Iowa ranks 30th among the 50 states in population and 23rd in square miles, but it is number two in wind -- and it wants more.

Iowa now has over 25,000 wind turbines and doubled its proportion of wind-generated electricity from 7% to 14% in 2009, the biggest jump in the U.S. Estimates put the current 2010 percentage of Iowa's electricity coming from wind above 17%.

Because Iowa added 879 megawatts of new capacity last year (enough to power more than 200,000 homes), the state's installed capacity is now second only to Texas. It has 3,670 megawatts of total installed capacity, enough electricity for 880,000 homes -- in a state with only 3 million people. And it has over 14,000 megawatts of wind power awaiting approval.

BOSTON — After nine years of regulatory review, the federal government gave the green light Wednesday to the nation’s first offshore wind farm, a highly contested project off the coast of Cape Cod.

The approval of the 130-turbine farm gives a significant boost to the nascent offshore wind industry in the United States, which has lagged far behind Europe and China in harnessing the strong and steady power of ocean breezes to provide electricity to homes and businesses.

With Gov. Deval Patrick standing beside him, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar announced at a news conference at the Massachusetts Statehouse that the government had approved a permit for Cape Wind Associates, a private venture, to build the farm.

Using a single wind turbine, the University of Delaware's Lewes campus soon will shift from being an electricity consumer to a producer -- powering its campus and selling the surplus to the city of Lewes.

Workers completed installation of the wind turbine's blades at the Hugh R. Sharp Campus on Tuesday, and university officials will meet with the Lewes Board of Public Works today -- possibly to finalize agreements that will allow power produced by the turbine to feed into the PJM electric grid. The grid -- which serves Delaware, 12 other states and the District of Columbia -- coordinates the movement of wholesale electricity.

The UD project is in line with state efforts. Delaware officials have been pushing for sustainable energy alternatives and have supported the proposed NRG Bluewater Wind offshore wind project. The state also has agreed to buy the power.

The university's turbine is expected to produce 5.52 million kilowatt hours of electricity a year -- enough to power the Lewes campus and research facilities with some left to spare, said Jeremy M. Firestone, an associate professor of marine policy and legal studies. Firestone is one of several university officials involved in the project.

Secretary Clinton announced the launch of the “Secretary’s Innovation Award for Women’s and Girls’ Empowerment” this morning during remarks at the Summit on Entrepreneurship. Funded by the Rockefeller Foundation, the Innovation Award seeks to find and bring to scale the most pioneering approaches to the political, economic and social empowerment of women and girls around the globe.

The award is part of the State Department’s continuing emphasis on public-private partnerships, and is administered by its Office of Global Women’s Issues. The award, and the office, is founded on the premise that the major economic, security, governance and environmental challenges of our time cannot be solved without the full participation of women at all levels of society. The Rockefeller Foundation, as part of its mission to expand opportunity and promote more equitable growth, seeks to identify innovative approaches that can be scaled to address these challenges.

A panel of jurors, co-chaired by Ambassador-at-Large for Global Women's Issues Melanne Verveer and Rockefeller Foundation President Judith Rodin, will assist in the selection of two award winners in 2010. Jury members include Cherie Blair, Beth Brooke, Paul Farmer, Noeleen Heyzer, Anne Mulcahy, Sheryl Sandberg, Sheryl WuDunn, and Muhammad Yunus. Each awardee will receive a grant of up to $500,000 with which to expand the scope of their idea.

A new study published by professors at the Harvard Business School shows that angel-backed companies are more likely to succeed and show more growth than those funded by venture firms alone. Researched and written by William Kerr and Josh Lerner, the report found that companies with angel funding see between 30% and 50% higher growth figures in terms of website traffic, are more likely to survive for four years, and are also in a better position to receive further rounds of funding.

Angel investing has become more common, and as this report shows, this is largely due to the value and success it tends to breed. But why are angel investments the secret sauce for some companies? As the report points out, it's the intangibles that angels bring to the table that could be playing a large role in company success.

WASHINGTON: The US on Wednesday launched a Global Entrepreneurship programme and several other ambitious projects in an effort to bridge the gap with the Muslim world and take its engagement with the community across the globe to a new level of mutual trust and friendship.

The series of announcements made by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton at the conclusion of a two-day meeting was greeted by applause from the entrepreneurs from more than 50 countries who were invited by US President Barack Obama.

Clinton said the Global Entrepreneurship Program's first pilot programme had been launched in Egypt, and the US would soon launch a second programme in Indonesia, before expanding it to a dozen countries within the next two years.

Since I joined the social innovation (SiG) team at MaRS in January, author Daniel Pink’s name has come up in numerous conversations. I hadn’t read any of Pink’s books before, but after skimming over his earlier New York Times bestseller, A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the World, I quickly realized why he was such a popular conversation point in the social innovation space.

In this earlier work, Pink talks about how the workplace has evolved from a knowledge-intensive Information Age to a creativity-intensive Conceptual Age. In this new age, “right-brain” aptitudes like inventiveness, storytelling, empathy and a desire for meaning become the benchmark for success.

For the right-brain-thinking class of social entrepreneurs, this leads to some cool thoughts: What would the world look like if business and political leaders shared the character traits that drive the typical social entrepreneurs? What could be better than the prospect of naturally socially minded right-brainers eventually taking over the world (or more “empathetically”, leading a wave of worldwide social transformation)? Fantastic!

When combined with great resources, useful downloads, and soft sell approaches, webinars offer a way to engage prospects and customers at a higher level.

Here are 26 webinar services for you to consider. Most of these define meetings differently from webinars, in both number of participants and pricing, so if you simply want to run an internal meeting with remote users there are affordable options within this set of providers.

Most of these offer the ability for you to present from a video camera (web cam) or just from your computer microphone via VOIP or via a regular phone. Most do not recommend calling in from a cell phone if you’re the presenter/moderator. All of these allow you to share your screen, which is usually at the core of any webinar presentation.

April 27 (Bloomberg) -- To understand why today’s crisis is a truly terrible thing to waste, consider the Panic of 1873, says Richard Florida in his latest ode to economic innovation, “The Great Reset.”

That distant crisis boiled up from a sadly familiar bust in mortgages and building in Europe. It then rolled across the Atlantic to the U.S., where Jay Cooke & Co. collapsed, triggering the fall of other financial firms. The Long Depression had begun. Iron mills shut down; railroads went bankrupt; jobs evaporated, sowing hunger and homelessness. The economy contracted for 65 months.

Yet when we think of that epoch today, we usually recall a brighter legacy: a burst of revolutionary technologies such as Thomas Edison’s light bulb and first power station, Alexander Graham Bell’s telephone, George Westinghouse’s electric transformer. What happened in these dark years?

We've been having, let's say, some "interesting" interactions with folks, when we asked them to talk about their innovative experiences with finance and accounting BPO.

What's been a tad disturbing, is how many have tried to pass up any mild form of progress as "innovation".  Our lieutenant entrusted with plowing through these case studies is Bruce McCracken, who shares some of his recent experiences with us, when trying to explain what innovation actually entails.  Over to you Dr Bruce...

Innovation?*!@?#!?

Ask six people what represents innovation and you will get half a dozen answers. Three people discussing innovation will consist of a couple of people talking about two different things while the eyes of the third glaze over. Innovation is a term that epitomizes the semantic differential. But regardless of how it is interpreted, it is a very important element for potential buyers of BPO services.

Innovation is the cornerstone of our forthcoming report, “Reaching New Performance Thresholds with Managed Finance Services: Real-world Experiences”. As we progress, our contacts with providers have shown considerable variance in the perceptions of what innovation entails.

The 10th anniversary of World IP Day on April 26 provides us an opportunity to recognize that protecting intellectual property rights is vital to America's economic prospects — both here at home and in markets around the world. As the theme of this year's celebration, "Innovation — Linking the World," reflects, new and innovative technologies and creative advancements play a vital role in breaking down international borders and in creating and sustaining economic growth. Intellectual property is one of America's greatest assets and its protection is central to our economic prosperity and security as well the public's health and safety. Aggressive intellectual property law enforcement is crucial to our continued success and safety, and is a top priority of the Department of Justice.

Businesses that create and rely upon intellectual property, from large entertainment conglomerates to small biotech firms, make up among the fastest-growing sectors of the U.S. economy. These industries also represent a significant portion of U.S. exports, with intellectual property now comprising a significant — and growing — share of the value of world trade. The proliferation of worldwide Internet access and advances in traditional distribution methods, such as transportation and shipping, now allow American businesses of all sizes to market their intellectual property throughout the world. Digital content, whether embodied in software, books, games, movies or music, can be transmitted from one corner of the world to another almost instantly.

But these unprecedented opportunities for American businesses and entrepreneurs are put at risk by criminals and criminal organizations that seek unlawfully to profit by stealing from the hard work of American artists, authors and inventors. For every new technological advancement by American business, there is, unfortunately, a criminal who would seek to misuse it for his own illicit purposes. Criminals are responding to American innovation with their own creative methods of committing intellectual property crimes — from widespread online piracy to well-funded corporate espionage to increased trade in counterfeit pharmaceuticals and other goods.

VATICAN CITY (AP) -- Pope Benedict XVI said Saturday the Internet and the ongoing process of media convergence carry a risk of conformity of thought and control.

Benedict said that while the Internet is egalitarian and creates the opportunity to be informed and stay connected, it also comes with risks.

The pontiff noted that the digital divide adds to the gap already separating wealthy nations from poor ones. He also mentioned the "dangers of conformity, of control, of moral and intellectual relativism, which can already be recognized in the decline of critical spirit."

The pope was addressing a meeting on digital technologies and new media promoted by the Italian Bishops' Conference.

This is serial entrepreneur Cameron Herold speaking at TedXEdmonton. Cameron suggests 9 core entrepreneurial values we can teach kids in the classroom and at home:

attainment
tenacity
leadership
sales
intraspection
networking
handling (?)
boot strapping
customer service

His advice is primarily for parents, but also for youth educators and entrepreneurs who want to help out the next generation of innovators. If you want to raise your kids to think outside the box…this is one video you might want to check out.

WASHINGTON — Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the leader of American and NATO forces in Afghanistan, was shown a PowerPoint slide in Kabul last summer that was meant to portray the complexity of American military strategy, but looked more like a bowl of spaghetti.

“When we understand that slide, we’ll have won the war,” General McChrystal dryly remarked, one of his advisers recalled, as the room erupted in laughter.

The slide has since bounced around the Internet as an example of a military tool that has spun out of control. Like an insurgency, PowerPoint has crept into the daily lives of military commanders and reached the level of near obsession. The amount of time expended on PowerPoint, the Microsoft presentation program of computer-generated charts, graphs and bullet points, has made it a running joke in the Pentagon and in Iraq and Afghanistan.

“PowerPoint makes us stupid,” Gen. James N. Mattis of the Marine Corps, the Joint Forces commander, said this month at a military conference in North Carolina. (He spoke without PowerPoint.) Brig. Gen. H. R. McMaster, who banned PowerPoint presentations when he led the successful effort to secure the northern Iraqi city of Tal Afar in 2005, followed up at the same conference by likening PowerPoint to an internal threat.

More than 800 giant wind turbines spin off the coasts of Denmark, Britain and seven other European countries, generating enough electricity from strong ocean breezes to power hundreds of thousands of homes. China’s first offshore wind farm, a 102-megawatt venture near Shanghai, goes online this month, with more in the pipeline.

But despite a decade of efforts, not a single offshore turbine has been built in the United States.

Experts say progress has been slowed by a variety of factors, including poor economics, an uncertain regulatory framework and local opposition.

GLOVER’S REEF, Belize — As Alex Tilley powers his 15-foot skiff over the turquoise surface, a dark form slips across the white sand floor below. “Sting ray,” Mr. Tilley says.

For the next half mile, en route to the Wildlife Conservation Society research station here at Glover’s Reef in Belize, at least half a dozen rays are spotted moving beneath the surface. To Mr. Tilley, the presence of so many rays says a lot about the state of the reef here.

“The fish populations at Glover’s are still very robust,” he said. “This is definitely one of the healthiest reefs in the region.”

Mr. Tilley is the station manager and resident scientist here on Middle Caye, one of six small islands within the Glover’s Reef atoll. A Ph.D. candidate in marine biology from Bangor University in North Wales, Mr. Tilley leads a reef monitoring program sponsored by the Wildlife Conservation Society, a Bronx-based organization that helped establish the reserve here in 1993.

Europe's biggest cities believe the European Commission's definition of innovation is too narrowly focused on the commercial and research sectors. In an interview with EurActiv, Paul Bevan, secretary-general of Eurocities, said Europe's urban centres are teeming with examples of social, organisational and market-driven innovation.

"We get a little frustrated that the focus is on R&D and market innovation. Those things are hugely important to Europe's global competitiveness and we wouldn't want to diminish that. However, we are concerned that the role of city governments as innovators and facilitators of market innovation is not part of the discussion," he said.

Eurocities, which lobbies on behalf of big cities, expects to make this point to Innovation Commissioner Máire Geoghegan-Quinn when they meet in the coming weeks. EU innovation policy is about more than just "grand projects," said Bevan.

Launch: Silicon Valley 2010, co-presented by SVASE, Garage Technology Ventures and Microsoft, provides an effective and cost efficient platform for the next generation of emerging technology companies to launch their products to the world, in front of an audience of Silicon Valley’s top VCs, Angels, corporate business development executives, prospective customers and partners, bloggers and media.

Launch: Silicon Valley 2010 is designed to showcase products and services from the most exciting of the newest startups in information technology, mobility, digital media, next generation internet, life sciences and clean energy.

Launch: Silicon Valley 2010 will feature new companies that are ready for launch, but are not yet well known. These are companies that have a product or service available (as of June 8, 2010), but have not been out in the marketplace for more than a few months.

Companies that are interested in presenting their products at Launch: Silicon Valley 2010 should send an Executive Summary of no more than 2 pages to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. by latest Friday May 7, 2010.

AMERICA COMPETES ACT REAUTHORIZATION BATTLE BEGINS IN EARNEST — COMPETES UPDATES, FUNDING LEVELS & HOW TO GET INVOLVED ... RECORD-SETTING CONGRESSIONAL VISITS DAY 2010 UNDERWAY... ASTRA’s STATE R&D SHEETS and STATE STEM ED REPORT CARDS ISSUED... NEW BUDGET SCORECARD ATTACHED... PCAST ISSUES 3rd NANOTECHNOLOGY REVIEW... DEPT. OF ED. RELEASES BLUEPRINT FOR REFORM: “NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND” SUPPLANTED ... SBIR AWARD CAPS RAISED BY SBA... ARE THESE AMERICA’s MOST INNOVATIVE COMPANIES?... ASTRA’S INNOVATION BENCHMARKS SURVEY COMPLETED... SBIR PROGRAM REAUTHORIZED THROUGH JUNE ...

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