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On the eve of high-level policy discussions about the federal role in job creation, university technology transfer, and regional clusters, the Association of University Research Parks (AURP) releases "The Power of Place 2.0: The Power of Innovation--10 Steps for Creating Jobs, Improving Technology Commercialization, and Building Communities of Innovation". 

Innovation assets for creating jobs

"The Power of Innovation," an update to "The Power of Place: A National Strategy for Building America's Communities of Innovation," outlines the role the federal government can take using research parks and other innovation assets for creating jobs and remaining a front-runner in the global technology competition.

"In 'The Power of Place,' AURP demonstrated how geography and connected communities play a large role in innovation," said Brian Darmody, AURP President. "In 'The Power of Innovation,' we offer ten steps, from policy changes to selected investments, that Congress and the President can take quickly to leverage existing federal assets to create jobs, technology companies and communities of innovation, without creating new bureaucracies."

AURP releases "The Power of Innovation" shortly after the Senate Commerce Committee passed Senate Bill 583: Building A Stronger America Act, sponsored by Senator Mark Pryor. The bill will now be considered by the full Senate. Its companion bill, H.R. 4413: The SPRINT Act, has been referred to the House Committee on Science and Technology.

"Science parks provide a launch pad for economic activity in a community. They have a strong record of fostering talent, high tech innovation and job growth. Providing seed funding to create or expand these parks is a necessary investment for our economy as well as our global competitiveness," said Senator Mark Pryor.

The key to moving forward? According to Darmody, connectivity and flexibility in the federal government's investment in research spending, infrastructure support and other programs.

"The federal government, invests billions of dollars a year in research and development at universities and federal labs, and technology led economic development programs. We need better alignment among research universities, university research parks, technology incubators, sponsored program offices, and technology-transfer officials to meet better our nation's global technology competition," said Darmody.

About AURP: The Association of University Research Parks is a professional association of university related research and science parks. AURP's mission is to foster innovation, commercialization and economic growth through university, industry and government partnerships. For more information, visit AURP's Web site at www.aurp.net or contact Chelsea Simpson at chelseasimpson@aurp.net.

Violence isn't green, isn't sustainbale... and certainly not part of a sustainable community.  But dealing with the potential for violence is a sustainability issue.

"... an Army psychiatrist apparently went on a shooting rampage that left 13 dead and 27 wounded at the Fort Hood army post where he worked.

" An engineer who was dismissed for poor performance two years ago allegedly returned to his former workplace in  Florida and shot and killed one person while wounding five others."

Policies and procedures that ignore anxiety producing workplace issues aren't "best practices" for an organization.

Take a look at your HR policies and procedures and look for abusive loopholes that allow ineffective or corrupt activities to fester or thrive. 

What's NOT there can be an even greater impact than what's THERE.

• Are there ways to report abusive behaviors?
• Are there methods to negotiate conflicts?
• Is training available for non-violent conflict resolution?
• Is there a way to identify and handle employees or customers with mental health problems?
• How is a healthy, sustainable organization visualized for your organization?  Is that ideal spread through the entire group, and encouraged and rewarded when progress is made?

Policies that prevent violence get down to the basic question, "Do you care about your people and their real world problems and needs?"

If you do, you will take the time to find preventive solutions that foster good workplace relationships.  If you don't ... well, you don't belong in a free enterprise environment.  Good citizenship starts with caring about your fellowman...and your community.  Business is about more than money ... it's about being a valued member of productivity that fosters LIFE.

Commenting on the Yale University case, Richard Denenberg, author of the book The Violence-Prone Workplace, said in an interview with Workforce Management that "each workplace should have an intervention system and a system to report untoward incidence or chronic conflict so a conflict can be interdicted."

Biomimicry Institute, Autodesk Announce World's First Database of Nature-Inspired Design Strategies

Imagine if buildings were as self-sufficient as living organisms: if they could gather water, filter air, and adapt to local climate conditions. Imagine if the natural world could teach us everything we need to know about sustainable, efficient design.

AskNature.org

Now for the first time, a new online database called AskNature.org will bring nature's best design ideas to design tables around the world. The new project, created by the Biomimicry Institute and sponsored by Autodesk, was announced on Nov. 21 at the Greenbuild 2008 conference in Boston.

AskNature.org is a free, public-domain online library of nature's best design ideas, organized by function and explained with illustrations and in language relevant to designers.

AskNature.org is a project of the Biomimicry Institute, founded by Janine Benyus, the renowned author of the book Biomimicry: Innovation Inspired by Nature. AskNature.org is collaborating with the Smithsonian Institute of Natural History and E.O. Wilson's Encyclopedia of Life as a source of data for the portal.

The portal explains in nontechnical language and enhanced with illustrations to explain how things work. The portal helps architects, designers, and engineers access and understand sustainable design concepts so they can use them in their own products and projects.

Biomimetic Information

Autodesk believes that biomimicry, as a design paradigm, can provide our customers with design intelligence to help them make smarter design decisions - whether they are designing a building, a train, a shoe or a city. Looking ahead, Autodesk's goal is to make biomimetic information accessible to a wide range of users globally. Autodesk product teams are investigating technology intersections, including those with the Autodesk® Seek web service, which has already made select biomimetic products available to designers.

Architects, designers and innovators can use this resource to study life's approaches to sustainable design--for example, how butterflies create pigment-free color, or how plants split water to release hydrogen.

"The core idea is that there is no need to reinvent the wheel. After 3.8 billion years of evolution, nature has already found the solutions to the sustainability challenges humans face," said Janine Benyus, founder of the non-profit Biomimicry Institute and author of Biomimicry: Innovation Inspired by Nature.

AskNature.org--part search engine, part social network--is a place where biologists and innovators can meet, exchange information and design together.  The site also has a feature called "Thank a Genius," which encourages the investment of a portion of profits derived from bio-inspired innovations to go toward preserving the organisms and ecosystems that inspired the breakthrough.

AskNature.org is sponsored by Autodesk, a world leader in design innovation technology. With a user base of 9 million architects, designers and engineers around the world, Autodesk sees biomimicry as a revolutionary design concept that can help influence better design decisions.

A growing number of businesses are using biomimicry to solve their design challenges. As one example, the architectural firm HOK is planning a community development in India that seeks to mimic tree roots with its foundation structure, as a way to deal with soil stability problems. They are also designing roofs that shed water during monsoon season and also store water for use in the drought season--just like trees do in that environment. 

Biomimicry at Greenbuild 2008

Janine Benyus, along with renowned Harvard biologist E. O. Wilson  announce the launch of AskNature.org. on November 21, 2009.  Wilson's Encyclopedia of Life is integrated with the AskNature.org database.

For more information about the Biomimicry Institute: www.biomimicryinstitute.org.

For more information about Autodesk's role: www.autodesk.com/biomimicry

More and more people are becoming "cultural creatives" -- working in the information economy, at home, as freelancers and struggling with all the curbs and opportunities that must be weighed to make a viable living.  Jason Rohrer is one of these thought leaders.  He's gone further into the possibilities than most creatives I've visited with.  His ideas are worth noting.  And his solution -- asking patrons to support their favorite creatives takes us way back to the Renaissance Days...with today's Internet connections.

Jason Rohrer is an independent game designer, musician, father, and creative thought leader. Not that any of that pays a lot...except in peace, hugs and a roof over his head! But he is making a name for himself in the independent, open-source gaming niche. And he's struggling with a new business model for creatives in the post-copyright era. (Which is in full swing, in case you haven't put 2 and 2 together yet). Here's an excerpt from his website that explains his ideas about independent production and distribution of creative fruits of our labor:

"I write software. This is my full-time work, and I have no other "job." Examples of projects that I have created include MUTE, Monolith, Transcend, and silk --- and these are only the projects that have been released during the past year," so Jason introduces himself.

How a creator will make a living post-copyright

"Now we come to the hard part. No creator who depends on copyright for a living likes to face the fact that copyright is crumbling. Making a living without copyright may seem impossible at first: how can a creator survive without selling copies? I will first examine the solutions that have been proposed so far.

Since the recent copyright debate has focused on the medium of recorded music, only one solution has been widely discussed. Musicians will make money the way they currently make most of their money anyway: they will play live shows. Since it is impossible to make a copy of a live experience, let alone distribute copies of that experience in a free fashion, musicians will be able to make adequate livings without copyright. And, if you place this means of making a living on the reliability and productivity spectrums discussed earlier, it measures quite well: musicians are paid ahead of time (at the ticket booth) for doing immediate, productive work (rendering a live performance on stage). Also, the amount of money made from a live performance is tightly correlated with how many people benefit from that performance (in other words, how many people are in the audience).

However, this particular post-copyright "solution" leaves most other creators out in the cold. Programmers and book writers cannot give live performances, at least not performances that will sell many tickets. The same goes, in general, for painters, sculptors, photographers, and graphic artists. During the recent copyright debate, a catch-all solution has been proposed for non-musicians: donations. These creators will supposedly eke out livings post-copyright with the online equivalent of the tip jars commonly used by bar and street performers. Of course, the online equivalents will work better, since an online audience can be so much bigger than a bar or street audience (if just 1% of 1,000,000 visitors give a $1 donation, we have already started approaching a livable income for a year).

On the productivity spectrum, donations are not an ideal way to make a living, since new creators still do their primary productive work unpaid in hope of attracting donations after their works are released, while established creators attempt to live on the current streams of donations while they create their next works. And, I hardly need to mention how poorly donations measure in terms of reliability: just ask any street performer." Read More...

Jason's website is www.hcsoftware.sourceforge.net and I hope that if you play his games, you'll do the honorable, visionary, creative thing...and send him a few bucks to show your support for his create farming.