The annual Startup School, put on by the Business Association of Stanford Entrepreneurial Students (BASES) and Y-Combinator, featured founders and investors in Dinkelspiel Auditorium on Saturday. More than 800 prospective entrepreneurs attended.

The day’s list of speakers included Silicon Valley heavyweights such as Mark Zuckerberg, founder and CEO of Facebook, Reid Hoffman ‘89, founder of LinkedIn, and angel investor Ron Conway, who was one of the early investors in companies such as Google, PayPal, Facebook and Twitter.

The annual event is a collaboration between BASES, a student organization focused on entrepreneurship on campus, and Y-Combinator, a startup incubator that identifies promising startups and helps them succeed. In its sixth year, the event attracted young entrepreneurs, including approximately 200 current Stanford students and recent alumni.

The Conversation Prism, an exhaustive encyclopedia of all the various sites offering online dialogue, has just been released in an updated version for 2010.

Media guru Brian Solis and creative agency JESS3 produced the first conversation prism in 2008. Since then, the landscape of online interactions has shifted dramatically. Ergo, the newest version has no less than 28 different types of conversation species you can have online, ranging from virtual worlds to custom social networks to "social commerce" (such as Groupon). (Previously, there were 22 different species, but these were vastly more simple and less nuanced than the ones now.)

Rogue archivist Rick Prelinger sez, "Simon Ramo (the 'R' in TRW Corp.) commissioned this film in 1959 to describe his concept of 'polymorphic computing,' which means distributing computer power over many generic machines. With friendly moving wooden blocks, charcoal drawings, acoustic guitar and a German-accented narrator, this is the best unknown film-prefiguring-the-Net I've ever seen. Please download, show and propagate this gift from Prelinger Archives."

During the past 25 years I’ve seen a lot of innovation task forces come and go. Some of them looked good at the beginning and died a slow death. Some of them looked bad at the beginning and died a quick death. And some of them actually succeeded.

And so, at the risk of giving your task force one more task to do, please take a few minutes to review the following guidelines.

They will save you time. They will save you headaches. And they may even save your company…

20 TIPS FOR INNOVATION TASK FORCES

1. Quit now if you’re not really into it.
2. Make sure everyone else on the task force really wants to do the work.
3. Get completely clear on what your “task” really is. Clear, as in specific, with definable deliverables.
4. Establish clear agreements at your first meeting. Otherwise, prepare for chaos, wheel spinning, indecision, and the corporate hoky poky.

Over the past two years, I have been teaching Information Communication Technology (ICT) at secondary school. During this time, I have made it a point to share with my students, stories reported by Michael Arrington & the crew at TechCrunch. To give some context I work within a inner London School called Henry Compton, based in Hammersmith & Fulham, London, UK. It is a typical inner London school with challenging students aged between 11-16.

So why has sharing TechCrunch stories been a must for me every Wednesday morning?

To put it simply, my students just get blown away by the world-changing, crazy, interesting, money-making adventures and businesses that come to life by entrepreneurs that start them!

Encouraging and Nurturing Internationally Competitive Spin-Offs

Panel with Richard Bendis (President & CEO of Innovation America), Edward Reinfurt (Executive Director of the New York State Foundation for Science, Technology and Innovation) and Thomas Lechler (Howe School of Technology Management, Stevens Institute of Technology)

The German Center for Research and Innovation (GCRI), in cooperation with Hannover Messe Research and Technology, the leading international trade fair for R&D and Technology Transfer in Hannover, Germany, will host a panel discussion on the national frameworks, practices, and funding schemes for early-stage high-tech companies in the United States and Germany. The event will take place on Tuesday, October 26, from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m., at the German House New York (871 United Nations Plaza, btw. 48th & 49th Streets).

Richard Bendis, President & CEO of Innovation America, Edward Reinfurt, Executive Director of the New York State Foundation for Science, Technology and Innovation, and Dr. Thomas Lechler of the Howe School of Technology Management at Stevens Institute of Technology will discuss best practices, accessing non-domestic sources of seed money to establish university spin-offs and the effects of the world economy on tech transfer, tech commercialization, and finance. Their discussion will include examples, opportunities, and obstacles of international collaboration. Of particular interest for public and private sector technology transfers and technology marketing managers, venture capital and economic development professionals, the panel will also focus on other vehicles of successful research commercialization. Kurt Becker, Associate Provost for Research & Technology Initiatives and Professor of Physics at the Polytechnic Institute of New York University, will moderate.

We, America, have lost our edge while our competitor nations are not waiting for us to wake up and realize it.  They are investing in innovation programs designed to spur the next and future generations of entrepreneurs. And they are doing so in big, bold ways.  In this country on the other hand we have leadership paralysis at all levels of government and in most communities we lack private sector leadership to organize and call for change.

I would like to add my voice to a growing list of people that are screaming the warning call.  Thomas Friedman in an Op-Ed piece last week Thomas Friedman describes a conversation with a colleague form the National University of Singapore regarding investment that we are making in energy innovation.  While Singapore has invested $ Billions, our Congress has appropriated only $25 Million.  Friedman sums up his frustration with the statement, “Welcome to Tea Party America, think small and carry a big ego.”

Small thinking is what is really killing jobs in this country. Elected leaders speak in sound bites and think only about what will happen until their next election.  There are very few brave leaders willing to take a risk for a plan with a 4, 6 or 10-year horizon.  Many private sector leaders think only about this years tax bill and maximizing shareholder profit.  So we argue over the small stuff and blame everyone else for the economy.

The National Association of Seed Venture Funds, which promotes innovation
capital, had its annual conference at the Marriott Inner Harbor in
Baltimore, Maryland, October 13-15th. It's an event that brings together
angel funds, angel investors, seed and early stage venture capital funds,
funds that invest in funds, city, county, state and university economic
development professionals, entrepreneurs, business consultants along with
federal government officials from the various federal laboratories to
discuss ways to fund innovation the life blood of the United States and the
world at large.

A couple of years ago during the financial markets collapse, the government
focused on rescuing banks and the automotive industry. Money was pumped
into to insure that there wouldn't be a total collapse and to encourage
lending. The government even increased the Small Business Administration
Loan guarantee from 80% to 90%.

Unfortunately, many small businesses don't have the asset base to borrow
what they need and in the case of startup companies no assets at all.
According to Mark Heesen, the president/CEO of the National Venture Capital
Association, the number venture capital funds, especially seed stage funds,
has been shrinking along with the amount of capital being invested. In the
past year startup investments have declined 7% to $4.8 billion and the
number of startups-seed funding category dropped 11%.

The nation's entrepreneurs have become reliant on investor angels and angel
funds to provide the fuel to propel the new ventures. Institutional venture
capital funds are running out of money because the public markets have been
virtually closed for two years and many corporations have reduced or
eliminated their business development and internal venture funds. The Small
Business Innovation Research grants, provided by the federal government, are
on a respirator even though it has been a crucial source of funds for
technology startups and spinouts from established companies. Even the state
of Pennsylvania, creator of the first public-private partnership through the
highly successful Ben Franklin Fund, which provides startup companies with
capital, has seen its allocation reduced by an unimaginable 60%.

The competitive advantage for the US has always been the entrepreneurial
sector developing new products and creating jobs going back to the creation
of steel mills to car companies to the pharmaceutical industry, plastics,
computers, biotechnology, Internet and now energy.

The keynote luncheon speaker the first full day of the conference was Aneesh
Chopra, the government's chief technology officer, who reports to President
Barak Obama. He told the audience about the various research and
development programs and contests the government was running to develop
solutions to problems. He mentioned that some of the winners have formed
companies.

Mr. Chopra, who told the audience how he made enough money from a venture
investment in a company that was bought by Microsoft, that it allowed him to
take a government job. Yet when asked about insuring SBIR program and
providing capital to seed and early stage venture and angel funds to deploy
to the cash starved entrepreneurial community, his answer was that
administration was focused on running entrepreneurial contests.

The country's federal laboratories, which receive almost $140 billion, and
the vast research being developed at universities, will rot unless they are
picked up by entrepreneurs and funded to create to new well paying jobs. I
speak to Chinese and Indian business professionals, who believe their
countries will surpass the US in innovation and entrepreneurship because
their governments are increasing their investment in early stage companies.
The US used to be the destination of choice for aspiring entrepreneurs, but
that is in jeopardy because the Obama administration doesn't have a clear
well defined plan and the major parties are more interested in bludgeoning
each other than job creation.

The question will be for next year's conference is whether the Obama
Administration realizing how discontented the public is over the lack of
jobs and the strong possibility that the House of Representatives will be
lead by Republicans will his administration provide the necessary capital to
revitalize America's entrepreneurial community.

Marc Kramer
Columnist for Forbes.com, The Bulletin and Smart CEO
Entrepreneurial Commentator KYW News Radio 1060 AM
(Sunday-11:25 am, 2:55 p.m., 6:25 p.m., 9:55 p.m. 1:25 a.m. and 4:55 a.m.)
Contributing Editor of NetNews, a publication of the National Association of
Seed and Venture Funds
Author of Five Books
484-288-0594
www.kramercommunications.com

"The problem with most organizations is that they are governed by mediocre ideas."  So says retired Hanover Insurance CEO Bill O'Brien in Dance of Change.  In my almost 20 years of studying and consulting to organizations, as well as teaching their executives, I'm astonished at how bad ideas keep flowing into companies -- and how resistant most people are to letting them die. These ideas make companies weak, encourage employees to "quit and stay," crush innovation, and create cultures of despair.

MIT’s Deshpande Center for Technological Innovation was created in 2002 to help technologies and ideas developed in the Institute’s labs make their way to the marketplace. So far, at least 20 of those ideas have become the basis for real companies, which have raised over $180 million in funding and created more than 200 jobs. Now, the Obama administration may try to replicate that record by creating similar centers across the country.

Earlier this year, The New York Times said the Deshpande Center was at “the vanguard of a movement” underway at a handful of universities: the creation of centers that help to bridge the gap between the kind of basic research funded by government or foundation grants, and market-ready plans that can raise money from investors and venture-capital firms. That gap, the Times said, is often described as “the valley of death,” because it is so hard for new ideas to find funding to get them to the stage where they have demonstrated enough success to attract further financing.

The China we knew as the enormous economy largely fueled by cheap labor and inexpensive manufacturing has changed. Though happening slowly compared to its potential, China is becoming one of the most innovative economies on the planet and the birthplace of entrepreneurs like Robin Li, CEO of Baidu, who are entrepreneurial rock stars at home and around the world. Entrepreneurial capitalism seems to be taking hold in China. How is entrepreneurship overcoming the roadblocks of a planned economy?

Part of the answer is that the government, interested in developing the country's potential, is more and more interested in entrepreneurship, reflected, for example, in the National Natural Science Foundation of China’s (CNSFC) funding of the Chinese Panel Study of Entrepreneurial Dynamics (CPSED) which will measure business creation. China has also established the Entrepreneurship Foundation for Graduates (EFG) with a mission to create a favorable entrepreneurial environment by promoting commercialization of scientific and technological breakthroughs and inspiring innovative minds to cultivate creative and entrepreneurial talents. EFG is the proud host of Global Entrepreneurship Week/China.

A study has confirmed something many small business owners know from painful experience: The much-ballyhooed capital crunch is hampering small businesses’ ability to expand.

The Pepperdine University Private Markets Capital Project surveyed 559 privately held businesses and 1,430 lenders and investors nationwide and found that, although the majority (78 percent) of businesses had solid growth strategies, only 40 percent had access to the resources they needed to grow.

When things go wrong in startup companies, the VCs often reach for the easy answers:

- Let's get a "world class CEO"
- Let's sell the company
- Let's fire the VP Sales

But in my experience there are no silver bullets. Fixing a bad investment is really hard. First and foremost, you have to accept you've made a bad investment and then you need to decide if you want to do what it takes to fix it. And you need to accept that even if you do fix it, you will probably be left with a subpar investment from a return perspective. So be prepared to invest additional capital that will not meet your hurdle rates.

President Obama today named 10 researchers as recipients of the National Medal of Science, and three individuals and one team as recipients of the National Medal of Technology and Innovation, the highest honors bestowed by the United States government on scientists, engineers and inventors. The recipients will receive their awards at a White House ceremony tentatively scheduled for mid-November.

"The extraordinary accomplishments of these scientists, engineers and inventors are a testament to American industry and ingenuity," President Obama said. "Their achievements have redrawn the frontiers of human knowledge while enhancing American prosperity, and it is my tremendous pleasure to honor them for their important contributions."

Following is the list of top 10 blogs and resources we follow which provides interesting perspective and food for thought on entrepreneurship, education, innovation, technology, and rural development.

AbdulKalam.com

A resource for inspiration and nation building by APJ Abdul Kalam.

Prof. Anil Gupta’s blog

Prof. Anil Gupta is founder of Honey Bee Network, Executive Vice Chairman at National Innovation Foundation (NIF), Coodinator at SRISTI and a member of National Innovation Council (NIC), Chaired by Advisor to Prime Minister. His blog covers inspiring grassroots innovators, his experiences from Sodhyatra, a journey for exploring local creativity, ethical issues in conservation and prospecting of biodiversity, and how organizations can become more creative and innovative by learning from grassroots innovations.

Pluggd.in

Among the top technology sites in India, PluGGd.in profiles Technology Startups and serves the most insightful articles on entrepreneurship/strategy to entrepreneurs and VCs.

You might be looking at your significant other right now thinking, “Why can’t you be cooler, hotter, more understanding, less understanding, more fun, less fun, better with people, more discerning, more fashionable, less fashion-obsessed … Well actually, why can’t you be more like me?”

From the folks that brought you YouTubeTimeMachine and in the same vein as ManBabies.com, we present to you this concept taken one step further, I’mdatingmyself.com a site created by Justin Johnson that allows you to (um, self) indulge your wildest onanistic Photoshop fantasies.

Some of our favorites below. Happy Friday.