Even though the economy remains stuck in a recession, business appears to be booming in garages and at kitchen tables across the country–at least according to a new report from the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation. That report shows that rates of entrepreneurship are at its highest level in 15 years. The Kauffman Index of Entrepreneurial Activity finds some 0.34 percent of American adults started a business in 2010, resulting in about 565,000 new businesses.

Rates of entrepreneurship are highest among those without a high school degree, and also in some of the states that have been hit hardest by the housing bust. That suggests that this burst of entrepreneurship has some similarities with that of the early 90s, when the country was also in a housing-led recession. At that time, many of the tradespeople and construction workers who had been laid off from their jobs, and who owned their own tools, formed new businesses simply by hanging out shingles. Many of those businesses evaporated when the housing markets picked up again and these temporary entrepreneurs were again able to find employment.

Why do small, innovative companies seem to do better when recruiting today’s young top talent?

Some may point to the technologies being driven by smaller companies. Others may point to the adrenaline that comes with the competitive nature of a start-up. Start-up veterans may point to the collaborative, mentor-based working environments. And they may all be right.

However, the answer may be far simpler: recruiters at a start-up… are human.

Of course, ultimately every recruiting process ends up with one human talking with another. In a small team environment, though – which in addition to start-ups may include entrepreneur driven small business and grass roots non-profits – human resources is accomplished by hyper-motivated, goal-sharing, succeed-or-cease-to-exist humans.

Recently I spoke at an event and used the word “app” in my remarks. Afterward, someone approached me and said, “I enjoyed your talk … but, can you please explain, what is an ‘app’?”

Talk about a reality check! It was like getting a bucket of cold water in my face. It was a perfect reminder of a lesson I know to be true and often preach, but in this case didn’t live up to. That lesson is: we sometimes throw about the latest tech words that we assume others will know, because we spend much time online and dealing with technology and the words are common to us. But the general population may still consider words such as “app” to be unintelligible lingo.

The Nokia story in recent years is on the surface about the struggle to build winning software platforms around OVI, Symbian and MeeGo. This is a story, which already has been told by BloombergBusinessWeek, the Economist and many others.

What has not been so much in focus is what lessons Nokia’s story holds for Nordic and European innovation policy makers. I will argue here that Nokia’s slide in competitiveness towards notably Apple and Google holds important insights into the stickiness and path dependency of national innovation systems and related policies within education as well as the supply base of entrepreneurs and partners in the innovation eco-system.

In 2008-2009, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) held 8 days of hearings across the country on the U.S. patent system and its effect on innovation. After compiling public comments and conducting additional research, the FTC released a new report today titled The Evolving IP Marketplace: Aligning Patent Notice and Remedies With Competition: A Report of the Federal Trade Commission.

The report supplements the earlier (2003) report titled To Promote Innovation: The Proper Balance of Competition and Patent Law and Policy, and continues to maintain many of the criticisms of the patent system, namely, (1) too many patents are ambiguous, (2) too many patents have an indeterminate scope, (3) too many patentees are exploiting the courts solely for monetary purposes, and (4) too many infringers are paying "excessive" awards.

After more than two decades of research and development, the first retinal prosthesis has received European approval for clinical and commercial use. People blinded by degenerative eye disease will have the option of buying an implant that can restore their vision at least partially.

"It marks the beginning of an era in which sight will be restored at ever more astonishing levels," says Robert Greenberg, president and CEO of Second Sight, the California company that developed the device.

Walter Wrobel, CEO of Retina Implant AG of Reutlingen, Germany, a startup that is carrying out trials of a similar device in several countries, says the approval is an exciting development for hundreds of thousands of people who suffer from diseases like retinitis pigmentosa.

When starting up a new business, is it better to found it as a team — with a partner or partners — or go at it solo?

It’s a fundamental question and a legitimate concern. Personally, I think it depends on your working style. If you work well alone and are good at bringing in the key skill sets to drive your business’ growth at the appropriate time, you may be better off on your own.

On the other hand, if having a business partner is likely to drive the growth of your business and motivate you and lead to a synergistic relationship, then a partnership is probably a wise choice.

Even so, you should be very careful who you choose as your co-founders.

(Reuters Life!) - Answering a few key questions up front can help weigh the risks and benefits of launching your own business, says Harvard Business Review.

The Harvard Management Tip of the Day offers quick, practical management tips and ideas from Harvard Business Review and HBR.org (http:\\www.hbr.org). Any opinions expressed are not endorsed by Reuters.

“I never find much to write about at conferences,” one woman told me as we waited for morning coffee just before the Women Entrepreneurs Festival (WE Festival) at NYU a few weeks ago. “There’s never anything interesting to say.” I nodded, demonstratively. A gathering of women focused on mobilizing an entrepreneurial “community,” seemed cliché. And while parts of the WE Festival veered in that direction, the messages that came out of the two-day event organized by Gotham Gal blogger Joanne Wilson was refreshingly original. I wanted to share them on International Women’s Day.

The gathering of around 200 mainly female entrepreneurs focused on mobilizing a “community of women entrepreneurs in New York City.” It highlighted speakers, all entrepreneurs, from four main disciplines: design, environmental, media and social entrepreneurship. Unsurprisingly they told their founding stories, participated on panels and engaged the audience in a question and answer exchange – everything I expected. Except, I didn’t expect some of their answers, particularly this one: There are no rules.

Republican Gov. Rick Snyder’s top economic development official defended a controversial plan to eliminate certain tax credits in favor of a flat corporate tax rate, arguing the state’s economy would better benefit from broad tax reform than tax breaks aimed at specific industries.

The best way to lower the state’s 11 percent unemployment rate is to “position Michigan in the minds of people as a place to do business,” Michigan Economic Development Corp. (MEDC) CEO Mike Finney told Xconomy.

“Business people want (to operate) in a stable business environment,” Finney says. “They see that as the top priority.”

We have a few important items for your consideration. One is the latest on reauthorization, from both the Senate and House. Another is on the ramifications of a government shutdown that could happen after March 18.

We have 2 critical views on this important subject for you, one from a leading professional on government contracting, the other from a former DoD SBIR program manager. If you're an SBIR/STTR company, you'll want to read this!

I don’t believe anyone sets out in life to be mediocre, ordinary, or “common.” Deep down, we desire more than that, but all too often we give in to the weight of social obligations, others’ expectations, personal fears, and the allure of low hanging fruit.

It goes without saying that “settling” is the choice of least resistance and therefore, the path of the common folk. But despite the odds, there are always some who stand boldly in the face of life’s challenges and temptations. Not surprisingly, they achieve the extraordinary and become exceptional.

It’s not difficult, nor worthwhile, to list the ingredients of the common life. But it’s always beneficial to explore the anatomy of life’s inspirational anomalies. In a few short minutes, I came up with 53 different, but complimentary, factors of a remarkable person.

If you’re like most professionals, you’re probably very skilled at setting goals–but not quite so adept at achieving them.

With the best of intentions, we make New Year’s resolutions, vowing to lose weight, exercise more, or get organized. And by February, our resolve usually evaporates, along with our goals, according to a poll by the time management firm Franklin Covey. The company polled more than 15,000 customers about their New Year’s resolutions and found 4 out of 5 eventually break them. About one in three didn’t even make it to the end of January.

Corporate real estate executives often take the lead in establishing operations in emerging markets. Given these markets’ complexity and lack of transparency, this role comes with inherent challenges. The CFO must ensure an accurate financial view of a direct investment project. This might seem simple, but experience suggests otherwise. Internally, project teams must develop cohesive project specifications and project assumptions. Externally, the complexities of emerging markets, geographic variability of factors, and access to accurate data mean substantial research and validation. But there are better ways to develop a financial model for manufacturing direct investment decisions.

The web's ability to interact and organise communities of people has been highlighted recently with the emergence of crowdfunding platforms that create a vital lifeline to much needed finance for thousands if not millions of public, private and social enterprises. Although there are now a multitude of crowdfunding sites that allow people to contribute small amounts of money in support of a creative idea or project, in return for rewards, the most recent development – equity-based crowdfunding – promises to become another great example of how web start-ups can challenge conventional business models.

We launched Crowdcube this year to give members of the public shares and equity in the enterprises registered on the site that they choose to invest in. It's the world's first equity-based crowdfunding platform, but probably not the last, judging by the swell of interest and enthusiasm we have received from home and abroad.

Israeli venture capital funds raised no capital in 2010, according to the Israel Venture Capital Association (IVC) and KPMG Somekh Chaikin. They added that 2010 joins 2009 and 2003, the other dry years of the decade for the industry.

IVC is cautiously optimistic for 2011, based on the positive outlook for the Israeli economy, and government incentives for investment: the Ministry of Finance's program for Israeli institutions to invest in Israeli venture capital funds. The ministry expects the plan to boost investment by $220 million in 2011-12.

IVC estimates that Israeli venture capital funds currently have $1.4 billion available for investment, of which $230 million will be allotted for first investments, and the rest for follow-on investments. It predicts that Israeli funds will raise $800 in 2011 for investment in Israel's high-tech industry.

Testing the limits of distance education and administration, the University of Kentucky has hired a professor and the technology leadership center that he directs away from Iowa State University—but will leave the professor in Ames to work remotely, unsettling some of his new colleagues, according to a local newspaper.

Scott McLeod will become an an associate professor in the department of educational leadership studies in the fall of 2011, the university announced today. His organization, the Center for the Advanced Study of Technology Leadership in Education, will be moving to Kentucky as well, along with another full-time faculty member. The center will have two research assistants.

The Technology Innovation Channel recently interviewed Orin Herskowitz, Executive Director of Columbia Technology Ventures and VP for Intellectual Property and Technology Transfer at Columbia University.

Orin Herskowitz Intv from jbourne on Vimeo.

We do not have to puzzle long over what ignited the Arab Youth to take over the streets calling for reforms in their governments. The protests have been against long tyrannies, unemployment and have been fueled by the power of social media. The act that triggered the pro-democracy movement in many Arab countries, the self-immolation of a Tunisian in protest over the confiscation of his fruit stand, shows that the events of late are also an uprising against anti-entrepreneurial barriers. Clearly, protesters have issued a call to Arab leaders to not stifle the innovative aspirations of their people--especially the younger generation--which leaders themselves have armed through education and who are now impatient to put their education to good use.

Channeling the anger and frustration into building a start-up culture in the region would transform what today seems a threat into a great stabilizing asset. Last December, I had the opportunity to meet many young aspiring entrepreneurs from Libya at a conference focused on the Maghreb countries (Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, and Mauritania). The objectives of the Maghreb Entrepreneurship Conference, was to discuss entrepreneurship-based strategies to fight high unemployment in the region. The conference paid special attention to youth entrepreneurship in North Africa. With over 50% of the population under 25, the Maghreb countries face the challenge of a large number of educated but unemployed young people. If more people like Lybia´s Omar Abdelaziz Abdelati al-Obeidi, who started the Arab world’s first online library for the blind, see opportunity to prosper in the new systems that emerge in the coming months, they will be supportive. Entrepreneurship generates a bottom-up push for reform. As I´ve expressed before, in the midst of the chaos, a positive sign has been obvious. The events were a result, not just of desperation, but of initiative and a belief that they should be allowed to have a say because they can contribute to their countries’ economic future.

More than 18 million people in the U.S. have been diagnosed with diabetes, which costs an estimated $174 billion annually. Typically, local public health agencies carry out the initiatives to manage and prevent this chronic disease, but because prevalence figures are generally given on national and state levels, local workers cannot gain the traction—and funding—to rein in rates in their areas.

A new study drills down to the county level, revealing wide disparities within states and striking national patterns. "We're extremely excited about the county level," says Lawrence Barker, associate director for science at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Division of Diabetes Translation.