Business Flip!Flip Business Flip

Stanford lecturer Steve Blank, gives feedback to the class teams at the NSF I-Corps Lean LaunchPad team presentations at Stanford University in Palo Alto, Calif., on Thursday, March 22, 2012. Blank is the architect of the Lean LaunchPad class at Stanford and judged the team presentations.

The National Science Foundation has hit some grand slams in its day: Research projects funded by the federal agency have gone on to become Google , Netscape and the Internet itself.

But such hits are relatively rare, considering that the NSF pours billions into university research each year. Now the agency — mindful that every dollar counts in these days of heated campaign rhetoric — is teaming with Stanford University to see if Silicon Valley can boost that batting average.

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The oil giant alleged in court that US authorities are using legal “privilege” to “shield documents reflecting discussions and deliberations concerning a factual issue, the amount of oil discharged”.

BP claimed it has identified 10,000 documents, out of more than 80,000, that the US has sought to suppress. A key issue in the dispute remains just how much oil had leaked from the faulty Macondo well.

The US estimated in August 2010 that 4.9 million barrels of oil, spilled into the Gulf, according to Bloomberg.

But BP pointed out that the US made at least four official estimates of differing amounts.

BP could face up to $17.6 billion (£11 billion) in pollution fines, based on the Government’s estimate of barrels spilled.

The company said since the US has brought the case for damages, it is “fundamentally unfair” for it to refuse to disclose documents.

BP has already said it will pay out $7 billion but has set aside as much as $37 billion.

  Sean Crafts at Mavenlink posted an interesting, infographic-style decision chart on his blog that he titled “Should You Hire or Contract Your Marketing Department?”

 While many of the questions in the decision tree may not apply to small business marketing decisions (small business owners rarely start with budget) it does point out some good questions that you may not have thought of (how comfortable are you really with sharing proprietary information with people outside of your company?).

Here is a copy of Sean’s chart – what do you think? What questions would you ask that he didn’t?

BRUSSELS—Inflation in the 17 countries that use the euro did not fall as much as predicted during March, in a further sign that rising oil prices are having an impact on the countries’ economies.

Figures from Eurostat, the EU’s statistics office, showed inflation in the eurozone in the year to March fell to 2.6 percent from 2.7 percent the previous month.

The decline was not as big as predicted. The consensus in the markets was for the rate to fall to 2.5 percent.

Inflation in the eurozone remains above the European Central Bank’s target of keeping price rises just below 2 percent. That suggests that the ECB has less room to cut interest rates further if it wanted to. It meets again next week and the expectation is that the benchmark interest rate will be maintained at 1 percent.

Rising oil prices in recent weeks have raised concerns that inflation may not fall below target as quickly as hoped.

WASHINGTON (AP) — A technical problem affecting the Visa network barred some people around the United States from using their credit and debit cards for about 45 minutes on Sunday, the company said.

The outage was caused by a recent update Visa has made to its system, said Visa Inc. spokeswoman Sandra Chu. She said Visa had trouble processing some transactions as a result, but the system is operating normally now.

Chu said the problem Sunday was unrelated to the security breach potentially affecting Visa and MasterCard customers that was reported Friday by credit card processor Global Payments Inc.

The outage occurred from around 2:40 p.m. to 3:20 p.m. EDT, a person from a major bank said. The person spoke on condition of anonymity because bank employees were not authorized to speak publicly.

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The volume of business in the financial services sector grew for the eighth consecutive three-month period, and at well above the average pace during the first quarter of the year, according to the CBI/PricewaterhouseCoopers Financial Services Survey.

The data will also show the first rise in optimism among financial firms in a year, with a positive rating of 32 per cent of respondents feeling upbeat about prospects. There has also been an unexpected increase in employment in the sector, showing a balance of +19 per cent.

Of the 95 financial firms that responded to the poll, 44 per cent saw volumes rise in the quarter to March, while 21 per cent reported a fall. The resulting positive balance of 23 per cent is well above the long-run average of positive 12 per cent.

Over the next three months, companies also expect growth to accelerate. Growing income more than offset the impact of sharply rising costs. This meant firms’ profitability rose more rapidly than in the previous three quarters.

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