Forbes recently published our list of the world's most innovative companies in which we ranked companies based upon their innovation premium. But why do some companies have a high innovation premium while others do not? During our study we learned that a leader's everyday actions are one of the most powerful signals to their team and organization that innovation truly matters.

Dozens of senior executives at large organizations revealed to us in interviews that in most cases they did not feel personally responsible for coming up with innovations. They felt only a responsibility to "facilitate the process," to make sure someone else in the company was doing it. But in the world's most innovative companies, senior executives like Jeff Bezos (Amazon), Marc Benioff (salesforce.com), and A.G. Lafley (Procter & Gamble) did not just delegate innovation; they kept their own hands deep in the innovation process.

In the hype that is social media marketing, it is often hard to distinguish between the braggadocio and the brilliant. Communities are launched with great fanfare only to slink away quietly into the burial ground of false promise. So to stumble across a vibrant community— one that predates Facebook and supports a B2B brand— is not just surprising, it is downright awe-inspiring.

Thanks to the support of an enlightened board member in 2003, the SAP Community Network (SCN) was able to overcome internal naysayers, and gradually grow into a 2.5 million-member social business juggernaut. Now heading community operations, Chip Rodgers, who I interviewed in advance of his presentation at the B2B Corporate Social Media Summit, the SCN sets a high standard, revealing these 9 ways to know your community is truly awesome.

KANGERLUSSUAQ, Greenland—In her knitted ski hat, parka and hiking boots, Åsa Rennermalm doesn't look like an accountant—or a plumber.

But the Rutgers University hydrologist draws on both disciplines as she works at the southwestern edge of Greenland's vast ice sheet. She's spent the past four years trying to answer a deceptively simple question: When Greenland's ice melts, where does the water go?

"Satellites show the surface of the ice is melting and the volume of ice is decreasing," Rennermalm says. "But how much meltwater is leaving and reaching the ocean? That will influence future sea level rise."

In the not-too-distant future broadband speeds will be measured in gigabits per second rather than megabits per second, the former being 1,000 times faster than the latter. Such blazing fast data transmission will vastly improve the quality of streaming high-definition video, playing online video games, participating in video conferences and using voice over IP, all of which struggle with latency at today's average data transfer rates, which range from less than one megabit per second (Mbps) to 10 Mbps (pdf). The sticking point over gigabit-per-second broadband: who will pay for it?

Telecommunications companies, still stinging from the financial beating they took a decade ago after hastily building up capacity for Internet companies that soon went out of business, have been leery ever since of investing in infrastructure unless they are certain there is a demand for it. Most customers, many of them still exploring the wonders of YouTube and for the most part content to simply use e-mail and social networks, are not demanding, nor are they willing to pay a premium for, service that moves information at 1 billion bits per second.

Students and faculty from across Georgetown University were invited to pitch their business ideas last year in the first-ever Hoya Challenge. Participants were eligible for $10,000 in cash prizes and workspace this summer at a local business incubator.

The year-long event, a living lesson in entre­pre­neur­ship, never involved a textbook.

The university is one of many in the region ramping up its entre­pre­neur­ship programs, both inside and outside the classroom, as a growing number of students in business schools and beyond want to study the subject.

The dynamics pushing the trend are varied. The troubled economy has made traditional jobs more difficult to obtain. Flashy success stories such as Google, Facebook and Groupon give entrepreneurship a certain glamour. And many of today’s graduates are less likely than their parents to pursue careers in a single company or industry.

As I got caught up on my reading this morning, I was amazed how many column inches, pixels (and a Google logo) were dedicated to what would have been Lucille Ball’s 100th birthday.

The more I read, the more I was reminded that the Lucy we all loved (even my kids LOVE I Love Lucy reruns) was more than a gifted comedienne – she was a remarkable entrepreneur.

Note I didn’t say “woman” entrepreneur – simply because it would be inappropriate to compare her to only females in the business world. Few – men or women – compared to Lucy while she was breaking invisible barriers and building what can only be described as an empire.

Where do you look for iPhone and iPad accessories? Your local Best Buy? The online Apple Store? There are lots of places to look, but one destination in particular has become my go-to spot for accessory browsing: Kickstarter.

The crowd-funding site, which invites users to invest in various projects with small sum “pledges” that only have to be paid if a project reaches its funding goal, is a breath of fresh air for a jaded iDevice accessory shopper like myself. And Kickstarter projects associated with Apple hardware seem to have a knack for doing well, both on the site and after achieving funding. Dan Provost, co-designer of the Glif and the Cosmonaut (both listed below), shared with me his opinion of why Kickstarter has prompted so many interesting Apple-related projects:

To a smaller degree, the influx of Apple accessories on Kickstarter has mirrored the deluge of apps into the App Store back in 2008. Apple has created an amazing tool in the iPhone, and people are excited to build things for it. Apple enabled individuals to publish software on the iPhone in 2008 with the opening of the App Store, and it seems Kickstarter has created that same enthusiasm for hardware.

Building a startup is hard work for low pay, it’s risky, and it requires total responsibility to make it work. Yet, many entrepreneurs are the happiest people I know. On the other hand, I know many unhappy individuals who are always partying, have minimal commitments, and little responsibility. I suspect the real parameters of happiness have eluded these people.

According to one of my favorite authors, Brian Tracy, in his book “The Power of Self-Discipline,” happiness is not even a goal that you can aim at and achieve in and of itself, but it is a by-product that comes to you when you are engaged in doing something you really enjoy while in the company of people you like and respect.

Finland's Nokia Technopolis Innovation Mill wants to attract new companies to expand what it says is a growing, pan-regional ICT ecosystem.

Nokia Technopolis and the Finnish Funding Agency for Technology and Innovation (Tekes) launched the Nokia Technopolis Innovation Mill in 2009 as an initiative aimed at strengthening Finland’s information and communication technology (ICT) cluster and encouraging companies to develop globally competitive products and services.

Tekes is the main government funding and expert organisation for R&D and innovation in Finland. It finances both industrial R&D projects and projects carried out in universities and research institutes. Fourteen new businesses were created during the first year and the number is growing steadily according to officials.

America isn't innovating like it used to. And by "like it used to," I mean the period from after World War II to 1973, when an explosion of new technologies increased worker productivity at a pace that, had it continued to the present day, would mean an increase in the average worker's wage of 51 percent, or $18 per hour. (This difference is represented by the gray area in the graph, above.)

That's just one of the surprising (at least to me) long-term trends explained in a new report from The Brookings Institution, A Dozen Economic Facts About Innovation, which delves into everything from the reasons for wage stagnation among middle-income men to the effects of innovation on life expectancy. (I'll be delving into more of the report's findings starting next week, and linking the results into a series.)

A quick and effective way to sort ideas generated during an innovation workshop is to apply brand coherence.  This means grouping ideas around relevant themes that support new or existing brands.  Ideation sessions can overwhelm you with hundreds of opportunities.  Teams struggle with evaluating and selecting the best ideas if they do not apply this simple step first.  Here is a suggested way to do it.

1.  Create an Idea Form:  Before the workshop, make sure all participants understand the importance of capturing their ideas using a standard format.  Print a supply of blank forms such as this one, and tell participants that any idea generated must be captured (quickly) using the form instead of taking notes in their own notebooks or lab books.  Engineers in particular like to document ideas in their own lab books for patent filings.  Insist that they do not use workshop time for this. (Your IP lawyers might appreciate this, too.).  Make sure each idea form has a pre-printed number (in sequence) on it.  This will be useful later as you inventory your ideas.

Newswise — Research, science and technology parks are catalysts for job creation. As communities look for ways to create jobs and drive economic growth, many are finding innovation to be a key element.

“Research and science parks help grow local, high-tech companies while attracting new ones to the region,” said Harold Strong, Jr., Association of University Research Parks (AURP) President and Director of Discovery Park and Technology Transfer at the University of North Texas. “These parks are impacting their communities in a big way – with high-wage jobs.”

One example of this is the Purdue Research Park Network. According to a recent economic impact study, the park network is responsible for a $1.3 billion annual impact for the State of Indiana and “more than 4,000 high-tech, high-quality jobs paying an average annual salary of $63,000 – 65 percent higher than the Indiana average.”

I recently organized a MOHAI walking tour of South Lake Union to begin to explore the roots of the museum’s new neighborhood. My original intent was to explain the importance of South Lake Union as a biotech hub but a different theme emerged in the course of my research. It is true that Seattle has some success attracting biotech organizations to the city, and the prospects for our region are promising, but not stellar. Where our city, and the South Lake Union neighborhood in particular are “punching above our weight” is in our contribution to global health.

The most important asset for the city has been the University of Washington, which generates the intellectual feedstock that might foster either biotech or global health. Beginning in the 1960s, the school transformed itself from general education university to a formidable research institution. While the conventional wisdom is that Warren Magnuson funneled money to the school when he was head of the Senate appropriations committee, Lee Huntsman makes the distinction that Magnuson championed the growth in the National Institutes of Health and then informed the UW of what they had to do to compete for those funds. Needless to say, they learned to compete very effectively. UW is consistently among the top recipients of NIH funding.

If you have a child entering grade school this fall, file away just one number with all those back-to-school forms: 65 percent.

Chances are just that good that, in spite of anything you do, little Oliver or Abigail won’t end up a doctor or lawyer — or, indeed, anything else you’ve ever heard of. According to Cathy N. Davidson, co-director of the annual MacArthur Foundation Digital Media and Learning Competitions, fully 65 percent of today’s grade-school kids may end up doing work that hasn’t been invented yet.

So Abigail won’t be doing genetic counseling. Oliver won’t be developing Android apps for currency traders or co-chairing Google’s philanthropic division. Even those digital-age careers will be old hat. Maybe the grown-up Oliver and Abigail will program Web-enabled barrettes or quilt with scraps of Berber tents. Or maybe they’ll be plying a trade none of us old-timers will even recognize as work.

It is approaching dusk in São Paulo, and in the Auditorio Ibirapuera, a grand opera house set amid the sprawling Brazilian metropolis, mayors from around the world are crowding together, taking pictures of one another. In the middle stands Michael R. Bloomberg, the mayor of New York. He is a man who is used to people asking to have their picture taken with him, and he seems very glad to oblige. Time and again, he asks his longtime companion, Diana Taylor, who's wearing a khaki dress and a sweater tied smartly around her shoulders, to use each person's camera so he or she might carry home a digitized piece of him.

Dr. Jan Rosenbaum is a molecular pharmacologist and a bioscience matchmaker.

As an executive-in-residence with Cincinnati-based seed-stage investor CincyTech, Rosenbaum matches up physicians with medical-device engineers, emerging therapeutics companies with medicinal chemists, and diagnostics makers with target markets.

Rosenbaum’s role is to look for opportunities to create companies — or commercialize research — out of health care and biotechnology work being done at local research institutions. For the last 12 months, that work has included three trips to Israel to form connections with its dynamic and prolific medical research and biotechnology industries.

Central Florida entrepreneurs have often faced near-drought conditions in the land of venture capital, those high-risk, high-payoff investments that seem to rain down on places like Silicon Valley.

But while the Orlando area historically falls short in venture-capital rankings, there is one area where it appears to keep pace with most areas of the country: family wealth. And although such money has rarely found its way to entrepreneurs in the past, other than to family-owned enterprises, there are signs that such wealth is venturing farther afield, corporate-finance experts say.

As discussed in earlier columns, America does not have a true entrepreneurs visa or a line for entrepreneurs to get in to start a business and create jobs in America. This past week, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS, the service part of the late INS) sought to loosen some of the federal government’s policies aligned against foreign-born entrepreneurs. But rather than “Let a thousand flowers bloom,” the new policy could perhaps be called, “Let one or two flowers bloom.”

Let’s not be mistaken: Anytime an immigration agency is interested in being more welcoming toward legal immigrants it deserves attention. And one can hope the new policy will help a number of people. The problem is that the new policy does not go very far and is constrained by previous agency actions.

There are some first-class blogs on the web for young entrepreneurs. The challenges that these entrepreneurs face every day are immense and having blogs packed with resources, guidance and inspiration are crucial.

Here’s a list of ten outstanding blogs helping entrepreneurs every day.

1. Mixergy

“Where Ambitious Upstarts Mix!”

Andrew Warner, an outgoing, intelligent guy regularly publishes video interviews with high profiled entrepreneurs. Some of the interviews are long — typically an hour or more —  but it’s that length that let’s you learn so much from those being interviewed. It’s exciting to dig into the archives and find past interviews with the likes of  Jimmy Wales, Tim Ferris, Paul Graham and more.