To become a more effective manager, it helps to rethink what you thought you knew--for example, that micromanagement is a sin, and that employees are the most important part of your organization.

Even the best leaders can benefit from adopting a new perspective or expanding an old one. Let’s explore and challenge a few concepts that you may have accepted as conventional wisdom but that aren’t necessarily working in your favor.

Over the years, I’ve heard many decision makers say that people are the most important part of their organization. While I agree that good organizations are made up of great people doing great work and that employees play an extremely important role in the success of any organization, the idea that people are the most important part of an organization is a wrong assumption that can actually hinder the people it intends to credit. We’ve all seen firsthand how even the most talented people turn in substandard performance if they don’t have the systems and structures they need to excel in their work. Therefore, if you make this assumption and are willing to rethink it, you can more readily capture opportunities to empower your people to achieve more successes within your organization.

When export-oriented Brazilian information technology companies consider expansion into North America, the typical choices are Miami, New York or Silicon Valley. A delegation from Ontario Technology Corridor cities is working to change that perception with an "advise the advisors" tour that takes Ontario's technology opportunity message this week to Brazilian IT associations and Brazilian-based companies in Florianopolis, Campinas, and Sao Paolo looking to expand outside the country's $212 billion information technology market that exports only $2.65 billion of products and services, according to Brasscom, the Brazilian Association of Information Technology and Communication Companies.

Ontario is Canada's largest province, and is home to the highest concentration of leading IT companies in Canada. Employing nearly 260,000 people among 6,400 companies within Information and Communication Technology (ICT) sectors, the Ontario Technology Corridor encompasses the Greater Toronto Area, Ottawa Region, Waterloo Region, City of London and the Niagara Region. Through the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), Ontario-based technology companies have long-term access to North America's $17.6 trillion (GDP) economy and 450 million consumers.

"Brazil has fantastic technologies and products that can change the world," said Gerson Schmitt, President of Brazilian software association ABES, and CEO of ClicBusiness Software S/A - Grupo Paradigma. "The Ontario Technology Corridor value proposition has already attracted companies like Cisco, Google, Huawei, IBM, Microsoft and Ubisoft to expand there, and we know we can represent, partner and collaborate with hundreds of export-oriented Ontario startups and Small to Medium Sized Enterprises (SMEs). The global-first export orientation of Ontario's homegrown companies like RIM and OpenText, and a deep base of senior executives with Silicon Valley and other global experience is also something our companies can take advantage of."

So there have been times that I’ve been a really sucky entrepreneur.  Our first company, OpenVote, was a web 2.0 company that built Facebook apps. For years, I’ve said that it failed with all the other web 2.0 apps of the time, but really that’s just a convenient excuse. It failed because I sucked as an entrepreneur. Now, when I’m talking to entrepreneurs that are making a lot of the same mistakes I was making then, I’m shocked how naïve they are to their degree of suckiness. Just as I was.

In FY11, the top 30 U.S. research universities accounted for over 40 percent (approximately $26.1 billion) of total academic R&D spending in 2011, according to survey data collected by the National Science Foundation. The other 882 universities surveyed accounted for approximately $39 billion of the total academic R&D spending for the 2011 fiscal year (approximately $65.1B billion). The Higher Education Research and Development Survey population also increased from 742 universities in 2010 to 912 in 2011. These universities added approximately $533 million in total R&D expenditures.

The federal government remained the primary funder of academic R&D spending and increased from FY 2010 total. Funding from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA) was responsible for much of the increase, with ARRA-funded expenditures totaling $4.2 billion in FY11. Among the nonfederal sources of funding, only nonprofit organizations and academic institutions themselves contributed more in FY11 than in FY10. R&D expenditures by state and local government, business and other sources virtually were unchanged.

In my last post, I described two types of entrepreneurs.

Steve Jobs, the conceptual 20-something, imagined products as if they existed in front of him and employed those with the technical talent to bring them to life. Like a dictator, he carefully oversaw every detail of the process until the final product resembled his initial idea.

Muhammad Yunus, who founded the Grameen Bank when he was 43, represents a different approach. Unlike Jobs, he leads democratically. Branch managers are encouraged to test their ideas before sharing successful practices with their colleagues, a hallmark of the experimental late bloomer.

When Apple makes headlines for its manufacturing practices, it’s rarely a headline that makes Cupertino look good. The company has come under fire in the past year for its reliance on the manufacturing giant Foxconn, which had a string of suicides at one of its plants, and where there have occasionally been reports of unsafe working conditions. The New York Times, for instance, wrote an investigative report into the “human costs” of the iPad back in January; iPhone manufacture even became the unlikely subject of a controversial, and ultimately discredited, work of quasi-reported theater (see “Mike Daisey, Storyteller,” and “An (Actual!) Look Inside Foxconn”). But for those who thought Apple would continue to exclusively rely on manufacturing abroad, Apple CEO made a surprising announcement on “Rock Center with Brian Williams” today. Starting in 2013, said Cook, a line of Macs would be manufactured in the US. Cook did not elaborate or specify just which line.

A federal agency has proposed listing 66 species of coral under the Endangered Species Act, which would bolster protections of the animals.

The proposed listing comes after a 2009 petition by the Center for Biological Diversity, an environmental group, asserting that the federal government needed to do more to protect coral species.

Under the proposal, the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) would list seven coral species as endangered and 52 as threatened in the Pacific, with five endangered and two threatened in the Caribbean.

Kleiner Perkins partner Mary Meeker released an updated version of her widely-read “Internet Trends” report Monday, tweaking former trends and adding new ones in her analysis of the future for internet and mobile technology. Meeker’s update comes after her report initially released in May.

The new sections focus on the impact of the ever-connected 20-something, the growth of big data, and “areas to re-imagine,” including e-commerce, education, and healthcare. Meeker’s full slides can be found online and are embedded below, but here were some of the big trends in her new sections:

Here are 4 “truths” I often hear from freelancers, and my responses.

1.  I’m just freelancing.  I don’t have any legal concerns to worry about.

The legal reality is that any time a freelancer accepts an assignment to perform work, he or she assumes legal liability for the work even if there isn’t a written agreement in place.  There are three main parts to this: project performance, third-party claims, and confidentiality.

First, a client has a reasonable expectation that the freelancer will complete the project on time, to specification and to an acceptable level of quality and functionality. Second, a client expects the freelancer’s work won’t expose him or her to legal liability for violation of third-party rights, such as copyright, trademark or trade secrets. Finally, the client will expect the freelancer to keep the client’s proprietary information confidential.

WASHINGTON, DC -- (Marketwire) -- 12/03/12 -- A new $50 million investment fund will provide seed capital to launch new businesses that use technologies from government and university research labs in the Maryland, Virginia, Delaware and the District of Columbia. The Chesapeake Regional Innovation Fund will provide seed capital for startups and emerging technology companies focused on innovations in energy, life sciences and security. The first investments are anticipated for later in 2013.

The times, they are a-changing--constantly. Luckily, the rulebook for leading in the midst of unpredictable change remains constant. Follow these 10 steps for great leadership no matter what happens.

In any moment of decision, the best thing you can do is the right thing and the next best thing is the wrong thing--the worst thing you can do is nothing.--Theodore Roosevelt

Today’s global economy is characterized by rapid and unpredictable change. The challenge of such turbulent times can only be met by employing an appropriate blend of the leadership and management mindsets.

There’s been a big change in the way companies tell their origin stories. The old emphasis was on heroic narratives, in which the idea for the company burst upon the founders fully formed, the market responded immediately, and the product began its inevitable ascent to market domination. But that story was never very helpful to students of business strategy, since it papered over the change, learning, and “good mistakes” that occur inside all successful companies. On top of that, the heroic arc just isn’t an accurate representation of the way things usually happen. Look at PayPal, which started out as a secure mobile payment system for Palm Pilots; Flickr, which started out as a massively multiplayer online game; Twitter, which grew out of a failed podcasting platform; or Groupon, which started out as a community organizing tool (and maybe should have stayed one).

Every strategy consultant has one PowerPoint slide he regards as his opus. After eight years in the field, I had several contenders: a two-by-two matrix that made people rethink the very nature of x and y axes; a waterfall chart that redefined the relationship between revenue and expenses; a customer- profitability Mekko chart that would sit as easily at MoMA as it did in GoToMeeting. But my greatest gift to the value-adding arts was for a telco that feared it had no future in the Internet era. Using clip art of stacked cylinders to represent databases (did I mention I'm a brilliant artist?), I depicted the missed opportunities in the valuable customer info our client didn't use.

Internet companies could ask users to share their location, but telcos already knew where all their devices were. Facebook could talk up the "social graph," but what is the Call Detail Record but an indicator of true friendship? And payments? Phone companies are basically billing operations with fiber optics. They were leaving money, market share, and innovation on the table.

It’s Tuesday morning at 8 a.m. Two San Francisco entrepreneurs are pitching their ventures to potential investors today. They’d both agree that this is one of the most important days of their lives. This is the story of Jane and Joe...

Jane was up until 4 a.m. putting the final touches on her deck. In fact, she spent the entire weekend fixed in her apartment, preparing the presentation. This morning, she woke up late and rushed putting together her most “investor-worthy” attire. She slammed a shot of espresso, grabbed her computer, and ran out the door feeling hungry and tired. She arrived right on time but felt anxious and flustered about the events of the morning.

The world's population is growing older, taking us into uncharted demographic waters. By 2050, over one-fifth of the US population will be 65 or older, up from the current figure of one-seventh. The number of centenarians worldwide will double by 2023 and double again by 2035. Projections suggest life expectancy will surpass 100 in some industrialized countries by the second half of this century — roughly triple the lifespan that prevailed worldwide throughout most of human history.

Anti-aging technologies — from memory-enhancing drugs to high-tech joint replacements — have combined with healthy lifestyles not merely to increase longevity but to make old age healthier for many people. Although the jury is still out, there is evidence that disability at the end of life is being compressed into a shorter period, which suggests that longer workspans will accompany longer lifespans. In the near future, employees in significantly growing numbers will likely be able to work productively into their eighth or even ninth decade.

Early stage startups already see New York as a hub for media, advertising and fashion. But the city is starting to build up its name in health tech as well.

At the start of this year, both Startup Health and Blueprint Health – two incubator-type programs that provide funding, mentorship and connections – announced their first classes of startups.  Then, in October, the New York Digital Health Accelerator, backed by the New York eHealth Collaborative nonprofit and the private New York City Fund, introduced its own batch of health tech startups.

Now Bio & Health Tech Entrepreneurship Lab, is joining the fun. Supported by the New York City Economic Development Corporation (NYCEDC), the new outfit began accepting applications a couple of weeks ago for its first class of health entrepreneurs.

Harnessing laser light’s ability to gently push and pull microscopic particles, researchers have created the fiber-optic equivalent of the world’s smallest wrench.

This virtual tool can precisely twist and turn the tiniest of particles, from living cells and DNA to microscopic motors and dynamos used in biological and physical research. This new twist on controlling the incredibly small, developed by physicists at The University of Texas at Arlington, will give scientists the ability to skillfully manipulate single cells for cancer research, twist and untwist individual strands of DNA, and perform many other functions where microscopic precision is essential. The authors describe their new technique, which they dub a fiber-optic spanner (the British term for a wrench), in a paper published today in the Optical Society’s (OSA) journal Optics Letters.

Since the 1980s, chemical engineer Dr. Robert Langer has engaged in the world of tech transfer perhaps more successfully than any other research on the planet, launching a wide range of biotech startups through his Langer Lab at MIT.

Among the 25 companies, 811 patents and 250 licensing agreements Dr. Langer has developed or accelerated, resulting products include treatments for cancer, diabetes, heart disease, schizophrenia and other diseases. A small wafer that delivers a dose of chemotherapy to treat brain cancer; sugar-sequencing tools to create safer, more effective drugs; and a tiny chip that can test for diseases have all emerged from the Langer Lab.

This fall, entrepreneurs and investors from all over the country gathered in downtown Cleveland for the National Association of Seed and Venture Funds (NASVF) annual conference. During a "fireside chat," AOL founder and Startup America Chair Steve Case touched on his belief that a "broader entrepreneurial ecosystem" with many hubs of innovation is possible. "Many years ago, you couldn't launch a startup in some areas, and now you can," he said. "Costs are down, and the ability to get talent is up."

The Midwest is working hard to make Case's vision a reality sooner rather than later. For example, a summit known as the Great Lakes Venture Fair directly followed the NASVF conference in Cleveland. This two-day event highlighted the region's expanding investment scene and its high potential young companies. Just a few weeks later, JumpStart presented an entrepreneur expo, which drew 117 startups and more than 1,000 people to an afternoon-long showcase of transformative technologies.

The second founder that we are interviewing this week, in our series of interviews exclusively with female founders, is Kathryn Minshew, Co-Founder and CEO of the The Daily Muse and their corresponding job search product, Company Muse

Kathryn graduated magna cum laude from Duke University as a Angier B Duke Scholar. In 2010, Kathryn worked on vaccine introduction in Rwanda and Malawi with the Clinton Health Access Initiative and previously worked as a management consultant at McKinsey & Company. She’s appeared on CNN, USA Today, Fast Company, PBS, Forbes’ 30-Under-30 in Media and INC’s 15 Women to Watch in Tech.

Kathryn Minshew, Alexandra Cavoulacos and Melissa McCreery, Co-Founded The Daily Muse in 2011. The site offers in-depth multimedia profiles of a variety of companies who are hiring, combined with career content and professional development. They are also a member of the Winter 2012 Y Combinator class.