Entrepreneurship & Innovation

Google in conjunction with the Nature publishing group and O'Reilly Media sponsors the Science Foo Camp each year. The conference is by invitation only and brings together people from art, science, engineering, and music to share ideas. The participants create the schedule and give the talks.

Angel investor and entrepreneur Glen Hellman has written a short blog describing the 10 Signs Your Child Has Startup CEO DNA.

Phil McKinney of HP describes The 7 Immutable Laws of Innovation in his blog. He says that organizations that don't commit to innovation for the long run are doomed to fail.

Google has been studying the impact of clean energy innovation on the economy. Yes Google and this surprises me too, but they find that clean energy technology creates 1.1 million jobs/year, and adds $155B/year to the GDP. These numbers would be higher if the USA adopted a clean energy policy. For more info, Google has set up a enerny innovation website. This is all very exciting, but clean energy innovation is on the brink due to cuts to renewable energy programs by congress.

Invntree describes how to do a patent search in this informative blog. One of the search tools to find global patents can be found at Espacenet.

Dr Michio Kaku says that Science is the Engine of Prosperity in his blog, but for some reason our political system and population do not seem to value science. I had for gotten that the supercollider construction began in 1993, but then congress decided it was too expensive or something and scrapped it. I keep thinking that this was a huge lost opportunity for great jobs, to build a robust ecosystems of companies, and educate tons of students in high tech science. This would have give the USA a 17 year lead in understanding and enhancing the Standard model and innovations in many fields. We might have found the Higgs particle. It appears this is happening in medical sciences with stem cells, and in aerospace too.

Harvard Business Review says that mentoring is the best way to retain talent. The HBR also provides 5 questions to ask a mentee to help the mentoring process be more effective.

Entrepreneur magazine has produced this short video on how to find an angel investor. A personal introduction is the best way to meet investors found by telling everyone you know that you are looking for money. That is, use your personal network to find investors. A good resource on angel investors is the Angel Capital Association.

A big mistake many entrepreneurs and inventors make is making a public statement about their invention or idea before filing for the patent. That is public disclosure = lost patent rights. The Startup America website has a great summary on patent rights.

Several articles were posted at Startup America,Huffington Post, and others that provide advice to entrepreneurs. These include:

• 9 Startup Lessons Learned From a Serial Entrepreneur by Stella Huh, Founder of SecondLeap
• IndieGoGo Founder: Crowdfunding Tips For Entrepreneurs On The Hunt For Cash Slava Rubin Founder of IndieGoGo
• How Scientists and Engineers Got It Right, and VC’s Got It Wrong by Steve Blank
• Access to Expertise – Ingredient for Startup Success by Glen Hellman at Driven Forward