business experts in its Entrepreneurial Success Program 9 a.m. - 4 p.m., Saturday, October 15 at the Anaheim Convention Center.

The Entrepreneurial Success Program will be divided into several sessions and the first session will teach attendees how entrepreneurs generate game-changing business ideas.

Individual seed investors have been an increasingly powerful force in Silicon Valley’s startup funding landscape. But in an onstage conversation at GigaOM’s Mobilize conference in San Francisco Tuesday, two venture capital heavyweights said that while the VC industry has been shaken up by the increase of seed backers, the current environment will likely lead to a fall.

“There will be a day of reckoning, certainly. There are way too many companies getting seed funding,” said Maha Ibrahim, a partner at Canaan Partners. That’s because many of the companies receiving seed funding now are likely to have trouble raising larger amounts of money down the line, she said, since they’ve become used to the kind of terms that only seed investors can offer.

University of Kansas officials on Tuesday unveiled the newest part of the university’s Bioscience & Technology Business Center at the University of Kansas Medical Center.

A $6 million remodeling of Breidenthal Hall, at 2002 W. 39th Ave., Kansas City, Kan., provides about 30,000 square feet of office and wet lab space designed to be a business incubator for commercialization of KU’s life science research.

Catherine Mott, CEO and founder of Pittsburgh-based BlueTree Capital Group and BlueTree Allied Angels, has been tapped by the Securities and Exchange Commission    to serve on its newly-formed national Advisory Committee on Small and Emerging Companies.

The 21-member committee is intended to provide a formal mechanism through which the SEC can receive advice and recommendations specifically related to small companies, both privately held ones and publicly traded ones with market capitalization less than $250 million.

(KANSAS CITY, Mo.) Sept. 28, 2011 — Women who are capable of starting growth companies that serve global markets may be the nation's secret weapon for achieving sustained economic growth.

Research shows that startup companies – particularly high-growth startups – are the most fruitful source of new U.S. jobs and offer the economy's best hope for recovery. However, despite the fact that about 46 percent of the workforce and more than 50 percent of college students are female, and that women have risen to top positions in corporate and university hierarchies, they represent only about 35 percent of startup business owners. Their firms also tend to experience less growth and prosperity than do firms started by men.

"Overcoming the Gender Gap: Women Entrepreneurs as Economic Drivers," a new paper from the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, explores the reasons behind lower business startup rates among women and proposes actions that would help to realize the promise of female entrepreneurs in escalating the economy.

A new $100 million center to update and expand Wistar Institute’s research facilities in line with a team approach to science broke ground earlier this month and will help allow it to increase staff by 50 percent.

The seven-story, 89,700-square-foot research tower will be located at its current address at 36th and Spruce streets in University City in Philadelphia.

Dr. Russel E. Kaufman, CEO of Wistar Institute, told MedCity News that the development of the center has been in the works for the past seven to eight years.

Senior executives need better mental maps to navigate our unevenly globalized world. Although a wide variety of metrics show that just 10 to 25 percent of economic activity is truly global, executives disproportionately embrace visions of unbounded opportunities in a borderless world, where distances and differences no longer matter.

In several articles and books, I’ve tried to describe the true nature of globalization and suggest ways for executives to structure their thinking about distance and difference effects (see sidebar, “Understanding the world and measuring distance”). Here, I want to focus on the potential for a special kind of map—one I call a “rooted map”—to help leaders enhance their intuition about the opportunities and threats inherent in our semiglobalized world.

There is a code of silence among entrepreneurs when it comes to personal ruin. The irony, though, is that most entrepreneurs endure personal ruin — it’s what makes entrepreneurs special. They bring this on themselves in the name of seeing their ideas to fruition.

In case you have any doubt about the craziness of entrepreneurs, there are two, seminal articles about the topic. One comes from David Segal in the New York Times. The article is titled, “Just Crazy Enough,” and Segal explains why VCs like CEOs who are a little crazy — but just short of mental-ward crazy — when they pitch.