Toronto-based leadership coach Robin Sharma says that even if we aren't artists, we all have the ability to be creative - including leaders. "Who sold us on the lie that only artists and poets and musicians are creative?" he writes in his e-newsletter. To help tap your creativity, he invites you to consider the eight faces of creativity, drawn from the most creative people he has observed:

Connect, the San Diego non-profit group dedicated to supporting technology innovation and entrepreneurism, named the winners of its “Most Innovative New Product” awards at a luncheon ceremony Friday. This year, San Diego’s innovation community nominated more than 100 new products—a record number of nominees—which prompted Connect CEO Duane Roth to note in a statement that “the true measure of an innovation economy is the volume of research that translates into successful products.”

The group also named TurboTax as the recipient of this year’s Otterson Award, which Connect describes as the highlight of its ceremony. The award, created in memory of Connect’s founding executive director, Bill Otterson, recognizes technologies or products developed in San Diego that have demonstrated a “significant positive impact on quality of life.” San Diego’s ChipSoft developed TurboTax during the early 1980s and Mountain View, CA-based Intuit (NASDAQ: INTU) acquired ChipSoft in 1993. Since its launch in 1984, TurboTax has grown to become the nation’s best-selling tax preparation software.

One of the most important attributes of a patent is its term or duration of enforceability. In 1995, the US patent system began calculating patent term based on the priority filing date of an application rather than a patent's issue date. Under the prior rule, a patent would remain in force for 17 years from the date of issue. Under the “new” system, the term is 20–years from the priority filing date. The three extra years were intended to account for a typical prosecution delay of three years. In addition, Congress added a patent-term-adjustment (PTA) provision to lengthen the patent term in instances where the USPTO unduly delayed in issuing a patent.

Study: For this study, I wanted to consider how the change has actually impacted patent term. To do this, I created a database of 50,000 recently issued patents and calculated the term under both the old and new system. For the calculation under the new system, I added 20–years to the earliest priority date (excluding provisional and original foreign filing dates) and then added any patent-term-adjustment. To calculate the term under the old system, I added 17–years to the issue date unless the patent had a family member (e.g., continuation application) with an earlier issue date. In that case, I added 17–years to the issue date of the family member based on an assumption that a terminal disclaimer would have been filed in the case. Because of some potential data discrepancies, I excluded the extreme 1% of results and also patents on applications filed proir to the 1995 change-over.

After a series of recent European tech conferences, Silicon Valley continues to dominate. Tech venture capital on this side of the Atlantic still remains relatively small, due to bureaucracy, language problems.

It was hard to ignore the dominance of Silicon Valley at this year's LeWeb tech conference last week in Paris - nearly all the speakers and featured guests were from California's famed tech hub.

While European innovation is picking up speed, it is starting from a long way behind the American startup scene - participants at the conference blamed over-cautious investors and misguided government spending.

I highly recommend mapping your organization or community genome. Understanding the basic genetic code or wiring of any organization is key to understanding what drives the behavior of both internal and external stakeholders. Intimate knowledge of the genome’s chromosomal makeup is a prerequisite for alignment and making meaningful progress. It explains why employees, customers, and collaborators are attracted to an organization or why they aren’t. Passion for an organization, community, or movement is coded at the genetic level. If you want to transform an organization or a system, forget process reengineering and think genetic reengineering. If you want to launch a movement make your genome transparent and accessible to anyone with a similar genetic make-up.

I offer up the BIF genome as an example and with the hope you will improve it. The Business Innovation Factory (BIF) is catalyzing a movement to transform the next decade. This is no time to think small! Together with a growing community of passionate innovators we are re-imagining the future of education, health care, energy, and entrepreneurship. We have identified and mapped 11 chromosomes that comprise the genome of the BIF innovation community and transformation movement. Do they resonate with you? Do you share a similar genetic make-up? If yes, do we have a movement for you!

Gina del Monte wasn't planning to go to college in Philadelphia - until she visited St. Joseph's University.

Growing up in Wildwood, she had her sights set on schools in Washington when a friend at St. Joe's took her on a tour of the campus.

"I looked around and said, 'This is it,' " she said. "I just fell in love with the area."

Now a graduate, del Monte lives in Manayunk, working as an account analyst at the Graham Co. in Center City.

Del Monte is part of what Campus Philly says is a growing trend of students choosing to stay in Philadelphia.

Have you ever read about a start-up and were so intrigued that you wanted to invest in it? And then learned that unless you knew someone involved in the company it was nearly impossible? A new online investment service called MicroVentures might just get you in the door.

The Austin-based company matches companies seeking money with investors looking to invest anywhere from $250 to $5,000 or more. Microventures helps investors learn about companies they may never have heard of, and helps them invest smaller sums, which is virtually unheard of with traditional investing. There is no fee or obligation to invest.

There’s an old business maxim that goes “Where performance is measured, performance improves. Where performance is measured and reported, performance improves dramatically.” And pretty much every manager has observed the truth in it.

Humans, though, can only focus on so many things at once. So, measuring the right things is the key to effectiveness.

When you’re running a software company, there are seemingly hundreds of things to measure. It can be difficult to identify and keep your eye on what really matters. Over the years, and through the various stages of our growth, I’ve found the things we measure at Infusionsoft change as our business matures and evolves. Of course, we’re always measuring revenue, profit and cash, but other things are less obvious and can easily get lost in the mix.

There are only so many adjectives you can use to describe your achievments. LinkedIn has just released the most overused words and phrases in members’ LinkedIn profiles in the U.S., and the results aren’t surprising.

Extensive experience took the top spot followed by Innovative and Motivated. Other popular keywords used in member profiles include Results-oriented, Dynamic, Proven track record, Team player, Fast-paced, Problem solver and Entrepreneurial. Results are similar for members outside the U.S. For example, France’s most-used word is Innovative while Spain’s most popular buzzword is Dynamic.

A one-year follow-up study on seniors who participated in a strength training exercise program shows sustained cognitive benefits as well as savings for the healthcare system. The research, conducted at the Centre for Hip Health and Mobility at Vancouver Coastal Health and the University of British Columbia, is published today in the Archives of Internal Medicine.

The study is the first to examine whether both cognitive and economic benefits are sustained after formal cessation of a tailored exercise program. It builds on the Brain Power Study, published in the January 2010 issue of Archives of Internal Medicine, which demonstrated that 12 months of once-weekly or twice-weekly progressive strength training improved executive cognitive function in women aged 65- to 75- years- old. Executive cognitive functions are cognitive abilities necessary for independent living.

I like studying what works and what doesn’t. I focus more of my time on the former, but often learn more from the latter. I compile tactical, earthy techniques from my mentors’ books and sprinkle in a bit of technology. Think of my maneuvers as real-world Google Analytics, but with a focus on extrapolating future conditions and outlining countermeasure options for when the shitake hits the fan.

With that introduction…Here is my list of the seven best places to close a deal in Silicon Valley. It’s meant to give you a home-field advantage even when you’re on the road. It’s street smart to have an array of spots to close deals; here is a window into mine.

1) Menlo Park Starbucks

Meetings that happen in the office on Sand Hill road are official. Official meetings suck.

GUELPH — Guelph innovators now have more provincial support to help them speed their ideas to the global marketplace or to craft them into new businesses.

Glen Murray, Ontario’s Minister of Research and Innovation, announced an initial expenditure of $886,000 to set up the Guelph Innovation Centre, the latest of 14 such centres that are part of the Ontario Network of Excellence.

Local researchers, manufacturers and entrepreneurs with commercially viable innovations now have access to a host of resources geared to hastening new businesses and/or the commercialization of new products. The development is part of the province’s ongoing push to build the knowledge-based economy, foster innovation and create new jobs.

Nothing defines a leader more than their communication style and effectiveness. How we’re perceived is often subject to change, though. If we need lessons we don’t need to look any further than this (admittedly subjective) list of the Best and Worst Communicators of 2010 from the world of politics, entertainment, sports and the news.

This annual list of best and worst communicators is from Decker Communications, a prominent San Francisco based executive communication training and coaching company that’s been training– and assessing– leaders for over 30 years.

According to Ben Decker ( the company’s President) and Kelly Decker (Executive Vice President) here is this year’s somewhat surprising list of those who showed how the perception of their leadership is tied directly to their ability to communicate.

The EU must prioritise investment in education, training, research (fundamental and applied), development and innovation as well as key technologies if it is to safeguard its sources of future growth and jobs, according to EU research and industry ministers. The recommendation is one of many contained in the conclusions on the 'Innovation Union' initiative issued by participants at the latest Competitiveness Council, which took place in Brussels, Belgium on 25 and 26 November. The Innovation Union is one of a number of flagship initiatives launched under the banner of the Europe 2020 strategy.

In their conclusions, the ministers stress : 'Scientific excellence and basic and applied research, supported by world-class infrastructures, life-long learning, training and higher education, in particular in science and engineering, as well as incentives for commercialisation of results, are preconditions for an efficient innovation system.'

When entrepreneurs go looking for investors, most call on independent venture capital firms. But there’s another place companies can seek investment capital: major corporations.

Many big companies have venture arms that invest in growing small companies. Corporate members of the National Venture Capital Association include such well-known names as General Motors, Kaiser Permanente, Citigroup, Dow Chemical, Johnson & Johnson, Nike, Microsoft, Google, Intel, and Adobe.

In recent years, the proportion of corporate venture capital has shrunk slightly, relative to all venture investments. A PricewaterhouseCoopers/National Venture Capital Association/MoneyTree report on Corporate Venture Capital from 1995 to 2009 showed corporate VC peaked at 16 percent of all venture capital investment in 2000 but shrank to 7.4 percent in 2009. In these uncertain economic times, companies have grown more cautious about investing in startups.

You want to show your employees appreciation with a gift this holiday season. But you don’t necessarily want to hand out trinkets that will inevitably create more waste by getting tossed in the closet or the trash can. Rather, think seriously about giving employees an eco-friendlier holiday gift this year.

Here are five green gift ideas for employees to get your mind rolling:

1. Reusable travel mug – Reusable mugs are a nice way to encourage employees to avoid creating styrofoam or paper waste. There are lots of options, of course, at local gift and home furnishing stores. If you need some inspiration, the JOEmo Leak-Proof Coffee Mug gets high marks from the consumer product reviewers at the Hammacher and Schlemmer Institute, or you could opt for a biodegradable porcelain one, such as the Eco Cup.

Last week we had some of the biggest and brightest names in new media take the stage at the Time Warner Center for our first-annual IGNITION: Future of Media conference.

If you missed it, no worries. Here's the 5-minute version...