“Even during times of economic downturns, products that provide innovations that meet customers’ changing needs will prevail in the marketplace.  Innovation keeps companies relevant to consumers.”  So says The Three-Dimensional Leader: Negotiating Your Mission, Resources and Context, which also lays out four ingredients to bring out a team’s creative potential.

Innovation requires 1) imagination, 2) coordination 3) synergy from diversity, and 4) getting the customer’s view.

Local economic boosters love to remind anyone who will listen that the Washington region boasts the greatest concentration of technical or knowledge workers in the country. The implication, of course, is that we’re right out there on the technological edge alongside Silicon Valley, Austin and Boston.

It makes for a wonderful marketing story, but it’s fundamentally misleading. What the numbers don’t tell you is that almost all of this high-tech work is done for the government — and therein is the problem. For even with this impressive ecosystem of firms, workers and advanced technology, the region hasn’t yet spawned a critical mass of companies providing technology products and services for consumers and private businesses.

The number of jobs in America is growing, and with that, full-time wages are also shooting up in parts of the country.

The PayScale Index tracks how many times private-sector wages have changed since 2006, and found that between Q4 of 2010 and Q4 of 2011, 18 metro areas saw at least some wage growth.

While energy and tech jobs continue to see the most wage growth, construction and manufacturing jobs are finally starting to move in that direction.

If Facebook IPOs at a $100 billion valuation later this year – per the plan – it will mint more than a thousand new millionaires. We spoke with a former Facebook employee who did his own digging into what kind of employees got how much stock, and when they got it. Then we came up with this handy flow-chart. It answers the question we're all dying to know: Is that guy or gal you know who works or worked at Facebook about to become a millionaire?

Lay-offs are everywhere on Wall Street these days, but as long as there are banks, there will be bankers.

So someone has to get hired right? We wanted to know who. The first year analyst will probably still have to come from the right school, be a well-rounded individual, and have stellar excel skills.

But obviously, not everyone is looking to be a first year analyst.

Email marketing has had to deal with its fair share of industry rumours (a.k.a. myths) during its many (largely successful) years of existence. Thankfully most of them never actually materialize, and those that do are promptly dealt with, which is how we end up with an increasing set of ‘best practices and standards’. Standards that are constantly evolving and refining themselves alongside the technology and client specs they feed off.

Then there are those rumours that just don’t seem to go away. Everybody has their two cents’ worth, which just seems to fuel the fire, and before you know it there’s widespread panic over something that should have been laid to rest long ago. We take a look at a few of the worst culprits, let’s hope that next time they don’t come back to haunt us.

1. More Subscribers = Higher Conversion Rates

You’ve got an email database of 30 million ‘subscribers’? Wow, that’s great! You’re going to make a fortune! Not likely. Unfortunately the size of your email database does not directly correlate with your conversion rate. In order for you to have a chance of reaching the conversion rate you so desire, it’s vital that each and every subscriber on your database has opted in to receive your email newsletters. This ensures your list remains targeted, with subscribers who are actually interested in what you’re offering.

Thanks to advances in chemistry and software, researchers can soon sequence a human genome for $1,000 in a day.

Back in July, Jonathan Rothberg, CEO of the Connecticut-based biotech company Ion Torrent, predicted that his company would develop a chip that could sequence an entire human genome by 2013.

This week, the company surpassed that prediction with a new tabletop sequencer called the Ion Proton. The company introduced the device at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas on Tuesday, although the sequencer is only available to researchers at this point.

The expert committee’s main criteria of selecting projects included competitiveness of the proposed solutions and the presence of an innovation component.

The National Innovation Fund has summed up the program of technology business incubation by selecting 40 projects totaling 245.4 million tenge, according to KazTAG citing the press service of the organization. Sector-wise, more than 30% of selected projects pertained to agriculture, 20% to construction and production of building materials, 17.5% to energy and 15% to information and telecommunication technologies. The program involves industrial parks in Almaty, Karaganda, Astana, Ust-Kamenogorsk, Uralsk, and Shymkent.

“The purpose of business is to create a customer.” — Peter Drucker.  Could Drucker be wrong?  Maybe and maybe not but now consultants and know it all pundits are spinning customer creation as the holy grail to all 21st Century sales and marketing efforts. I am sorry, no I am not, but I don’t buy it.

A business doesn’t create a customer they come ready made. Customers are looking for suppliers to meet their needs but in the 20th Century mentality suppliers look for customers to meet their needs.  It doesn’t work that way in the minds of the 21st Century customer and yet many suppliers still think that way.  Look around and you’ll see suppliers consumed with CRM , RM, QM, CM and all the other acronyms  and now social media tricks aimed at capturing, not engaging, the customer.  Now suppliers are talking about another consultant speak mantra of the month—Customer Creation Tools & Techniques

Early stage investor Fortify.vc will open the doors to a new business At a Digital Capital Week event in November, Mayor Vincent Gray spoke about the need to lure more technology companies to Washington. (Steven Overly - The Washington Post) incubator program on Monday for as many as 15 startups, choosing office space in the District after a $100,000 grant from the mayor’s office lured the firm away from neighboring Arlington.

The city’s economic development office has made a more concerted effort in recent months to engage the technology community in the District, which has become a burgeoning hub for startups with little involvement to date from city officials.

The deal came together in a matter of weeks. Fortify co-founder Jonathon Perrelli met with officials at the Office of the Deputy Mayor for Planning and Economic Development just a few days before Christmas to discuss a deal.

A plan is a decision about what you’re going to do. It can be as detailed as you choose and potentially complicated. Or it can be core and more simple. I’ve noticed that when you’re running a one man, one woman show or any type of small team, it’s easy to get lost in the details. So make the details second to the beautiful parts of the vision.

For example, it’s the new year and we have fitness resolutions dancing in our heads. But instead of thinking of the 4 or 5 workouts a week and the diet changes, you could choose to focus on a flat tummy in your favorite shirt, a shopping spree at the 20 pound mark, how fun Zumba classes are on Monday nights and the new tasty gourmet meals that you’ll discover, etc.

Ontario is supporting 15 projects that will help drive innovation and increase partnerships among the entertainment and creative sector while ensuring our place as a leader in the creative economy.

Through the Entertainment and Creative Cluster Partnerships Fund, Ontario is helping promote capacity building, marketing, innovation and skills development in the book and magazine publishing, film and television, music, interactive digital media and commercial theatre industries. This support encourages new industry collaborations, leverages partnerships and will help strengthen these industries across the province.

Supporting Ontario's creative industries is part of the McGuinty government's plan to strengthen the economy and create good jobs for families.

What’s the difference between a coworking space, startup incubator and a startup accelerator?

We hear this question a lot. Especially since we have been known to call RocketSpace all of above, while growing into what we’ve ultimately become – a tech accelerator.

Here are the quick rules of thumb for the three concepts.

A coworking facility, like WeWork, is an office space that attracts people who want to get out of the house and engage in an office environment. The coworking crowd consists of a diverse set of members: individual entrepreneurs, freelancers and independent contractors. Events and classes are held on the premises, but services are usually limited. Coworking spaces typically operate on a monthly fee basis.

Most high level executives do not expect a lot of recognition from others. Neither do they give a lot of recognition to others.

Many managers are like the classic husband who, when his wife complains that he doesn't tell her he loves her any more, responds that he told her he loved her when he married her -- and would have let her know if anything had changed.

Similarly, most managers act as if the act of hiring an employee is recognition enough -- this in spite of the fact that every one of these managers wants to be valued and appreciated by their superiors, and is regularly disappointed by the lack of appreciation coming their way.

So sue me: When a company gets a cease-and-desist letter from taxicab regulators, you know it has an interesting business model. That’s what happened to UberCab, a startup since renamed simply Uber, whose app acts like a pocket limousine dispatcher.

Uber is simple: ask it to send you a car, and soon you’ll see a black limousine inching toward you on the screen. Limo drivers who sign up use the app, too, and see the location of fares. The experience is intimate; soon you’ll be IM-ing John, Bill, and the rest of your fleet of drivers.

For the first time in 10 years, startup companies majority-owned by venture capital funds are eligible again for hundreds of millions of dollars in research grants available to small businesses each year.

Legislation, buried in a national defense spending bill adopted on Dec. 30, allows federal agencies to award a portion of their Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grants to VC-backed startups.

It’s a reversal of a 10-year-old policy that excluded firms that were more than 50 percent owned by VC investors.

As the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel consolidates several of its major areas, it has tapped a science veteran of almost 30 years to ensure it is ready to meet the needs of its federal military and research customers.

“We need to make sure we strategically invest program development funds to best support our customers,” said Charles Goldblum, who was recently named business area executive for the lab’s new department.

The Research and Exploratory Development Department was created this fall to develop and nurture new technologies to meet emerging national challenges.

Healthcare venture capital is still breathing and soon may be off the oxygen tank.

The sector closed out 2011 in strong fashion and posted a five-quarter high in funding and recording “solid” deal activity, according to the latest quarterly report from venture capital database CB Insights.

Of course, one quarter does not a trend make. Nonetheless, the strong fourth-quarter performance is welcome news for healthcare investors and entrepreneurs feeling beleaguered by a weak IPO market, regulatory uncertainty and a future of declining reimbursements from payers and providers. In the fourth quarter of 2011, healthcare VCs invested $1.9 billion in a total of 172 deals, according to CB Insights.

Every Michigan needs its Ohio State, and New York City has been working hard to become one to Silicon Valley.

In the last year, the city has pumped up its digital initiatives, welcomed prestigious startup accelerator TechStars, opened new offices for Twitter and Facebook and announced plans for a 2.1-million-square-foot Cornell tech campus.

Along the way, Mayor Michael Bloomberg has framed New York City as a Silicon Valley rival.

A New York-based store focused on mobile health apps for healthcare professionals and patients is developing a certification program.

Happtique‘s program would evaluate and certify healthcare apps. The program would articulate quality and performance standards for an app’s clinical relevance and technical functionality, developed by members of a blue ribbon panel in the next six months.

The voluntary program will be open to all app developers and will be funded by developer application fees.