If your company engages in external innovation, technology scouting is a necessary and important activity. In some important respects, it's a lot like cutting your lawn. How so? It's got to be done. It should be done regularly. Very few people LOVE doing it.If you put it off, the need won't go away.

Last week, I traveled to Pittsburgh to walk the INPEX Inventor Expo. It provided energizing inspiration. It also reminded me that a lot of clever, industrious, motivated (and friendly!) people are seeking their big opportunity.INPEX provides a highly visible show place for inventors.

Four months ago, I spoke with a senior executive from a global consumer products company. They had decided to extract value from several non-commercialized intellectual properties (IP) by outlicensing them. The striking aspect of this decision was that the company chose to outlicense cutting edge technologies they themselves had originally intented to practice, but after painful deliberation had decided not to, for strategic reasons.

While it may seem hard to believe because of the oppressive heat many of us are currently experiencing, another Fall youth sports season is almost upon us. A veteran of many seasons of youth sports spectatorship, my wife Lee and I have proudly watched our children's athletic skills develop as they have matured. We've also noticed that there are a heck of a lot of other parents who transport their kids from one sports activity to another, and then stay to cheer them on. This has translated to a huge market for sports spectator gear for amateur athletics.

"Mensch" is a Yiddish word that has been incoporated into American English and is used to describe a "good person", someone of integrity and honor. As in "John is a real mensch. He always does the right thing".

Each of us is always selling something...be it an idea, a business proposal, merchandise, or points of view. We all want to increase our personal effectiveness in influencing others. Whether one is an entrepreneur or a corporate go-getter, here are some suggestions for improving one's success odds in selling situations:

I have found that there is one reliable way to gauge a prospect's interest in a new business proposition: are they investing money in it? This may not be a terribly profound observation, but it's almost universally true.

This week, I wish to relate an experience I had in the mid '90-s, during my tenure as Marketing Director at Time Warner Cable in Cincinnati, Ohio, to an emerging phenomena in open source collaboration. It's a saucy topic, but see if you agree that there are some relevant similarities.

Microencapsules are used in a host of product applications, ranging from pharmaceuticals, to cosmetics, to flavors/fragrances and foods. Essentially, they provide two types of benefits: either to keep what is contained within the microcapsule (the core) from exposure to outside environment....or, to control the release of the material from the core.

A couple of weeks ago, I published a breakthrough technology offer for a microencapsulation process developed by a former NASA scientist. Not only can his process significantly reduce cost, it also can successfully microencapsulate live cells (which is currently extremely difficult to accomplish).