Two trends are driving the current job market: globalization, where everybody is becoming part of the economy, and innovation, which increases productivity and allows fewer people to do the same jobs. These two trends will not slow down during the next few decades. How should students train in college to build careers under these conditions?

The situation is similar to 150 years ago, when 98 perecent of people farmed. Now we need only 2 percent of the population to look after the farms. The other 96 percent are engaged in businesses that did not exist 150 years ago. Similarly, the globalization of the workforce and the concurrent productivity gains will take care of people’s current needs. New graduates over the next decades will be part of businesses that don’t exist today.

What are these new businesses? We know that the world faces several big challenges such as energy, sustainability, poverty, education and healthcare. We need to solve these problems, but no one is sure how they will lead to specific businesses. This is the challenge and the opportunity for new graduates.

New graduates who want to be players in the new economy will need a strong work ethic, rigor in their thought process, and entrepreneurial energy. In the old economy, individuals mastered a specific skill and practiced it over the course of a 50-year career. In the next 50 years, new graduates will probably change their field of practice every 10 years. They need a good work ethic to be able to learn new things. They need rigor in their thought process to learn to learn. They need to be flexible and be entrepreneurial to adapt to new businesses.

No matter what students study, whether it is technology, journalism, art, medicine, business, or law, they will have to be entrepreneurial to survive and prosper in the next 50 years. In universities they learn to solve problems. In addition to solving problems posed by others, students need to learn how to pick problems that they are passionate about solving. A big part of being an entrepreneur is to learn to pick problems that you want to solve.

I am a big believer that students should create experiential learning opportunities during their university years. They should treat the whole world and its problems as their laboratory, as opposed to confining themselves to their campuses. Picking a problem that they feel passionate about and finding a way to solve it builds confidence and gives students a taste of taking charge. New graduates have to be entrepreneurial and innovative in creating opportunities for themselves as opposed to waiting for others to do it for them.

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As President Obama prepares to roll out a jobs program in a nationwide address tomorrow, the first 50 people to enroll in a six-month program to retrain workers for jobs in biofuels, sustainable biotechnology, and other cleantech industries are graduating today.

The students began their technical training earlier this year with classes at UC San Diego Extension and Mira Costa College under a two-year, $4-million grant from the California Department of Labor.

“These are the technician positions that are required in the research and development stage, but will also be needed [for] production,” says Stephen Mayfield, a professor of biology at UC San Diego and director of the San Diego Center for Algae Biotechnology, or SD-CAB. “We also have a program with Mira Costa [community college] which is geared more towards straight production, so those are the real green-collar jobs.”

Mayfield, who also is a co-founder and chairman of the scientific advisory board at the San Diego algal biofuels startup Sapphire Energy, says the emerging green sector will need both technicians and production employees. Ultimately there will be more jobs on the production side as new commercial facilities get built.

“The program is funded by the state as a training development project, meaning the state funded us to develop the certificate program.” Mayfield says. “We get two years for that, and during that phase there is no cost to the students. After that time the program will be run on a tuition basis, [which will cost about] $5,000 per student for the six-month program, and [after] that it should be self-sustaining.”

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Written on the whiteboard on the first day of my entrepreneurship class at Tufts was a sobering statistic: 80 percent of startups die in their first four years. There exist a variety of factors that can kill a business. Luckily, Boston is full of programs and organizations designed to help entrepreneurs navigate through the startup process. The National Collegiate Inventors and Innovators Alliance’s Sustainable Vision VentureLab, led by James Barlow, is a five-day intensive incubator program for companies doing business in emerging markets (it ran August 26-30). I initially thought that it would be an abbreviated version of a conventional business class curriculum, somewhat similar to what I had experienced in the five-day boot camp organized by MassChallenge: what are the best ways to structure a company, to manufacture, distribute, and market product X in market Y, and how to go about getting VC funding?

On the contrary, it is a back-to-basics introspective program that emphasizes the human element of a business, such as being able to communicate your value proposition in an effective and clear manner. This may sound elementary. The reality is that this is the foundation for any business. James compared it to humming a song in your head. When vocalized you can clearly hear the tune and the words, even though the person across from you may be shooting you a puzzled look. This is a problem many entrepreneurs unknowingly struggle with. Having become so familiar with the intricacies of their businesses, they have lost the ability to break it down into its simplest and most coherent forms. When hearing these entrepreneurs pitch, the listener finds himself unable to understand the core of their idea, akin to listening to a hummed song.

Oftentimes, the founders themselves are confused and are unknowingly in disagreement about what the value proposition of their businesses is. Even if they are aware of the value proposition, they are unable to translate it in a way that speaks to the wants and needs of their market. That is why the VentureLab program focuses so much on deconstructing the human element aspect of your business. This is often a tricky process because it requires you to examine your business in a manner in which you are unaccustomed to and uncomfortable doing. At Roof For Two, we looked at all the factors that could sink our company and discovered the need to connect with different influencers in our product market. It became an exercise in stitching together our business and value proposition in a manner that resonated with each one of these individual actors. For example, our company provides a motorcycle weather accessory for riders in India to shield themselves from the monsoon rains. It saves them time in their commute and increases the efficiency of businesses whose employees lose time when seeking shelter from the downpour. When we started looking beyond our end user and examined other people potentially impacted by our product, we began asking ourselves very different questions from the ones we had originally posed. We had initially asked: What do Indian motorcyclists look for in a product? How will our product affect their lifestyle?

However, during VentureLab we looked beyond the commuter towards businesses, institutions, and society. We asked ourselves very different questions: What businesses stay open during the heavy monsoon season? Would small businesses have incentives to subsidize our product for their commute sensitive employees? How do we best communicate our value proposition to both the commuters and the businesses that depend on them?

Besides the introspective portion, part of the learning process in programs such as VentureLab comes from the interaction between participants who can help one another, despite operating … Next Page »

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Micah Kotch, operations director of New York City’s only cleantech incubator, has developed a bit of a complex. The incubator, called NYC ACRE (Accelerator for a Clean & Renewable Economy), is housed within New York University’s better-known technology incubator on Varick Street. Since ACRE started up in July 2009, Kotch has watched a procession of media—from the Wall Street Journal to MSNBC—come to spotlight the tech side of the incubator, while virtually ignoring the ten or so companies on the cleantech side. Why? Because mobile apps and other emerging technologies are sexy, whereas “cleantech is viewed more as infrastructure,” Kotch says.

Maybe so, but cleantech is one part of New York’s infrastructure that the city has pegged as vital for its economic growth. In 2007, the New York City Investment Fund—a private group that promotes the diversification of New York’s economy—released a report urging local governments to support cleantech. That encouraged NYU’s Polytechnic University to apply for a grant from New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA).

The University won a four-year NYSERDA grant of $1.5 million, and ACRE was born.

Since then, the New York City Economic Development Corporation (NYCEDC) has signed on as a partner, and Mayor Michael Bloomberg has publicly declared his support for the incubator’s mission. Cities “need to be bold” when it comes to figuring out new ways to reduce their impact on the environment, the mayor said during a press conference last fall at ACRE.

Kotch is fully on board with the mayor’s mission, and even though ACRE is barely two years old, it has chalked up some impressive metrics to prove NYC can be a player in cleantech. ACRE companies have raised $8 million so far, created 125 jobs, and … Next Page »

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We saw acquisitions in the life sciences, Internet, and mobile sectors, as well as financings for startups spanning high-tech industries in New England.

—Akiban Technologies, a Boston database software maker, added another $3.2 million to its $6.5 million financing from 2009. The company, whose previous investors include North Bridge Venture Partners and Foundation Capital, used to be called Akiba.

—World Energy Solutions (NASDAQ: XWES of Worcester, MA, said it was selling 1.5 million shares of common stock (at $3.60 per share) to several institutional investors, to put toward new investments and acquisitions in the energy management sector.

—Google’s $700 million acquisition of Cambridge, MA-based ITA Software, a developer of airfare pricing and shopping software, can now go through, thanks to a proposed settlement by the U.S. Department of Justice that includes stipulations requiring Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) to play fair with other travel site competitors. The settlement comes in response to a coalition of other travel technology companies opposing the deal last fall. The Department of Justice said Google must continue to license ITA’s software, and must offer it to other companies in the field, among other things.

—Cambridge-based Blueprint Medicines raised $40 million in a big Series A financing led by Third Rock Ventures. The stealthy company is focusing on personalized cancer treatments, using molecular and cancer genome data and a proprietary chemical-compound library.

—Zixi, a Waltham, MA-based maker of software enhancing the delivery of HD content over the Internet, said it raised $4 million from Schooner Capital, and TV execs Sidney Topol and Maurice Schonfeld.

—nSphere, a Boston firm focused on connecting users with relevant content from databases online, acquired Boston-based mobile couponing startup Peekaboo Mobile, for a sum reported to be seven figures.

—Digital Lumens, a Boston-based company combining LED lighting with networking software to lower commercial energy costs, got $10 million from its existing investors, Black Coral … Next Page »

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Groom Energy, a Salem, MA-based company focused on corporate sustainability and energy assessments, said today it has pinned down $2.6 million in funding from a group of angel investors, led by Eyk Van Otterloo, founder of the investment management firm GMO. The money will fund its shared-savings agreements with corporations, where it installs products like solar panels and LED lighting for companies and outsources energy maintenance and monitoring. Groom, whose customers include General Electric and Thermo Fisher Scientific, also plans to add to its engineering team and open up new offices.

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Everyone has their own green environmental “a-ha” moment. Maybe it’s seeing birds drowning in oil, or paying $4 a gallon for gas, or reading about the plastic trash heap the size of Texas swirling around in the Pacific Ocean. For Susan Hunt Stevens, it was discovering her young son had serious food and environmental allergies, which prompted her to examine which ingredients and toxins were causing the health problems.

Her discovery came back in 2007, and it roughly coincided with Stevens and her family moving into a 19th-century Victorian home outside of Boston. So, in part to create a better living environment for her family, she decided to do a major “green renovation.” This effort has included generating electricity from waste energy (boiled water), using light-emitting diodes and compact fluorescent lamps for lighting, buying energy-saving appliances and plywood cabinetry made without formaldehyde glues, insulating the roof with healthy spray foam, installing bamboo shades and cork floors, using low-flow faucets and toilets, composting kitchen waste, and so on.

Along the way, Stevens decided to blog about the experience. She knows a thing or two about online media and consumer marketing, having been a longtime senior executive with The New York Times and Boston Globe, where she oversaw the news site Boston.com, among other things. [Disclosure: Stevens joined Xconomy’s board of directors last month---Eds.]

But when she originally started blogging about green issues, she got questions from readers about the industry that she couldn’t answer. That started her on the road to taking classes at the Boston Architectural College, where she learned cutting-edge green design.

Stevens is now the founder and CEO of Practically Green, a stealthy Web startup based in Boston that combines many of the things she has done in her career. I sat down with her last week to talk about the company and its significance to green sustainability issues, online business models, and technology trends like social networking and videogame mechanics.

The first thing to know about Practically Green is that it’s not just another “green content” site, or how-to blog about sustainability and the environment. Instead, think of it as being like Foursquare or FarmVille for the green lifestyle, mixed with WeightWatchers.com in terms of accessibility and support networks. And throw in a little Amazon.com and TripAdvisor for consumer reviews and e-commerce. The site uses social networks, gaming mechanics, and expert content to help consumers figure out “how green” they are, find reputable green products and services, and connect with other like-minded people so as to stay motivated to live a greener lifestyle. The big idea is to help consumers lead healthier lives, while also aiding the environment—and saving on their electric bill.

It’s also an intriguing example of the “gamification” trend we’ve been reporting on lately, whereby consumer websites and companies are trying to boost traffic, engagement, and customer loyalty … Next Page »

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Ecohaus, the Seattle-based retail chain selling eco-friendly building materials, has raised $3.8 million in new financing, according to regulatory documents filed last week. CEO Rik Tokuno told Venture Wire that the funding, which came from existing investors Catamount Ventures, Mindful Investors, and Selby Ventures, will help to support the chain’s newest location, which opened this spring at 1090 Bryant Street in San Francisco’s SoMa neighborhood. Ecohaus sells sustainably produced flooring, kitchen and bath fixtures, and the like, as well as home energy efficiency and monitoring technology.

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There has been a lot of talk in the past year (and the past month) about the need to build a critical mass of cleantech and alternative energy companies in the Northwest. Now one venture firm in Portland, OR, is doing something about it, by assembling a talent pool of people with the ability to run serious cleantech companies.

Pivotal Investments, an early-stage venture fund focused on cleantech and sustainability, is organizing what it’s calling Pivotal Leaders—a new network of community-nominated entrepreneurs and executives who will be voted the most promising candidates to lead new companies in this emerging sector. Nominations are open now, and Pivotal is looking to compile and vet a list of roughly 50 top cleantech business leaders who have ties to Washington, Oregon, Idaho, or British Columbia, by mid-June. The plan will be to organize four or five networking events around these leaders, in different cities, in the second half of the year.

The proposed network strikes me as exactly the sort of dedicated effort the Northwest needs to get more cleantech investors in Vancouver, BC, for instance, to talk to entrepreneurs and big companies in Portland and Seattle, and vice versa. That, in turn, could help call more national attention to the region and spur its efforts to become a true leader in energy and sustainability—or at least better compete with companies in California and other parts of the country. “We’re interested in building the ecosystem here for green, cleantech jobs,” says Gregg Semler, co-founder and managing director of Pivotal Investments. “This is an enormous economic opportunity for the region.”

Semler says the Pivotal list will address “a problem that deals with the future.” That is, the community knows who’s running cleantech companies today, he says, but what about five years from now? “To attract capital, you need strong business leaders who can captain these companies. That builds confidence in the investors and sources of capital,” Semler says.

Pivotal Leaders will most likely be made up of a mix of early-stage entrepreneurs, executives from big companies focused on areas like software or green buildings, and others from traditional business backgrounds who have a strong interest in energy and green technologies. Semler didn’t name any names or offer up any specific examples yet, but he stressed that nominations will be open for the next few weeks, and that Pivotal wants to hear from the innovation community.

On the investment side, Semler says his venture firm is currently looking at potential deals in solar power, green buildings, agriculture, and energy efficiency. Although cleantech opportunities are still at an early stage, he says, the markets they address are big, global, and mature. And, of course, part of Pivotal’s plan with its new network is to build relationships with the best young talent the Northwest has to offer—and then consider investing in their startups.

“Our hope is that when these people decide to start a company, they’ll call us,” Semler says. “We want to get to know these people, so they feel confident that we’re a great source of capital and have a strong network to help them grow their company.”

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When Eric Fitch decided to start his own company a few years back after working on a string of other startups, he knew clean energy was the way to go. “I couldn’t escape the gravity of this renewable energy thing,” he says.

He thought the industrial and manufacturing arenas would be the best targets, as industries such as transportation were already teeming with renewable energy innovators. Luckily for Fitch, he had friends in the right places, one of those being Boston’s Harpoon Brewery. Fitch, a home brewer himself, knew firsthand how much waste beer production creates. Harpoon let him come in and analyze its operations, allowing him to build a model of its energy use and output—and to begin brewing up ideas about how the organic waste produced in the system could be converted to renewable energy.

“While it’s quirky and cute, it’s also a good business model,” says Fitch, who has his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in mechanical engineering from MIT and a decade’s worth of experience at startups in industries as diverse as biotech, sports equipment, and software under his belt. “The beer brewing industry is the best marketing industry in the world,” he explains. Fitch’s aim is for his company, Arlington, MA-based PurposeEnergy, to excel in the beer market, and then let its first customers become the startup’s loudest advocates as it expands into other industries.

Brewing and bottling beer creates organic byproducts at almost every step of the process, from spent grain and yeast to protein deposits. The resulting waste is mostly water with a high concentration of solids, which companies have to pay to transport offsite to treatment facilities that charge by the pound to make the water safe enough for disposal.

PurposeEnergy, incorporated in 2007, has come up with system that uses a process called anaerobic digestion to turn the byproducts from brewing into renewable fuels. Installed on-site at a brewery, the “PurposeEnergy Biogas Facility” would convert much of the organic waste into methane, the main component of the natural gas that most breweries use to fuel their plants. In doing so, it would cut costs for energy and byproduct remediation by about … Next Page »

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“The easy answer is, ‘Of course it will,’” said panel moderator Jesse Berst, the head of Redmond, WA-based research and consulting firm GlobalSmartEnergy. He was referring to the title of last night’s event in downtown Seattle organized by the MIT Enterprise Forum: “Will Green Return the Green?”

It’s a reasonable question, especially here in Washington state, where things have been fairly quiet on the cleantech and energy front as of late. Despite the presence of such companies as EnerG2, Verdiem, Optimum Energy, Powerit, Bio Architecture Lab, Areva T&D, Avista, and Imperium Renewables, much has been made of the region’s lack of competitiveness with other parts of the country like Silicon Valley and New England—not to mention global competitors like China. (I’m using a broad definition of “green” tech here to include both alternative energy and sustainability.)

To discuss business and policy leaders’ concerns around financing opportunities, regulations, resources, and hot areas in the green sector, the MIT Enterprise Forum (together with a team of volunteers led by Seattle law firm Graham & Dunn) convened a distinguished panel:

—Berst (the moderator), a global authority on smart grid technologies and economics, and an Xconomist.

—Patricia Irving, CEO and founder of Richland, WA-based InnovaTek, which develops technologies for sustainable energy and environmental safety.

—Rogers Weed, director of the Department of Commerce, Washington state (and a former Microsoft vice president).

—Roger Woodworth, vice president for sustainable energy solutions at Avista, the Spokane, WA-based energy and utilities company.

—Bradley Zenger, managing director at Pivotal Investments, an early-stage cleantech venture investing firm in Portland, OR.

(By the way, all of the panelists are involved with the Cleantech Open, which is gearing up for its 2010 business plan competition.)

Berst kicked things off by saying that dozens of smart grid companies around the world have been raising $50-100 million or more, and many will be going public in the next 12 to 18 months. In terms of Washington state, he said, “We’ve got some real challenges here around creating a real cleantech cluster. The one thing you can’t fake is proximity. We have a lot of islands of innovation scattered 150 miles apart.” He also talked about the entrepreneurial culture of the region: “We don’t have a lot of people with the urgent desire to crush” competitors in Silicon Valley, Boston, New York, and so forth, he said.

Irving, whose company makes fuel cells and other technologies for partners like Boeing, summed up the mindset of consumers in the Northwest. “We love to be green, but we’re not willing to take the risk that’s necessary to shift our paradigms,” she said. “Part of the challenge is we haven’t been willing to stand up. Sacrifices need to be made.”

Weed, who has been on the job for 10 months since being appointed by Gov. Christine Gregoire, said cleantech is one of Washington’s top three opportunities for growth. But the state faces two key challenges, he said. One is the budget situation. “The state is struggling to make … Next Page »

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In the past, Microsoft has had a reputation for being slow moving in the areas of green technology and energy-saving innovation. However, in the last two years, the corporation seems to have turned the tide, stepping up to the sustainability plate and implementing a number of company-wide green initiatives.

First, it hired Rob Bernard as chief environmental strategist, a position created specifically for him. It began integrating power management capabilities into its products—the latest release of Windows 7 and Microsoft Hohm include new energy tracking and management features. Partnerships were formed with the Clinton Foundation, the Carbon Disclosure Project, and the European Environmental Agency. And, most recently, Microsoft sent a 12-person delegation, led by Bernard, to the COP15 Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen.

Microsoft’s director of environmental sustainability, Francois Ajenstat, has been with the company for nine years, working in various groups including Office and SQL Server. He moved to sustainability, a personal passion of his, 18 months ago. His job includes everything from working with product teams to reduce the harmful environmental impact of their customers to talking with governments and NGOs around the world about climate change, and working on Microsoft’s own commitment to going green.

On the last day of the conference, Friday, I spoke with Ajenstat about how the company was received in Copenhagen and what its current environmental strategy entails.

“A lot of people join Microsoft to change the world,” he said. “This is clearly an opportunity where I could go in and have a significant impact on the world by also helping change the company.”

Here are a few edited highlights from our conversation:

Xconomy: Microsoft has recently put much more emphasis on sustainable technology. Why now?

Francois Ajenstat: The way that I describe how things were originally is we had a lot of what I call “well intentioned chaos”—a lot different people within the company doing great work, but not necessarily a line to a broader vision or broader strategy. Sustainability has moved to the forefront of everybody’s minds, both in terms of our customers asking Microsoft how we can help, government talking to Microsoft, our employees looking for what the company was doing, shareholders. It was almost more of a whole mountain of requests coming from all directions. What we wanted to do was have a thoughtful approach that made sense based on what society needs and also based on the real capabilities that Microsoft can bring to the table.

X: What are the key components of Microsoft’s environmental strategy?

FA: There are really three parts to the strategy. The first one is to use IT to improve energy efficiency. The second is to accelerate research breakthroughs. And the third is about responsible environmental leadership. A number of different studies have shown that the IT industry represents about 2 percent of the global greenhouse gas emissions that are emitted. And you might say that 2 percent is … Next Page »

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If Jane Austen had been an avant-garde technology writer instead of a 19th Century English novelist, she might have imagined a character like Larry Smarr: a brainy and bespectacled man of 61 years who tends the roses and fuchias of his La Jolla garden on weekends while designing the infrastructure of the Internet the rest of the week.

In his Twitter bio, Smarr writes, “I was a mathematician, then physicist, then astrophysicist, then supercomputer director, now computer scientist. I have made change my friend.”

Now, as director of the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology, Smarr wants to do for energy conservation and green technologies what he did for Web innovation. He is enthusiastically endorsing the widespread use of sensors for real-time monitoring of power use in buildings. The savings could be huge and the environmental benefits enormous, Smarr says, because energy used to heat and cool buildings generates 40 percent of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions.

Smarr described the idea at a UC San Diego forum Wednesday evening: wireless sensors nowadays can continuously monitor temperature and many other factors inside and outside a building—and relay the data to Web-based environmental control systems designed to maximize energy efficiencies.

“If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it,” said Smarr, adding that “the electrical bill of this building is $1 million a year.” During his presentation, Smarr noted that UC San Diego has now installed sensors throughout 34 of its buildings, and publishes the resulting data online and in real time. UCSD announced a few weeks ago that it has embarked on a $73 million program to increase the energy efficiency of 25 of its older buildings in an effort to reduce their combined energy costs by at least $6 million a year.

The concept is an example of what the forum’s organizers call “greenovation,” or green innovation. If Austen were still around, though, she might call it “Sensing and Sensibility,” or perhaps “Sense and Sustainability.”

Smarr told the audience that the desktop computers and servers in the UCSD computer science and engineering building account for 70 percent of the building’s baseload power demand. “And 90 percent of that could be avoided,” Smarr says, by adding software that would turn off display screens, internal wireless devices, and other energy-guzzling internal components when they’re not being used.

Whether Smarr’s call for a new era of energy-conscious chip and computer design will be heard in Silicon Valley and other hardware technology capitals remains to be seen. But UCSD, to its credit, has set out to establish itself as … Next Page »

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Seattle-based Zino Society has announced the winners of its 2009 Zino Zillionaire Investment Funds. Bellevue, WA-based Enroute Systems, a maker of analytics and transportation management software for parcel-shipping businesses, received $60,000. Arlington, WA-based MicroGreen Polymers, a company focused on making plastic products more environmentally sustainable, also took home $60,000. The companies presented to investors back on September 17.

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It was a fairly quiet week for deals in the Northwest, with just a trickle of activity in software, computing, cleantech, and life sciences. But there was a hint that the IPO window may be about to open.

—Seattle-based Cray (NASDAQ: CRAY), the supercomputing company, acquired some assets from SiCortex, a Maynard, MA-based computing firm that shut down in May. Financial terms weren’t given, but Cray purchased compiler technology that could help it improve its own products and gain new customers.

—Luke reported that Seattle’s Infectious Disease Research Institute, a global health nonprofit, licensed technology from Israel-based NanoPass to use “microneedles” to stimulate immune system cells just below the skin surface, which might make new vaccines more protective. Financial terms were not released.

—Hillsboro, OR-based ClearEdge Power raised $15 million in equity financing, according to media reports, which cited a regulatory filing. The investors were not disclosed, but ClearEdge Power has been backed by the Kohlberg family, Big Basin Partners, and Applied Ventures. ClearEdge develops fuel cell systems for homes.

—Seattle-based Trubion Pharmaceuticals signed a global partnership with Redwood City, CA-based Facet Biotech to co-develop and market an experimental treatment for leukemia, as Luke reported. As part of the deal, Trubion (NASDAQ: TRBN) will receive a $20 million upfront payment, and Facet (NASDAQ: FACT) has agreed to buy another $10 million worth of Trubion stock. The news sent Trubion shares up more than 40 percent, to $5.45, about six minutes after the opening bell on Friday morning.

—Seattle-based Tuusso Energy, a solar power plant developer, has raised a $2 million financing round from Pivotal Investments, a Portland, OR-based venture capital fund focused on cleantech and sustainability. Tuusso’s first solar plant is scheduled to be completed in the California desert in 2011. The deal represents the first investment from Pivotal’s new fund.

—Omeros, a Seattle-based biotech firm, is preparing a renewed push for an IPO this fall, as Luke reported in an Xconomy exclusive. The offering, which could happen as soon as this month, would be the first IPO from a Washington company in more than two years (since Kirkland, WA-based Clearwire went public in March 2007). Omeros, which is developing a treatment to help people recover faster from knee surgery (among other products), previously tried to go public in January 2008.

—Xconomy broke the news that Seattle-based Marketfish, an online marketing startup, has raised an undisclosed amount of funding from private investors led by the Alliance of Angels. Marketfish, which was founded in July 2008, has developed a Web interface for connecting marketing agencies with list owners.

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On Tuesday, we reported that Pivotal Investments has led a $2 million financing round for Tuusso Energy, a solar power developer based in Seattle. Tuusso is an intriguing startup focused on developing and operating solar plants to supply renewable energy to utility companies; its first plant is slated to be built in the California desert by 2011. But the deal is worth a closer look through the lens of what Pivotal is doing.

Pivotal Investments is a venture capital firm that started investing in cleantech and sustainability companies out of its first fund in January. The firm, based in Portland, OR, is led by managing directors Gregg Semler, Brad Zenger, and John Miner. (Semler and Zenger previously were co-founders, along with Reference Capital, of the Sustainability Investment Fund 2007, which backed Northwest firms EnerG2, SeQuential Biofuels, Plas2Fuel, and RNA Networks.) Pivotal’s investment focus is primarily early-stage startups in the Pacific Northwest, often with first-time entrepreneurs. The firm’s areas of expertise include clean energy, water, air, green materials, and sustainable agriculture.

Semler confirmed via e-mail that Tuusso Energy is the first investment from Pivotal’s new fund. He says his team is excited about the solar company because of its strong team; it’s in a big market; it is capital efficient; it provides strategic insight into multiple facets of the renewable energy market; and it represents a “strong opportunity for investor returns with or without an IPO or acquisition.”

The Pivotal team says it has evaluated more than 250 companies since January. “This deal flow in quantity, breadth, and quality is a proof point that the Northwest is a great place for investing in sustainability,” Semler says. “It also validates the premise behind Pivotal Investments as the only venture fund in the Northwest completely dedicated to these opportunities.”

Earlier this summer, Semler and Zenger told me a little more about their investment themes. And what they said rings true with Tuusso Energy. “We get excited about investments that have systemic disruption in large markets that can be proven in the Northwest, and then scale to other markets like California and Asia,” said Semler, a cleantech entrepreneur himself who has led firms such as ClearEdge Power and PolyFuel over his career as an executive.

Yet if you ask Seattle entrepreneurs and investors alike, they’ll say alternative energy and sustainability are not in most local venture capitalists’ comfort zone. “We talked to most of the VCs in Portland and Seattle, and this is a new space for them—new markets, new technologies, and many times new teams,” Semler said. (A notable exception would be Rick LeFaivre of Kirkland, WA-based OVP Venture Partners, who notes that cleantech VCs should invest in the sweet spot between mom-and-pop companies and $100-million-upfront deals, like wind farms, that call for private equity or other means.)

Which is also why cleantech and sustainability can be such an attractive field—for the right firm. “This is bigger than the original Industrial Revolution,” said Zenger, a co-founder of Portland-based Pixelworks (NASDAQ: PXLW) and an expert in global technology markets. “The scale of these opportunities is just huge.”

Huge investments, however, are not what the Pivotal VCs have in mind. Their typical deal structure will be to contribute around $3 million, investing over multiple rounds—often with other investors—to ensure the company has the resources it needs to achieve its plan. I wondered how much you can really do with $3 million in a capital-intensive space like energy. Quite a bit, they said. “Entrepreneurs need to be creative and find ways to use less capital to make the same progress,” Semler explained, “especially in the current market environment.”

“While we’re a little concerned about the amount of capital pouring into the cleantech sector, we believe it’s a great time to be a cleantech investor in the Northwest,” Semler said. “Valuations are low, innovation is high. If you’re willing to do early-stage work, there is a great opportunity for reward.”

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Carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide get a bad rap. Sure, the first is a silent killer that binds to hemoglobin and suffocates people in burning buildings, and the second is poisoning our atmosphere and driving global temperatures out of control. But did you know that they can also be used to make plastic?

Back in November 2007, I wrote one of the first press stories about Novomer, a startup then based in Ithaca, NY, that was beginning to exploit a novel catalyst discovered by a Cornell chemist to transform CO and CO2 into various types of packaging materials and other plastics. The company moved its headquarters to Boston last October, and as we reported on Monday, it has now raised an additional $14 million in venture funding, with Kirkland, WA-based OVP Venture Partners leading the round.

So it seemed like a good time to check in with the company, whose proprietary zinc-based catalyst prompts CO and CO2 to react with petroleum-based compounds called epoxides to form several important types of plastic used in packaging, coatings, medical implants, absorbent materials, and injection-molded products such as the cases for cell phones and computers. Novomer CEO Jim Mahoney says the company is close to announcing partnerships with major consumer-goods companies that will put its technology into production, making “pretty much all the types of plastic you touch on a daily basis.”

Mahoney says the latest venture round—which brings the company’s total funding to about $21 million—gives the company the cash it needs to ramp up its production process, buy raw materials, and design new products in conjunction with partners. “I wish I could give you the names now, but we’re right on the cusp of some pretty big partnerships, and I hope to be able to talk about them at the beginning of the year,” Mahoney says.

One of the processes the company is developing, Mahoney says, is a new way to use carbon monoxide as a feedstock to make acrylic acids, the super-absorbent polymers used in products such as disposable diapers. “We can make very cost-effective acrylic acids, and this is the most environmentally responsible way to make it,” he says. And, as with anything having to with diapers, “It’s a big market,” says Mahoney.

Indeed, what green-minded consumer wouldn’t choose products made using cheap, abundant materials that would otherwise escape into the environment? (In the case of Novomer’s CO2-based plastics, the process also helps to sequester a greenhouse gas.) Novomer’s challenge, according to Mahoney, isn’t persuading potential partners that the company’s technology is more sustainable and eco-friendly than conventional ways of making plastics—it’s convincing them that the end products perform just as well, and that they won’t cost more.

“Some people look at the sustainability aspects first and want to make sure they are significantly more responsible, then they move on to performance and economics,” Mahoney says. “Other companies will look at the economics first. We have to deliver on all of those, and so far we have been able to demonstrate that. But fortunately many consumer-goods companies are really starting to demand these materials, because their customers want them—as long as they don’t have to pay more.”

While OVP Venture Partners has several cleantech companies in its portfolio, it isn’t particularly well known for investing in materials companies (an exception being Seattle-based EnerG2), nor in East Coast firms. OVP managing director Carl Weissman says the Novomer deal came about primarily because of his longtime relationship with Mahoney, who was his boss at Bothell, WA-based chemical firm Prolinx from 1998 to 2001. “Normally we’re Pacific Northwest or West Coast” in focus, says Weissman, who has joined Novomer’s board as a result of the funding. “The only reason to stretch that thesis is the excitement about the opportunity—and the relationship I have with [Mahoney] will allow me to monitor the company’s progress.”

There’s one other Novomer-OVP connection: Novomer’s proprietary catalyst was discovered by Geoffrey Coates, a professor in Cornell’s chemistry department, where OVP managing director Gerry Langeler got his undergraduate degree. Langeler will be an observer on Novomer’s board.

Novomer’s Series A investors—Flagship Ventures of Cambridge, MA, Physic Ventures of San Francisco, and DSM Venturing of the Netherlands—have all returned for the Series B round. “It’s a nice syndicate to invest with,” says Weissman. “I’ve known people at Flagship and Physic for a while. It’s my first opportunity to invest with them at OVP.”

With reporting from Seattle by Greg Huang.

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One of MIT’s leading business professors, Richard Locke, came to Seattle yesterday to talk about the “S” word. Yes, we’ve been hearing a lot about sustainability lately, in the context of technology and business. Big companies like Microsoft, Amazon, and Boeing are talking seriously about the issue. Smaller Seattle-area companies like Verdiem, Powerit Solutions, and R.W. Beck have been making progress in important areas like energy efficiency and water management. To Locke, and many others, sustainability is much more than a corporate buzzword.

Locke is deputy dean of the MIT Sloan School of Management, and a professor of entrepreneurship and political science at MIT, based in Cambridge, MA. His research specialties include labor standards and practices, global entrepreneurship, and sustainable businesses. I sat down with him at the Westin Hotel downtown to get his perspective on Northwest companies’ green initiatives, and their possible partnerships with MIT. Locke was coming from meetings with Intel in the Portland area the previous day (the Santa Clara, CA-based chipmaker has manufacturing and development facilities in Hillsboro, OR). His other meetings in Seattle included a stop at Amazon to speak to Sloan School alums about the changing face of MBA education, and about sustainability in the corporate realm.

Locke defines sustainability broadly as “using resources today in a way that permits future generations to use them as well.” By this he means not just natural resources—energy, materials, water—but also social resources like people, jobs, and standards. “Let’s redefine sustainability in such a way that we can show the opportunities available, not just the constraints,” he says. “Once you broaden the definition, you expand the scope for individuals and organizations to try to do something about it.” (As I understand it, this definition of sustainability could include managing employees so they don’t burn out, creating jobs that last, and establishing fair labor standards that endure.)

Take Intel, for instance. Locke says the company is pursuing a series of initiatives to reduce its carbon footprint, improve its supply chain efficiency, and reshape the way it uses energy, water, and people. “Are there ways they can make, for example, new chips that might require less energy? They’re having a very interesting internal discussion about chip speed versus energy consumption. I find it fascinating that a large company in an extremely competitive sector, that still does manufacturing in … Next Page »

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Who’s Who in San Diego cleantech innovation?

At Xconomy San Diego, we wanted to answer that question as completely as possible, so we put together an accounting of all the local companies that are creating new ways to make biofuels, clean the environment, and improve the energy efficiency of our vehicles, homes, and businesses. In preparing our list, we owe a debt of gratitude to the nonprofit industry group Cleantech San Diego, which has compiled on its website a comprehensive inventory of every company under the sun with ties to the cleantech and renewable energy industries. We winnowed that list down to just the companies that are focused squarely on technological innovation (as opposed to other players in the cleantech arena, such as solar panel installers and engineering consultants).

Of course, our list likely isn’t comprehensive, and like so many good things, it will be outdated soon. If you know any companies we missed, please send us an e-mail addressed to “editors at xconomy.com”  (And if your interests lie further north, Xconomy Seattle recently published its guide to the cleantech clusters of the Pacific Northwest, breaking out separate lists for Washington, Oregon, and British Columbia.)

Achates Power (San Diego, CA)
This venture-backed startup is developing a fuel-efficient, cleaner-burning diesel engine, based on a two-cycle, opposed-piston internal combustion design.

AdaptiveARC (San Diego, CA)
This waste-to-clean-energy startup is developing an arc-plasma reactor and related technologies and services that offer an alternative to landfills.

Allylix (San Diego, CA)
Allylix has developed technology to synthesize terpenes, a class of hydrocarbons naturally produced by conifers and other plants. The company has licensed its technology to an unnamed cleantech company to develop and commercialize terpene fuels and fuel additives.

Ambient Control Systems (El Cajon, CA)
Ambient has developed a customized solar energy device with a computerized energy management and control system to power and operate remote sensor and surveillance networks.

American Biodiesel and Community Fuels (Encinitas, CA)
This company conducts biofuels research and development, using animal fats, vegetable oils, waste oils, and other … Next Page »

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One of the distinguishing characteristics about algae is that it grows fast, and it seems that may be true as well for the algae biomass industry in San Diego.

After reporting last month about a push to establish a multimillion-dollar hub for algae-based biofuels research in San Diego, I learned of a related effort with a broader focus that is known simply as “the regional algae initiative.”

While the initiative includes San Diego’s growing mini-cluster of algae-based biofuels startups, project manager Rick Halperin told me yesterday the concept extends beyond biofuels to all things algal. Halperin says the effort also plans to rely on a recent macro-economic study on “mega-region” economic development that identifies ways in which groups in San Diego and Imperial Counties can collaborate.

Imperial County, which borders Mexico between San Diego County and Arizona, consists of 4,597 square miles of mostly parched terrain. Agriculture has traditionally dominated the Imperial Valley’s economy, but close to 20 percent of the county’s 145,000 residents live near poverty and the December unemployment rate of 22.6 percent is likely the highest in California. Yet Halperin and others see the sun-baked county, which is increasingly being viewed as a paradise for renewable energy, as an ideal hotbed for growing algae in all its multipurpose forms.

“The idea for a regional algae initiative is relatively virtual,” Halperin told me. The initiative is not intended to become a formal entity, or as Halperin put it, “A Roman slave ship where everybody has to grab an oar and pull in the same direction.”

Rather, the initiative is intended to encourage collaboration, for example, by developing and sharing information on sources of government grants and other public funding for algae-based projects that span the continuum from laboratory to construction of large-scale plants. “We’re trying to be very cross-disciplinary in our approach to all this,” Halperin says. “The regional algae initiative is part cheerleading and part figuring out what needs to get done and what needs to get cleared out of our path.”

Apart from using algae to produce biofuels, Halperin says the potential uses for algae are legion. New technologies are being developed in San Diego that use algae to produce methane gas for electric power plants—and as algal pond filters capable of absorbing carbon dioxide emissions from the same power plants. New technologies that use algae to process and cleanse sewage wastewater also could prove helpful to the City of San Diego, which is currently operating its wastewater treatment plant under an EPA waiver.

“The more you can combine your industry initiatives with solutions that address some other problems, the better your chance of getting funding,” Halperin says.

Groups supporting the intiative include San Diego startups like Sapphire Energy that are focused on developing algae-based technologies, government contractors, as well as industry groups like Cleantech San Diego, and economic development organizations in San Diego and Imperial Valley. Halperin says financial support from Bank of America’s “sustainability initiative” launched the effort last year. Halperin, a San Diego consultant who has worked for the Nature Conservancy, American Wind Energy Association and Renewable Energy Institute was hired as project manager.

Part of the regional algae initiative calls for local companies to share information about their research and development efforts as part of a regular “commercialization of algae seminars.” For example, Kent BioEnergy is scheduled to make a noon presentation in Hubbs Hall today at UCSD’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography about its work with Clemson University in developing microalgal-based water treatment techniques. The San Diego company says it has progressed from using algae in finfish aquaculture to increasingly complex technologies, such as using algal biomass to fuel power plants.

“For all the excitement we feel about this,” Halperin says, “We’re also really committed to trying to keep the hype level down.”

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