2010 Create the Future Design Contest

The Create the Future Design Contest was launched in 2002 by the publishers of NASA Tech Briefs magazine to help stimulate and reward engineering innovation. The annual event has attracted more than 7,000 product design ideas from engineers, entrepreneurs, and students worldwide. The contest's principal sponsors are COMSOL, PTC, and Tech Briefs Media Group.
This years contest is on and entries received till 11:59 pm ET on June 30, 2010.
Details: http://contest.techbriefs.com/contest-rules

India Forum for Clean Energy Financing

India Forum for Clean Energy Financing seeks environmentally beneficial, socially responsible and financially viable projects across India.The selected teams will be provided mentoring support and an opportunity to make presentation to investors in Sept 2010 in Mumbai. Budding entrepreneurs in clean energy space can apply before 31th May to Kavita Kaur at kavita@cleanenergyasia.net .
URL: http://www.cti-pfan.net/events_detail.php?eventsid=29

Indian Pharma firms get a billion -is market failure still a valid resaon for govt support

Abbott (US) bought Piramal Healthcare's domestic formulations business for $3.72 billion. This was preceded by Shantha Biotech getting $784 m , Ranbaxy getting 4.6 Bn etc from acquisitions. There is debate on shareholders value in this acquisitions, but little is said of government. All Drug firms had been receiving support from government (DST/ DSIR/DBT/CSIR) in the form of tax benefits, grants, soft loans, duty waivers etc. The rationale in Indian case is supposed `market failure ' hence govt intervention. Many government initiatives on Patenting, R&D promotion were outcome of lobbying by Indian drug firms. It is different from S Korean policy of supporting their biggies. How should govt react?
Govt should be happy that they played their bit role in value maximisation of Indian firms. It is also time to prioritise- there are horde of small , young firms wanting to grow the size of Piramal and get their billion. Why not focus on supporting young technology ventures ?

A New Geography of Knowledge in the Electronics Industry? Asia's Role in Global Innovation Networks

This report by Dieter Ernst, East West Center is available for download from:
http://www.eastwestcenter.org/fileadmin/stored/pdfs/ps054_2.pdf

Citizens agenda on Science and Innovation

EU wants to prioritize focus areas for Science and Innovation and how do they do it -they invite citizens to vote !!!
May be we can make a beginning by listening to invited experts to government meetings.
Source: http://www.reto2030.eu/

Raising early stage financing for a Silicon Valley startup

Secret History of Silicon Valley

Vijay Govindarajan: How GE is Disrupting Itself

IP Radio

IP radio, web casting service exclusively devoted to Intellectual Property is initiative of Brain league. There is news, debates, interviews etc and I liked listening to them.
URL:http://sinapse.intellectureindia.com/radio/

External Regenearaive Braking

New Energy Technologies, USA came with this regenerative system, where kinetic energy of vehicles wasted when slowing down, at stops etc is reused . Read at:
http://www.newenergytechnologiesinc.com/motion_power

This sounds familiar- several innovators came with this idea in different versions, few supported under TePP/NIF. All face challenge of engineering, customer identification/acceptance and scale-up. Will this be one of the ideas that `failed' in India but engineered to success in US?

Celebrating women innovators

No nation can progress if it ignores contributions and potential of half of their population. Journalist Susan Casey wondered why women innovators were not talked about in US and wrote a book on `Women Invent' which was an eye opener. (http://www.susancaseybooks.com/)

Now Famina has taken the initiative to write a series of articles on 'Women and Innovation' wherein they feature young women who have come up with interesting innovations. It includes a profile of the inventor/innovator and a detailed description of the product and its working.

Here is the opportunity to nominate your favorite women innovator. Send details to:

Anindita Ghosh, Features Editor,Femina,9818186174,
Anindita Ghosh <aninditaghosh75@gmail.com>

The reversal of the Chicago River

While cruising on Chicago river, the guide makes an interesting reference to a great innovation in public works- that is reversal of river flow. There was a time Chicago river was flowing into the great Michigan lake and carrying with it all city's sewage. At one time 12% of Chicago citizens were affected with water borne diseases and how did they solve it? They did do so by constructing canals to make the Chicago River flow backwards, away from the lake. The system of three canals was built from 1892 to 1922, The Sanitary and Ship Canal reversed the flow in the Chicago River toward the Mississippi River and Gulf of Mexico, diverting sewage away from the Lake Michigan water supply.
source: Top ten public works

Fazlur Rahman Khan

Visited Sears tower ( now called Willis tower), the world's tallest building for many years. There was a citation about one great structural engineer `Fazlur Rahman Khan. Name sounds familiar, I dig and learn he was from Bangladesh. Read more about the great innovator engineer called Einstein of Structural Engineering.
source: wikipedia

Acara Challenge 2010

Attended B plan competition at IIT, Chicago. And this was the first time I sat to judge US students. How do I rate them? The plans are not qualitatively different. But considering they are design under graduate students preparing plans for first time and developing solutions for a problem they are remotely connected, it was admirable work by the teams. What is the outcome of such elaborate exercise? The innovations , technical and service models , may not be pursued as like Indian students these US students would look for a career. The learning, on affordable innovations and cross country collaborations would be real.