The Startup America Partnership wants to make sure the little guy doesn’t get forgotten. That’s why San Francisco-based IndieGoGo turned up on a new list of companies contributing to the high-profile national job creation initiative last week. One of the first “crowdfunding” platforms, IndieGoGo helps individuals and organizations raise non-equity funding for their projects online. The company said it would contribute to the cause by cutting its fees in half to help these fledgling businesses get off the ground.

It’s an interesting tactic, given that when companies raise money through crowdfunding, they don’t usually think first about hiring people. Most crowdfunded organizations rarely collect more than $30,000 through this method—which makes it hard to hire people for anything other than occasional part-time work. I was curious about the jobs connection—so I contacted IndieGoGo CEO Slava Rubin and Startup America Partnership CEO Scott Case last week to get their perspective on crowdfunding’s role in creating jobs.

The Propeller Venture Accelerator Fund is an initiative of The Ryan Academy for Entrepreneurship, a wholly owned subsidiary of Dublin City University. It has €1 milllion with which to fund up to twenty-four early stage companies over a two year period.

Gordon McConnell is Deputy-CEO and Director of Business Development for the DCU Ryan Academy is a strong supporter of the Lean Startup methodology, “It is really about getting the product out there. You can sit in a room for six months and develop a product that nobody wants or needs.”

Up until about a year ago the Ryan Academy was mostly concerned with training. But using funding and support models such as TechStars and Y Combinator the focus has shifted to a hands-on results focused incubation process for startups. Gordon says, “We would see ourselves as being ‘pracademic’ as opposed to being academic.”

Today, leaders from the G12 countries -- the 12 largest economies in the world -- are descending on Brazil, to dither and whine and bicker stroke their chins about the world's economy. But it's safe to say that the number one concern for all those economic ministers and treasury secretaries is innovation. Which is a wooly, often vague concept. How do you get your arms around it? Well, GE has taken a stab, with their newly released Innovation Barometer.

The report surveyed 1,000 business executives from around the world about the state of innovation in their countries -- to see how good their countries are at fostering innovation, and how good they were at getting outcomes from it. Lisa Strausfeld, the interaction-design genius formerly of Pentagram who has now left to start her own firm, InnovationArt, has provided a powerful visualization of the results.

The University and the Wallace H. Coulter Foundation have partnered to create a $20 million endowment which will fund the University of Virginia Coulter Translational Research Partnership in biomedical engineering. This aims to foster research collaboration between biomedical engineers and clinicians with the ultimate goal of bringing new technology for human health to the marketplace.

The funds will go toward translational research, which works to apply discoveries from University laboratories to the creation of products or services, often by working in partnership with corporations or creating small companies.

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg has consistently declared that his third term is to be a time of progress and innovation. To his credit, Bloomberg isn't willing to allow the tyranny of the status quo to obstruct change. Several months ago, he asked me to specifically review the way the city handles its large IT contracts. As in many large organizations, these contracts tend to produce scope creep, change orders and quality issues that lead to unanticipated costs.

After a thorough review, we recently announced significant improvements to how the city plans to manage these IT projects. The changes include beefing up our in-house expertise and enhancing our ability to manage IT contractors. By doing this, the city will be able to save potentially hundreds of millions of dollars and reduce risk.

This strikes me as one of those really important topics that doesn’t get nearly enough airplay. I neither hear this freely discussed among industry participants nor among lead investors and the founders they are backing.

Building a company is really tough, requiring incomprehensible amounts of effort, stress, and personal sacrifice. Added drama is certainly not desirable, yet this happens all too frequently when mismatched utility functions cause disputes among owners at precisely the worst time - around a potential exit. The punch line is, as it is in every aspect of life: good, honest communication, trust and respect is absolutely critical.

Supported by the European Commission and the Russian presidential administration and managed by the German Council on Foreign Relations (DGAP), the EU-Russia Forum is an established platform for dialogue and political interaction between the European Union and Russia. It recently launched a new ’Trendmonitor’ series, which analyzes Russian and European public opinion on various aspects of EU-Russia relations. The first Trendmonitor, which was released in February 2011 on the basis of studies conducted by the Levada Center in Russia and the Forsa Institute in Germany, looked at how Russians and Germans see the “partnership for modernization” launched by the two countries in 2008. Alexander Rahr, director of the EU-Russia forum and of the Russia/Eurasia program at DGAP, discussed the main results of these studies with Modern Russia.

Elon Musk, the inspiration behind Iron Man’s executive-turned-rocketeering space hero Tony Stark, believes his space-transport start-up will send passengers to Mars in as soon as 10 years.

In a wide-ranging interview with The Wall Street Journal’s Alan Murray (watch below), Musk says Space Exploration Technologies Corp., better known as SpaceX, is aiming to send the first man to space in three years. But, he said, “we’re going all the way to Mars.” Asked for a timeframe, Musk adds: “Best case, 10 years, worst case, 15 to 20 years.”

Want to build a truly entrepreneurial team? Screen out the MBAs.

That’s my second piece of advice as I offer a six-part series on how to build an entrepreneurial culture.

My first recommendation was to scan résumés in search of candidates who display a competitive streak – the raw material needed for entrepreneurial drive.

ALBANY -- A group dominated by corporate business leaders will be tasked with redesigning state government, Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced Tuesday.

The Democrat promised during his campaign last year to reorganize and streamline government to more efficiently deliver services to the public.

The last time New York did this? 1927.

"For decades, our state government has ballooned, evolving into the sprawling and inefficient bureaucracy we have today," Cuomo said. He said overlapping state agencies, authorities and commissions need consolidation.

The U.S doesn't have much over China at this point. Sure, we have breathable air, but they have more clean energy funding, the world's fastest-growing economy, and at least for now, a head start on the vehicle electrification race. Unless we catch up, China may eventually invade us with their EV tanks and take our remaining natural resources to fuel their growing economy. What to do, what to do...

China's success with EVs, as reported by PRTM Management Consultants today, can be attributed mostly to its Ten Cities, Thousand Vehicles Program. Instituted in 2009, the program rolled out 1,000 EVs (mostly garbage trucks, buses, and taxis) in 10 major cities--all as part of an attempt to identify and solve technology and safety issues. Now the program has been expanded to 25 cities, and it's still growing.

The Federal Communications Commission doesn’t have to issue new regulations to promote innovation; it also can promote advances in broadband and wireless services by using its bully pulpit.

That’s the message delivered today by the FCC’s Technical Advisory Council, a diverse group of private-sector telecommunications experts. The council issued its first report, a list of eight recommendations that could be implemented in months, not years.

“Each recommendation is an opportunity for the FCC to unleash new private-sector innovation and job creation, without working through traditional regulatory processes,” said council Chairman Tom Wheeler.

Wheeler knows a little bit about innovation: He’s managing director of Core Capital Partners, a venture capital firm in Washington, D.C. He also is former CEO of the Cellular Telecommunications and Internet Association and a serial entrepreneur.

As business leaders, much of our time is spent in communicating:

1. Conveying our business goals and direction
2. Reinforcing our values
3. Following up
4. Teaching and training our team

Unfortunately, due to poor communication skills on our part, the distractions of relationships, environment and culture, and poor listening skills on the part of our audience, communication is (in general) only 30% effective.

There really isn’t a one-size-fits-all formula that can be followed for optimizing the chances of attracting professional investment. Each company is different and faces challenges and issues that can be overcome only through creativity, perseverance and resolve.

There are, however, some elements that are so basic they cannot be ignored. Most institutional venture investors either expressly or intuitively address these requirements whenever they evaluate a business plan for a potential investment. Here are four to be especially aware of.

Sequella has agreed with a Russian venture fund to develop a treatment for tuberculosis in the Russian Federation and neighboring countries in a deal that could be worth as much as $50 million to the Rockville biotechnology company, executives said today.

It is the first licensing deal for Sequella's drug candidate SQ109 and marks the first time that Sequella will work in Russia, said Alan S. Klein, executive vice president, corporate development. That market is significant due to the number of TB cases there, he said.

Russia is considered one of the world's "high burden" TB countries, with more than 150,000 cases of active TB reported each year, according to the World Health Organization. The Russian market for anti-tubercular drugs is more than $150 million annually, according to privately held Sequella.

Most US startups are funded by entrepreneurs from their own pockets and they are not dependent on banks or venture capital (VC) firms, new Federal Reserve data shows.

Federal Reserve Governor Elizabeth Duke said in a recent speech citing preliminary results from the 2010 Survey of Consumer Finances, a report based on interviews with some 6,500 US consumers, that more than 70% of the nation’s startups use personal savings or assets as a primary source of funding.

Just 6% relied on personal loans, while 3% took out business loans or used unutilised credit card credit, the survey found. An even smaller percentage turned to credit unions or investors.

It’s a tale of two hires. Either Cleveland Clinic Innovations just landed the heavyweight leader of the Kansas Bioscience Authority, or that leader got out of Kansas just in time.

Cleveland Clinic Innovations will look to Tom Thornton, the former president and CEO of the Kansas Bioscience Authority, to manage and expand the Clinic’s promising research collaboration efforts. The job, formally called general manager of alliances for Cleveland Clinic Innovations, is a new position that will help find partnerships with other healthcare institutions to develop new medical technologies, Cleveland Clinic spokeswoman Eileen Sheil said.

But Kansas legislators are questioning everything from Thornton’s exit and the way he managed the Kansas organization to the relationship between Thornton and business partners in Ohio. In essence, they assert Thornton was fleeing an uncomfortable situation in Kansas with the help of alliances he made in Cleveland.

For some firms innovation is incredibly rewarding, for many others it remains at best an unfulfilled promise. Why does innovation present such a stark choice, often fraught with difficulties for many, yet so simple and successful for the few?

Is innovation such a mystery? We believe innovation can be demystified through a careful evaluation of innovation models and frameworks. This evaluation requires taking time to deconstruct the relationship between innovation efforts and corporate functions or capabilities such as corporate strategy, existing skills and knowledge and internal processes. Our goal is to create a common, collaborative innovation framework that any firm can adopt, in the process eliminating some of the mystique that surrounds innovation.

Suffering from the inability to generate higher levels of profitable growth? Find yourself repeatedly asking “Why aren’t we able to develop the ‘next new thing’?”

You’re not alone. Companies everywhere have been having difficulty driving higher levels of growth. And few have harnessed sufficient innovation wherewithal to introduce the “next new thing.”

The harsh reality is that traditional types of innovation won’t produce the “next new thing”. While conventional R&D organizations can provide incremental improvements to existing products and services, they are not structured or resourced to generate sustained, above-average growth.

The early success of seed-investment program Y Combinator has led to a wave of new incubators and accelerators, all hoping to capitalize on a Web investment boom and cheap-to-build technology that can quickly make fast, nimble start-ups attractive acquisition targets.

One of the latest incubators to emerge is in not in any of the traditional technology hubs, but in Portland, Ore., where a longtime venture capitalist is putting the finishing touches on a $3 million city-sponsored fund. The Portland Seed Fund will provide start-ups with mentoring and training, as well as an initial investment of $25,000 to $50,000 and possible follow-on funding, VentureWire reported Monday.

The so-called Y Combinator model, in which small amounts of money as well as mentoring and networking opportunities are sprinkled among a dozen or more promising businesses, is gaining more attention from investors.