Watching videos online is usually considered fun, but generally a waste of time. Not so with TED videos, which are uniformly interesting, educational, inspiring, and enjoyable. If you haven't spent much time (or any) checking out TED videos, you should – and to help with that, I've compiled what seem to be the very best 10 TED videos of 2011.

It was a grueling task, combing through the cream of the crop on the TED site, but somebody had to do it.

Some of the talks may have been filmed prior to 2011 but all of the talks here were posted in 2011. Unless you were lucky enough to attend the TED event in question, it's still new to you. Enjoy!

Venture capital (VC) serves as the lifeblood for early-stage businesses as they prepare to launch ideas onto the completive marketplace.  VC investment allows innovators to test prototypes, fine-tune products and build their workforce and attract customers.  The Ohio Capital Fund is working to build a healthy venture capital ecosystem to support Ohio entrepreneurs building businesses in the state.  A new study, conducted by The Ohio State University's Fisher College of Business, is evidence of Ohio's success in this key resource for growing businesses in high growth economic sectors.  In fact, results indicate that growth of Ohio's VC investments last year outpaced national levels by four to one.

"Every day The Ohio Capital Fund works to nurture Ohio's entrepreneurial ecosystem by attracting venture capital to support innovation," said Paul Cohn, Regional Director of Fort Washington Capital Partners Group, the manager of The Ohio Capital Fund. "It is exciting to see these tangible results which demonstrate our progress."

With the 2012 presidential election season officially kicking off in Iowa on January 3, the focus has increasingly been on the state as a leading indicator of Middle America where rural and suburban voters value simplicity and authenticity over whiz-bang political posturing. That was the story that came out of the big Republican debate in Des Moines on Saturday when Romney made his $10,000 wager, and it will likely be the case again in the second Iowa debate in Sioux City on December 15. But that storyline ignores an important fact – cities across America’s heartland such as Des Moines are fast emerging as forward-looking innovation hubs in their own right, no longer content to co-exist in the shadow of Silicon Valley.

In short, Iowa is no longer flyover territory.

South Dakota State University leaders and many of their colleagues at other large public universities recently reported strategies they have initiated to support regional economic growth.

The reports, compiled by the Association of Public and Land-Grant Universities, demonstrate continued initiatives developed to foster and promote innovation, entrepreneurship and technology commercialization throughout the United States.

The initiatives at South Dakota State stem from a collaborative effort of colleges and departments throughout the university in support of the university's strategic plan, "Achieving National Distinction, Strengthening Local Relevance." Each program allows for the potential of regional innovation partnerships with other research-based universities, collaboration with existing companies to commercialize federally-funded research, or opportunities to nurture startup companies, attract new talent to the university and train a world-class workforce.

Budding entrepreneur Eric Bolden had never met an angel investor until he tried pitching a business idea to a few of them.

Last week, the retired prison guard showed up at a midtown New York loft for an event that connects entrepreneurs with investors to see whether he might get, say, $50,000, from the angels—wealthy individuals who provide capital to start-ups with the potential for fast growth.‬

Mr. Bolden, dressed in a suit and tie, took to the microphone for a two-minute pitch, clutching his crumpled notes of the key selling points for his idea—a police handgun identification signal, complete with a flashing alert. The proposed device is meant to protect plain-clothes officers from friendly fire.‬

Pressure BioSciences (PBIO) is a research products and services provider for the life science industry. The Company is engaged in the research, development and commercialization of a novel, enabling platform technology called pressure cycling technology (PCT).

PCT uses cycles of hydrostatic pressure between ambient and ultra-high levels (≥35,000 psi) to control bio-molecular interactions. The current product portfolio includes Barocyclers, PCT based instruments, and consumables, which include PULSE (Pressure Used to Lyse Samples for Extraction) Tubes as well as application specific kits (which include consumable products and reagents). The instruments and the consumables together make up the PCT Sample Preparation System (PCT SPS).  The system follows the highly successful and profitable “razor and blade” business model.

For City of Hope Medical Center’s Beckman Research Institute, the “Cabilly patents” are the gift that keeps on giving

And they’re also the overwhelming reason why City of Hope again finished first in licensing income among hospitals and research institutions in the 2010 annual survey by the Association of University Technology Managers (AUTM).

Duarte, California-based City of Hope pulled in $202 million in licensing income in 2010, up about 3 percent from the prior year. City of Hope’s 2010 haul exceeded runner-up Sloan Kettering Institute by 45 percent.

As I jogged down Wall Street in New York in October through the barricades, police horses, and thousands of activists, something became clear. The masses had self-organized and social media had added yet another social movement to its résumé. At the same time, something else became clear to me. Much higher than street level, in the boardrooms of America’s largest companies, social media expertise was far from entering the résumés of most C-suites.

Why is there confusion inside these glass fortresses around the world? Senior executives are struggling to get a grasp of what to do about the social opportunity for their kingdom. But hey, it’s new, right? The kids only started signing up eight years ago. For lots of people, the biggest concern with technology is figuring out how to operate their BlackBerry in the post-trackwheel era.

The money pumped into the National Institutes of Health in 2009 by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA)—more than $8 billion over 2 years—helped create thousands of jobs as the agency funded new and expanded grant programs, according to a government report released last month.

The Government Accounting Office (GAO), at the behest of Republican members of the House of Representatives, found that ARRA funding has created about one full-time equivalent position for each of the 21,500 grants NIH awarded since the bill’s enactment. Though the total number of jobs is tricky to pin down because the positions are reported quarterly, the NIH told GAO officials that the controversial stimulus dollars could end up creating and supporting 54,000 jobs.

Working remotely, on your own schedule, from wherever you want, can be a pretty sweet gig. But once you’ve nailed down an income that allows you to travel, being productive from your choice corner of the globe isn’t as easy as it sounds.

To succeed, you need a solid Internet connection to the mothership, even if that mothership is your own blog. And while much of the world is now wired, travelers tend to find themselves in places that offer slow Internet connections or no access at all.

Successful entrepreneurs come in all shapes and sizes, but they all share one essential trait. Find out how to make your own entrepreneurial dreams come true.

Much to the dismay of my long suffering father, in 1985 I exchanged my “fast track” career in the New York City based cable television industry for a job with a cash-starved, software start-up in bucolic North Carolina for half the pay. Shortly thereafter I attended my first meeting of the Council for Entrepreneurial Development that had recently formed in Research Triangle Park (RTP) to nurture entrepreneurship.

The speaker was a highly successful Silicon Valley transplant with what might be euphemistically described as “a bit of an attitude.” The first thing he did was ask all the entrepreneurs in the capacity crowd to raise their hands. Very few hands went up. Then he smirked, “Oh I get it, the rest of you are wannabes trying to sell something to an entrepreneur.”

How do you define success? A new study from The Hartford set out to discover what constitutes success in the eyes of small business owners. Here’s what the Small Business Success Study of 2,000 small business owners found:

Overall, business owners are feeling good. One in five (22.9 percent) say their businesses are very or extremely successful. Nearly half (46.8 percent) say their businesses are moderately successful. Just 30.3 percent say their businesses were “slightly” or “not at all” successful. Asked to project forward for the next two years, only 6 percent feel they won’t achieve success in that time frame.

Last week I attended the National Manufacturing Competitiveness Summit, hosted by the Council on Competitiveness in Washington DC.  During the Summit, the Council released a comprehensive national manufacturing strategy to create a more robust and globally competitive industrial base. In the report, the Council states “American manufacturing is either in steep decline, doing reasonably well or poised to grow.”

Depending on your perspective and the data you use, there is some truth in each view. But what does this mean for our future?  How can U.S. manufacturing continue to be competitive and relevant within the context of an ever changing, technology-driven, global economy?

Technology gurus have long lamented how hard it is for foreign talent to secure American visas and create start-ups here. As Congress spins its wheels with endless debate over immigration, an ambitious venture based in Sunnyvale, Calif., is trying to chart a more productive course aboard a 600-foot boat, or possibly a barge.

That’s the idea behind Blueseed, which aims to create a visa-free, floating incubator for international entrepreneurs off the California coast near Silicon Valley.

I am pleased (a gross understatement) to inform you that SBIR HAS NOW BEEN REAUTHORIZED for a period of 6 years, ending September 30, 2017, and that includes STTR, and what was the Commercialization Pilot Program (CPP), now to be known as the Commercialization Readiness Program (CRP).

This was all done under the National Defense Authorization Act of 2012 (NDAA) HR.1540. All that's left is for the President to sign the bill into law, and he has said he would.

There are many changes and additions to these programs, many you will probably like, some, perhaps "not so much. What you won't read in press releases or the main stream press is that the SBIR program was a stone's throw from being laid to rest.

SheerWind is a Chaska, Minnesota-based start-up with a wind power generator concept that looks nothing like any wind turbine you have ever seen. The venture’s “Invelox” technology recently won the 2011 CleanTech Open’s Sustainability Award for the North Central Region. SheerWind’s Founder and CEO, Dr. Daryoush Allaei, has 25 years of research and development experience, including leading projects funded by the U.S. Department of Defense and Department of Energy (DOE).

Interestingly, his technical expertise is not in wind power, or even renewable energy, but in systems dynamics–specifically, noise and vibration. He first developed the idea for Invelox in late 2008, while working on a proposal for a project to monitor wind turbine vibration, in response to a DOE solicitation.

Killer read: The slow death of the printed book is claiming more and more victims. First, big chain stores like Barnes & Noble and Borders wiped out the independent corner bookshop. Now the megastores face their own adapt-or-die agenda with the arrival of e-books. Initially rejected as an inferior way to read, consumer e-books are suddenly soaring in sales, which are expected to hit $2 billion next year. Booksellers including Amazon have launched e-readers like the Kindle Fire shown above, but the damage isn’t over. Borders recently declared bankruptcy, and Barnes & Noble, despite winning 26 percent of the e-book market with its Nook e-reader, is losing money too.

Attention holiday shoppers! New documents reveal that Santa Claus recently obtained his Ph.D. in child psychology. Disguised as a scruffy graduate student in worn-out jeans, he managed to conceal his identity despite his foot-long white beard and obsession with red velvet jackets.

His dissertation, titled, "Whence Play?: Why Children Need More," offered an eyewitness report on the decline of play in the last quarter- century. Playtime has dropped from 40 percent of children's time in 1987 to a mere 25 percent by 1997. In the last decade alone, children have lost eight hours of playtime per week, and many schools have dropped recess. The American Academy of Pediatrics issued a dire report urging families to allow their children to play with real toys -- blocks, dolls, and jump ropes. Dr. Santa and other experts in child development understand that real educational toys like board games (an easy way to learn math), construction toys (grist for learning about space and physics), and art supplies (a boon to creative thinking and problem solving) are being passed over for toys imprinted with the words "educational" and "electronic." "There is little evidence that toys claiming to be educational really are," Dr. Santa asserted as he cited a report by the Kaiser Foundation as well as a study by researchers at the University of Washington indicating that toddlers who watch so-called "educational" videos have a poorer vocabulary than their peers. "The demise of playtime in children's lives is equivalent to the crisis in global warming," they wrote.

According to the most commonly accepted definition, open innovation is the use of both internal and external knowledge to fuel innovation, and both internal and external paths to commercialize new products and business models (Chesbrough 2003). Businesses adopting open innovation use both external and internal ideas to create value: internal ideas can be taken to market through external channels and ideas can start from outside the firm and be taken inside.

Some industries have been adopting open innovation models for a long time -although definition might have been different- through networks of partnerships and alliances, aimed at cooperating along the value chain. As the concept has gained momentum in recent years, it is often studied supposing a clear-cut dichotomy between closed and open approaches, while many industries, such as automotive, pharma IT and software, are in transition. Similarly, different models of open innovation can be found in the practice of companies as regard the number and types of partners, the kind of governance of the innovation networks, the degree of integration and the kind of support they seek from innovation intermediaries.

Tyson Balcomb quit Facebook after a chance encounter on an elevator. He found himself standing next to a woman he had never met — yet through Facebook he knew what her older brother looked like, that she was from a tiny island off the coast of Washington and that she had recently visited the Space Needle in Seattle.

“I knew all these things about her, but I’d never even talked to her,” said Mr. Balcomb, a pre-med student in Oregon who had some real-life friends in common with the woman. “At that point I thought, maybe this is a little unhealthy.”

As Facebook prepares for a much-anticipated public offering, the company is eager to show off its momentum by building on its huge membership: more than 800 million active users around the world, Facebook says, and roughly 200 million in the United States, or two-thirds of the population.