If you compulsively check Facebook, you are not alone, and your behavior, says B. J. Fogg, is no accident.

In his role as a professor of psychology at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, Fogg studies how technology influences behavior. As a consultant to corporations and organizations, he teaches how to design persuasive technologies, those designed to modify behavior without coercion. And as an educator, he's taught many people who now work at Facebook and Google or who have founded other Silicon Valley startups that rely in large part on the power of persuasion.

"Facebook taps into our need to belong," says Fogg, who is writing a book about the psychology of the social-networking site. "Checking it is the most efficient way to feel like you matter. Eventually it becomes a ritual." While most companies can't hope to become another Facebook, Fogg says that with a careful eye to design, organizations can do more to reach specific goals, whether that's getting consumers to switch brands or getting employees to lose weight to save on health care.

Five years ago most of the components inside a typical Apple iPod came from Japan. Today a tear-down of the iPad reveals that nearly all the important components come from South Korea and Taiwan. In such a short time Japan’s dominance of Asia’s technology industry has been eroded by its neighbors according to a story in The Economist.

"Between 2006 and 2009, the number of patent applications in America, Europe and South Korea largely held steady. But filings in Japan sank while those in China soared. If the pattern holds, more patents may be filed in China this year than in Japan for the first time, putting China in striking distance of America. It is an astonishing reversal. As recently as 2000, Japanese patent filings were four times greater than China’s.

I’ve spent the last 3 days at TechCrunch Disrupt learning about the latest and greatest tech startups Silicon Valley (and actually the world) has to offer.  I noticed that many of the start-ups, many of which launched at TechCrunch Disrupt, are doing very similar things.  Here I’ll summarize the trends I saw.  While not totally relevant to the social enterprise world, I do believe many of these technologies can be leveraged to make a difference or at least improve the operations of a sustainable business.

1) Mobile everything

• Pay with your phone with BlingNation.  MobilePay does something very similar. Easily build mobile apps with ApplicationCraft.   InstaMobile creates a mobile store fast and simple for anyone.  With ParticleCode you can automatically port mobile apps across platforms.  DudaMobile turns websites into mobile sites.
• Clixtr lets you collaborate with friends and strangers on event related photo albums.  Pinger provides free texting!
• Apsalar provides mobile analytics.

If you find yourself reminiscing about how easily your imagination flowed when you were a child, and wonder why it’s so difficult to stir up your creative juices as an adult, this post is for you. As we mature, we develop bad habits that crush your ability to be innovative and, as a result, stifle our creativity. There are eight main patterns of behaviour we fall into that will limit us. See three below:

• Creating and evaluating at the same time
• Fear of ambiguity
• Being trapped by false limits

WASHINGTON — The system put in place by the Bayh-Dole Act of 1980 -- which gives universities significant control over intellectual property associated with the results of federally funded research at their institutions – has been more effective than the pre-1980 system in making research advances available to the public and spurring innovation, says a new report from the National Research Council.  Nevertheless, the current system needs improvement, said the committee that wrote the report.

"The public investment in research universities has led to a great deal of new knowledge that can benefit society, and the movement of research results to those who can commercialize them creates jobs and strengthens the economy, contributes to the advance of human health, and adds to the nation's security," said Mark S. Wrighton, chair of the committee that wrote the report, and chancellor and professor of chemistry at Washington University in St. Louis.  "The movement of intellectual property from universities to new and mature companies is a healthy process, but one that can be improved. Our committee's report provides some recommendations for those involved in this transfer of knowledge."

This year I thought I would experiment with a Top Ten list at the beginning of each month, profiling the ten posts from the previous month that generated the most traffic to Blogging Innovation. So, without further ado, here are September’s ten most popular innovation or marketing posts:

1. Innovation and Porter’s Value Chain – by Jeffrey Phillips
2. Top 40 Innovation Bloggers of 2010 – by Braden Kelley
3. Building a Marketing Strategy for Innovation Efforts – by James Pasmantier
4. Rethinking Failure – by Mitch Ditkoff
5. Enhancing Creativity – Adult Games versus Kid Games – by Stephen Shapiro

LinkedIn has launched a tool aimed at current college students that the company says will provide students with "unique, data-driven insights to help them build their careers." LinkedIn's Career Explorer is a collaborative effort between the professional network and professional services and accountancy firm PwC.

Career Explorer aims to help students chart their potential career paths and to help them build a professional network pre-graduation. Based on data aggregated from LinkedIn's 80 million members, Career Explorer will map out the paths that others in similar fields have taken. It will also offer resources including relevant job opportunities, salary information, and educational and experience required in certain industries or fields.

The idea of gaming for more than a high score and bragging rights has been around for some time. The U.S. military used flight simulators and Mission Rehearsal Exercise video games in training programs as early as 2001.

More recently, scientists at the University of Washington began using a game called FoldIt to solve problems related to molecular science and, as the title suggests, folding and design of proteins.

Today, IBM released CityOne (a “serious game” in the company’s own parlance) to help urban planners, civic and business leaders make cities “smarter” or more environmentally and socially sustainable. CityOne is a massively multiplayer online game in the real time strategy category.

It’s hard not to feel sorry for American embryonic stem cell (ESC) researchers. Over the dozen years since the cells were first derived, they’ve been expected to meet federal rules that change with each president, research guidelines from the National Academy of Sciences as interpreted by their institutions, and separate requirements from state and private funders. While the extremely restrictive policies of the Bush administration caused a number of alternative funders to step up to the plate, each comes with its own rules, restrictions, and reporting requirements. Labs with a mix of federal and private funding are required to account for the monies separately, leading to the somewhat absurd practice of color-coding lab instruments and workspace so that nothing paid for with federal money is used to do something federal policies prohibit.

Can you say "branding?" There. I knew ya could.

As my little girl grows up and gets interested in television and "brands" that appeal to her, I can't help but think of those of my own early childhood. The brand she is exposed to the most is Sesame Street: It started with her diapers, moved into plush animals, and has manifested into a full-blown television love, fueled by the show's release of a "Best of..." of its first 40 years on the air.

For me, Sesame Street existed right alongside one of the most revered figures in television history: Fred Rogers. I haven't gotten Ms. Emma Belle any Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood DVDs lined up yet, primarily because there's very little available. (There's a petition circulating with almost 2,000 signatures to get the DVDs released.) However, I have caught some episodes in re-run. And I've been giving a lot of thought to the lessons Mr. Rogers handed down to a young Samuel Earl all those years ago.

Exit interviews are important tools to uncover potential legal liability early and learn if there are morale  (or other) problems in an organization.  Done wrong, though, they can land you in some hot water. As such, it’s best to follow certain guidelines when conducting these talks.

For example, create a script of general questions.  And always have a neutral third party or someone from another department conduct the interview.

As a practical matter, remember that leaving is a highly emotionally charged situation and try to be empathic to the employee. And never forger that while the exit interview may be confidential for the employee, it is not for you and the employee may repeat to anyone else what you said. As such, work with your legal department or outside counsel to ensure that the questions you ask don’t violate the law.

General Electric has edged out Ford and Intel to take the top spot in Maplecroft’s Climate Innovation Index U.S. 100, while Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway comes in last, reports Bloomberg.

Ranked on their efforts to manage carbon emissions and global warming as well as their profit on climate opportunities, GE topped the list of the 100 largest public companies in the U.S. for the second year in a row.

Maplecroft rated these companies on 100 categories including their reduction of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, use of new technologies, and their strategies for climate- related opportunities and disclosure of environmental policies. The company used publicly disclosed information such as company sustainability reports, followed up by at least two e-mails, according to Bloomberg.

The 53-year-old fitness enthusiast and his crew have an important job: nurturing inventions that emerge from several thousand scientists and doctors at the nation’s top heart hospital, and guiding them through a years-long process to commercial viability, according to the Cleveland Plain Dealer.

Coburn, the son of a thoracic surgeon, grew up eating politics and policy. He cut his commercialization teeth at Battelle, building the research institute’s Cleveland-based commercialization unit to 60 people. He has been executive director of what then was known as CCF (Cleveland Clinic Foundation) Innovations since 2000.

Known simply as Cleveland Clinic Innovations (CCI), the group of more than 35 people recently started their second decade with a first-of-its-kind venture ranking, a brand-new incubator building and a growing portfolio of spin-out companies.

The Premier University Startups Conference
Now In Its 5th year!

The International University Startups Conference will take place December 2-3, 2010 at the Washington Convention Center, Washington, DC. with an Opening Reception on December 1, 2010.

The Conference is organized annually by the National Council of Entrepreneurial Tech Transfer (NCET2.org). This year's University Co-Hosts are the University of Maryland and Boston University. The Government Co-Hosts are the National Science Foundation (Division of Industrial Innovation and Partnership) and National Institutes of Health (Office of Tech Transfer). The Embassy Host is the British Embassy.

The University Startups Conference is a unique conference series dedicated exclusively to creating and funding globally-competitive, venture-backable university startups. We bring together universities creating startups with VCs, angel investors, SBIR program managers and Fortune 500 technology scouts funding them. The conference also includes NSF, NIH, NIST, NAVY, DOE, DHS and other government agencies working on improving the Innovation Economy by increasing the quality and quantity of startups coming out of universities.

The National Council of Entrepreneurial Tech Transfer is partnering with the Science and Technology officials at the various Washington Embassies to include the international university startup perspective.

There’s more to China’s capabilities. Beyond the toys and cheap gadgets we seem to know them for, the dragon is gathering steam. It is going through a grueling training regime and adapting different postures that are redefining the fabled arts of the crouching tiger and the hidden dragon.

Flip your DVD, laptops, mobile phones or your headsets, in all likely you will find “Made in China” written in fine print. Sure enough the brands you put your faith on belong to more “innovative” countries but the fact that they come to you from China are telling you something about what’s coming our way.

(Reuters) - In the 1860s, Chinese labourers laid track over the treacherous terrain of California's high Sierras to help complete America's first transcontinental railroad.

Fast forward, and California wants Chinese technology and capital to construct the country's first high-speed rail system.

"We look to China to build our high-speed rail, to be part of the bidding process that we are going to go through," the state's governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, said on a visit to Shanghai this month.

Acceleration of the industrial upgrading that puts China on par with the likes of France and Japan to compete for the Californian contract will be a centrepiece of the country's five-year plan for 2011-2016 now being finalised.

So I’m on my fifth straight day of watching startup competitions, and if you cut me a mixture coffee and RedBull would probably pour out of my veins. As soon as Disrupt ended, Endeavor’s International Selection Panel started in Pebble Beach and I drove down to check it out.

Endeavor is a nonprofit that finds and helps some of the best entrepreneurs in the emerging world. I’ve written about them a few times and attended selection panels in the mountains of Patagonia and the beaches of Rio. This one is a little less geographically thrilling  for me, as it’s just in Pebble Beach– a place people usually come to golf or look at cars. But for the entrepreneurs pitching, being a few hours from Silicon Valley is exhilarating. More than a few big name venture capitalists from firms like Benchmark and Redpoint are down here to check out the contenders.

Voice is the new black. Seems like after all the hype of apps, the world still wants to connect in real-time and in many cases is willing to pay for such value. In the battle of voice, Skype, Google, Apple, telecom operators and independent outfits are gearing up for battle. The trillion-dollar land grab is officially on.

Apple launched FaceTime video chat. Google Talk is turning into the new pay phone. Oh, and Skype has filed for an IPO as well as announcing plans to enter the enterprise space.

But besides the indie stalwarts, who’s the dark horse in the room?

If you are an entrepreneur you probably know already that keeping track of latest trends and developments in general and in the areas related to your business is critical. Not surprisingly there are several high quality business and finance magazines available online covering more or less any topic related to economy, business and corporate/personal finance. In this article I have collected some of the best business and finance magazines available and as you may all have different preferences and needs the list is not prioritized at all.