China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC) is mulling plans to regulate crowd funding, an online financing vehicle, to ward off risks, according to China Business News Monday, a move that will put the brakes on the booming Internet finance industry.

CSRC regulations on peer-to-peer and crowd funding services are expected to be released earlier than those of the country’s banking regulatory commission, as CSRC Chairman Xiao Gang has launched field investigations on the industry.

Xiao visited two Internet finance companies last week, including the Beijing Angel Crunch Financial Information Service Co Ltd, mainly an equity-based online crowd funding platform, according to the report citing an industry researcher.

Equity-based crowd funding as a fledgling business is believed to be another innovative financing tool designed to help start-ups and small businesses to gain a foothold in the capital market. And the attitude of the CSRC on that is positive, the report said.  In the US, the SEC allows equity-based crowdfunding up to 1 million dollars.

Mattel consulted with real live entrepreneurs in the creation of their new doll.  She carries a smart phone and a tablet and is launching her own million dollar company.  All good for the “I Can Be” line of Barbies.

But why are we still living with an anatomical presentation that can’t be: unless you live under the plastic surgeon’s knife and eat nothing.  When will Mattel make their iconic figure like the rest of us?

Claire Chase is a very special entrepreneur.  A concert level flutist who has championed contemporary music since her junior high school graduation, has put together an organization which is nimble, daring, fiscally sound and now global.

Chase is an unusual person, but suggests that if you can shape and discipline your passion, you can make what seems to be impossible come true.

Addressing the League of American Orchestras on June 5th, Chase gave the introduced her speech with a riveting solo performance of Density 21.5. The wailing rendition of the Varese piece had been turned down by her junior high school’s graduation committee. Instead she played Danny Boy.

The derailed attempt lit a fire in Chase to tell a different kind of story. She would not just be a seeker of sounds for the metal of the flute. Instead she would create stories we could all live in. Like the stories of Nation, Family, Religion and Community. We live within and with these narratives. In them, you constantly question. No longer is performance art segregated into unions, performers.

At ICE, performers run development and education departments. They bring their reverence for music and boundless curiosity to what are sometimes perceived as pedestrian tasks. Vast repertoire, past present and future. Palpable utopia one 100 people coming together to make music.

ICE is part circus troop, part garage band, part rock band. They have no fixed location instead performing wherever music can be made. Based in Chicago and New York, they are developing satellites on the West Coast, in Qatar and Greenland. Chase is willing to go out into space and perform on the moon. With her, this all seems possible.

Being a musician is being a teacher, and without any of the boredom of the classroom, ICE teaches and pulsates every moment. Claire Chase is a model entrepreneur.   ICE

Two years ago, in something like a quirky, B2B Craigslist hookup, Heinz, Ford, Coca-Cola, Nike, and Procter & Gamble found one another. Since then, the five companies have been exploring ways to replace conventional, petrochemical-based plastic with materials derived completely from plant matter.

This week, Ford announced that it and Heinz have made a good bit of progress, as they’ve worked to turn the latter’s tomato waste into the former’s bioplastics. Ford says that tomato skins, for example, may ultimately be used to create plastic for wiring brackets, panels, or storage bins. (Still no word on the seeds and stems, which, as any college student can tell you, are problematic.)

Ellen Lee, a plastics research technical specialist with the automaker, says that “Our goal is to develop a strong, lightweight material that meets our vehicle requirements, while at the same time reducing our overall environmental impact.”

Which is great, but it avoids any mention of economic imperatives. Despite the hazards involved in producing and employing plastics derived from petrochemicals, companies keep doing so because it’s cheap. Recycling old materials and creating new ones from waste takes time and considerably more money — at least in the initial phases. That’s a deterrent to managers and shareholders focused on the bottom line.

There are also limits to the safety and effectiveness of these new materials. Plant-derived products may be fine for building storage bins, but no one’s found a way to use them as substitutes for sheetmetal. (Though that hasn’t kept some from trying.) Shifting to aluminum car bodies can lessen the environmental impact of auto manufacturing, since aluminum is easily recycled, but the dream of a fully recycled or bio-based car is a long way off.

And sadly, future technology isn’t necessarily much cleaner. As eco-friendly as battery electric and fuel cell vehicles may seem, they still require a lot of resources — not just mined metals that create car batteries, but also electricity that’s often generated from “dirty” sources.

Like global warming, education, the obesity epidemic, and countless other contemporary problems, greening cars can’t be done in one fell swoop. It’s death – or in this case, success – by a thousand cuts. Kudos to Ford and Heinz for taking a stab at it.

In the interest of developing electric cars, Elon Musk will give you his patents if you want them. The chief executive of Tesla Motors, the electric car company, will let competitors use its patents, numbering several hundred, without the fear of triggering a lawsuit. In a blog post Thursday, Mr. Musk notes his reasoning for a decision that would ordinarily leave patent lawyers scratching their heads.

Namely, that “annual new vehicle production is approaching 100 million per year and the global fleet is approximately 2 billion cars,” he says in the post. “It is impossible for Tesla to build electric cars fast enough to address the carbon crisis.”

This decision goes along with the company’s stated goal: showing that an electric car can be every bit as utilitarian and cool as a gasoline-fueled car.  Musk says patents hinder progress and stand in the way of companies developing electric cars.  “Tesla Motors was created to accelerate the advent of sustainable transport,” he says in the post. “If we clear a path to the creation of compelling electric vehicles, but then lay intellectual property landmines behind us to inhibit others, we are acting in a manner contrary to that goal.”

Because so few companies are producing electric cars, Musk is confident that others’ use of its technology will not hurt the Palo Alto-based company. In his view, the competition is not other electric car manufacturers, but rather “the enormous flood of gasoline cars pouring out of the world’s factories every day.”

At major auto manufacturers, the amount of electric cars produced, or cars that burn no hydrocarbons, totals less than one percent. By opening up its patents, Musk hopes to reverse this trend. Granted, he recognizes that things won’t change overnight. Rather, the move comes more as a symbolic gesture to begin moving an industry toward a spirit of greater cooperation in an effort to begin producing more zero-emission vehicles.

“Technology leadership is not defined by patents, which history has repeatedly shown to be small protection indeed against a determined competitor, but rather by the ability of a company to attract and motivate the world’s most talented engineers,” Musk says in the post. “We believe that applying the open source philosophy to our patents will strengthen rather than diminish Tesla’s position in this regard.”

Musk noted that Tesla will continue to secure patents for its future products so that other companies don’t take the idea and patent it themselves, according to Forbes. Still, future patents will also be available for free.

Now FInland.   A visiting senior official of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Thursday urged Chinese and Finnish small and medium-sized enterprises to carry out more active cooperation.

“Finnish SMEs have unique advantage in technology innovation,” said Liu Yunshan, a member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee, at a meeting with Finnish Prime Minister Jyrki Katainen.

“We should encourage the small and medium-sized companies from the two countries to carry out more active cooperation, so as to fill in the content of a brand new partnership between China and Finland, and promote bilateral relations,” said Liu.  China has been Finland’s biggest trading partner in Asia for 11 years, and Finland has become China’s important technology partner in Europe.
Last year Finnish President Sauli Niinisto visited China and agreed with his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping on the establishment of a future-oriented cooperative partnership.
To further implement the consensus, Liu eyed an expanded cooperation between the two countries on culture creativity, high-end service, clean energy, as well as efficiency and environmental protection.
Liu’s suggestion was echoed by Katainen, who stressed that it will be an important part of the overall cooperation to increase the SME’s motivation.
Although the two countries have differences, the prime minister said, they are facing similar challenges. The two sides should enhance cooperation in education, scientific research and environmental technologies, added Katainen.