Posted by Paul Ryan, Editor, Anthill Magazine

The digital world has made it both easier and more difficult to track new innovation. Easier because almost everyone has the ability to broadcast their genius to a global audience. More difficult because this creates quite a din.

Part of Anthill’s mission is to perform some of the filtering for you, largely for the Australian market. But if you are looking for a global repository of interesting and thought-provoking new products and services, you should be reading Springwise.

Springwise calls on a global network of over 8,000 “Springspotters“, who suggest new business and marketing stories. If the Dutch-based editors and researchers accept a submission, the idea-spotter earns points, which can be redeemed online for gifts.

The result is a stimulating collection of cutting-edge developments that have been recently introduced into a market somewhere. I know of several seasoned Australian entrepreneurs who read Springwise specifically to learn about new products and services that are yet to reach Australian shores. The idea is that they occasionally find something that can be either adapted or reproduced for the Australian market more quickly and efficiently than by foreign counterparts. Others just like to keep tabs on the competition.

Even if you’re not quite so focused on exploiting existing opportunities, browsing Springwise is a great circuit-breaker to help you quit tinkering with an all-consuming idea that refuses to bloom and get thinking about pristine opportunities for the future, out there on the virgin frontier.

If you’re on the lookout for new commercial inspiration, you could do a lot worse than sign-up for the weekly Springwise email newsletter. For more contemplative macro analysis of the latest trends, check out Springwise’s sister site, Trendwatching.com.

Posted by Paul Ryan, Editor, Anthill Magazine

You might have already contributed to our ongoing Magazine 2.0 experiment, where we are inviting readers to nominate insightful tips for starting a business (the best will be published in each issue of Anthill).

To complement these “168 start-up tips”, this week we are featuring a terrifically useful blog post by Jason Nazar containing links to “10 Incredibly Awesome Documents to Help You Start a Company“.

Nazar is co-founder and CEO of Docstoc.com, a popular online community for professional document sharing, so he’s better placed than most to nominate the best template documents for start-ups.

Looking for a Non Disclosure Agreement, Financial Model Projections for an Internet Company, a Sample Convertible Note, a Start Up Pitch Presentation? Or perhaps you’re curious about 10 Questions to Consider When Start a New Business, just to make sure you have everything covered.

Keep in mind that these templates were created for an America audience, so some elements might be peculiar to American law. Just on that, if you’re about to bet the bank, you should probably consult a solicitor and bed down the fine print. But these are a great starting point.

Do you know of any other great template documents for start-ups? Perhaps ones unique to Australia? Let us know about them below in the comments.