The author argues that giving green cards to international students who graduate with advanced degrees in math, science, technology, or engineering isn't the best solution for pulling the US economy out of its current doldrums.

Carlos Barria/Reuters/File

As hundreds of corporate leaders from across the country gather in the Buckeye State for the 2011 National Middle Market Summit, the public pressure for job creation has reached a fever pitch.

In the past week, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke warned that the economic recovery is "close to faltering," Goldman Sachs predicted unemployment to push past 9.1% in 2012, and the Occupy Wall Street protests against job cuts and underemployment are gaining national attention.

Yesterday I wrote how a platform like the Kindle might act as a stimulus to the wider, creative economy.  The question in my mind is this. Is the creative economy a bit of hocous pocus or is it increasingly possible and beneficial to build our careers around our creative smarts?

In so doing are we assisting the broader national economy or is talk of a creative class a large chunk of self  indulgence?

This is an important question because, reading this weeks’ Bloomberg Businessweek researchers point out, in an article by Charles Kenny, that most job growth actually comes from large companies as does real economic efficiency. It seems that a high proportion of start-ups in an economy is actually a liability because they are so inefficient.

A 20-year study from Sweden suggests that screening for prostate cancer does not substantially reduce the risk of death from the disease.

On the other hand, a good many men might receive false-positive results and overtreatment, adding an element of risk to widescale screening, the researchers report in the March 31 online issue of the BMJ.

“In the light of our findings, I would say that the benefit from screening is not sufficient to support mass screening,” said study author Dr. Gabriel Sandblom, an associate professor at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm.

THE melancholy over Steve Jobs’s passing is not just about the loss of the inventor of so many products we enjoy. It is also about the loss of someone who personified so many of the leadership traits we know are missing from our national politics. Those traits jump out of every Jobs obituary: He was someone who did not read the polls but changed the polls by giving people what he was certain they wanted and needed before they knew it; he was someone who was ready to pursue his vision in the face of long odds over multiple years; and, most of all, he was someone who earned the respect of his colleagues, not by going easy on them but by constantly pushing them out of their comfort zones and, in the process, inspiring ordinary people to do extraordinary things.

An embarrassing e-mail that recently leaked onto tech blogs revealed that Airbnb's latest venture capital round includes a $21 million cash-out for the company's founders, extending the disturbing trend of generous early payouts at tech startups.

In the note intercepted by All Things D, venture capitalist Chamath Palihapitiya told the San Francisco company's chief executive that he was passing on the recent $112 million round not because of the cash-out, but because it failed to adequately spread the financial love to rank-and-file employees.

"I really think you can do better than this ... and that you are better than this," Palihapitiya wrote.

While we in the tech world are still celebrating the life of Steve Jobs, I’ve seen numerous articles over the past few days that talk about the things he’s accomplished, the impact that he’s had and where we go from here. I’ve had conversations through Twitter, Google+, over the phone and otherwise wherein everyone from entrepreneurs to analysts and Venture Capital firms have expressed their concern for the technology ecosystem as a whole.

But it occurs to me, as it should to you, that while the passing of Steve is a a tragedy of our generation, technology and entrepreneurialism will continue to move forward. By the very nature of their definitions, these two terms that describe our world are forced to move on. We’ll never forget Steve or his impact, and in fact should be driven forward by those factors.

Most U.S. companies are small. Ninety percent employ fewer than 20 employees, and 99 percent employ 500 or fewer. I tell my entrepreneurship students that, odds are, many of them will not work for a large employer. In fact, the chances are very good that they will work for a smaller company. They may start one, or help to grow an existing one. The economy needs both.

Graduates of business schools should be able to add value immediately to an economy that relies on smaller companies. Are we teaching students about small businesses or only big ones? Smaller companies are not little big businesses. Many business theories developed around larger companies do not apply well to smaller companies because the two face vastly different issues.

Some of the worst product flops in history started as big ideas.

Crystal Pepsi was billed as the here and now of colas, offering a caffeine free alternative with the grandeur of health and clarity. Nokia’s NGage phones were an attempt to lure gamers from their portable gaming systems and give them that platform on their cell phones. The fata

l flaw of these products was a fixation on an idea that just didn’t work for mass-market consumption.

Crystal Pepsi didn’t taste so clear, and the NGage phone looked like a taco, and didn’t work well as a phone. Both were great ideas, in theory – but a focus on the ideas themselves ultimately led to their demise. In so many ways the idea of ideas is ruining the innovation process. Here’s why:

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A growing community of online investors with competitive interest rates is filling a funding gap for SMEs at a time when access to bank loans is drying up.

Social networks of investors are lending millions of euros' worth in loans to entrepreneurs and small businesses in a growing trend of peer-to-peer funding for companies online.

Funding for SMEs has begun to dry up as banks attempt to deal with the euro crisis and the pressure from both governments and markets to strengthen their balance sheets.

"The issue of financing is a pressing issue and it is not going to get better," Daniel Calleja-Crespo, the Deputy Director General for Industry and Entrepreneurship from the European Commission said at an event on SME financing yesterday (6 October).

When you're at the top business school in the nation, some things come easily.

Last year, 95% of Harvard Business School students landed jobs or launched companies within three months of graduation, reports the Wall Street Journal.

And HBS intends to keep it that way — in part, by creating more entrepreneurs.

This fall the school is rolling out a new curriculum, which focuses more on ethics and "hands-on training in entrepreneurship and leadership," its dean Nitin Nohria tells the Journal:

Over the last few months, a steady stream of visitors to Palo Alto, Calif., called an old friend’s home number and asked if he was well enough to entertain visitors, perhaps for the last time.

In February, Steven P. Jobs had learned that, after years of fighting cancer, his time was becoming shorter. He quietly told a few acquaintances, and they, in turn, whispered to others. And so a pilgrimage began.

The calls trickled in at first. Just a few, then dozens, and in recent weeks, a nearly endless stream of people who wanted a few moments to say goodbye, according to people close to Mr. Jobs. Most were intercepted by his wife, Laurene. She would apologetically explain that he was too tired to receive many visitors. In his final weeks, he became so weak that it was hard for him to walk up the stairs of his own home anymore, she confided to one caller.

Let’s imagine that someone from the year 1970 miraculously traveled forward in time to today. You could show her one of the iPhones that Steve Jobs helped create, and she’d be thunderstruck. People back then imagined wireless communication (Dick Tracy, Star Trek), but they never imagined you could funnel an entire world’s worth of information through a pocket-sized device.

The time traveler would be vibrating with excitement. She’d want to know what other technological marvels had been invented in the past 41 years. She’d ask about space colonies on Mars, flying cars, superfast nuclear-powered airplanes, artificial organs. She’d want to know how doctors ended up curing cancer and senility.

HeraldNet recently asked some entrepreneurs for their take on small business in the future. Has a weak economy permanently harmed small business? Tell us your thoughts in the comments.

Phil Bannan, co-owner of Scuttlebutt Brewery Co.

I don’t think the long recession will have much of a negative impact on the next generation of entrepreneurs because nothing seems to constrain the true entrepreneur. It’s in their DNA. Yet, there are a lot of steps between the germination of an idea and a fully functioning enterprise. Somewhere in there, financing and capital accumulation become a key determinant of successfully bringing an enterprise to life. I think the question is: Will there be financing? Venture capital is difficult, IPOs aren’t working and the tax policy is confiscatory. That’s where I see the future entrepreneur’s problem.

The AccuWeather.com Long-Range Forecasting Team is predicting another brutally cold and snowy winter for a large part of the country, thanks in large part to La Niña... yet again.

La Niña, a phenomenon that occurs when sea surface temperatures across the equatorial central and eastern Pacific are below normal, is what made last year's winter so awful for the Midwest and Northeast. Monster blizzards virtually shut down the cities of New York and Chicago. Last winter was one of New York City's snowiest on record.

Winning may not be the only thing, but the human brain devotes a lot of resources to the outcome of games, a new study by Yale researchers suggest.

The study published in the Oct. 6 issue of the journal Neuron shows that when participants play games, such as rock-paper-scissors, almost the entire brain is engaged, not just the reward centers of the brain, which have been assigned the central role for shaping adaptive human behavior.

“Our brain functions to maximize the chance of survival and reproduction, so reward should be important for all cognitive functions, and thus most brain regions,” said Timothy Vickery, postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Psychology and lead author of the study.

Recognizing that Connecticut does not do enough to spur the creation of tech firms, Gov. Dannel P. Malloy on Thursday launched Startup Connecticut, an effort to push along high-growth enterprises.

The effort would be part of a national network coordinated by The Startup America Partnership, a nonprofit dedicated to helping new companies grow.

Malloy made the announcement along with business and economic development executives at his jobs summit at the Connecticut Convention Center. But details remain sketchy; it wasn't immediately clear how much money the new initiative would spend, and on which programs.

For kids from low-income backgrounds who want to level up, getting money for college is one of the most significant and most daunting challenges to try to overcome.

Takeashine is a new crowdfunding platform that aims to help deserving, underprivileged youth get the money they need to continue their education.

“Takeashine has the potential to not only directly changes the lives of students, but to change the way we approach the community’s role in the process of educational access,” founder Sarah Baird said. “I think technology’s ability to create large-scale social impact is only getting started.”

A question I get quite frequently is, “Can entrepreneurship be taught”? It’s a tough question and the answer is highly dependent on how you define “entrepreneurship,” so let’s start there. If you look in Webster’s dictionary online (http://www.merriam-webster.com), there is no separate definition forentrepreneurship, but here’s the definition you find for entrepreneur:

One who organizes, manages, and assumes the risks of a business or enterprise.

Frankly, I find that definition a bit lacking, as it’s very dry and does not embody any of the spirit or mindset it takes to be an entrepreneur.