Silicon Valley worships innovation. Great Britain upholds tradition.

These may be stereotypes, but they’re true enough that for British entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley, it can feel like an oxymoronic existence.

I got nine Oxford- and Cambridge-educated toffs together recently for a round of croquet and some civilized discussion about disruptive innovation. You can read our interview below.

The debate over pay for performance in healthcare gets progressively more interesting, and confusing. And, with Medicare’s recent launch of its value-based purchasing and readmission penalty programs, the debate is no longer theoretical.

Just in the past several months, we’ve seen studies showing that pay for performance works, and others showing that it doesn’t. We’ve heard from some theorists who describe P4P as sapping intrinsic motivation and doing violence to professionalism, and others who feel that its effects are as natural and predictable as water running downhill. Some commentators beg us to stop it, while others denounce P4P’s current incarnations as too wimpy to work and recommend they be turbo-charged.

Imagine that an electric company wants to build a loud, ugly power line on your property. They ask, "How much would we need to pay you to make this happen?" You'd probably demand a lot of money.

Now imagine that that power line already exists on your property. How much would you pay the electric company to get rid of it? Would you pay the same amount — or less?

Most people insist on a larger payment to build the power line than they'd be willing to pay for its removal. This difference is an illustration of status quo bias, a cognitive trait most people share. When presented with a potential change, we usually weigh the potential losses more heavily than the potential gains.

Easing into the New Year, one big hope we have for 2013 is that women continue to bridge the gender gap in terms of pay equality and access to leadership positions. So much of the news was good last year: women were better educated than ever, we continued to claim coveted CEO roles at companies such as IBM and Yahoo, and one study even reported that women were the primary breadwinners in a majority of households in the US. That sounds like progress.

Yet, in order to clear a path for greater advancement and parity in 2013, we need to address the difficult paradoxes that women leaders continue to face — these are the mixed messages and uncomfortable realities that complicate an arguably positive picture of progress.

Professional happiness is elusive--but you can have it (or even manufacture it), if you know where to look.

In her book The Happiness Myth, Jennifer Michael Hecht identifies three basic kinds of happiness: good day, good life, and peak, and I’ve found that thinking about work within her construct has helped me tease apart some of the “happiness formula” variables that influence well-being.

Good-day happiness at work might mean: I got to the office early, I was able to take care of backlogged paperwork that had been nagging me, I had a productive meeting, and I was able to leave in time to make it to my daughter’s school concert. Good-day happiness is about an awareness of the fortunate conditions of one’s life--where stopping to smell the roses can have measurable positive impact.

Design software company Autodesk has teamed up with bioprinting company Organovo to try to deliver us the future of personalized medicine: new organs that can be printed up just for you.

Take a trip to the Autodesk Gallery in San Francisco and you’ll see all manner of products that have been helped along with the company’s design software--the electric Pi Cycle bike, a 3D-HD autostereoscopic display, a model of the new Bay Bridge span, and more. One day, that gallery might include human organs.

Autodesk recently announced that it’s teaming up with bioprinting company Organovo to develop software that can design human tissue to be printed out on 3-D printers. In the near future, the printed organs are expected to be used in research. But down the line, they could end up inside real, live humans--an alternative to today’s inefficient organ donation process.

On December 27, 2012, the US Small Business Administration (SBA) published a final rule to amend regulations governing eligibility for the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) and Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) Programs and to implement provisions of the SBIR/STTR Reauthorization Act of 2011. The Reauthorization was included in the FY12 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which reauthorized the SBIR Program for six years and now allows small firms that are majority-owned by venture capital operating companies (VCOCs), hedge funds, or private equity firms to compete for SBIR grants.

This advisory briefly summarizes the most important changes to the SBIR eligibility rules and discusses how investments in or acquisitions of SBIR-funded companies may be affected.

Final Rules – What Will Change?

The final rule implementing the SBIR/STTR Reauthorization is effective January 28, 2013. When the final rule is effective and integrated into the federal agency grant cycle process, multiple VCOCs, hedge funds, and private equity firms will be able to take majority positions in SBIR applicants, provided that no single firm owns a majority interest in the SBIR applicant. As described below, so long as each investment firm owns and controls only a minority share of voting stock under the minority ownership rule, the investor will be able to include the SBIR applicant in its portfolio without aggregating the employees of its other portfolio companies with the SBIR applicant’s employees for purposes of the SBIR affiliation determination.

A landmark speech by British Prime Minister David Cameron later this month will trigger campaigns to persuade young people to chose between staying in or opting out of the EU, as the issue moves to the fore of the country's domestic political agenda in 2013. Representatives for and against UK membership in the EU told EurActiv they are on stand-by to set campaigns in motion to woo the country’s biggest swing demographic: those aged between 18 and 44, in a year which will see Europe move to the forefront in domestic politics.

Popular advocates will include pop stars and high-profile business leaders, such as Sir Richard Branson.

According to Columbia Professor Bill Duggan, the vast majority of the methods used to try and come up with innovative ideas are based on a flawed understanding of how how the brain works. In an interview with Columbia Business School about his new book, Creative Strategy, Duggan reveals a surprising discovery he's made while digging into how the most successful innovators come up with ideas:

If you are looking for inspiration and ideas, I strongly suggest that you check out TED.  Technology, Education and Design, for which TED is the acronym, is a series of conferences and talks that cover a wide range of subjects.  Most importantly though, at this time, TED’s website, www.TED.com offers over 1,000 such talks, usually less than 20 minutes each, for free.  It’s a truly amazing resource!  Their tagline is “Ideas worth spreading”; I couldn’t agree more.

Here are a few of my favorite talks on TED.com, the variety of which gives you a good idea of the range of topics covered on TED.  The site contains ideas and inspiration for you, regardless of your interests.

The first cavewoman (or caveman) to open her mouth and utter an intelligible word changed the game for the local tribe. After some time, humans gained the power of language, and eventually, figured out how to write things down. Suddenly information could be transmitted and retained. The game had grown larger and more complex. Somebody needed to make some rules.

Centuries later, a German blacksmith named Johannes Gutenberg invented mechanical movable type and ushered in a printing revolution throughout Europe, and then the world. Now information could be spread throughout the masses. Reading and transmission of data was no longer relegated to the educated elite.

Many budding entrepreneurs struggle mightily with that first step – out of their comfort zone and into the unknown. They keep asking people like me whether the time is right, and the truth is that there’s never an ideal time to start your own business. It’s like starting a personal relationship, if you wait for exactly the right time, you’ll never do it.

I’ve talked to many experts, and everyone has his own view of the right personal attributes, and the right business conditions to jump in. In my own view, the recovering economy is ripe for new startups, but successful startups are more about the right person, than the right idea or the right climate. So the real challenge is looking inward to check your alignment with these clues:

Tis the season to make predictions.  If my crystal ball is working, 2013 is going to be a good year for small businesses.

The economy (fiscal “cliff” threat notwithstanding) seems to be on track for a stronger recovery in 2013, buoyed by consumer confidence and more Americans going back to work.

Below are some of the trends that I feel will be driving small business in 2013:

Northern European regions are in the lead when it comes to innovation in Europe. But there is a considerable diversity in regional innovation performance not only across European countries, but also within the member states, according to the European Commission's Regional Innovation Scoreboard 2012, published today (7 November). Unsurprisingly, the most innovative regions come from the most innovative countries in Europe.

Within the EU, Sweden confirms its position at the top of the overall ranking in innovation, a key driver of economic growth and jobs. The Scandinavian country is closely followed by Denmark, Germany and Finland, the Regional Innovation Scoreboard shows.

Facebook's sprawling Menlo Park campus is surrounded by water on three sides. It's beautiful now, but in a few decades its location could be problematic. According to ClimateWire, Facebook and 256 other Silicon Valley tech companies sit in a dangerous flood zone. As climate change becomes more of a reality and sea levels rise, they could all be in serious trouble.

You could call it the cleantech cliff: Global clean-technology venture investment plunged to $6.46 billion in 2012, down 33 percent from the $9.61 billion invested a year ago, according to San Francisco-based research and consulting firm Cleantech Group.

"2012 was a difficult year for the sector," Sheeraz Haji, CEO of the Cleantech Group, said during a conference call Thursday. "Anyway you cut it, there's been a significant drop-off."

Haji cited several reasons for investor skittishness. The low price of natural gas has made it harder for renewable energy to compete on cost. Venture capitalists are shying away from capital-intensive deals after seeing companies like Santa Clara-based Misasolé sold at fire sale prices. And global economic uncertainty took a toll: Several privately backed cleantech companies, including Oakland's BrightSource Energy, were forced to shelve their IPO plans and raise additional funds from existing investors.

Mobile was a top priority for companies in the last year, and for good reason. Mobile devices, including tablets, are becoming more popular than desktops for online access.

As a result, mobile projects are slated to outnumber PC development projects by 4:1 in the next three years. The number of mobile devices on the planet will outnumber people by 2016.

The challenge for development teams is how to adopt a mobile-first mindset. This approach requires you to put user experience at the center, offering a strong contextual and personalized experience. It also means offering that experience across multiple platforms and devices, introducing complexity and the need for specialized skills into the development process.

As the new year begins, we asked several venture capital investors to reflect on the past year and give us their outlook for 2013. Continuing our series is Alfred Lin, a partner at Sequoia Capital.

Lin speaks about how there’s always room for businesses with strong fundamentals, although low starting costs for startups mean that competition emerges quickly, and how a VC’s job is to help founders reach “escape velocity.”

The greater Asheville, NC region is focused on supporting its next generation of businesses by providing support programs tailor-made for the area’s assets and creating the culture and connections for entrepreneurs to thrive. The region provides important lessons for local governments pursuing entrepreneurship efforts, specifically the importance of having the right staff and partners, playing the role of connector and doing your homework before creating new programs.

Mike Rangel, who started Asheville Brewing in 1999, says that Asheville is a “BOYJ – Bring Your Own Job” community. It attracts individuals who are looking to start their own business. If you walk around downtown Asheville, which is practically wallpapered in “Buy Local” stickers, you certainly feel some of the same vibes as other entrepreneurship capitals; like a smaller Austin with an Appalachian twist.

For decades the cynical observer could be forgiven for viewing Microsoft as a giant copying machine. The inspiration for just about every major Microsoft initiative can be traced back to a successful predecessor: Windows (Macintosh), Internet Explorer (Netscape), Bing (Google), Zune (iPod).

But in late 2012 Microsoft broke from the pack. It made a billion-dollar gamble that personal computing is taking a new direction. The gamble was Windows 8, and the direction is touch.