17 September 2010: Revolutionary artificial foam which captures and converts the sun's energy more effectively than living organisms, has won The Earth Awards 2010.

The Photosynthetic Foam won the $50,000 prize after being selected from over 500 entries from around the world. The team pitched to an audience of leading CEOs and investors at a Dragon's Den style Summit held in partnership with the Financial Times at Marlborough House, London.

University of Cincinnati Professors David Wendell's and Carlo Montemagno's Photosynthetic Foam is a more land efficient means of producing biofuels because it is not reliant on soil as it is a synthetic material.

The UC Professors' manufactured system of photosynthesis means that all captured energy is converted to sugars, unlike natural plant photosynthesis where a large amount of energy is used to maintain the life of the organism. In short, the foam is a far more efficient and versatile energy production platform, presenting new opportunities for developments in the field of renewable energy.

Voting is now open in the Top 40 Innovation Bloggers Contest hosted by Blogging Innovation.

If you’re a first time visitor to Blogging Innovation, we have nearly 1,700 articles on site with the aim to make innovation and marketing insights available for the greater good. Please check out our search feature, jump to a category, or try a random post or two at the bottom.

People who vote (or who nominated someone) will be entered into the prize drawings for a range of great prizes (more than $10,000 worth), including:

1. 3 signed advance copies of Stoking Your Innovation Bonfire by Braden Kelley (get it before its October launch date) – priceless
2. 1 ticket to the World Business Forum (October 5-6, 2010 in New York City) – $2,500 value
3. 1 ticket to the Future Trends 2010 conference (October 18-20, 2010 in Miami) – $2,500 value
4. Signed copy of The Power of Pull by John Hagel III and John Seely Brown and Lang Davidson (signed by John Hagel III and John Seely Brown)
5. 1 ticket to the EPIC 2010 conference (October 27-29, 2010 in New York City) – $2,500 value
6. 1 ticket to the World Innovation Forum (June 7-8, 2011 in New York City) – $2,500 value
7. Four copies of “Personality Poker” by Stephen Shapiro – $104 value
8. One 10-pack of Personality Poker cards from Stephen Shapiro – $125 value

Voting Ends on the 19th!

You can vote here:  Blogging Innovation » Voting Open – Top 40 Innovation Bloggers

NOTE: You'll have to scroll down to the bottom of the page this link opens.  You vote by typing "Rich Bendis" in the comments area and submitting your comment.  Thank you for your continued support.

Author: Braden Kelley

Corporate branding–it’s all the rage these days. Social media blogs wax on about the companies doing it right, the companies doing it wrong, and the companies that have yet to get involved at all. As a small business owner, it can be a little intimidating. How do you go about building a brand while building a business at the same time? Well, there a few places you should start.

Below you’ll find five ways to begin building your brand online. You’ll actually find it’s pretty painless.
1. Know what you want it to be.

You can’t build a brand if you don’t know what you’re trying to build. Social media is about amplifying your voice in a way that connects with customers. So what do you want your voice to sound like? Who are you in your space and what do you want people to associate with you? Everything you do on the Web and off of should work to strengthen that. Your actions now have a purpose – to create the identity you’re after. Once you know this, you have a road map for everything else.

Cambridge, England's position as the Silicon Valley of the UK seems to have "weathered the economic downturn well" according to a report today in the Economist.

Cambridge, one of the largest clusters of its kind in Britain, or Europe, is home to the Cambridge Science Park, and in many ways, the region is a dead ringer Silicon Valley.

PITTSBURGH, Sept. 15 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Four organizations were named winners of SSTI's 2010 Excellence in TBED Award, serving as national models for states and regions investing in science, technology and innovation to grow and sustain their economies and create high-paying jobs.

"We're very excited to share with the country the success stories from these four organizations," said Dan Berglund, SSTI President and CEO. "Communities and regions across the nation working to transform their economies can learn from the positive results demonstrated by these organizations selected in part for their ability to be successfully replicated."

American car buyers want to be green, but their motives are mixed. In a recent survey by car-shopping site Autobytel.com, 57% of those surveyed said they are likely to consider a hybrid or other green car in the next year and 75% would consider it in the next 2 to 5 years. Of that group, about half said their lean toward green was for economic reasons or higher gas mileage, some 40% for a combination of environmental principle and reducing dependence on foreign oil — with the balance liking cool new technology.  Whatever your reason, if you want to save money while reducing tailpipe emissions and oil use, hybrids are not your only choice.

One disadvantage of hybrids is that they generally cost more than their gas-only counterparts. “The price premium for hybrids is still a deterrent for most car buyers,” says Michael Omotoso, senior manager for power train issues at J.D. Power and Associates. He expects hybrids to rise from their current 2.5% of total sales to about 9% by 2016 ( See What You’ll be Driving in 2016).

I am delighted to announce HuffPost's 2010 Game Changers -- 100 innovators, mavericks, visionaries, and leaders who are changing the way we look at the world and the way we live in it. Whether standing front and center in the spotlight or working under the radar, they are having a game-changing effect on their fields -- and inspiring others to follow in their footsteps.

Innovation has always been part of HuffPost's DNA. So we're pleased to recognize those who are pushing the envelope. Our Game Changers operate in multiple worlds but, whatever the arena, they share a common trait: a willingness to look at things and take the risk of saying, "I think I have a better way."

Last year I had the good fortune to raise some venture financing for my business. I did have a slight advantage because one of my employees had previously been a venture capitalist and gave me some advice. However, the process was still challenging. Here are seven key pieces of advice based on what I learned:

1. Understanding your business is key.

Venture capitalists will pick apart your projections, operations and vision. You probably already have a great instinctive feel for your business, but the challenge when dealing with VCs is being able to succinctly articulate this. Keep in mind that VCs are financiers, so the ability to talk about your operations, growth and other aspects of your business using numbers is critical to impressing venture professionals.

Last week I mentioned some important page elements that small business owners should focus on to improve the SEO and findability of their content. Today I want to focus on one of the most important page elements of them all – the Title tag– and a few things small business owners can do to maximize this tag and get the biggest benefit from both users and the search engines. It turns out a little tweaking can make all the difference.

Below are eight tips to help you write absolutely tantalizing Title tags. Feel free to share your own tips below.

* Use branding: When users are on your site, you want them to know they’re on your site. Constantly reinforcing this can go a long way in helping you to build your brand. One way to do this is to include your site/company name in the Title tag of each of your pages so that users are constantly seeing it. This keeps your company name top of mind as users navigate and become familiar with your Web site and burns it into their brain. Remember, people buy based on brand. You want to make sure you’re building and reinforcing yours whenever you can.

At the recent Conversion Leaders Summit on improving website performance, Danny Dover, an SEO specialist with SEOmoz.org, provided some fresh insight into search engine optimization.

One of the thought leaders in the space, his presentation covered a six-point checklist to help improve any website's SEO.

Why does SEO matter?

SEO drives traffic to your website for free. The traffic-driving alternative is to buy pay-per-click ads. Organic SEO links—the actual search results generated by Google, Yahoo!, etc.—generate about 90 percent of all clicks, while PPC ads only generate 10 percent. When done correctly, SEO can create a lot of free traffic.

Much of the coverage on this blog is focused on social ventures emanating from the United States. Although I try to keep track of the shifts, trends, and new ideas in global social entrepreneurship, the reality is that different places have their own scenes, their own leaders, their own constraints, their own opportunities. Despite that, the composition of this blog's audience suggests just how international this field really is.

Yesterday I decided to look at the Facebook Fan Page (or Like page, or whatever its called these days) for the blog and used their "Insights" feature to learn more about the audience. Insights is a basic analytics suite that gives the managers of pages the ability to see things like how many people have been active 'liking' or commenting on shared links, where members of the community come from, what language they speak, and other demographic information.

This is the third article in a series on what it takes to be a great angel investor (and why this should matter to entrepreneurs).  Part 1 – Access to Great Deal Flow – is here.  Part 2 discussed the need for domain knowledge since merely “joining the right club deal” will in no way determine success.

Not everybody agreed on the need for domain knowledge.  Paul Kedrosky made the case for “naive optimism” being an important part of startup success.  Chris Dixon made the point that he thinks investors should look for the founders to have the domain knowledge rather than them having domain knowledge themselves.  Me?  I’d rather be Roger Ehrenberg with a thesis around data-centric companies and base my investment decisions on the skills I’ve developed in my career.

Seattle's Steve Sauer (a former Boeing interiors engineer) has done up his 182 sqft apartment over two levels, with cleverly segmented nooks and crannies for different uses. It's as snug as a houseboat, and looks like it'd be a great place to live: "I wanted to compress my home to squirt me back out to the community.That was one of the philosophical reasons. I want to be able to shop daily, not store a lot and eat really well."

Voting is now open in the Top 40 Innovation Bloggers Contest hosted by Blogging Innovation.

If you’re a first time visitor to Blogging Innovation, we have nearly 1,700 articles on site with the aim to make innovation and marketing insights available for the greater good. Please check out our search feature, jump to a category, or try a random post or two at the bottom.

People who vote (or who nominated someone) will be entered into the prize drawings for a range of great prizes (more than $10,000 worth), including:

1. 3 signed advance copies of Stoking Your Innovation Bonfire by Braden Kelley (get it before its October launch date) – priceless
2. 1 ticket to the World Business Forum (October 5-6, 2010 in New York City) – $2,500 value
3. 1 ticket to the Future Trends 2010 conference (October 18-20, 2010 in Miami) – $2,500 value
4. Signed copy of The Power of Pull by John Hagel III and John Seely Brown and Lang Davidson (signed by John Hagel III and John Seely Brown)
5. 1 ticket to the EPIC 2010 conference (October 27-29, 2010 in New York City) – $2,500 value
6. 1 ticket to the World Innovation Forum (June 7-8, 2011 in New York City) – $2,500 value
7. Four copies of “Personality Poker” by Stephen Shapiro – $104 value
8. One 10-pack of Personality Poker cards from Stephen Shapiro – $125 value

You can vote here:  Blogging Innovation » Voting Open – Top 40 Innovation Bloggers

NOTE: You'll have to scroll down to the bottom of the page this link opens.  You vote by typing "Rich Bendis" in the comments area and submitting your comment.  Thank you for your continued support.

Author: Braden Kelley

India's most populous city, Mumbai, may soon have a world class Innovation Park, where 25,000 scientific experts from over 100 countries will work. 

Maharashtra Chief Minister Ashok Chavan has given nod to set up world class Innovation Park in Mumbai, an official release said, adding the Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority (MMRDA) will set up the park.

The right level of communication and information flow for a startup changes as it evolves and is always challenging, but it’s imperative to have a communications strategy for shareholders at all stages of a company’s development.

In the earliest stages, communication is pretty easy and straightforward. With just a founder or two and a few angel investors, regular communication is natural. You don’t even have to think about it because it happens with ease. But as time passes and venture capital rounds increase your investor base, the amount of communication with shareholders tends to become less frequent.

For a while, that’s not a problem. But things can – and will – change.

If you are vaguely familiar with the Middle East startup scene, it’s impossible to escape the name Fadi Ghandour. From his office in Jordan, Ghandour has had a heavy hand in laying the foundation of the Arab world’s rising tech scene.

As a fresh-faced graduate of George Washington University, Ghandour returned to Jordan as a young man to start Aramex in 1982. It took 16 years for his transportation and logistics company to get the proper licenses to operate in the region, but by 1997, Aramex was ready to go public, becoming the first Arab company to hit the NASDAQ. In the last two decades, Ghandour has also become a prominent angel investor in the region. Notably, he was one of the first investors in Maktoob— the Arab internet portal that was sold to Yahoo last year for $164 million. Recently, he’s made 14 other investments, including bets on Asuaq, Jeeran and Twitvid.