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Why we need a Federal Lab Innovation Authority: Unlocking Our Federal Lab Resources for Economic Growth

By

Brian Darmody & Richard Bendis

Each year over $30 billion is spent by federal laboratories for internal research and development, nearly as much as the federal government spends on university research. The approximately 1,000 federal research labs in the U.S. also employ tens of thousands of government scientists, including Nobel Prize winners, producing advanced technologies through their sophisticated research facilities.

Federal research labs, like the research university system, can be key players in helping the U.S. compete internationally through advancing technologies discovered at laboratories into the commercial marketplace.

But, the federal lab system is a government-run, complicated resource, choked by differing rules, oversight, authorities, experience, and motivation. A recent study by the Institute for Defense Analysis (IDA) confirms the reality. In the IDA report, businesses cite negotiation times for technology licensing to be too long and also that labs don’t effectively understand markets. And, conflict of interest rules largely prevent federal researchers from interacting with private sector business representatives. In short, the technology commercialization effort is not business-like, but government-like.

Indeed, the National Governor’s Association has identified fed labs as unrealized entities for regional economic development in the U.S. Through an executive memorandum last fall, the Obama Administration has asked federal labs to suggest new ideas to improve their performance, which were due last month.

Day After IPO, Mark Zuckerberg Marries Longtime Girlfriend Priscilla Chan | TechCrunch

What a week. After eight years, Mark Zuckerberg takes Facebook public at a $104 billion valuation. His longtime girlfriend Priscilla Chan gets her medical degree from the UC San Francisco. He has his 28th birthday.

And to top it all off, they get married today! Mazel tov.

Apparently, the wedding had been in the works for four to five months, according to a source authorized to speak on behalf of the couple. It wasn’t tied to the IPO, but rather Chan’s graduation from medical school on Monday.

Iowa Innovation Corporation

The Iowa Innovation Corporation is a private, non-profit created by the state legislature to be the state’s innovation intermediary. Despite recent setbacks resulting from inaction by the Iowa Legislature the Innovation Corporation continues to make strides establishing an innovation ecosystem in Iowa.

The Iowa Innovation Corporation sought to have the state legislature change the parameters of the Iowa Innovation Seed Fund Tax Credits. Despite broad preliminary support, the Innovation Corporation was surprised that the bill didn’t make it to the House floor. The bill, HF 2454, would have adopted changes in the tax incentive structure needed to raise the seed capital funding for Iowa’s start-up companies. These changes would not have cost taxpayers any additional money.

7 Hot Startup Tips for Raising a Killer Seed Round

There are many stories of hot startups raising killer seed rounds, and it can feel like money is flowing everywhere. Times might be good right now, but raising external capital is a complicated process, and it’s something every entrepreneur needs to think about carefully. Here are tips that can help you achieve your goals as quickly and pain-free as possible.

Six Reasons Young Professionals Now Pursue Entrepreneurship - TheStreet

It is the cry of every generation that moves from childhood and adolescence to the "real world" of adulthood. A work revolution built for the times, since the times are always a'changin' and parents just don't understand.

Young professionals are catapulting off the corporate ship that has characterized the working class for a couple hundred centuries into the cold dark waters of entrepreneurship, hoping to find paradise or at least freedom from the course they seem set for.

Yet these new generations of Millenials and Plurals are setting new rules for the games of career and advancement with a time-tested concept: Entrepreneurship

Why Top Innovators Make Time to Waste Time | Humanizing Technology | Big Think

The average consumer associates 3M with tape – a product so integral to our daily lives that we barely notice it anymore. But in 1925, as an alternative to the unwieldy, glue-covered sheets of paper it made obsolete, the product was a stroke of genius. In fact, 3M is consistently innovative in an astonishingly diverse array of technologies, from drug delivery to post-it notes to cellphones to nanobots. And they’ve been at it for over 70 years, since a sandpaper salesman with the nascent company invented the concept of a roll of tape as a pet project, in his off hours. 

How do they do it? While researching creativity for his book Imagine: How Creativity Works, Jonah Lehrer spent some time at 3M, studying the company culture that earned it the title of third most innovative company in the world in a recent survey of executives. 

For This Social Enterprise Accelerator in Philadelphia, It's All About Rigor - Forbes

Do social enterprise founders lack sufficient business rigor? Do they focus too much on the social part and not enough on the money part which, after all, is what fuels the venture (and makes investors happy)?

And, as a result, are they doomed to found companies that can’t, in business-speak, scale or get big enough to help a lot of the people they want to help?

Will Crowdfunding Crowd Out Venture Capital?

Venture capitalists have been getting a black eye to go with their blue shirts. A recent report from the Kauffman Foundation slammed VCs for “shortchanging” investors, pointing out that public markets deliver better returns. The next day, Fred Wilson, general partner at Union Square Ventures and prominent VC blogger, suggested that a flood of crowdfunding money unleashed by the JOBS Act could sweep away venture capitalists altogether.

It could happen.

“The game has changed,” says Paul Kedrosky, a senior fellow at the Kauffman Foundation who’s focused on entrepreneurship, innovation and the future of risk capital. “It’s obvious to everyone in the industry that crowdfunding is no longer just a toy.”

Are You a Closer? Take the Test - Steve W. Martin - Harvard Business Review

My last HBR blog post, How to Close a Sales Call, reviewed sales call closing techniques. Now let's analyze whether or not you are a natural born closer.

The drive to take command of a situation is instrumental to a salesperson's success. Salespeople with a weak dominance instinct are never quite in control of an account. They operate under the direction of customers or are at the mercy of the competition. They also find it more difficult to close the sale because they are uncomfortable exerting their will over the customer.

Dominance is gaining the willing obedience of the customer. The customer listens to your opinions and advice, internalizes your recommendations and agrees with them, and when you close the sales call follows your course of action. Your personality greatly influences the way in which you establish dominance during sales calls.

How to Run a Legal Business On the Side

From blogging to handling a one-off PR project for a former client, today’s digital economy offers new opportunities for bringing in a little extra income. But when does a casual project turn into a business, and how do you keep that business legal?

According to the IRS, an activity is considered a “business” if it has made a profit in three of the past five years. Since you’re supposed to report all income, the IRS defines gross income as income “from whatever source derived.” This means that if you’re making money doing anything — whether that’s selling ads on your blog or selling items on eBay — the tax authorities will want their cut.

7 Ways to Gauge Your Commitment to Your Startup

We’ve all heard the old joke “In a bacon-and-egg breakfast, the chicken is involved, but the pig is committed.” This quote epitomizes the true essence of commitment. We all know at least one self-professed entrepreneur who claims to committed, but seems to treat it like a part-time hobby, won’t put any personal skin in the game, and is quick to give up when things are tough.

There are no middle roads to real commitment, and if you are not ready to fully commit to all the rigors of a startup, you are better off sticking with your current role. For your calibration, here are some characteristics you will recognize in a truly committed entrepreneur:

Three Tips for Innovators: Move Nimbly, Open Wisely and Fail Gracefully | Input/Output | Big Think

Vijay Vaitheeswaran surveys the landscape of the global economy and sees "wicked problems," to borrow a phrase from the subtitle of his bestselling new book, Need, Speed and Greed: How the New Rules of Innovation Can Transform Businesses, Propel Nations to Greatness and Tame the World’s Most Wicked Problems. He sees a global middle class that is being squeezed and left out of the benefits and opportunities that breakthrough technologies have created. He sees an educational system that is seriously outdated and divorced from the real needs of 21st century knowledge workers.

And yet, Vaitheeswaran is an optimist. Yes, it is true that our current disruptive age is more dangerous and riskier, Vaitheeswaran argues you can find "enormous opportunities for profit--you must move nimbly, open wisely and fail gracefully." This is not just advice for big players. Vaitheeswaran's formula is designed for the little guys, the upstarts, to compete. So what does he mean by "Move Nimbly, Open Wisely and Fail Gracefully"

Three Ts of Business Innovation Leadership

Gartner analysts see many CIOs and IT leaders who are frustrated that they are unable to lead technology related innovation in their companies. IT is too often pushed back into a supplicant role. So I’m always on the lookout for examples of people in business who are really breaking through walls of disinterest and cynicism, against the odds – to see how they are doing it.

I recently had the opportunity to chat briefly with the CEO of a company that is trying to advance human spaceflight (no – it wasn’t Richard Branson).  Now that’s a tough sell. I mean, many of us may fantasize about going into space one day .. but we don’t really believe it will happen. Imagine you had to sell the idea that it can be a reality. That it is worth funding. That government should take it seriously. That one day space tourism could be a major industry.. not easy. But this gentleman is making quiet progress.  So I asked him how. What would he say to other leaders seeking to learn from his technique. The answers he gave me boiled down to three things.

Number of Those Working Past 65 Is at a Record High - NYTimes.com

THE retirement dream seems further away for a lot of baby boomers, and they appear to be responding to that by holding on to their jobs if they can. But that may have worsened the employment prospects for younger workers.

Labor Department figures indicate that the percentage of workers over the traditional retirement age of 65 is at a record high. But, the figures show, job totals fell sharply for men under 55 during the recession and have only started to recover, while the proportion of women ages 25 to 54 with jobs also slid and is close to the lowest level of the last two decades.

The 100% Economy: Why the U.S. Needs a Strong Middle Class to Thrive - Jim Tankersley - Business - The Atlantic

Nick Hanauer toddled through his early years in a cramped Greenwich Village apartment. His mother waited tables at the Bitter End. His father worked low-level jobs on Wall Street and as an editor at a publishing house. When Nick was 5, his folks left New York to join a family pillow-making business in the Pacific Northwest. They raised their three sons in a three-bedroom house in the suburbs and sent them to public schools. After Nick, the eldest, earned a philosophy degree at the University of Washington, he went to work for his father. In his 30s, he scraped together $45,000 to invest in a small start-up that sought to revolutionize American retail. It was called Amazon.com.

This is how Nick Hanauer has come to be standing in the owner's box at a Seattle Sounders FC professional soccer game, snacking on chicken fingers, and listing the very expensive things he owns.

The Darwinian Evolution of Startup Hubs

This weekend finds NYC in between Internet Week (which I largely missed because of my London trip) and Disrupt NYC (which I will be at on and off this coming week). So the development of NYC as a startup hub is very much on my mind. And so I thought I'd post about the development of startup hubs.

This theory, which I like the call The Darwinian Evolution of Startup Hubs, is not new and I certainly didn't come up with it. But I think it is important for everyone to understand and so I'm going to blog about it.

If you study Silicon Valley, what you see is something that looks like a forest where trees grow tall, produce seeds that drop and start new trees, and eventually the older trees mature and stop growing or worse, die of disease and rot, but the new trees grow up even taller and stronger.

6 Ways to Get a Tech Job Without a Tech Degree

Jobs in tech are stronger than ever. In 2011, Amazon hired 22,500 people, bringing its workforce up to 56,200, and Google hired 8,000 people — more than ever in a single year. The technology sector is booming, and while not all of these jobs require an engineering degree, getting a gig can be harder than getting into an Ivy League school. Competition between businesses is too steep for firms to hire those who aren’t qualified, and demand for these positions is greater than the skills that exist in the marketplace.

Incredible job opportunities exist, if you know how to get them. Yet, college students are still earning educations for jobs that technology will eliminate in the next decade, and people without backgrounds in technology are stuck in unemployment or at the dead-end of a long career, hoping their field will be revived before their luck runs out. But none of these people are actually stuck.

You Can’t Be the Victim as an Entrepreneur

People with a victim mentality should never be entrepreneurs. We all know the role of starting and running a business is unpredictable, and has a high risk of failure. For people with a victim mentality, this fear of failure alone will almost certainly make it a self-fulfilling prophecy.

I’m sure you all know someone who is the perennial victim. The problem is that most of these people aren’t likely to accept your assessment, so it’s hard to help them. They don’t see themselves as others see them, and many simply refuse to accept the reality of the world in general.

Getting Into A Startup Accelerator : Managing :: American Express OPEN Forum

Swirling in your brain is an idea for the next big technology company. You have the drive, the revenue model, even the team, but a few roadblocks stand in your way, namely access to funds and mentors. Wouldn’t it be great if someone gave you $25,000 (in exchange for a percentage of equity) and three months to do nothing but work on your company, talk with the best minds in the industry and get in front of potential investors?

This dream is realized for entrepreneurs granted access to startup accelerator programs. Such programs are popping up all over the country and grooming promising companies into big-time successes. Most choose around 10 companies to participate in an intense three-month program culminating with a "demo day" in which entrepreneurs present to investors and hopefully attract enough money to keep running.

House leaders tie jobs bill to innovation economy - Framingham, MA - The MetroWest Daily News

Positioning job creation at the top of his “to-do-list” with just over two months remaining on the legislative calendar, House Speaker Robert DeLeo and top House Democrats outlined a bill Monday afternoon that DeLeo said would allow the state to “directly compete with and outshine many of our closest rivals.”

The bill includes a new $50 million innovation investment fund to support research and development at universities and research centers where House leaders say the state’s economic strengths lie. Projects would need to secure at least $3 for every $1 of state funding provided through the new capital program.

A new manufacturing grant program to support small businesses, increased funding to advance large economic projects, and expanded efforts to expedite permitting were also included in the job creation legislation presented Monday afternoon at the capitol with labor and business leaders. 

Blog | WOBI : World of Business Ideas

In a recent WOBI webinar, we hosted a discussion with Dr. Henry Chesbrough of the Program for Open Innovation at Berkeley Haas, as well as speaker at this year’s World Innovation Forum New York 2012, along with Bill Schulz of Walden University. The conversation was focused on open innovation and how companies can begin to incorporate outside ideas/participation/talent, and then develop it to be put back into the market. Here were our top ten takeaways:

1. Innovation is becoming Open Innovation

2. This means it is about taking down the fences around your Research and Development facilities

3. Start breaking down internal silos preventing open sharing of ideas

Cleveland Clinic to help Notre Dame commercialize medical innovations

Following on the heels of two hospitals, the University of Notre Dame has become the first university to strike a collaboration with Cleveland Clinic aimed at commercializing medical innovations from its faculty and researchers.

Through the collaboration, Cleveland Clinic Innovations will essentially do for Notre Dame what it does for the Clinic — help turn employee ideas into marketable products that generate financial returns for the organization.

“By collaborating with Cleveland Clinic Innovations, we are hoping to create marketplace opportunities for our biomedical and health innovations to be a force for good,” said Robert Bernhard, Notre Dame’s vice president for research, in a statement.

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New video and photo sharing startup aimed at military & conflict veterans wins AppSumo Lean Startup Competition

AlphaStripe will allow Videos, Pictures and Stories from Global Conflicts, Past and Present, to be viewed, shared and archived

(Scottsdale, AZ)

A new Arizona-based startup, which provides an online platform for military veterans and participants in wars and conflict situations to record and share their stories, has won the AppSumo Lean Startup Challenge, winning a prize package valued at $50,000 that includes software development from New Context. AppSumo is a daily deals website based in Austin Texas which was setup in 2010 that strongly advocates the Lean Startup methodology.

AlphaStripe involves a number of Arizona-based entrepreneurs, including US Marine and Air Force veterans, as well as previous student entrepreneurs of Arizona State University. AlphaStripe is a global, online networking platform for military service members, military families, civilians, and humanitarian organizations to share war-time and conflict zone stories in video, photo, audio, and journal formats. The site is currently in beta testing with a group of military personnel and veterans, and will officially launch in the coming weeks.

“We are honored to win the AppSumo competition and are excited to be launching AlphaStripe to the wider market very soon,” said Eli Chmouni, co-founder and CEO of AlphaStripe. “Based on our research, veterans want to share their stories of conflict but do not want to do it on public social channels, such as YouTube, where their serious and emotional video is posted next to videos of kittens.”

MIT $100K Entrepreneurship Competition Awards $100,000 Grand Prize to Startup That Connects Users' Online Content to Web Applications - MarketWatch

CloudTop, a startup that has created a new set of tools that enables developers of Web applications to integrate users' online content in a unified and simple way, was awarded the Robert P. Goldberg $100,000 grand prize Tuesday night after beating out seven other finalist teams during the MIT $100K Entrepreneurship Competition finale held on the MIT campus.

This year's teams of finalists in the business plan contest -- whose offerings included, among others, the cryopreserving of fish eggs and new patent-pending wireless throughput-increasing technology -- emerged from a pool of 215 teams. A panel of judges made up of entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, scientists, and industry professionals chose CloudTop on the strength of their business plan and presentation.

Northeastern launches new Center for Entrepreneurship Education | news @ Northeastern

North­eastern is launching a new center that unites pro­grams and ini­tia­tives across dis­ci­plines to train stu­dents and alumni to become the next gen­er­a­tion of entrepreneurs.

The North­eastern Uni­ver­sity Center for Entre­pre­neur­ship Edu­ca­tion — made pos­sible thanks to a $5 mil­lion invest­ment by uni­ver­sity trustee Alan S. McKim, MBA’88, the founder and chairman of Clean Har­bors, Inc. — cre­ates a pipeline that teaches entre­pre­neur­ship and busi­ness skills; helps stu­dents and alumni develop new ven­tures; and brings together promising, viable start-ups with a well-connected net­work of angel investors and ven­ture capitalists.