In an update of their 2009 The Atlantic Century report, the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation reports that the U.S. continues to rank fourth in innovation-based competitiveness and second-to-last in innovative progress. Among the 43 nations included in the study, only Italy ranked lower than the U.S. in improving their innovative competitiveness. Certain U.S. regions performed much better than the country as a whole. For example, Massachusetts, if taken as an independent economy, would rank as the most innovative economy in the world. Read the report...

Anand Agarawala was dozing off in a computer science class at the University of Calgary when he had his big idea. Seven years later, after selling his technology startup to Google, he is living his dream.

The Silicon Valley search giant reportedly paid about $30-million for Mr. Agarawala’s business, BumpTop, which aimed to change the way people navigate their digital desktops, and then hired him. But the 29-year-old credits a $20,000 university fellowship with giving him the momentum to move past daydreaming.

As a war of words kicks off over the state of the European venture capital industry, the return of a French VC from the Valley to London seems strangely apposite. Philippe Botteri, a Frenchman, but nurtured in the ways of American VCs, brings an interesting perspective on the differences between the two worlds: some of it to do with the fractured European market, some of it do with the nature of European politics and a lot of it to do with a lack of entrepreneurial culture. Not all that surprisingly he didn’t see a lack of risk by European VCs.

The biggest difference, he said, was that old problem. European cultural attitudes.

“Working for a start up is different from working for a big company,” he said. “One of the things I have seen in the U.S. is the readiness of people to be entrepreneurs, to create something new, to take their destiny in their own hands and to create their own dreams.”

EDMONTON, ALBERTA, Jul 12, 2011 (MARKETWIRE via COMTEX) -- The Government of Canada, in collaboration with funding participants, is helping to enhance the business productivity and competitiveness of small- and medium-sized businesses in northern Alberta.

The Honourable Lynne Yelich, Minister of State for Western Economic Diversification, announced a federal investment of $500,000 towards the Mobile Business Incubator (MBI) today, an initiative that will create economic opportunities for rural entrepreneurs by connecting them to a wide range of business resources and services. In addition to federal funding, the Province of Alberta is investing $500,000 towards the project, while industry participants, ConocoPhillips Canada and Statoil, are contributing a total of $500,000.

A new kind of early stage investor has set up its premises in Cambridge, looking to mend what has been called a broken investment model. Clifton Cowley Ventures wants to turn dumb money into smart, working as an accelerator where cash and services are both invested in return for an equity stake.

It is the provision of the services which it believes makes it stand out from other investors as they are carefully structured to get the most out of the investee companies.

Job creation may be as bipartisan an issue as they come, but the Kauffman Foundation's latest effort to prompt new legislation aiming to jump-start the economy with startups will likely stall out.

The Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, a Kansas City-based small-business research organization, today offered up a four-point plan for how to both support the growth of startups and to help create jobs. That plan, dubbed the "Startup Act," is effectively an entrepreneur's wish list that includes giving smaller companies wider access to public capital markets, providing "Entrepreneurs’ visas" and green cards to foreign students with degrees in science, technology, engineering and math, making permanent the capital-gains tax exemption currently available on long-held investments in startups and providing expedited patent processing in exchange for higher fees.

ANN ARBOR, Mich., July 19, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- Several Michigan companies recently received investments from the Michigan Pre-Seed Capital Fund, totaling more than $1.8 million.  To date, the Michigan Pre-Seed Capital Fund, a collaborative effort of Michigan's SmartZones, has awarded 61 Michigan companies with seed funding totaling more than $13.4 million.

"Funding that helps a company bridge the gap between research and development and sales is critical to achieving overall success.  It's that type of funding, provided by the Michigan Pre-Seed Capital Fund, that can make or break an early stage venture," said Skip Simms, Ann Arbor SPARK's senior vice president and administrator of the Michigan Pre-Seed Capital Fund.  "Retaining these innovative start-ups in Michigan, as well as the talent that they attract, improves our economic vitality."

Creating a startup, or managing any business, is all about problem solving. Some people are good at it and some are not – independent of their IQ or their academic credentials (there may even be an inverse relationship here). Yet I’m convinced that problem solving is a learnable trait, rather than just a birthright.

Entrepreneurs who are great problem solvers within any business are the best prepared to solve their customers’ needs effectively as well. In fact, every business is about solutions to customer problems – no problems, no business. Problems are an everyday part of every business and personal environment.

Tell the truth – you resent your small business blog a little bit, don’t you? It’s OK. You’re not alone. Reading all these reports that more businesses are blogging than not and constantly watching your competitors hit it out of the ballpark is creating increased pressure. And that pressure, when added to our already busy schedules, sometimes makes us look at blogging not as an effective way to spur lead generation or market our businesses, but as a burden. The result isn’t pretty.

Actually, the result is horrible, horrible blogging.

If readers aren’t connecting with your blog posts or you simply feel like maybe you need a refresh, read these six tips to writing better blog posts. Sometimes it really is just about getting out of your own way and letting the magic happen.

Blogging is hardly a new trend in business. In fact, blogging and online entrepreneurship have been linked for quite some time. But why is blogging still such an effective tool for your small business even in the age of Facebook and Twitter? For more, read on…

Basic Tips

How to develop the blogging habit. Blogging has been a tool for entrepreneurs through much of the recent development of online business, so not surprisingly, many would suggest the art of blogging is a natural extension of the entrepreneur’s creative impulse. But what do you do when the posts just don’t come naturally? Some inspiration might help! Small Business Trends

Middle Men. Middle People?

They exist in all forms of work and life. They’re essential in helping us get our jobs done because they specialize in something we do not. They do a routine task over-and-over again all year long that we do only periodically.

Lawyers. Recruiters. Bankers. Real Estate professionals. PR firms. You name it. And yes, VC’s, too.

We need them all. Yet a critical mistake I see many entrepreneurs make is that they hand over too much control to their third-parties. They outsource the critical negotiations and “trust their advisors to handle the details.” Middle Men need to be led by you, not the other way around. And a key point is that when it comes down to “negotiations” you need to turn up your personal heat and dial back the middle man.

MISSISSAUGA, ON, July 19, 2011 /CNW/ - Small businesses earn high respect among Canadians, according to results of a survey issued today. An overwhelming 94 per cent said they admire entrepreneurs, while 92 per cent would approve of their child or immediate family member starting their own business.

The study, titled Perspectives on Small Business in Canada, is based on a survey of 1,160 small businesses, and includes a separate general-population survey of 2,028 adult Canadians. The surveys were commissioned through the Angus Reid Forum by the Canadian Federation of Independent Business (CFIB), HP Canada and Intel Canada.

Small business is the second-most respected institution behind farmers, most of whom are small businesses themselves. The survey also found that 95 per cent of Canadians value the products, services and personal attention that they get from a small business. Importantly, an impressive 98 per cent of Canadians surveyed say small business is important to Canada's future.

At age 7, I was selling lemonade on the corner. A few years later, looking for even higher margin product, I started checking the prices on different beverages around the house and noticed wine sold for more than juice.

I remembered an episode of I Love Lucy where Lucille Ball stood in a massive vat of grapes crushing them into wine, so I crushed a bag of grapes into a mini clay urn, sealed-off the top with electrical tape and hid it in my tree-house to ferment in an attempt to make my own wine to sell.

Chateaux Fields never quite made it to market, but to this day, I can remember the smell when I opened that urn a month later.

Thinking of starting the next Twitter, Groupon, or Facebook? With these remarkable successes permeating the media, most aspiring entrepreneurs don’t get to hear about the reality of business ownership for 99.99 percent of those who start a new venture. Here are five of the most common myths—along with one absolute truth—about entrepreneurship.

Myth 1: You get to do more of what you love. Everyone thinks that if you love to do something, you’ll get to do more of it when you run a business. Wrong! When you run a business, you have to do and oversee many functions, from marketing to accounting to handling employees to dealing with customer service and more. So at the end of the day, you actually spend less time doing whatever it is you enjoy doing. Your job as an entrepreneur is not to do one thing—it’s to run a business. So, if you love to wear multiple hats and are jazzed by the idea of managing all aspects of an operation, and you think you’ve got the chops to do it, you’re headed in the right direction. If not, beware of the myth.

A report released today by the National Research Council presents a new framework for K-12 science education that identifies the key scientific ideas and practices all students should learn by the end of high school. The framework will serve as the foundation for new K-12 science education standards, to replace those issued more than a decade ago. The National Research Council is the operating arm of the National Academy of Sciences and National Academy of Engineering; all three are independent, nongovernmental organizations.

The committee that wrote the report sees the need for significant improvements in how science is taught in the U.S. The new framework is designed to help students gradually deepen their knowledge of core ideas in four disciplinary areas over multiple years of school, rather than acquire shallow knowledge of many topics. And it strongly emphasizes the practices of science – helping students learn to plan and carry out investigations, for example, and to engage in argumentation from evidence.

Five Ways to “Think Different” by Jeff Dyer, Hal Gregersen, and Clayton M. Christensen co-authors of  "THE INNOVATOR’S DNA: Mastering the Five Skills of Disruptive Innovators"

A few years ago, we set out to discover where innovative ideas come from. So much had been written on the innovation of organizations – thanks, primarily, to the pioneering work of our co-author, Clayton M. Christensen in The Innovator’s Dilemma and The Innovator’s Solution.

But we wanted to know more about the actual people who came up with these brilliant ideas.

We set out on a study that involved over 5,000 executives, and identified five skills that innovative thinkers regularly practice – and that anyone can follow to become innovators themselves. During the course of this study, we discovered that of the five skills, the most important one is a cognitive skill we call “associational thinking.” It helps you discover new directions by making connections across seemingly unrelated questions, problems, or ideas. It’s what Apple [AAPL  388.32    11.47  (+3.04%)   ] means when they say, “Think Different.”

Google AdWords is a dynamic, auction-based marketplace where advertisers bid on keywords to compete for top ad placement. The minimum bid per keyword is 5 cents, but this research shows that in highly competitive categories, Google can make up to $50 per click.

According to Wordstream, these are the top 10 most expensive keywords to buy from Google Adwords, ranked by their search volume:

Insurance $54.91 per click Loans $44.28 per click Mortgage $47.12 per click Attorney $47.07 per click Credit $36.06 per click

The “tech world” is really more of a “tech family.” Between digital giants’ appetites for acquisitions and the tendency of their ex-employees to start new companies, it’s easy to see how nearly every blip in the ecosystem is closely related.

We’ve mapped just a few of these family ties between “Xooglers,” the “PayPal Mafia”, “Softies” and the many other tech connectors who have yet to be nicknamed.

Our guess is that if you gathered a handful of tech veterans in a room, you could keep the tech connection game going forever. So while this graphic is hardly exhaustive, we’ll keep it going in the comments — feel free to add connections to the list!

When you introduce yourself, the most important audience is not the people you meet. The most important audience is actually you.

I have zero soccer ability but still played in a pretty competitive adult soccer league with my teenage stepson. (When three different ambulances show up during one game, you know it’s competitive.)

I was terrible but still played. Why? My stepson asked me to.

Note to parents: When your teenage kids ask you to do something with them, the first time you say no is also the last time you’ll be asked.

As we took the field before a game a guy on the opposing team strutted over. I think he picked me out since I was obviously the oldest player on the field. (Huh; there’s a delightful sentence to write.)

COLUMBIA, Md. -- The Maryland Technology Development Corporation (TEDCO) announced today that 15 Maryland technology companies have received $1,125,000 total in funding. AccuStrata, Inc.; Applied Plasma Science, LLC; Branchpoint Technologies, LLC; Combined Technology Solutions, LLC; Creatv Microtech, Inc.; EncephRX, Inc.; Euveda Biosciences, Inc.; Fuzbien Technology Institute, Inc.; GM Biosciences, Inc.; OmniSpeech, LLC; Opticul Diagnostics, Inc.; SemaConnect, Inc.; TreeMiner, Inc.; Video Semantics, LLC and VisiSonics Corporation each received $75,000 from TEDCO's Maryland Technology Transfer and Commercialization Fund (MTTCF). This program is designed to foster greater collaboration between businesses, Maryland universities and federal laboratories in order to bring technology into the marketplace.

"TEDCO is pleased to provide seed funding to these fifteen promising companies," said Rob Rosenbaum, president and executive director of TEDCO. "Each of these companies has tremendous potential to leverage these funds in hopes of attracting support from future investors, which is vital to ensuring their continued success and pathway to the commercial market."