Whenever the White House starts rattling off ideas for goosing the economy and creating jobs, “patent reform” always ranks high on the list. Here was Barack Obama on June 29: “Right now, Congress can send me a bill that would make it easier for entrepreneurs to patent a new product or idea, because we can’t give innovators in other countries a big leg up.”

In the abstract, Obama is onto something. There’s been no shortage of reporting over the years about how the U.S. patent system has become outmoded and can throttle innovation. “This American Life,” for example, recently aired an in-depth segment on patent trolls: firms that exist solely to stockpile patents — often vague patents on basic business methods — and then lob infringement suits at companies trying to market new products. Start-up firms are at risk of being throttled by lawsuits, while many established tech firms spend their time gobbling up patents as a defensive measure, so that they can countersue if the need arises. That’s why Apple, Microsoft and Google have been wrestling one another for the 6,000 patents that went on auction after telecom equipment maker Nortel went bankrupt.

Clearbridge Accelerator, a Singapore-based technology incubator that focuses on biomedical devices, nanotech, advanced material sciences and computational algorithms, has received an investment from Tim Draper, founder and managing director of venture capital firm Draper Fisher Jurvetson, according to a press release.

The funding will go towards strengthening Clearbridge Accelerator’s incubation platform and expanding its incubation team and support infrastructure. Currently, the incubator is involved with four companies: Clearbridge BioMedics, Clearbridge BioLoc, Clearbridge Nanomedics, and Clearbridge VitalSigns, according to a report in sgentrepreneurs.

If the vertiginious dive of the Dow Jones has left you feeling gloomy this week, your biggest problem might be that you’re paying too careful watch over the erratic EKG of a dying system, the one the International Energy Agency described a few years ago as “patently unsustainable.” Look intead at the numbers that matter to a truly sustainable system, and the future looks bright even after this wild week.

Herewith, a rosy forecast from the MNN weather desk and a bullish report on the green economy. Let’s call it the MNN Innovation Index.

24kwh:

This is the amount of energy a Nissan Leaf’s battery can store, enough to power the average Japanese home for two days, IT World reports. This is also the dawning of a promised smart-grid revolution in which EV owners power up on the cheap overnight and then sell power back to the grid when demand peaks during the day - about as win-win as a scenario can get.

Through a revived public-private partnership, Detroit is positioning itself for an economic recovery and the federal government is more than willing to help.

That -- in short -- is what U.S. Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Economic Development John Fernandez told a handful of media today as he took a break from touring high-tech businesses and speaking with officials from companies such as Compuware Corp., Quicken Loans Inc. and GalaxE.Solutions.

“We wanted to come and actually get on the ground and meet some of the leadership,” said Fernandez, who is the point man for President Barack Obama on economic development. “We wanted to learn more about what was happening here; look for opportunities where we can be a better federal partner to accelerate this growth.”

Yesterday, we asked “Where Do You Get New Ideas?” There weren’t many comments on the post, but I received tons of emails with your answers. The number one response? In the shower!

You can see the other responses in the infographic below.

I still get business plans, looking for an investor, that say all too clearly that the first goal of the new business is to do research and development (R&D) on some promising new technology, like superconductivity or cancer research. Investors are looking for commercial products to make money, rather than R&D sunk costs, so your investment hopes are sunk as well.

In fact, the term ‘research and development’ covers a continuum of activities, so you need to use a more precise term to optimize your funding considerations. There are opportunities all along the continuum, and they need to be mapped to the right academic environments and public- and private-sector development organizations before a funding source can be determined.

Good news: LinkedIn and LinkedIn Today can drive huge amounts of traffic to a website. The bad news? Generating traffic via LinkedIn — just like generating traffic via any strategy — is not easy.

But it can be done.

First some background. LinkedIn Today is a social news platform that gathers stories, articles, etc. based on what LinkedIn users share with each other. If you like an article and “share” it (like by using the “share” button above the first paragraph of this post) your connections — and their connections — may notice and check it out.

Nice — but it gets better.

We've won the war on boredom! If you have a smartphone in your pocket, a game console in the living room, a Kindle in your backpack and an iPad in the kitchen, you never need to suffer a minute without stimulation. Yay!

But wait—we might be in dangerous territory. Experts say our brains need boredom so we can process thoughts and be creative. I think they're right. I've noticed that my best ideas always bubble up when the outside world fails in its primary job of frightening, wounding or entertaining me.

I make my living being creative and have always assumed that my potential was inherited from my parents. But for allowing my creativity to flourish, I have to credit the soul-crushing boredom of my childhood.

The traditional office space is in the midst of its most dramatic shift since it was rocked by the creation of the cubicle more than 40 years ago. Driven by new communication technologies, the globalization of supply chains and an increased emphasis on real estate cost reduction, we’ve seen a massive change in the way people work. The “New Office” is an airport lounge on a tablet, a midnight video call on the kitchen counter, a shared table at the office or a collaboration pod for ad hoc meetings. These new workspaces create fresh challenges for IT departments and technological demands from today’s workforce – from new productivity tools to broader communication and collaboration solutions.

Niccolò Machiavelli might well have titled his 16th-century Dell'arte Della Guerra ("   The Art of War ") as The Art of Lying, since verbal deception—mainly, how to get away with it—was so central to his political psychology. To say that the exquisitely light-of-tongue are "talented" is, of course, sure to be met with moral outrage. We place a social premium on the ability to ferret out other people’s lies, especially, as we’ve seen just this week in the news, when they may hide brutal and ugly crimes.

Still, there is something darkly fascinating about those skilled in verbal legerdemain. And at least one team of scientists, led by Dutch psychologist Aldert Vrij , believes that it has identified the precise ingredients of "good liars." These researchers outline the following 18 traits (pdf) that, if ever they were to coalesce in a perfect storm of a single perpetrator, would strain even seasoned interrogators’ lie-detection abilities:

Start-ups is the new flavour for venture capital (VC) investors in 2011. With 93 deals worth $510.98 million already between January and July compared to 69 deals worth $282.21 million in the corresponding period in 2010, the start-up space is finding much traction. As per the VCCEdge data, total investments in start-ups in 2010 were 147 deals worth $728.52 million.

With a slew of investments happening across a spectrum of start-ups ranging from consumer discretionary, consumer staples, financials, healthcare, industrials, telecommunication services and utilities, the story is no more just limited to the e-commerce space. The ecosystem for the Indian entrepreneur who hitherto depended on just family and friends to fund his enterprise is fast evolving into a comprehensive one.

1 You have to lead. "Individuals who aspire to work at technology startups want to be part of something greater than the sum of its parts. Having an ambitious plan for market domination will attract the people and culture you want to cultivate in your company. Many workers in central Iowa's large companies don't see how their contribution makes a difference, and are looking for somewhere they can make their mark."

2. Disrupt. "The industry is full of incremental startups who all describe themselves as 'The next (fill in successful startup).' Be revolutionary and disruptive, not evolutionary and copycat. Being in the Midwest means that we have to work harder and smarter if we want to succeed. There are better-financed startups on either coast waiting to knock you down and steal your lunch money."

A spin-off is merely a startup spawned by a mature parent (company), and conventional logic would dictate that it has a survival advantage over the lowly startup. Yet spin-offs seem to most often fail to launch in the real world. I was part of one myself a few years ago, and felt the pain, so the phenomenon has intrigued me ever since.

My first thought is that spin-offs are like struggling adolescents with over-protective parents. When companies spin off a division (sometimes called a demerger or deconsolidation), they naturally want it to grow and succeed on its own merits, just as they have. But like protective parents everywhere, they tend to shelter it in ways that stunt its growth in the long run.

IN the wake of the hugely disappointing budget deal and the S.& P.’s debt downgrade, maybe we need to hang a new sign in the immigration arrival halls at all U.S. ports and airports. It could simply read: “Welcome. You are entering the United States of America. Past performance is not necessarily indicative of future returns.”

Because our country is now finding itself in the worst kind of decline — a slow decline, just slow enough for us to keep deluding ourselves that nothing really fundamental needs to change if our future is to match our past.

Everyone who works in the start-up realm — whether tech, biotech, cleantech, or other — tends to live in the future. All day long, they're working on products that will be launched and sold in a month or a year or a decade. So when the stock market soars or swoons, they tend to ignore it. "That's today's news. We're tomorrow's," the thinking goes, no matter how many points the Dow has lost.

Of course, vertiginous plunges in the public markets do tend to have an affect on young companies that need to continually raise venture capital money, and hope to one day go public themselves or be acquired by a bigger entity — as we saw in 2000 and 2008. They're bad news.

But here's how the various players in the innovation economy rationalize away stock market drops and other macro-economic bad mojo...

Internationally renowned entrepreneurship guru Dan isenberg believes Puerto Rico provides fertile ground for entrepreneurship, and in 20 or 30 years, he sees the local economy buoyed by a number of native companies exporting their goods and services to the world.

"I think it could happen five times faster with some intelligent facilitation," isenberg told CARIBBEAN BUSINESS. "Entrepreneurship is part of the human condition. It is like art and music. It is here in Puerto Rico. You can't stamp it out, even though you have done a pretty good job here at trying."

The world investment guru doesn't buy the oft-stated refrain that Puerto Ricans, shaped by the Section 936 experience, are skilled workers and managers, but by and large aren't entrepreneurial.

"Entrepreneurs exist here. I know the people who are trying to do it. There are barriers and obstacles, but they do exist," isenberg said. "You don't need gazillions of people to be entrepreneurs. Not everybody should be an entrepreneur. You need a couple hundred."

Two-thirds of US companies expect to increase hiring in the coming year, according to a recent survey by social recruitment software developer JobVite.

If you're hunting for one of those jobs, it's going to help to be on social networks. But make sure you keep them updated and professional -- nearly half of recruiters always try to track down your online profiles, according to JobVite.

INNOVATION is today’s equivalent of the Holy Grail. Rich-world governments see it as a way of staving off stagnation. Poor governments see it as a way of speeding up growth. And businesspeople everywhere see it as the key to survival.

Which makes Clay Christensen the closest thing we have to Sir Galahad. Fourteen years ago Mr Christensen, a knight of the Harvard Business School, revolutionised the study of the subject with “The Innovator’s Dilemma”, a book that popularised the term “disruptive innovation”. This month he publishes a new study, “The Innovator’s DNA”, co-written with Jeff Dyer and Hal Gregersen, which tries to take us inside the minds of successful innovators. How do they go about their business? How do they differ from regular suits? And what can companies learn from their mental habits?

I hear many executives and professionals in large corporations talking about their dream of jumping ship, and starting their own company. What they don’t realize is that the longer they wait, the more big-company habits they are acquiring, which will make their eventual decision harder and entrepreneurial efforts less and less likely to succeed.

Certainly, the longer they wait, the greater the variety of excuses they will find for why now is not the time. Common examples include; need to work on my resume, broaden my experience, enhance my skills, save my income, and maintain a stable family life until my children are gone. Most will then NEVER make the step, and remain unsatisfied through much of their career.