America is a mighty big country. It contains multitudes, and it can be hard to get a sense, sitting in, say, Montana, of what's happening thousands of miles away in Maine. The Real State of America Atlas by Cynthai Enloe and Joni Seager, released last week, is full of maps and graphics that can help quantify some of how we're doing as a country.

For instance, how is our driving? Driving is, as you can see, down from last year, as the recession and high gas prices pinch transportation plans. (Maybe everyone's taking their bikes and public transportation?) As you can see, states with major metropolitan areas tend to have less driving. In Oklahoma, the non-car options are presumably quite worse.

NAPLES — Tammie Nemecek has a new job in economic development, where she’ll focus on “gardening.”

The longtime CEO and president of Collier County’s Economic Development Council has been hired by the University of Central Florida in Orlando to help grow jobs through a statewide economic gardening program.

“It completely fit exactly what I wanted to do going forward,” said Nemecek, 42.

The gardening program is designed to help small businesses expand their market share and increase their revenues so they can grow.

Nemecek will work for the Florida Economic Gardening Institute, created by the Florida Legislature in 2009 to help boost Florida’s economy.

To: New Jersey Biotechnology Community

From: Debbie Hart, President

Re: Funding Available to Help Life Sciences and Tech Companies Leverage Angel and Venture Fund Investments

We are writing to advise of the following announcement issued today by Governor Christie.

* * *

TRENTON - Governor Chris Christie announced on August 2 that funding is now available for life sciences and tech companies through three programs offered by the New Jersey Economic Development Authority (EDA). The products target emerging companies that have attracted capital through angel and venture capital investors.

"The success of New Jersey's life sciences companies is critical to growing the State's economy and essential to maintaining our role as a leader in the development of innovative technologies that enhance and save lives while creating high-paying jobs and attracting private investment," said Governor Christie. "These programs will strengthen New Jersey's entrepreneurial environment by providing businesses that have attracted matching investments from angel investors and venture funds with the additional resources they need to thrive."

The three programs, which are structured as subordinated convertible debt, will benefit early stage, emerging technology and life sciences companies by providing growth capital to directly fund uses such as hiring key staff, product marketing and sales:

I find it fascinating that they said, out loud, that they felt “older applicants…were less likely to succeed.” Sure, lots of people think that way, but surprising that they said it.  The reality is, once you reach 40, you are part of a “protected class” which means that you can’t be fired or not hired because of your age.  However, there are lots of reasons not to hire any one person, so it’s very difficult to win an age discrimination lawsuit on the hiring side.

In answer to what you should watch for, here’s an easy answer:  Nothing.  Why?  Because we tend to see what we’re looking for, and it will cause you to second guess yourself.  If the person opens the door for you, will you think, “Oh no!  He thinks I’m incapable of opening my own doors because I’m so darn old!” That would be utterly ridiculous, but it’s where thought patterns tend to go when you are looking for evidence that people are discriminating against you.

I’m currently reading a book called The Beak of the Finch. I’m quite enjoying it, even though it deals with a subject I don’t normally read about (evolutionary biology). It also came out in 1994, meaning few book stores would display it near the front. So how did I come to have a copy?

I found it in my local library.

I had a few minutes to kill the other day, and was perusing the stacks when I came across this tale of Peter and Rosemary Grant’s epic adventures in the Galapagos tracking Darwin’s finches. I’ve now spent several pleasant late night hours reading the book on my back porch while listening to the insects and birds all around me. This is the definition of serendipity — happy results that happen by chance.

The Province of Ontario, Canada is helping MaRS expand to more than double its size, making it the largest urban innovation hub in the world.

MaRS is a convergence centre in the heart of Toronto's discovery district that brings together researchers, financiers, entrepreneurs and industry leaders to accelerate innovation and the commercialization of new discoveries.

Artist's rendering of Phase 2 at night. Phase 2 of the MaRS Discovery District, a new advanced medical laboratory and technology building, will be located in the heart of Toronto. Near globally recognized universities, hospitals and research institutes, the new 20-storey building will house research organizations and businesses in the science, technology and social innovation sectors.

The European Union's research budget has hit a record high, including a major increase for funding for blue-skies research.

The latest round of annual funding from the European Commission's Seventh Framework Programme will see overall spending increase by more than 9 per cent to €7 billion (£6.2 billion).

Funding for the highly regarded European Research Council, which finances "frontier" research, will rise by 23 per cent to €1.6 billion.

Jerzy Langer, professor of physics at the Polish Academy of Sciences, said that in terms of money received versus investment, UK researchers were the "true financial winners".

Commenting on the considerable increase in funding for the ERC, he said it was "a triple miracle".

A new survey of 2,000 kids between 11 -18 shows that 77% of them want to start a business when they grow up. Nearly half of the kids mentioned that they have always had an interest in being their own boss.

TV programmes such as The Apprentice and Dragon’s Den and the high profile of entrepreneurs, particularly those creating successful online businesses such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn or Skype, are having a profound effect on the dreams of Britain’s children. Online or digital businesses and IT are among the most popular areas of business interest for young Brits, with more than one in five (22 per cent) saying this is where they intend to pursue their ambitions.

The Internet and social media are capturing the public’s attention , but some of the most significant advances today are happening in medicine. Technology and medicine are converging in new ways to make possible the types of innovations that could be seen on “Star Trek.” Consider this: We spend the majority of our health-care dollars on treating chronic diseases. Technological advances will enable us to shift those investments into improving our health and preventing disease.

My colleague Daniel Kraft is a physician who chairs the medicine track and heads the FutureMed Program for Singularity University . The Silicon Valley-based university teaches business executives, technologists and government leaders about “exponential technologies.” These are inventions in fields that experience faster growth than average — such as robotics, nanotechnology and artificial intelligence. Singularity University’s founders believe that these technologies, when combined in new ways, could solve some of the world’s major problems, such as poverty, hunger, energy shortages and disease.

Where do the ideas in your organisation come from? And from whom? If you’re not taking advantage of new sources of inspiration - sources outside your organisation, outside the management suite - to facilitate growth and change, you could be in trouble.

Herminia Ibarra “Organisations that have been pioneers have found that their lunch is eaten by competitors that didn’t even exist a few years back,” says Herminia Ibarra, INSEAD Professor of Organisational Behaviour and Cora Chaired Professor of Leadership and Learning. “Change is always from the outside… if you want to innovate, if you want to be at the forefront of the trends, the only thing you can do is talk to people, to groups, to constituencies, to stakeholders outside your organisation.”

Remember studying for the GMATs? Or AP Biology? Or even English 101 your freshman year? How about poring through those old textbooks and every now and then wishing you had a buddy close by you could ask for help on the parts that befuddled you?

BenchPrep is making that happen. The Chicago-based startup, backed by Lightbank (whose founders bankrolled Groupon), has been digitizing test prep materials for the last two years. But it’s not just making your SAT or MCAT textbooks more portable. It’s also adding social features that act as a real-time virtual study groups to get you the help you need when you need it.

Serial entrepreneur Andrew Birt is looking for Melbourne-based start-ups to become the first group of participants for his latest venture AngelCube, an early stage incubator for web-based businesses.

Birt, who founded marketing agency StartUP Marketing in 2009, is also the founder of start-up job board Snowballer and co-founder of small cap investment firm Catvielle Capital.

He’s now focused on the early stage investment market, as the lead investor and chief executive of AngelCube.

The European Commission has set aside almost 7 billion euros to finance research for the promotion of European innovation. In addition to topics such as environmental research and nanotechnologies, the development of a strong bio-economy is also high on the EU’s political agenda.

The Innovation Union is to ensure that Europe is well equipped for global competition from emerging markets. In this regard, challenges such as climate change, energy and food security, health and population ageing are to be better addressed via far-ranging improvements to innovation performance. With the aid of research financing, the transition from innovative ideas to market-ready products is to be supported, e.g. through demonstrating the commercial potential of a new technology.

Ted Christopher moved to San Diego three years ago to work in his cousins sheet metal shop. Every weekend he tinkered on his own secret project. In 2009, he returned to Minneapolis and launched his own business, Verterra Energy Inc. Through Verterra he hopes to bring his “small” project to life.

Using power of water, he hopes to place his turbines at the bottom of certain rivers to generate energy.

Hydrokinetic turbines capture the power created by the current in waves underneath the water’s surface. Traditional hydropower, in contrast, uses a dam to create a reservoir above the river. Water flows downward through turbines to create energy then is released back into the river downstream from the dam.

I’ve been on a number of board calls this month while I’ve been in Paris. About half of them have been via Skype; the other half have been standard audio conferencing. I’ve also had a bunch of other meetings, discussions, and pitches via Skype.

The quality of the meeting and interaction – when all attendees are in person or via videoconference (in my case Skype on my laptop) – was 10x better than the ones via audio conference only.

I’ve been vacillating between a “physical attendance at all board meetings” approach or “video conference at all board meetings approach” to life. It’s impossible for me to physically attend all board meetings, but there’s no reason why I can’t attend by video conference. I’m now encouraging everyone I work with – as well as everyone that has a board meeting – to have a physical + video conference approach. It is so much better than having people on audio conference.

Some aspiring entrepreneurs are so desperate for funding, or naïve, that they ignore the obvious signs of scams and rip-offs on the Internet, praying for a windfall. One would think that with all the sad stories and tools published over the past twenty years, this problem would be behind us. But people are still begging for more technology or laws, often to protect them from themselves.

As examples, I present my list of ten of the most common ways to be victimized on the Internet by ignorance or greed, based on questions and stories I get from entrepreneurs and associates. The threats are organized from high to low avoidance ease, with common sense suggestions for each case:

Cash transfer assistance. I continue to be amazed that some government agency reportedly still gets 100 calls per day from victims of the Nigerian unclaimed cash scam alone. People who fall for this one must be really greedy. The best answer is the age-old wisdom that if it sounds too good to be true, it’s not true. Delete the message.

Focus put together this great infographic of salaries for various technical positions in Silicon Valley, noting that there are more tech jobs there than at the apex of the dotcom bubble. (Then again, after more than 10 years of growth, irrespective of bubbles, there ought to be.)

It doesn't take into account stock-based compensation, but it does take into account cost of living. So that great $92,000 pay in Silicon Valley will only buy you as much as $59,000 in San Diego. Worth keeping in mind.

Corporate valuation. It’s one of the two key metrics for a business owner. The first is cash flow/income in the short term. For some, that’s as far as they get. But, for the really successful ones, the second metric is how much cash they can realize upon exit from the business. My partner, Mike Oleksak, calls this “getting paid twice for the same effort.”

If you use both metrics, a private company can be a very exciting place to be. Because this perspective helps you balance short-term gains with sustainable value. It helps you think about how to build a business that will grow profitably and sustainably. (The lack of this kind of thinking is a huge problem for public companies today but that’s a topic for another day).

But the process of valuation is a mystery to many business owners. Even those that understand how it works, can’t always put their finger on why values end up the way that they do.

With a low birth rate, Canada will need immigrants to help drive economic growth. But does our system reward the immigrants most likely to create that growth?

We want skilled workers, or so goes the mantra. But the set of skills most likely to create jobs – entrepreneurship, or that intangible mix of creativity, personal drive and business acumen – gets short shrift in our immigration system.