Do you have a million-dollar idea that could revolutionize how the government works?  Now there’s a quick easy way to get your idea in the right hands – and maybe walk away with a cash prize for your effort.

The White House has announced the launch of their new website, Challenge.gov, a portal for everyday citizens to offer solutions to the nation’s biggest challenges. The site is an extension of President Barack Obama’s Strategy for American Innovation, which opens government solutions to the general public.

On Challenge.gov, entrepreneurs, leading innovators and citizen solvers can compete for prizes by providing novel solutions to tough problems and, at the same time, take pride in engaging with their government to advance national priorities.

The EAI was created by a community of leaders from industry, research, and policy making organisations to address Europe’s future competitiveness through innovation within ICT enabled areas. The grassroots nature of the community provides for a democratic representation of ideas and an empowering environment. This powerful dynamic creates the potential for sustainable growth.

Fairly or not, Steve Burrill’s reputation in Minnesota will rest a great deal on whether he can deliver the $1 billion investment fund to back the Elk Run BioBusiness Park in Pine Island.

He says he’s close, but in this global economy, nothing is a done deal until the documents are signed and the check clears the bank.

However, fund or no fund, Burrill said the state already has benefited from his interest and his checkbook. In an exclusive interview with MedCity News, Burrill said he has provided much-needed early stage capital and expertise to Minnesota-related companies.

When ReadWriteWeb profiled Montreal last month as part of our "Never Mind the Valley" series, it was clear that the city had a thriving entrepreneurial community. And today the Montreal startup scene gets stronger with the announcement of the launch of Year One Labs, a startup accelerator program.

The program is founded by four entrepreneurs - Raymond Luk, Ben Yoskovitz, Ian Rae, and Alistair Croll - who describe themselves as "operators, not armchair quarterbacks. We've been in the trenches." The program will utilize the "lean startup" methodology and be focused on a "rigorous process of customer development and iterative adjustment."

Montreal-based entrepreneur and blogger Ben Yoskovitz knows a thing or two about hiring employees at startups. Yoskovitz formerly founded his own company, Standout Jobs - a tool designed to improve hiring and recruiting techniques for small businesses on the Web. Needless to say, the hiring and performance tracking of employees at the SMB level is a topic of interest for Yoskovitz. One of the items he recently wrote about is whether startups should hire workaholics expected to work 80+ hours each week, and some interesting arguments against this doctrine emerged.

The startup ecosystem has long accepted the "all day, every day" methodology toward building a company, especially at the early stages. When you think you have a great idea you don't want to stop working on it, and young entrepreneurs will work during every spare moment to hasten the progress of their idea. That's great, and many successful entrepreneurs have done just that, but should that translate to your employees once you begin expanding?

The bus, which the company calls "Solarve," is equipped with photovoltaic (PV) panels, LED lamps, and a system for viewing the surroundings of the vehicle.

"This is the world's first public bus that is equipped with solar panels," said a representative of Sanyo Electric Co Ltd, which supplied the PV panels.

As you work to develop your product - before and after launch, it's important that you use more than just "gut feelings" to ascertain what's working and what's not. Along those lines, last week, Ryan Carson, co-founder of Carsonified offered a list of six key metrics for your web app and how to track them.

It's a great list - with definitions, calculation methods, examples, and even a link to a Google spreadsheet (see below for link) that you can use to input your own data.

Venture capital database VentureDeal this morning released complimentary VC Funding Quarterly reports, covering the second quarter of 2010. Let’s take a look at the report TechCrunch readers are likely most interested in: the world of the Web, digital media, software and ecommerce.

During Q2 2010, VentureDeal reports (PDF) that 366 companies raised a total of $2.1 billion in venture capital funding for those sectors, up 17% in total funding amount compared to the first quarter of this year and an increase of 30% in the number of companies funded.

All four sectors showed gains in funding amounts and number of companies funded.

One big theme to emerge out of our conversation last week about the future of the workplace was remote working. I thought it would be beneficial to start this week off by thinking about the disadvantages of remote work and the technologies and policies that may be able to mitigate some of those problems.

Productivity remains a concern for managers unwilling to give their employees a chance, but according to telecommute advocacy groups like Undress for Success and The American Telecommuting Association, research shows those concerns are mostly unwarranted. However, there are some other problems. Here are some of the issues I've witnessed in organizations of all sizes, and some ideas about what to do to fix these issues.

PHILADELPHIA, PA – September 8, 2010 - General Colin L. Powell (USA, ret.), Chairman of Eisenhower Fellowships, announced today that the organization will send seven U.S. citizens abroad in 2011 as Eisenhower USA Fellows.    “This is a unique opportunity for a group of emerging leaders to broaden themselves personally and professionally,” he said.

The seven Fellows, selected from a highly competitive pool of applicants, include Seth Williams, Philadelphia, PA District Attorney; Robert Burns, Senior Vice President of Lux Research, Inc., in Raleigh, NC; Kelly Gast, Assistant Comptroller of Monsanto in St. Louis, MO; and Christopher Nowinski, Co-Director of the Center for the Study of Traumatic Encephalopathy at Boston University’s School of Medicine.

For more complete information visit: www.eisenhowerfellowships.org/news/news.php.

Even venture capitalists who sit on boards where they have significant investments often forget this point. They write into their investment documents that they will occupy a seat on the board for as long as they are invested in the company, thinking of this as a protection for their investment and tool for them to influence growth.

Actually, there are two legal duties of board members. They are: the duty of care, and the duty of loyalty. Everything else is a self-imposed duty or responsibility. The duty of care is to care for the corporation asset itself, not the shareholders whom they represent. Each corporation when chartered becomes a live person in the eyes of the law, independent and subject to the care of its board of directors. Shareholders such as the investors are granted few rights by law. They can elect directors for their class of stock, approve mergers and acquisitions; approve increases or changes to the capital structure of the company and other more minor actions.

TORONTO, ONTARIO--(Marketwire - Sept. 7, 2010) - Venture capitalists (VCs) in Canada expect their industry to contract further while those in emerging markets, including China, India and Brazil, expect to see theirs expand over the next five years, according to the 2010 Global Venture Capital Survey by Deloitte, Canada's Venture Capital & Private Equity Association (CVCA) and several other international industry associations.

According to the survey results, two thirds (66 per cent) of Canadian survey respondents expect the number of venture firms to decrease between now and 2015, while a great majority of venture capitalists in China, India and Brazil anticipate adding more venture firms in their country during the same time frame. Venture capitalists in the U.S. and the European continent also expect an industry tightening in their respective countries, but the Canadian industry is much more vulnerable to such a trend given its much smaller size.

Most academics, including administrators, spend much of our time writing. But we aren't as good at it as we should be. I have never understood why our trade values, but rarely teaches, nonfiction writing.

In my nearly 30 years at universities, I have seen a lot of very talented people fail because they couldn't, or didn't, write. And some much less talented people (I see one in the mirror every morning) have done OK because they learned how to write.

Three blog posts that caught my eye this week demonstrate three different ways that you can fail at innovation:

1. Ignore the small innovations: James Todhunter wrote an excellent post yesterday defending thinking about improvements as innovation. You should read the whole post, but here is a highlight:

Breakthrough innovation, incremental innovation, minor improvement—these are all points on a continuum of value creating solution generation. Incremental innovation is very beneficial to an organization trying to develop the core competence needed to support a high-performance innovation system. Specifically, incremental innovation delivers both short and long term benefits. In the short term, immediate business benefits can be realized—extended revenue life of a product, increased market share, better contribution to margin, etc. In the long term, incremental innovation provides a low risk platform to hone the basic innovation skills needed for successful, repeatable breakthrough innovation practice.

In my blog post, “How Can Goals Enhance Creativity” I said…

“…As long as everyone in the organization believes they are playing a game which is designed to get them energized today, and it is not specifically about hitting the target, I can assure you that people will be more motivated.”

Games can be a useful tool for enhancing creativity. They make work more fun, they reduce stress, and they get people in action.

The sunlight of summer has begun it's annual transition to equinox, and we are all reviving the pulse of the work-year.

The President has returned from Martha's Vineyard to face what will surely be a challenging fall. It's mid-term election season and the mood of the voting public is downright ornery.

ODS (Obama Disappointment Syndrome) a growing wave of depression, has created a huge anti-incumbent wave. "Throw 'em all out!" seems to be the mantra of the season.

Silicon Valley may be an epicenter of the nascent electric car industry, but don’t expect the battery revolution to mimic the computer revolution, one of I.B.M.’s top energy storage scientists advises.

“Forget Moore’s Law — it’s nothing like that,” said Winfried Wilcke, senior manager for I.B.M.’s Battery 500 project, referring to the maxim put forward by Gordon Moore, an Intel founder, that computer processing power doubles roughly every two years.

“Lithium ion, which clearly is the best battery technology today, is flat, completely flat since 2003,” Mr. Wilcke said last week at a gathering in San Francisco attended by executives from I.B.M. and Better Place, a Silicon Valley electric car infrastructure company.

Today the Obama administration formally launched Challenge.gov, a tool that enables government agencies to solicit ideas from the public to solve issues plaguing the country. Announced by U.S. CIO Vivek Kundra at the Gov 2.0 conference, Challenge.gov is essentially a digital age-version of JFK's "ask not" plea--with cash prizes.

Unveiling a crowdsourcing initiative at a summit created to demonstrate the most advanced marriages of technology and government? Yawn.

Sure, it's great to see the public sector harnessing the potential of its citizenry. And this same model worked for the X Prize, which help spur the development of a low-cost, reusable spacecraft with a $10 million incentive. And Challenge.gov is offering similar rewards: $10 million from the Department of Energy for a 100 mile-per-gallon vehicle; $15 million for a replacement for the common light bulb; and $1.65 million for an aircraft that can fly 200 miles using 1 gallon of gas per occupant.

Fast-growing small firms will gain access to fresh sources of money by 2012 via a network of specialist stock exchanges under new European Commission proposals due next month.

EU Internal Market Commissioner Michel Barnier is set to adopt a French-inspired blueprint for helping SMEs to tap into stock markets as part of the European Single Market Act, due to be published in October.

Documents seen by EurActiv France show Barnier wants to reduce the level of red tape required for small firms keen to list on stock exchanges and to raise the visibility of SMEs in the investment community.

Some time ago, I met with a young entrepreneurial team that had started an e-commerce company. They seemed very excited and gung-ho with the prospects of their company. But there didn’t seem to be any differentiation in their product offering vis-à-vis the many others who too, according to me, were dispensing similar, if not, identical e-commerce services. I therefore asked about their differentiation. I was told that they had not just an online service but also a physical, telephone enabled and mobile versions of their service.