University College London is launching a five-year campaign to boost the role of enterprise at the university.

The ambitious aims include doubling income from licensing, sponsored research and other key commercial activities; creating 500 new enterprises on- and off-campus; offering courses in entrepreneurship to all students and training for staff; and providing sabbatical leave for academics involved in innovation.

“Being enterprising and having a broad portfolio of enterprise activities is central to the core mission of a university. And a core mission of the university is social good, through education, scholarship and relationships with the outside world,” Steve Caddick, professor of chemistry and UCL’s Vice-Provost (Enterprise) told Science|Business.

The question of how to better exploit the intellectual potential of Europe, through completing the European Research Area (ERA) by 2014, is being debated in a ministerial conference and an informal meeting of the EU Competitiveness Council, taking place in Sopot, Poland, this week.

This is the first ministerial conference to discuss strategic requirements for the realisation of ERA, the EU’s single market for knowledge. The vision is that ideas and those responsible for generating them circulate freely without legislative or economic barriers. The ERA therefore needs to remove obstacles to researcher mobility and to cross-border co-operation.

The completion of ERA is a formal objective of the Lisbon Treaty, and in February 2011 the European Council endorsed the Commission’s plan, as set out in the Innovation Union strategy, that ERA should be completed by 2014.

Who is going to create the new jobs America so desperately needs to get our economy back on track? This question is a subject of ongoing debate. Will small businesses create them? Big business? Well, according to a new survey by online employment platform oDesk, new jobs are already being generated by remote hiring.

oDesk found what it called “a significant shift” in how businesses are hiring and how workers are finding jobs:

“Businesses are growing by leveraging remote contractors to build distributed teams, and contractors, in turn, are earning more money and even starting their own small businesses.”

At present we are seemingly in a state of flux, we are learning to move from linear innovation models into more dynamic ones that are increasingly forming around innovation ecosystems.

Our whole understanding of innovation is changing; we are evaluating and changing our existing focus from closed (internal orientation) into open (external orientation) thinking for accelerating and improving our innovation performances.

Regretfully we are not yet fully equipped to manage within these new innovation ecosystems. We need to give the factors an increasing focus and lead into a better emerging theory of leading or good practice.

These days, reading a headline that includes the word “economy” often means the text below contains some pretty depressing news. But a new program in Philadelphia proves that adding the word “creative” can reverse this effect.

Despite what the conservative PR machine might have you believe, it’s small to moderately-sized, locally-owned businesses that create the most jobs in America, not the giant corporations that are fighting so hard to avoid paying slightly higher taxes.

Companies have long used criminal background checks, credit reports and even searches on Google and LinkedIn to probe the previous lives of prospective employees. Now, some companies are requiring job candidates to also pass a social media background check.

A year-old start-up, Social Intelligence, scrapes the Internet for everything prospective employees may have said or done online in the past seven years.

Then it assembles a dossier with examples of professional honors and charitable work, along with negative information that meets specific criteria: online evidence of racist remarks; references to drugs; sexually explicit photos, text messages or videos; flagrant displays of weapons or bombs and clearly identifiable violent activity.

Startup work environments are always chaos, but they can still be great environments to work in, or they can be terrible. Whether yours is terrible or great, that same tone flows out to your customers, and regulates your productivity inside. You as the founder are the starting point and definer, so you need to get it right.

What does it take to create a positive workplace culture? I did some research on this, and compared it with my own experience. I’ve concluded and the experts agree that it’s all about understanding people, and overtly optimizing the factors that drive them at work.

Recent college graduates who are interested in entrepreneurship but not yet ready to leap into self-employment may want to check out a new program that will soon place young workers at startups.

Based on the Teach for America model, Venture for America will offer 50 positions at a variety of new companies in Detroit, New Orleans, and Providence, R.I., with the goal of growing both numerically and geographically in coming years. The nonprofit organization aims to both provide jobs for smart-minded young people and help new companies succeed in cities that need them.

The Mozilla Foundation, a nonprofit corporation that makes the Firefox browser, released an experimental tool last week that could dramatically change the way people identify themselves online.

Instead of handing your log-in credentials over to countless different websites, or to a site like Facebook or Google that then confirms your identity with other sites, Mozilla's BrowserID tool stores your identity information inside your browser. This keeps that data out of the hands of companies that could be hacked, or that may track your log-in behavior for commercial purposes.

Global climate change, our ever-growing population and social disruption will set the stage for a host of new business opportunities. Some of these have already emerged while others are still in earlier stages of incubation.

Whether you're looking for a new career, an investment opportunity, or thinking about starting a new business, these are the areas to watch:

Desalination Water purification Alternative energy Energy efficiency Weatherization

One of the surest signs of a bubble is when you start to hear the phrase, “This time it’s different.” That’s my cue to clap my hand over my wallet and head for the nearest exit. That same mentality is starting to bubble up around seed stage valuations. Investors are justifying those higher valuations with comments like “social media and viral loops make marketing more effective” or “If things don’t work out, we can sell to Google as a talent acquisition.”

It all comes down to the fact that all the previous norms of seed stage investing have gone out the window. The problem is that this shift partially ignores two important factors: History and economics. Here’s why valuations still matter.

If you were to look under the hood of any big-name IPO these days – such as LinkedIn, Pandora, and someday, Facebook – you’d see a highly sophisticated coordination of capital sources that fueled each to that highly coveted spot: Seed or “Angel” money that got the idea off the ground was followed by early-stage venture capital investors who percolated the company to viability, making it attractive to up-round VC investors and maybe some “mezzanine” financiers. It’s all very integrated, deeply “vertical” and it’s why the $50 billion-a-year U.S. venture market is the envy of the world.

Contrast that with the $10 billion raised for social enterprises that are trying to solve stubborn social problems like food security, safe drinking water, or energy access and maybe one day make a profit as well.

A friend of mine received an anonymous offer for $120, via GoDaddy, for a domain he had owned for years called FuzzWire.com. He did not know the nature of the offer--that is, whether it was from a well-financed startup--but he at least knew that since it came from GoDaddy, and was not just some personalized plea sent by email, that he should test the offers limits. So my friend, an entrepreneur, matter-of-factly countered with $10,000. By the week's end, the interested party agreed to the offer and moved $10,000 to escrow.

Such transactions are common in Silicon Valley, where the right domain name can still propel a startup's chances of success. But given the increasing popularity of apps, there's a question of whether owning the right domain name is as important as it was when the world was driven by dot-coms and browsers rather than iPhones and Android devices. In other words, if you launch an app today--say, Foursquare, for example--is it necessary to purchase Foursquare.com if the primary use of the service is through the mobile app, which does not require a web address?

Ever since co-founder Larry Page took over as CEO from Eric Schmidt in January, Google has been getting a lot more, well… businesslike. It has been closing down or winding up a variety of projects and experiments, including Google Health and Google PowerMeter, and now it has announced that it is closing the door on its entire Google Labs venture. Some features will be folded into existing products, but many may simply disappear altogether. While this may be an admirable sign of maturity, it could also make the Google culture less experimental — and therefore also less interesting, and ultimately less successful.

In his first major address as the new CEO of the company last week, discussing Google’s latest earnings results, Page described how he has been trying to get the web giant to focus on a smaller number of product groups and lines of business (his remarks were also simultaneously published as a Google+ post). The Google co-founder said that management had already done “substantial internal work simplifying and streamlining our product lines” because the company needs to put “more wood behind fewer arrows.”

In an effort to generate revenue and jobs, New York City is inviting universities to build a science and tech facility within city limits, Mayor Michael Bloomberg said during a speech on Tuesday (July 19). The city is offering “prime New York City real estate—at virtually no cost—plus up to $100-million in infrastructure upgrades, in exchange for a university’s commitment to build or expand a world-class science and engineering campus here in our city,” Bloomberg said, adding that building sites are available at three “underutilized” locations in NYC: Governors Island, the Navy Yard, and Roosevelt Island.

The mayor estimated that in its first 30 years, an applied science campus could spin-off 400 new companies and create more than 22,000 permanent jobs.

Newswise — DURHAM, N.H. – New research from the University of New Hampshire Center for Venture Research shows that stereotypes about gender affect the investment decision-making of women, even among successful women.

The research by Jeffrey Sohl, director of the UNH Center for Venture Research, and John Becker-Blease, of Oregon State University, is presented in the July issue of the journal “Entrepreneurship, Theory and Practice.” It relies on a sample of data from 183 angel investment groups from 2000 to 2006 collected by the Center for Venture Research, which holds the most complete database of angel groups in the United States.

Researchers found that when an angel investment group had a small percentage of women, the group was more cautious about investing. However, when women comprised more than 10 percent of the investment group, their presence became associated with increased investments. The results surprised the researchers.

When it comes to mentoring entrepreneurs and startup companies, there are many sources, motives, and methodologies.

Some mentors engage because they want to give back. Others mentor because they have a particular expertise to share or because they want to become involved more as a leader, consultant, or service provider in the community.

Many angel investors mentor to apply their specific experience and know-how to help more startups become fundable or to help companies that have been funded grow and succeed.

"Angels consist primarily of entrepreneurs and/or corporate executives who collectively are experienced in many industries, many technologies, and many phases of entrepreneurial business success," says Bob Goff, founder and president of Sierra Angels of Incline Village, NV. "They are genuinely motivated to improve entrepreneurs' success and to attain an improved ROI."

Working with family at a small or medium sized business is hardly unusual, but it often comes with complications the relatives don’t anticipate. Typically, people underestimate the pressures running a startup might put on family relationships – and if you’re not careful, it can damage both the business and the family.

My twin brother Darr, and I have been business partners for the better part of two decades. During that time, we’ve set up and guided a number of successful internet start-up ventures. By necessity, that has made us well versed in how to have a successful professional relationship with a family member.  It’s not easy, but there are a few things that can help keep the personal relationship intact as you remain focused on building a successful business:

Trust is paramount – All successful business partnerships must be built on trust, regardless of whether it’s with a family member or a colleague. And as you might expect from twin brothers, Darr and I have an implicit trust in each other, and know that we can rely on the other to make decisions and act in a way that puts the business before personal feelings.

The return of bicycle manufacturing to American shores might seem improbable with nearly 99 percent of all bikes sold in the U.S. now made in China, Taiwan or other low-wage Asian countries. But two bicycle industry veterans are among those who believe that conditions are right for some of that manufacturing to come home.

The U.S. bicycle industry began moving to Asia in the early 1980s, and there has been a gradual shutdown domestically, from about 15 million bikes manufactured annually in the U.S. to about 350,000 today. Most of the bikes built in the U.S. now are by small, high-end niche builders.

Jay Townley, a former long-time executive with the iconic brand Schwinn and now a bicycle industry consultant, believes factors are converging to bring significant bicycle manufacturing back to the U.S. He cites two major reasons: the three to four weeks of shipping time from Asia to the U.S., and the decreasing attractiveness of China as its labor rates increase.

EBAN is delighted to release its new White Paper about European early stage impact investing. Early stage impact investing is investing in for-profit businesses that have the specific objective of creating positive social and environmental impact the way business is conducted and/or the products realized. This White Paper explores this emerging sector, why it is interesting for early stage investors, how they can get involved and what EBAN will do to support its development.

***

Early stage impact investing is investing in for profit businesses that have the specific ob- jective of creating positive social and envi- ronmental impact, in the way the business is conducted and/or the products are realised.

The market is very young and it still in a diverse and nascent stage, which makes measurement of its size difficult. Eurosif, which has been collect- ing data on this market since 2007, predicts that the share of impact investing of high net worth individuals’ portfolio will grow from 11% to 15% by 2013. EBAN will publish its first data on this sector in 2011.

EBAN believes that early stage Impact Investing should and is poised for growth since:

There is growing evidence that investors can do well and do good at the same time. This is at- tracting the interest of younger generations of investors, women and family offices. This will grow the business angel investing sector as a whole.

There is an increasing need for sustainable business and consumer behaviour. This is cre- ating new opportunities for impact entrepre- neurs which will require financing, especially from the private sector as government support diminishes. Other public and private players in the ecosys- tem are becoming active in this area, creating opportunities and needs for collaboration.

Download the PDF