Color me cynical, but for a long time, I assumed that all the political blather about green jobs meant only one thing: They were fake. But according to this infographic by Column Five for solar-power company 1Bog, green jobs are very much real--and in fact might be one of the only places in this awful economy where a person can hope to get a decent manufacturing job.

Granted, we're not experiencing the hockey-stick growth you might expect from such a burgeoning field. As the topmost chart shows, the green economy expanded three times faster than the economy as a whole, in the decade ended in 2007. (Who knows exactly what that ratio looks like now, but we're betting that it's larger.)

The developing world has, for the first time, outstripped richer economies in providing new investment in the renewable energy sector, according to a report.

And research and development (R&D) funding from government sources, at US$5 billion in 2010, for the first time overtook corporate R&D investment, according to 'Global Trends in Renewable Energy Investment 2011', published by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) last month (7 July).

"The increase in government R&D funding is a global phenomenon and reflects, partly, the spending of money from the 'green stimulus' packages that were introduced [by some countries] in 2008–9 after the financial crisis," said Angus McCrone, chief editor of the research and analysis provider Bloomberg New Energy Finance, which prepared the report.

Just like the word innovation, or even ‘the precursor to acceleration’ (‘startup incubation’) this particular use of the word acceleration (probably originating in this context with leading startup accelerators Y Combinator and TechStars) is being used to mean just about anything that those involved want it to, but here at the iij we’re getting a strange sense of déjà vu.

Readers of the iij are probably more than familiar with our efforts to define the word startup: ‘Why startup is a crazy term‘, Innovation Investment Journal, April 2011.

It’s not at all uncommon that when something is successful, other companies attempt to mirror that success by following some of the same methods. From the first cars to the recent deluge of daily deals sites, the behavior is far from surprising.

It stands to reason then that we’d start seeing a number of startup incubators and accelerators popping up across the world, given the success of some of the bigger names within this vein. While the track records of accelerators such as Y Combinator and TechStars are subject to your definition of success, the fact that these companies have spawned some of the names that are now huge within the technology industry will continue to lead more people down a similar path.

We rely on innovation to address challenges and to make our lives more enjoyable. But innovation decreases and is altogether curbed when change agents (that’s you):

• Become bystanders
• Decide to hoard their ideas

The world is in need of anxious thinkers (not onlookers) who stimulate ideas through providing and sharing ideas. When a person relieves themselves of this duty, everyone loses. Innovators become needy spectators and selfish pacifiers, stunting beneficial change. Let’s ensure this doesn’t happen.

When Google deploys a fiber-to-the-home network in Kansas City, Kan. (and later in Kansas City, Missouri) its success for the project will not be measured in dollars but in users. And in promoting this view of broadband Google shows a keen understanding of how broadband has the potential to disrupt everything — the value isn’t in delivering broadband — it’s in delivering services over broadband.

That doesn’t mean that broadband isn’t valuable, but it’s also not the highest value — much like electricity is valuable, but it’s the air conditioning or refrigeration that it enables that people spend more money on. Which runs somewhat counter to the argument put forth by ISPs, especially those keen to meter broadband — that the value is in the access itself. Instead of viewing broadband as a gateway to the web, and trying to capitalize on that by offering faster speeds that people will eventually pay more for as Verizon is doing with FiOS, many ISPs view broadband as something that’s valuable in and of itself– and as such it might make sense to charge people by the byte.

You want to make certain your collaborative system for the front end of innovation encourages team members to contribute to the ideation process. Practical experience tells us we can lend the following practical guidance.

1. Your collaborative system should employ “persuasive design”. It may sound superficial, but the graphical user interface is an important part of the collaborative system. The users’ eyes and their clicking fingers should be led toward the parts of the screen that yield collaborative contribution. Choice architecture leads people to make decisions based on evaluating choices. You can help encourage people to make their choices with a well presented user interface design.

It's a lesson that's all too easy to forget in a world driven by mobile devices, cloud computing and home offices. There are big benefits to setting up shop in the right spot—especially among lots of peers in the same field.

Just ask sports-gear makers in Ogden, Utah. Or health-care companies in Nashville. Or nanotechnology researchers in Albany, N.Y.

These cities, and others like them across the country, have become hubs for specific industries. Entrepreneurs are moving there and flourishing in the teeth of a bleak economy. The cities, in turn, are nurturing the entrepreneurs by giving them access to funding, mentors and facilities.

To coincide with Scientific American's "Cities" special topic issue, we gathered recent lists ranking U.S. cities on aspects of green living, pollution, health and technology. Today, we feature the cities that showed up most frequently on the top 10 lists to determine the overall top performers, Part 5 of 5

Even during this bruising recession, risk-taking entrepreneurs in the developing world seem to be seeing opportunities to leapfrog others and create advantage. And, as the Kauffman Foundation’s Carl Schramm recently argued in an article in Forbes magazine, I am not just talking about mobile technology in Africa.

The Economist will hold its “Change from the Bottom Up” Summit in Mexico City in October. The theme comes from the population’s impatience with true political reform, which has been slow, while many in the country argue that they can build a high-growth economy from the bottom up. This thinking probably comes in great part from observing a new generation of entrepreneurs who are turning enthusiasm into profitability.

Elevator Labs is one of a growing numbers of start-ups in Los Angeles hoping to raise the profile of L.A.'s tech scene.

But this start-up isn't making any one specific product. Rather, Elevator Labs is in business of building start-ups.

With $20 million in funding to feed Elevator Labs, the new firm is an incubator looking to start L.A. companies based off of ideas thought up by its founders, two former Virgin Digital executives, Zack Zalon and Brendon Cassidy.

The first idea to make it to market and available to the public is Hello Music, an online marketplace that offers musicians discounts on recording and performance gear and studio time.

E-mail may have been the Internet's first "killer app," but keeping up with it has become sheer murder. The volume of e-mail defies comprehension: by one count, 32 billion messages a day were sent in 2010, a figure that does not include the roughly 90 percent of e-mails that are spam.

A growing number of products and research efforts aim to ensure that e-mail overload doesn't cancel out the productivity-enhancing benefits of IT.

Researchers have made stretchable, ultrathin electronics that cling to skin like a temporary tattoo and can measure electrical activity from the body. These electronic tattoos could allow doctors to diagnose and monitor conditions like heart arrhythmia or sleep disorders noninvasively.

John A. Rogers, a professor of materials science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, has developed a prototype that can replicate the monitoring abilities of bulky electrocardiograms and other medical devices that are normally restricted to a clinical or laboratory setting. This work was presented today in Science.

Entrepreneurs are often considered the stars of business, the rebels that redefine mundane realities. Both developed and developing countries acknowledge the role they play in spurring economic growth. But the term entrepreneurship is often loosely defined.

It is the amount and speed of wealth creation, high risk and innovation that separates real entrepreneurship from small business or the self-employed. Entrepreneurs challenge basic notions of the market by taking risks that many people would consider irrational. They are willing to go to great lengths to build their businesses even if that means selling their own homes. Successful entrepreneurs are the ones that may initially be ridiculed but later are applauded for the positive changes they instill in markets.

There is an old adage that leaders are born and not made.  If your 3 year old complains that you are trying to dilute her when you add more milk to her chocolate milk, you just may have a budding startup founder on your hands.  So here are 10 signs that your child has the startup founder gene:

1.   Understands the Value of a $ – She doesn’t stop crying when you give her a bottle and yet she does stop crying when you give her a dollar.

What: Ben Franklin Technology Ventures

Where: 125 Goodman Drive, Bethlehem, PA 18015-3715

610-758-5200

800-445-9515

When: There's no set time for a company founder to apply for funding or a lease.

Who: Startups and entrepreneurs looking for early-stage funding, mentorship, and the opportunity to work with other new companies. You must be located in Pennsylvania or have plans for a significant portion of your operation to be in Pennsylvania.

AngelList, the Silicon Valley-based community that connects startups with investors, is opening up shop in New York.

Next week, three of its ten employees will move into startup incubator DogPatch Labs.

Dave Zohrob, an AngelList developer who will be moving into DogPatch, says his company is attracted to New York because of its hyperactive startup community.

"A lot is happening around New York, and a lot of companies have raised money on the east coast," Zohrob says. "They've raised more per capita via AngelList than startups on the west coast."

Although the world is dependent on personal computers, making them has not been a great business for most American companies for almost a decade.

The announcement on Thursday by Hewlett-Packard that it was considering offloading its PC business, even though it is the undisputed worldwide market leader, was a clear sign of the difficulties.

If H.P. goes through with the idea, it would follow I.B.M., an early PC maker, which was one of the first to recognize the long-term problems and, in 2005, sold its business to Lenovo, a Chinese company. Other American makers like Compaq (acquired by H.P.), Gateway and Packard Bell were absorbed by others or just faded away. Depending on how H.P. sheds the unit — it could sell or spin it off as a separate company — only two American PC makers would remain.

In retrospect I think it’s a lot like driving: no matter how well the other person drives, I always feel safer it I’m behind the wheel.

Thinking about risk and entrepreneurship: There is risk, perceived risk, and the difference between real risk and perceived. And I know that I always feel less risk if I’ve got my hands on the wheel. Do you?

This helped me a lot while I was in the high-risk high-growth stage of growing a company, with my wife and I signing second and third mortgages and liens on our house.