Here is a blinding glimpse of the obvious for you:  Innovation is all about leadership.

There is today an emerging distinction between “leadership” and “innovation leadership,” a new vision of what it takes to become an innovative leader and a leader of innovation.  This new model of thinking requires a new way of preparing leaders, and a new way of thinking about leadership.  The rules are changing and it might not be stretching the point to say there is actually a leadership revolution brewing.

In developed and emerging economies alike, policy makers and practitioners recognize the undeniable significance of technology-based entrepreneurship as a major driver of innovation and its ability to impact humanity worldwide – on both economic and social fronts.  Larta Institute, an innovation hub based in the U.S., reports on the breadth and impact of their work in this field in their 2012 Larta Institute Annual Report: Impact through Innovation (www.Larta.org/2012AR).  The report reflects a number of trends in the space and highlights Larta's unique Network-Centric approach to entrepreneurial assistance and the activities, programs, entrepreneurs and other stakeholders involved in growing a successful "innovation network."

I first came to the topic of time not because I was interested in time management but because I was fascinated by the academic study of time use.

Hunting through data from the American Time Use Survey, conducted annually by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and other time-diary projects, I came to the inescapable conclusion that how we think we spend our time has little to do with reality. We wildly overestimate time devoted to housework. We underestimate time devoted to sleep. We write whole treatises glorifying a golden age that never was; American women, for instance, spend more time with their children now than their grandmothers did in the 1950s and '60s.

This ain’t your typical summer school: New York City’s Lerer Ventures today announced Summer School VC, a new program that will show students what it’s like to be a venture capitalist.

Applications for Summer School VC are being accepted until May 24, after which the firm will choose 15 to 20 students to participate. It’s a month-long program — running from June 25 to July 23 — at Lerer’s New York City offices.

There is a lot of attention today on innovation and entrepreneurship as people, companies, and even universities try to capitalize on innovation. This is especially true in a challenging economic environment with reductions in funding sources. We’re all looking to do more with less (the hallmark of the entrepreneur). After almost thirty years of practicing, consulting, and teaching innovation and entrepreneurship, one truth remains: Innovation is driven by the individual, and supported by organizations.

Between 2007 and 2012, the U.S. recovered from a temporary patenting lull in the wake of the economic crisis, jumping more than 43 percent. Most states shared in this patent resurgence, though activity continues to be concentrated in a few states. About one quarter of 2012 U.S. patents were awarded in California, the leading patenting state. About half of all patents were awarded in the top five states, California, Texas, New York, Massachusetts and Washington.

SSTI has prepared tables showing total patents and patents per 100,000 residents by state for 2007-2012. These tables include updated data from USPTO for 2007-2010, and include utility, design, plant and reissue patents (less statutory invention registration). Download the tables in Excel format to get access to all of the data.

The Iowa Legislature has approved a $41 million compromise economic development budget.

The House and Senate both easily approved the plan Wednesday. It funds the Department of Cultural Affairs, Iowa Workforce Development, the Iowa Economic Development Authority, the Iowa Finance Authority and the Public Employment Relations Board.

The budget is $31 million under what Republican Gov. Terry Branstad proposed. That's because leadership has decided to move some budget items into a different fund paid by gaming revenue.

New York will award $760 million in grants and tax incentives in the next round of a regional economic development competition created by Gov. Andrew Cuomo.

Lt. Gov. Robert Duffy said Wednesday that $220 million of the $760 million will be made available specifically as part of a competition between the 10 regional economic development councils created by Cuomo in 2011.

Gathering at the National Venture Capital Association’s VentureScape conference this week, venture and corporate investors met with executives leading top startup accelerators in a crowded session to discuss the health of the “startup ecosystem.”

Two main questions on venture investors’ minds: “How do we know if accelerators are succeeding?”  And: “Are we in an accelerator bubble?”

Box, Fab, Facebook, Foursquare, Skype, Twitter. You wouldn't blow too many minds if you said that Andreessen Horowitz has good taste in investments.

Similarly, it's safe to say that Marc Andreessen knows a thing or two about technology: He co-authored Mosaic, the first web browser; he cofounded Netscape, one of the original startups; and his surname adorns one of Menlo Park's premier venture firms.

Traditional tech transfer makes it hard for industry to realise commercial potential, and for universities to maximise the value, of IP. A new approach pioneered by the University of Manitoba aims to change this, using IP to underpin collaboration, explains Digvir Jayas.

The University of Manitoba - through a collective agreement with the University of Manitoba Faculty Association (UMFA) and the Intellectual Property Policy - defines all intellectual property (IP) generated at the university as being jointly owned by the university academics and the university as an institution.

“If I want to start a company, do I really need to go to business school?” is a question I get a lot.

Frankly, I think it’s a misguided question. If you want to start a business (as I did, heading into business school), then the real question is, “What do I have to do to maximize my chances of being a successful entrepreneur?” For some, that answer will mean going to business school, and for others, it won’t. 

For me, going to business school was the right move. There are several reasons why, and I’d like to share five with you now. 1. Adam Grant. Wharton professor Adam Grant is something of a burgeoning national treasure with the runaway success of his recent book Give and Take (#2 on the New York Times Best Sellers list in April, second only to Sheryl Sandberg’s Lean In). But before he began shaping the national conversation on how we think about success, he was Wharton’s highest rated professor who remembered every one of his students’ names while citing research seamlessly into conversation (all of which he still does). It is this Adam Grant on whom I feel incredibly fortunate to be able to lean when heading into an important negotiation or needing to reflect thoughtfully about any resistance the company is facing. The funny thing is I never took a class with Adam Grant while at Wharton. In fact our paths never really crossed while there. Because I went to Wharton, and students there told us we had to meet, Adam and I ultimately connected and have been able to engage in meaningful dialogue ever since.

For Jack Wrigley, co-founder of mobile-app company Qwiqq, Dallas is a great place to live but it can’t hold a candle to Silicon Valley as a fount of venture capital for a consumer Internet company.

Qwiqq co-founder Jack Wrigley met with top investors for feedback about his mobile-app company — and maybe eventually some crucial financial backing. So when the opportunity arose to fly out to San Francisco for a national venture capital conference and get serious face time with big-time venture investors – with free airfare, to boot – he and his co-founder jumped at the chance.

Wrigley and his co-founder, John Phan, were among the more than 170 entrepreneurs participating Tuesday in a National Venture Capital Association experiment to engage entrepreneurs by hosting what was billed as the world’s largest office hours at the group’s VentureScape annual meeting in San Francisco.

Few would disagree that Canada needs venture capital to ensure its long-term economic health, helping to turn innovative ideas into viable companies that generate jobs and new technologies.

But the latest data from Canada’s Venture Capital & Private Equity Association suggest talk is cheap.

While the amount of overall venture-capital investment and the number of deals were both up in the first quarter of 2013 from a year earlier, the amount of new capital raised for future investment fell 44% to 381 million Canadian dollars ($375 million), according to the industry group. This suggests that, while there’s no shortage of demand for VC money, the industry’s ability to take advantage of new investing opportunities could be at risk unless it starts attracting more funding.

Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg, Sergey Brin: We celebrate these entrepreneurs for their successes, and often equally extol the venture capitalists who backed their start-ups and share in their glory. Well-known VC firms such as Kleiner Perkins and Sequoia have cultivated a branded mystique around their ability to find and finance the most successful young companies. Forbes identifies the top individual VCs on its Midas List, implicitly crediting them with a mythical magic touch for investing. The story of venture capital appears to be a compelling narrative of bold investments and excess returns.

Conventional wisdom for a generation has been that manufacturing in America is dying. Yet over the past five years, the country has experienced something of an industrial renaissance. We may be far from replacing the 3 million industrial jobs lost in the recession, but the economy has added over 330,000 industrial jobs since 2010, with output growing at the fastest pace since the 1990s.

Looking across the country, it is clear that industrial expansion has been a key element in boosting some of our most successful local economies. The large metro areas with the most momentum in expanding their manufacturing sectors also rank highly on our list of the cities that are generating the most jobs overall, including Houston-Sugarland-Baytown, Texas, which places first on our list of the big metro areas that are creating the most manufacturing jobs; Seattle-Bellevue-Everett, Wash. (third); Oklahoma City, Okla. (fourth), Nashville-Davidson-Murfreesboro-Franklin, Tenn. (No. 6); Ft. Worth, Texas (No. 9); and Salt Lake City, Utah (No. 10).

Having too much body fat makes arteries become stiff after middle age, a new study has revealed.

In young people, blood vessels appear to be able to compensate for the effects of obesity. But after middle age, this adaptability is lost, and arteries become progressively stiffer as body fat rises – potentially increasing the risk of dying from cardiovascular disease.

The researchers suggest that the harmful effects of body fat may be related to the total number of years that a person is overweight in adulthood. Further research is needed to find out when the effects of obesity lead to irreversible damage to the heart and arteries, they said.

Everyday at Under30CEO we try to help young people get what they really want out of life.  For some it’s money, power, and fame, for others it’s time to spend with friends and family, still others embrace the journey and continue to search for what happiness might mean to them…

Last week my friend Marcella Chamorro who joined us in her home country of Nicaragua for our Under30Experiences trip, interviewed me for her new book Life Is What I Say It Is.  When Marcella asked me what my definition of freedom was, I told her: “doing what I want, when I want, with the people I want.”  

I have been reluctant to discuss crowdfunding, since there are so many conversations going on already.  As a new mechanism for academic technology transfer, it has been the subject of conference sessions, webinars, blog posts, and articles from the New York Times to the Wall Street Journal to Forbes. 

The apparent bias toward New York City publications above was purely unintentional.  Although we are technically in the same state, my upstate location is very different from our downstate neighbors.

Has Austin reached the tipping point when it comes to technology incubators? News came today that Colorado-based TechStars is planning to bring its incubation program to Austin this summer. And get this: it will be operating out of the Capital Factory. So a Colorado incubator will be incubating tech companies at an Austin incubator. Central Texas already has a plethora of such business mentoring programs, including the Longhorn Startup, IC2 Institute, Door64, Austin Startup, Tech Ranch, Austin Technology Incubator, Napkin Venture, the Incubation Station and Austin Tech Live. Whew.