Intel announced a $3.5 billion initiative “to support investment in U.S.-based growth-oriented industries and detailed a commitment to significantly increase jobs available this year for recent college graduates.”

The headline of Intel’s press release says, “Invest in America Alliance to Fund American Technology Companies, Create Jobs for College Grads.” The story was covered bytechnology reporter Claire Cain Miller in the  New York Times, as well as by many others.

Miller begins her article by saying, “Technologists have been worrying aloud for years that America is losing its competitive edge as other countries invest more heavily in technology education and innovation.”

The alliance is led by Intel and is supported by 24 leading venture capital firms and corporations, aims to further anchor America’s competitiveness on the global stage. Intel President and CEO Paul Otellini said the announcement represents ”an investment in the country’s innovators and a signal to the global marketplace about America’s commitment to innovation and future competitiveness.” (read the full transcript of Otellini’s speech).

Venture Capital firms joining the Invest in America alliance include:

• Advanced Technology Ventures
• Braemar Energy Ventures
• Bridgescale Partners
• Canaan Partners
• DCM
• Draper Fisher Jurvetson
• Flywheel Ventures
• Good Energies
• Institutional Venture Partners
• Investcorp Technology Partners
• Khosla Ventures
• Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers
• Menlo Ventures
• Mohr Davidow Ventures
• New Enterprise Associates
• North Bridge Venture Partners
• QuestMark Partners
• Sevin Rosen Funds
• Storm Ventures
• Telesoft Partners
• Updata Partners
• U.S. Venture Partners
• Venrock and Walden International

Companies joining the Invest in America alliance include:

• Accenture
• Adobe Systems Incorporated
• Autodesk
• Broadcom Corporation
• CDW LLC.
• Cisco
• Dell
• eBay
• Inc.
• EMC Corporation
• GE
• Google
• Inc.
• HP
• Liberty Mutual Group
• Marvell Semiconductor Inc.
• Microsoft Corporation
• Yahoo!

Readers of my blog know I’m an unabashed fan of NYT columnist Thomas Friedman. Why? Because he consistently gets the world of innovation and how innovation drives, is driven by, and interconnects with so many aspects of geopolitics and economics (from micro to macro).

In his latest column, “More (Steve) Jobs, Jobs, Jobs, Jobs,” Friedman says President Obama should launch a “moon shot” initiative to get millions of American kids excited about innovation and entrepreneurship again. Friedman calls for the President ”to make 2010 the year of innovation, the year of making our pie bigger, the year of “Start-Up America” (a veiled reference to “Startup Nation” perhaps?)

Obama should bring together the country’s leading innovators, Friedman advocates, and ask them: “What legislation, what tax incentives, do we need right now to replicate you all a million times over” — and make that his No. 1 priority.

Friedman’s line in the sand (and I would dearly love it if someone would put this on an index card and put it on the President’s desk tomorrow morning) is this: “Inspiring, reviving and empowering Start-up America is [Obama's] moon shot.” Readers of this blog will not be surprised to know that I LOVE IT.

Let us, the innovators, the entrepreneurs, and yes even (or especially?) the marketers, endorse Thomas Friedman’s epic call to action. Let us tell the President we stand ready to help launch a year, a decade, a century of innovation. Let us ask for his leadership, and then let’s march forward to ride the twin rocket engines of innovation and entrepreneurship to all the economic recovery this world needs.

When Rainier client CopperGate was acquired by Sigma Designs a couple months ago, plenty of people made some nice sums of money. What I didn’t know at the time was that Tmura, the Israeli Public Service Venture Fund would convert options granted by CopperGate six years ago into $100,000!

Founded in 2002 to increase the involvement of the high-tech community in non-profit activity in Israel, Tmura receives donations of equity from (mainly private) Israeli and Israel-related high-tech companies and uses the proceeds from successful “exits” such as a public offering or acquisition to fund education- and youth-related initiatives in Israel. “Tmura” is the Hebrew word for “change” or “metamorphosis” and also means “value for money”; it is also a play on the word “truma”, which means “donation”.

CopperGate was Tmura’s 21st such exit event – exits to date have generated more than $2,600,000 for charity, which has benefited more than 20 different non-profit organizations in Israel.

Tmura grantees are mainly youth oriented. For example, Kadima youth centers have received Tmura money to help operate a network of youth clubs in poor neighborhoods. In another example, Tmura has also helped an Israeli humanitarian aid organization called Latet (Hebrew for “to give”). Latet aims to mobilize Israeli society to greater involvement in the humanitarian field, through heightened social awareness and the fostering of values such as mutual responsibility and giving.

I love the basic concept behind Tmura – everyone wins in an exit event. Especially the kids.

President Obama’s new “Educate to Innovate”  campaign aims to improve the participation and performance of America’s students in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM).

The President launched the initiative with these words, “We’re going to show young people how cool science can be.” Having spent my entire career dedicated to the promotion of technology and innovation, I could not be more excited to hear such sentiments from the President of the United States!

The campaign expects to include Federal Government participation, as well as imput from leading companies, foundations, non-profits, and science and engineering societies to work with young people across America to excel in science and math.

In fact, five major public-private partnerships are jumping in to harness the power of media, interactive games, hands-on learning, and community volunteers to reach millions of students over the next four years, inspiring them to be the next generation of inventors and innovators. $4.35 billion in Federal grants will be offered to schools who can innovate in STEM education and the private sector is stepping up with an additional $260 million in related funding and programs.

I like what Chuck Lawton had to say in his GeekDad post about this. “Part of what makes this exciting is the contrast between “Educate to Innovate” and the purely standards-based ‘No Child Left Behind’ initiative which had similar but broader goals for increasing educational competency. Regardless of where you stand on the merits of NCLB, a focus to improve test scores as the only metric for improvement isn’t as engaging or applicable for students as robotics competitions, computer programming in the form of games or other real-world applications of science. And corporations looking for the next wave of top thinkers, such as Intel, now have the ability to get involved.”

These remain exciting times in general, and while many say the President has too much on his plate, this kind of initiative has been a LONG time coming. I’m glad to see an adminstration willing to face the slide in America’s ability to educate in science and math. And more importantly, an adminstration willing to DO something about it!

By the way, parts of Tom Friedman’s recent column Advice From Grandma resonate perfectly with this. Friedman declares he is ”not ready to cede the 21st century to China just yet,” because you cannot commodotize imagination. And today’s technology allows us, he says, to act on our imaginations farther, faster, deeper and cheaper than ever before.

• Whitehouse press release on Educate to Innovate
• Whitehouse blog on Educate to Innovate
• President Obama’s full remarks on Educate to Innovate