MONTREAL, Jan 14 Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper announced a plan on Monday to provide C$400 million ($408 million) in venture capital to stem the loss of young entrepreneurs to the United States and to rekindle investor interest in providing start-up funds for new ventures.

The money comes in response to consultations that showed venture capital returns have been poor across the world and venture-capital fundraising in Canada has declined since 2001 following the burst of the dot-com bubble.

In The $100 Startup, Chris Guillebeau shows you how to lead of life of adventure, meaning and purpose – and earn a good living.

Still in his early thirties, Chris is on the verge of completing a tour of every country on earth – he’s already visited more than 175 nations – and yet he’s never held a “real job” or earned a regular paycheck.  Rather, he has a special genius for turning ideas into income, and he uses what he earns both to support his life of adventure and to give back.

There are many others like Chris – those who’ve found ways to opt out of traditional employment and create the time and income to pursue what they find meaningful.  Sometimes, achieving that perfect blend of passion and income doesn’t depend on shelving what you currently do.  You can start small with your venture, committing little time or money, and wait to take the real plunge when you’re sure it’s successful.

I have spent a lot of time recently pondering the question, “What makes an organization a great one?” I think this question is essential as we continue on our path of economic recovery and aim to maintain America’s status as the world’s leader in innovation.

One of the most heralded business books of the past decade addressing this question is Jim Collins’s Good to Great. In it, he examines what separates simply good or mediocre companies from the truly great ones. Collins has since also produced a monograph in which he addresses the similarities and differences between great businesses and other great organizations – be they for-profit or non-profit organizations.

I’m sure you have all been frustrated at least once by not being able to get the Internet domain name you want for your company. Who owns all of these names, and should you ever buy one for a premium? The simple answer is that if you want to be found on the Web, the perfect domain name can be well worth a few thousand dollars, but don’t pay a fortune for one.

The market for domain investors has been in the doldrums for the last few years, since the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) has rolled out top-level domains for every country, like .us and .me, as well as allowing companies to set up their own top-level domains. For instance, Cisco has applied to use URLs ending in .cisco.

Be it triumph or crushing defeat, exhilaration or agony, body language more accurately conveys intense emotions, according to recent research that challenges the predominance of facial expressions as an indicator of how a person feels.

Princeton University researchers report in the journal Science that facial expressions can be ambiguous and subjective when viewed independently. The researchers asked study participants to determine from photographs if people were experiencing feelings such as loss, victory or pain from facial expressions or body language alone, or from both. In some cases, a facial expression associated with one emotion was paired with a body experiencing the opposite emotion.

Innovation has become the holy grail. Finding innovation is almost a sacred quest for the solution that will create growth, and open new eras of prosperity and well-being. Unfortunately, like many things called holy, the concept of innovation is invoked ritually and ceremonially more than it is embraced in practice.

For all the talk about innovation, I see many leaders in numerous organizations in every sector who actively stifle it. They say they want more innovation. But at the same time, they seem to operate by a set of hidden principles designed to prevent innovations from surfacing or succeeding. I've compiled them into a set of anti-rules. Acting in these nine ways guarantees that there will be little or no innovation of any significance, because no one had the time, money, or motivation to innovate:

Private Equity, funds, angel networks and broker dealers are embracing the technology underpinning crowdfunding with its standards of deal presentation and distribution channels to potential investors. According to Jouko Ahvenainen, Chairman and co-founder of Grow VC, “At Grow VC Group we work with many broker dealers to offer our platform as a service for their use. Through GrowVC they can easily transfer many offline activities and investors to an online marketplace as a strategy to get more investors and make their operations more effective.” Although crowdfunding for equity is not yet legal, the technology facilitating campaigns is widespread and already affecting millions. The layout protocols and distribution technology of these sites are what investment industry leaders want to use with the clients, investors and deals they already have. “New market infrastructure will continue to be developed that will allow for efficient and effective distribution of offerings, while embedding investor education and awareness into the process, resulting in investor protection,” says Vince Molinari of GATE Technologies. “This is the difference between capital raising and capital formation.”

In April 2012, President Obama signed the JOBS (Jumpstart Our Business Startups) Act, aiming to revitalize opportunities for entrepreneurs, startups, and small businesses; e.g. America’s main job creators. Briefly, main benefits of the JOBS Act as it is now are as follows.

The JOBS Act will enable entrepreneurs, start-ups, and small businesses to raise funds and gather investors through equity crowdfunding. It will reopen American Capital Markets to Emerging Growth Companies (Companies with total annual gross revenues of less than $1 billion). It also lifts the ban on general solicitation/advertising; allowing entrepreneurs, start-ups, and small businesses to advertise for new investors, and assures that these businesses will have the necessary time and flexibility needed to grow.

1. "Start by doing what's necessary; then do what's possible; and suddenly you are doing the impossible." - St. Francis of Assisi

2. "Sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast." - Lewis Carroll

3. "The Wright brother flew right through the smoke screen of impossibility." - Charles Kettering

4. "In order to attain the impossible, one must attempt the absurd." - Miguel de Cervantes

Writing isn’t easy. It’s a skill that requires equal parts creativity and education. It’s a craft and an art. And it’s very easy to make mistakes. Yes, you can start a sentence with and. Luckily, as a blogger you have more leeway than a novelist, or even a magazine writer. But you still have to concentrate on your writing, proofread and edit your work, and maintain a level of professionalism. Yes, you can start a sentence with but. Here are a few mistakes many writers, even professionals, make all the time.

Mixing Up the Theres

Most people know the difference between there, their, and they’re, but it’s very simple to make this mistake when you’re writing quickly. It’s also just as easy to miss it during a proofread. They’re is a contraction of they are. There refers to location. And there is possessive form a they. They’re starting a successful blog. Their goals are to take over the Internet. Their laptops are over there.

Few entrepreneurs know how to grow a business into a multimillion powerhouse better than Barbara Corcoran. So it's only fitting that the founder of the successful real-estate firm The Corcoran Group offered up the keynote address at Entrepreneur Media’s 5th annual Growth Conference in Dallas last week.

The event drew in close to 700 attendees -- mostly eager to hear of Corcoran's business blunders and travails, as well as her dazzling-success story. If you don't already know, Corcoran -- famously, at this point if you watch Shark Tank -- built up her towering New York City real-estate firm from just $1,000. After 30 years in business, she sold the company for $66 million.

A study by a Stanford academic has concluded that a firm's IPO can put the lid on creativity and innovation. Shai Bernstein of the university's Graduate School of Business studied thousands of startups between 1985 and 2003 to write a paper (PDF file) on the subject, and these are some of his findings: Going public causes an exodus of ideas as well as key creative staff. Acquired patents after an IPO are almost always of a higher quality than those produced in-house.

Late last year, the Northwestern social scientist Robert Gordon penned a provocative op-ed in the Wall Street Journal that touched on the very issues we cover here at Change Reaction, especially now, during National Geographic’s 125th anniversary year of exploration. His thesis was simple: In a world that has already invented ways to regulate indoor temperature, grow food on large scale and transport ourselves across large distances, what’s left to innovate? We’ve already gotten all the low-hanging fruit, so the innovations of the next few decades will be incremental, rather than game changing.

This week and next, the hub of American innovation appears to be a city that all too often hogs headlines as a poster child for urban blight: Detroit. For the duration of the Detroit Auto Show, at least, which kicked off yesterday and stretches till the 27th, that city is presenting innovations to rival many products coming out of the Bay Area. Here are a few of the most eye-catching stories so far:

Cadillac unveiled an ELR plug-in hybrid, modeled after the Chevy Volt, reports the LA Times. Cadillac’s VP of global said that the brand has struggled a little bit in California, but that “this car will refresh consideration among Californians.” How will the ELR fare on the road? Though it has the same basic drivetrain as a Volt, the electric motor is stronger, 207-horsepower versus the Volt’s 207. The ELR is front-wheel drive and has a single-speed transmission. It will take 4.5 hours to charge via a 240V outlet, 12 hours via a 120V outlet. Pricing is likely to be around 60 to 70 grand.

Unlike last year's slate of sweeping new proposals and initiatives to reorganize economic development activities brought on by more than two dozen new governors in office, 2012 witnessed changes to state and regional tech-based initiatives on a smaller scale with states making more strategic investments.

The report provides a comprehensive outline of trends categorized by eight themes:
• New Commitments to TBED
• Commercializing Research
• Investing in a Skilled Workforce & STEM Initiatives
• Re-Organization/Branding
• Strategic & Competitiveness Plans
• Tax Incentives
• Local & Private Activity on the Rise
• Federal Efforts Strengthened

Download the report: http://www.ssti.org/Publications/trends2012.pdf.

Coming up with a great name for your business should never be taken lightly. You want something that grabs people’s attention, is easy to remember, has long-lasting appeal, and reinforces your burgeoning brand. This is trickier even than it sounds. What’s more, when you’re trying to think of a name, you’re just starting out and have plenty on your plate already. But think through this decision carefully. You want to get it right the first time. It can be confusing to customers and colleagues if you attempt a name change down the road.

Do: Make it Catchy

Obviously, you’ll want a brand name that people will recognize in the crowd. Remember, the shorter the better. Anything more than a few syllables will usually be difficult to remember. Gimmicks like alliterations or rhymes can be helpful as long as they appropriately express the idea you’re trying to convey. The name should both look good on paper and sound good to the ear.

For nearly a decade Wenyuan Shi, a researcher at UCLA School of Dentistry, has been developing a revolutionary new mouthwash aimed at effectively eliminating tooth decay. The technology is a partnership with Colgate-Palmolive and from C3-Jian Inc.

“The best analogy I’ve been using is a ‘weeds vs. grass’ with this technology that we call STAMPS (specifically targeted anti-microbial peptides). What it does is it acts like a smart bomb, it only kills the weeds not the grass.” — Wenyuan Shi, UCLA School of Dentistry

If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it one bajillion times. If you’re going to start a business accelerator, don’t clone Y Combinator or TechStars. Find a niche. With the glut of new accelerators today, the most successful are building vertical-specific approaches that bring together seed capital with meaningful industry partnerships to create real business (and learning) opportunities for their startups. Lately, digital health has been leading the way in this regard, as Rock Health, Healthbox, New York Digital Health Accelerator, DreamIt Health and Startup Health are all beginning to blossom.

One of the veterans (a relative term) of this space is the NYC-based Blueprint Health, an accelerator that got its start in 2011 and launched its first batch in January of last year. Today, the accelerator is announcing its third batch of startups as part of its Winter Program, which kicks off on Monday.

With thousands of gastropreneurs launching local food businesses around the U.S. - cupcake trucks and boutique farms, gourmet this and sous vide that - “food accelerators” are setting up to put them through tech-style incubator programs and turn their early-stage ideas into fully baked businesses.

It's one part Y Combinator, one part “Hell’s Kitchen.”

Learning From Tech Startup Best Practices

“Food companies can really learn from the tech world,” says Krysia Zajonc, CEO of Local Food Lab in Palo Alto, where the inaugural fall class of 12 startups included Brunched in the Face (an all-day brunch truck) and LifeBites, which makes energy snacks made from a traditional South African recipe. “In the food world there’s this idea that if you have your grandma’s recipe, you can put it out there and just because you love it the whole world will love it. But imagine saying, ‘I created an app that my grandma loves, so everyone else will love it too.’”

Fun. Friendly. Inspiring. Collaborative. Productive. If you wouldn't define your workplace with any or all of those terms, you may have to ditch your own desk and take a seat at a coworking space near you. Even if you aren’t an entrepreneur or freelancer, the benefits of coworking, according to Deskmag’s annual Global Coworking Survey, are pretty hard to ignore: 71 percent of participants reported a boost in creativity since joining a coworking space, while 62 percent said their standard of work had improved.

The study also found that half of all coworkers access their work space around the clock--with only 30 percent preferring to work during normal business hours. “The future of work should not be dictated by space or place, but by the individual and the tasks that he or she has to deliver,” Regus CEO Mark Dixon tells Fast Company. “Many employees are now measured by output and productivity, and not just 40 hours spent sitting at a desk. Workers and the companies for which they work are increasingly realizing that they need to provide and utilize a wide range of workplaces to accommodate an increasingly diverse workforce with very different expectations of what work is, and where and when it should happen,” he explains.