As a journalist, maintaining a healthy level of skepticism is a requirement. Sources routinely put their own actions in the best possible light, while undercutting the activities of rivals. I just can’t take everything people say to me at face value.

But every now and then, I get to engage in a project that is so inspiring, my wall of cynicism melts. That’s the way I feel about our annual coverage of the Most Creative People in Business. Each year, our editorial team scours the globe to identify 100 all-new honorees whom we have not significantly covered in print before.

New York, San Francisco, San Jose, Boston and Los Angeles are just some of the obvious cities that come instantly to mind when you think leading business cities in the U.S.

However, freelancers, startup founders, and small business owners have some great locations that you may not have realized were great for business and now the secret is out on eight of them:

As the first source of external financing for most entrepreneurs, angel investors play an important role in the success of burgeoning startups. But investing in young businesses is always a risk. So what convinces an investor a venture is worth betting on—the product? The market data? The confidence and charm of the entrepreneur?

According to research by Laura Huang, assistant professor of management and entrepreneurship, the answer might be found in an unexpected place: the gut. In her paper “Managing the Unknowable: The Effectiveness of Early-Stage Investor Gut Feel in Entrepreneurial Investment Decisions,” coauthored by Jone L. Pearce, a University of California, Irvine, management professor, Huang examined the ways in which angel investors make decisions. 

Image: http://entrepreneurship.wharton.upenn.edu

When your team is tasked with generating ideas to solve a problem, suggesting a brainstorming session is a natural reaction. But does that approach actually work?

Although the term “brainstorming” is now used as a generic term for having groups develop ideas, it began as the name of a specific technique proposed by advertising executive Alex Osborn in the 1950s. He codified the basic rules that many of us follow when getting people together to generate ideas: Toss out as many ideas as possible. Don’t worry if they’re too crazy. Build on the ideas people generate. Don’t criticize initially.

A new report released on Thursday by the nonprofit Brookings Institution tries to tackle a major, eternally looming question for Philadelphia: With all of the city’s recent advancements in innovation, why isn’t Philadelphia more competitive on the national and global stage?

The answer: Philly leaders and institutions lack “a sense of collective urgency” to help the city intentionally connect the dots on how to best leverage its innovation capacity.

The report examined what it calls Philadelphia’s “innovation district” the area from 17th Street in Center City to 44th Street along Market in University City and South along the Schuylkill River to Grays Ferry and determined that this region, home to anchor firms and institutions like CHOP, FMC, the Science Center, Drexel, Penn, Comcast, IBX, and PECO, can be further developed and more interconnected to push Philly past its innovation tipping point.

(KANSAS CITY, Mo.) May 18, 2017 – Business startup activity trudged slightly upward in 2016, continuing a three-year ascension and reaching pre-Recession levels, according to the 2017 Kauffman Index of Startup Activity, released today by the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation.

While the findings are heartening, the report notes, startup activity remains in a long-term decline when compared to activity levels in the 1980s.

"A three-year upward trend in new business formation is a promising sign for the economy," said Victor Hwang, vice president of Entrepreneurship at the Kauffman Foundation. "Recent research demonstrates that more startups lead to higher productivity, wage growth and quality of life.

Wall Street Journal reporter Alexandra Wolfe peels back the mystique of Silicon Valley, where hordes of young entrepreneurs are hoping to strike it rich while changing the world, in her new book Valley of the Gods: A Silicon Valley Story. She follows the exploits of three promising young entrepreneurs who received $100,000 each to drop out of school and start a business through a program by billionaire venture capitalist Peter Thiel, co-founder of PayPal and an early investor in Facebook.

Wolfe paints a startling and sometimes hilarious picture of the goings on among techies in Silicon Valley. “It was so much more colorful than I imagined,” she said. Wolfe, the daughter of Tom Wolfe, New Journalism pioneer and author of the seminal The Bonfire of the Vanities, talked about her book on the Knowledge@Wharton show, which airs on SiriusXM channel 111.

Image: http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu

Entrepreneurs are an optimistic bunch. The upward trend to start new businesses continued for the third consecutive year, according to the annual Kauffman Index that measures new business creation in the United States and covers about 5 million companies in all industries.

Immigrants are twice as likely to start companies as U.S. citizens, and first-generation immigrants now make up nearly 30% of all new U.S. entrepreneurs. This is also the highest the share of immigrant entrepreneurs in the last 20 years.

Image: https://news.fastcompany.com

If you think you’ll have to move to the Bay Area to get a foothold in the startup world, think again.

This week, the Kauffman Foundation released its annual Startup Activity Index that explores the state of entrepreneurship across the United States. According to the data assembled in the report, the home of Google, Facebook and Twitter doesn’t even crack the top 10. Neither does Amazon and Microsoft’s hometown of Seattle.

Many international students who enroll at colleges in the United States long to get jobs in the U.S. after they graduate. And while there is no right to do so on the basis of student visas, a program that allows such employment -- and whose future is unclear during the Trump administration -- is growing.

Image: https://www.insidehighered.com

Maryland’s governor is putting new economic development energy into creating life sciences and cybersecurity startups.

To kick off the Governor’s Business Summit in Baltimore this morning, Gov. Larry Hogan provided some details on Excel Maryland. It’s a new initiative that’s seeking to bring together government, university and the tech community to develop a new strategy to grow startups.

Image: Gov. Larry Hogan announces the Maryland Tech Council. (Photo by Stephen Babcock) - https://technical.ly/baltimore

“If you don’t measure it, you can’t manage it,” said George, the chief strategy officer, to a nodding CEO Tom.

Cybersecurity performance can be managed, but only if measured.

The ability to measure performance has always been at the heart of effective management, underlying decisions about how to allocate resources, which practices to employ and whom to reward. Much more so than in the past, this is an age of granular and systematic performance management. Senior executives are exploiting massive amounts of data to understand which products generate profits, which salespeople sell effectively, and which operational teams execute with the highest degree of efficiency.

When you hear the words startup founder, it’s likely that the image that comes to mind is that of a young, white man who lives in California or New York, favors casual wear and didn't finish college. New data from the Kauffman Foundation may have you thinking differently.

Every year, Kauffman releases a wide ranging body of research about the state of startup activity in the United States. The study looks at trends across cities and states and explores who -- by age, gender, race and even veteran status -- chooses to be an entrepreneur.

Yes, there's an app for that. And even that.

While HBO's Silicon Valley pokes fun at start-up culture, tech entrepreneurs, and off-the-wall ideas, the show's riffs and jokes aren't only contained to fictional cable TV storylines. The real world is filled with actual examples of unnecessary companies, apps, and products trying so hard to "disrupt" something, anything.

It's fairly normal for successful venture capital pros to spend their careers building up a track record at a larger firm, and then "spin off" with their own firms. Lately, as limited partner interest in venture continues to grow, it feels like just about every partner who isn't listed on their firm's Form ADV is launching their own fund.

Another fairly normal thing: Lots of people who hold the "partner" title at venture capital firms don't actually have decision-making power. For years startup gurus like Paul Graham have told young founders not to waste time talking to venture associates. So now some firms give their associates the "external" title of partner.

Image: http://fortune.com

Spencer Glendon is a very impressive guy. He was a Fulbright Scholar, earned a PhD in economics from Harvard, helped charities on the South Side of Chicago, and is currently a partner at one of the biggest money management funds in Massachusetts.

While doing these things, he was almost always extremely ill. In high school, Glendon suffered from chronic ulcerative colitis. This led to serious liver problems, and eventually to a weakened immune system.

THE ACCELERATION is making some scientists fear that Antarctica’s ice sheet may have entered the early stages of an unstoppable disintegration.

Because the collapse of vulnerable parts of the ice sheet could raise the sea level dramatically, the continued existence of the world’s great coastal cities — Miami, New York, Shanghai and many more — is tied to Antarctica’s fate.

Four New York Times journalists joined a Columbia University team in Antarctica late last year to fly across the world’s largest chunk of floating ice in an American military cargo plane loaded with the latest scientific gear.

“We were able to email 10 of our customer advisory board members, give them mockups of the new feature and invite them for an hour of usability testing — we threw in Amazon gift cards as a reward — and the results were amazing,” says Peter Kazanjy, best known for co-founding recruiting startup TalentBin and his proven early-stage sales wisdom. “With a Customer Advisory Board (CAB), you essentially have a captive audience of folks who are fired up for your success, and who you can leverage on an ongoing basis to build the best product possible.”

You have this breakthrough invention. You know it will change the world.

But passion alone isn’t enough. You need moolah to fuel your innovations. And you think you’ve done everything you can to get a particular VC’s attention. You have called and emailed. And emailed and emailed.

In return, there has been zip, zilch nada.

Image: http://medcitynews.com 

A new study by the Impact Centre at the University of Toronto suggests that Canada doesn’t have a problem securing patents for its inventions; it has a problem of commercializing them.

The study, Canada’s Patent Puzzle, looked at economic, patenting, and company data from several sources, including Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s (OECD) Gross Domestic Product and Triadic Patent Families data, Forbes’ Global 2000 List, and Research Infosource’s list of the top 100 R&D spenders in Canada.