Now more than ever, North Carolina’s future depends on our ability to create and adopt new products, services and business models that yield value.

That’s “innovation,” and our state’s private and public leaders, our people and organizations, must commit to making it happen here each and every day.

Our economic development and quality of life, which are intertwined with dynamic global forces, depend on it.

Recognizing that North Carolina must stay on the cutting edge of innovation in order to remain globally competitive, in November 2009 Governor Beverly Perdue formed, via Executive Order number 29 the North Carolina Innovation Council.

Failure sucks. Nobody wants to fail.

But in the startup world, most people are doing just that. I’m not sure I’ve read much about “how” to fail, since failure is so depressing and negative.

But I’m here to tell you that there is a good way to fail and that there are steps for positively managing the aftermath. I’ve seen it done well, I’ve seen it done poorly and I’ve done it myself, so I certainly have some well-formed views on the topic.

Even with unemployment lingering at 9%, there are industries that are rapidly increasing their hiring rates. Online training company, Mindflash.com compiled data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and other sources, to compile a list of industries hiring in 2011.

And not surprisingly, almost all of them relate to technology.

So if you're unemployed, or need a career change, look to one of these industries in 2011.

TOKYO — Kenichi Horie was a promising auto engineer, exactly the sort of youthful talent Japan needs to maintain its edge over hungry Korean and Chinese rivals. As a worker in his early 30s at a major carmaker, Mr. Horie won praise for his design work on advanced biofuel systems.

But like many young Japanese, he was a so-called irregular worker, kept on a temporary staff contract with little of the job security and half the salary of the “regular” employees, most of them workers in their late 40s or older. After more than a decade of trying to gain regular status, Mr. Horie finally quit — not just the temporary jobs, but Japan altogether.

As if one needed another affirmation of how awesome it is to work for Google.

Its new London offices, a 40,000-square-foot space designed by Scott Brownrigg Interior Design, features a gym, massage room, and Asian-fusion restaurant. (And, like the offices of Twitter, Eames chairs!)

Officially decorated in a "London-Brighton" theme, this is clearly a place that embraces the comingling of work and play.

Even when you're the number one company in the world, you can never relax. Businesses need to market themselves constantly and reinvent themselves every few years. This keeps them fresh and helps them maintain their great stature.

We checked out the evolution of some of today's most prominent brands to see how they've revamped over the years. Some of the original logos aren't even recognizable.

They call it New Space, a commercial effort to send people into space as tourists. Entrepreneurs are creating startups that are flying tourists into space, for a fee. One of the companies doing so is Virgin Galactic, a startup funded by billionaire Richard Branson of the Virgin Group.

We caught up with George Whitesides, chief executive of Virgin Galactic, at the recent Digital Life Design conference in Munich. He thinks that as early as next year he can send you up into space and experience weightlessness and see the Earth from a unique point of view.

Venture Capitalists are increasingly optimistic about the immediate future of investing in Silicon Valley. Their confidence registered 3.75 on a 5 point scale, with 5 indicating high confidence and 1 indicating low confidence, according to the quarterly Silicon Valley Venture Capitalist Confidence Index released today.

The index polled 35 San Francisco Bay Area venture capitalists in December 2010 about how they viewed the high-growth venture entrepreneurial environment in the San Francisco Bay Area over the next 6-18 months.

It found that confidence had ticked up slightly to 3.75 from 3.70 a quarter earlier, as VCs continue to see promise in an improving exit environment and steadily rising public capital markets.

It was 1956, and Joseph Mancuso had a plan. He purchased a large, abandoned manufacturing building and decided to try something different. What he created became the first business incubator.

Tenants received office space, and they had other professionals to bounce ideas off of. The place offered a unique atmosphere that helped promote startup and growth. He referred to the Batavia Industrial Center as an “incubator” because he saw some newly hatched chicks running around the place one day.

According to The New York Times, the number of “incubators” available to startups has grown tremendously over the years, reaching approximately 1,200.

More and more companies are engaging interns as an efficient and economical resource for expanding their bandwidth, injecting enthusiasm, and as a way of “giving back” to their community.

However, it seems many employers – in the eyes of the intern, anyway – aren’t making the cut when it comes to providing a rewarding internship experience; the intern leaves unfulfilled. In today’s “everybody knows everyone” world of social media, this often comes back to haunt these employers.

As our partners at Intern Bridge state, 94% of interns will vocalize their experiences through friends and social networking. So, it may be worth a little time to evaluate your internship program – and figure out if your company sucks.

The medical device industry is touting a study it says debunks the Food & Drug Administration’s claims that there’s a safety benefit from the slower, more rigorous regulatory process in the U.S.

The conclusions are based on a new study, paid for by the Advanced Medical Technology Assn., that compares four years of recall data from U.S. and EU regulatory bodies.

The study, “EU Medical Device Approval Safety Assessment,” conducted by the Boston Consulting Group, matched four years of medical device recall data for the United Kingdom, Germany, Switzerland and Ireland and compared it with similar U.S. data. The report’s authors conclude that there is no material difference between the regulatory regimes in the U.S. and Europe, from a safety perspective.

Box.net CEO and Co-Founder Aaron Levie started his company with friends he had known since high school.

In the following 3-minute video, Aaron shares the dangers and benefits of starting an organization with close friends, including the positive "hum" and a high level of trust that can build between group members dedicated to a vision.

Each year, the Intelligent Community Forum presents an awards program for Intelligent Communities and the public-sector and private-sector partners who contribute to them. The awards program has two goals: to salute the accomplishments of communities in developing inclusive prosperity on a foundation of information and communications technology, and to gather data for ICF's research programs. See the event calendar for upcoming dates.

JUNE

Call for Nominations
The process begins in early summer, when ICF issues a call for nominations for Intelligent Communities. Over the next 100 days, ICF receives completed nomination forms from hundreds of communities large and small, urban and rural, in developed and developing nations. Learn about award criteria, deadlines and nomination forms.

The Workshop was organised by the British Business Angels Association, the UK trade body for angel and early stage investing, with over 120 investors all getting together at the event held at the law firm Travers Smith.

Anthony Clarke, Chair of BBAA and MD of Angel Capital Group, opened by saying that the “BBAA welcomes the proposed new measures to support a new Angel co-investment Fund as a key means to leverage new investor groups and significantly increase the level of equity finance into the market place for early stage and start-ups”

Ohio’s Third Frontier technology acceleration program has awarded $25 million to several early stage investment funds in the state.

The grants come under two different Third Frontier programs, which are designed to funnel growth capital to young, promising technology companies through professionally managed investment funds. With state money flowing to the companies, the idea is that private investors will be more likely to throw their own money in alongside the public funding.

1. "Time is a created thing. To say 'I don't have time' is to say 'I don't want to.'" - Lao Tzu

2. "To achieve great things, two things are needed; a plan, and not quite enough time." - Leonard Bernstein

3. "Don't say you don't have enough time. You have exactly the same number of hours per day that were given to Helen Keller, Pasteur, Michaelangelo, Mother Teresa, Leonardo da Vinci, Thomas Jefferson, and Albert Einstein." - H. Jackson Brown

4. "The only reason for time is so that everything doesn't happen at once." - Albert Einstein

The AIB Seed Capital Fund, a joint venture between the bank and Enterprise Ireland, invested €10m in seven companies during 2010. The fund has helped generate 250 new jobs to date.

The 2010 investments bring to more than 40 the total investments made in 30 Irish companies by year end. The fund’s investments are split about 55/45 between Dublin City and county and the rest of Ireland.

The investment to 2010 by the AIB Seed Capital Fund of more than €10m has leveraged in excess of €30m of additional capital from other investors, including Enterprise Ireland, and helped to create and support more than 250 jobs. In return for its investments, the fund has acquired an equity stake in each of the investee companies.

Coming into the New Year, we saw lots of reports that small business owners would be upping their social media spend in 2011. Reports suggested perhaps the “experimentation” days of social media were over and that businesses were beginning to treat it like a real marketing channel, with dedicated resources. To give us some insight into how small businesses are using the medium and where they’re finding success, eMarketer recently highlighted an Adology survey of 752 SMBs that showed which sites were working best and what businesses were getting out of them.