What sparks paradigm-shifting innovation in any business? It’s a special mix of entrepreneur and company, regular in every respect except for having the courage and foresight to make an idea happen that was supposed to be impossible. As an entrepreneur in a startup, how do you know if you have this potential, and what are the steps to get from an innovation to a revolution?

The first step is to meditate on the examples set by others, like Steve Jobs of Apple, Jeff Bezos of Amazon, or Thomas Edison with the electric light. There are many others, like the book I read a while back about Ratan Tata bringing out the Nano car in 2009 in India for less than $2,500. The book is titled “Nanovation,” by Kevin & Jackie Freiberg.

Can machines have morals? Should anyone own the internet? Is the consumer software space all but saturated? Are outdated regulations actually making it inconvenient to not be a pirate? Yep, it’s time for another round up of some of the top tech stories we’ve found on the web.

Moral machines

Machine ethics. Well, there’s something you probably haven’t thought about since I, Robot. But with the rapid advancements in technology (self-driving cars were part of sci-fi stories once — now they’re driving around California) it’s becoming an interesting topic: how do you tell a machine what action to take in complicated circumstances?

“HAVE you seen the toilet?” said the man next to me. “You have to see the toilet.”

Airplane bathrooms are hardly conversation starters, and if they are, it’s generally not a conversation one wants to continue. But I had just boarded the Dreamliner — Boeing’s new 787 that is outshining its ancestors with roomier overhead bins, larger windows, power for smartphones, a quieter cabin, more humid air and, as it turns out, a toilet that’s a crowd pleaser.

A vision in white, it has plastic tabs on the sides of the lid and the seat so you barely have to touch them, a sensor instead of a flush button and, according to some users, a more subdued whoosh when flushed. “It’s very refined,” said my seatmate, Joe Nevin, a former executive at Apple turned Aspen ski pro. “It doesn’t sound like it’s going to take your clothes off.”

Reddit has grown from a network of niche communities to the “front page of the Internet.” The social news site, which received 47 million visitors last month, has become a voice to be reckoned with on the web. Users have discovered new talent and kept politics in check — among many other important moments.

The Johns Hopkins University performed $2.1 billion in medical, science, and engineering research in fiscal 2011, making it the leading U.S. academic institution in total research and development spending for the 33rd year in a row, according to a new National Science Foundation ranking.

The university also once again ranked first on the NSF's separate list for federally funded research and development, spending $1.88 billion in FY2011 on research supported by NSF, NASA, the National Institutes of Health, and the Department of Defense. In FY2002, Johns Hopkins became the first university to reach the $1 billion mark on either list, recording $1.14 billion in total research and $1.023 billion in federally sponsored research that year.

Two small grant programs and a minor reorganization of related functions within the U.S. Small Business Administration are the aims of a bill introduced Nov 26 by Democratic Sens. Mary Landrieu and John Kerry. "Today's Entrepreneurs are Advancing Mentorship Act of 2012," or the TEAM Act (S. 3638) for short, would create an Office of Entrepreneurial Support within SBA to administer the grant programs, oversee online entrepreneurship education and resources, coordinate programs targeting youth entrepreneurship, and host international groups interested in U.S. entrepreneurship.

The proposed Entrepreneurial Support grant program would provide funding to develop entrepreneurship curricula and mentoring programs within SBA's network of resource partners, including SBDCs, SCORE, women business centers and other nonprofit organizations. The total authorized funding level would begin at $1 million in 2013 and build to $3 million by 2015.

If you want your op-ed or contributed content featured in The New York Times or, heck, Fast Company, read this (handslap!) before you even reach for your pen. Are you listening, PR?

If entrepreneurship is, as Harvard professor Howard Stevenson calls it, “the pursuit of opportunity without regard to resources currently controlled,” then business builders have a lot in common with journalists. And whereas entrepreneurs can learn much from the journalism trade itself, some of today’s top business leaders are actually participating in journalism, with enterprise-worthy results.

When the Great Place to Work Institute released its 2012 World's Best Multinational Workplaces list this month, ranking the world's 25 best employers - tech companies ruled. High-tech companies grabbed 9 of the 25 slots including 4 of the top 5.

It's a nice feather in the caps of Google, SAS, NetApp, Microsoft and the other winners, but beyond bragging rights, is there a point to this or any similar lists? Don't these awards always go to rich companies that can afford to pay and coddle their workers. Isn't that why fast-growing tech companies always seem to dominate them?

“The Hardware Renaissance”. It’s unmissable. Paul Graham has noticed it and, certainly, my credit card has. Where once, entrepreneurs turned to software to form their ‘next big thing’, there is an increasing trend towards hardware in this space and, while many would seem to point to the likes of Kickstarter and other crowdfunding platforms as the driving force behind this shift, I believe that the credit should really be handed to two guys in Cupertino who changed the way the world feels about hardware; Steve Jobs and Jonathan Ive.

Apple certainly wasn’t the first company to introduce people to beautifully designed and functional hardware, but I can’t think of another brand or company who have more influenced the way that the average consumer feels about the things they use. So much so, that it has ultimately become their core value proposition; simplicity and beauty. Apple, in turn, have inspired a range of startups, and indeed entrepreneurs, who have placed (hardware) design at the centre of what they do. Jack Dorsey and Square. Nest. Jawbone. The list goes on.

The biggest, best-funded non profits have an obligation to be leaders in innovation, but sometimes they hesitate.

One reason: "We're doing important work. Our funders count on us to be reasonable and cautious and proven, because the work we're doing is too important to risk failure."

One alternative: "We're doing important work. Our funders count on us to be daring and bold and brave, because the work we're doing is too important to play it safe."

During the 2012 presidential campaign, Silicon Valley tech businesses overwhelmingly supported Barack Obama with their dollars. Here's a table, from Nate Silver:

Then, during election day, Obama won the Bay Area with an epic 49 point margin. Here's another Silver chart:

So, you'd think that these companies (and the voters who work for them) would have the newly re-elected Obama administration's ear, right? Maybe not. In mid-September, dozens of tech companies, including Apple, Cisco, Microsoft, and Xerox, signed a letter asking Congress and the President to pass a bill called the STEM Jobs Act of 2012. STEM is an acronym for science, technology, engineering, and math. The purpose of the bill is to increase the number of visas available by up to 55,000 for immigrants with advanced degrees in those fields.

Change is about the only thing constant in the world of startups. Despite their own focus on changing the world, they often forget that they too have to change rapidly and often as the market evolves. Too many find that out too late, and are left chasing a rabbit that is long gone.

The solution is to establish and maintain a culture and processes that don’t view change as a discrete event to be spotted and managed, but as an ongoing opportunity to improve competitiveness. Chris Musselwhite and Tammie Plouffe, in an HBR article a couple of years ago on change readiness for large companies, define it as “the ability to continuously initiate and respond to change in ways that create advantage, minimize risk, and sustain performance.”

Montgomery County Executive Ike Leggett wants to provide some high-tech companies with capital in exchange for ownership stakes in the businesses, a first for a local jurisdiction. Leggett’s economic development team hopes to have such a bill before the County Council in two weeks. The proposal would be similar to Maryland’s State Challenge Investment Program, said Peter Bang, chief operating officer for the county’s Department of Economic Development.

One of the things that you might not know about some of the world’s greatest technology is that it was conceived and developed right in the heart of Silicon Valley in a place called SRI International (formerly known as the Stanford Research Institute). This, my friends, is the birthplace of the Internet, the computer mouse, electronic banking, and perhaps the most recent and famous success, Siri.

Today, Norman Winarsky, SRI’s vice president, sat down with members of the media to share insights about what’s happening with the company, how it views investments, and much more. There was a lot for him to share too, especially about an organization that was founded in 1946 by Stanford University to discover and research the application of science and technology. In 1970, it parted ways from the university, but still is pursuing the same mission since its beginnings.

The Ontario government is examining ways to loosen the rules that restrict crowdfunding, a popular method of online fundraising for startups, The Globe has learned.

Premier Dalton McGuinty has championed the possibilities crowdfunding offers, according to a source close to Mr. McGuinty, who recently noted the Ontario Securities Commission is contemplating a crowdfunding exemption to the Securities Act.

THIS newspaper was established in 1843 to take part in “a severe contest between intelligence, which presses forward, and an unworthy, timid ignorance obstructing our progress.” One of the chief ways in which intelligence presses forward is through innovation, which is now recognised as one of the most important contributors to economic growth. Innovation, in turn, depends on the creative individuals who dream up new ideas and turn them into reality.

The Economist recognises these talented people through its annual Innovation awards, presented in eight fields: bioscience, computing and telecommunications, energy and the environment, social and economic innovation, business-process innovation, consumer products, a flexible “no boundaries” category, and the corporate use of innovation. The awards were presented by Tom Standage, digital editor of The Economist and editor of Technology Quarterly, at a ceremony at BAFTA in London on November 15th

Entrepreneurial activity is up 60 percent in the United States over last year, reaching its highest level since 2005, according to a new report.

About 12.3 percent of U.S. adults — around 29 million — are involved in entrepreneurial activity, the 2011 Global Entrepreneurship Monitor issued by Babson College and Baruch College reported.

This rise marks the the first uptick in Americans starting or running new businesses since 2008. The rate had been steadily falling for the past three years, reaching its lowest point in 2010 at 7.8 percent. The report  surveyed more than 5,800 adults between the ages of 18 and 99.

A successful personal relationship must follow the 5:1 rule: for every unpleasant interaction, at least five positive interactions are needed to offset the negative one, says Stanford Professor and author Bob Sutton. Research in the workplace also shows that just one rotten apple - or someone who repeatedly proves to be selfish - can be contagion that severely reduces overall team performance. These contagions must be removed for the health and longevity of the team.

Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business, together with several other of the university’s schools, will now apply social entrepreneurship and innovation to some of the most pressing global health challenges thanks to a $10 million award from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), the school announced earlier this month.

With the USAID funding, which was awarded on Thursday, November 15th, Fuqua’s Center for the Advancement of Social Entrepreneurship (CASE) will partner with the International Partnership for Innovative Healthcare Delivery (IPIHD) at Duke Medicine and the Duke Global Health Institute to establish the Social Entrepreneurship Accelerator at Duke (SEAD). SEAD’s mission will be to serve as a global health development lab that can identify and help address global health challenges in low- and middle-income countries. Faculty from the Duke Center for Science Education, Sanford School of Public Policy, the Department of Economics and elsewhere across Duke also will serve as advisors for the initiative.

Montreal-based FounderFuel, one of Canada’s leading startup accelerator programs, announced a new plan this week to provide access to free work space at Rocketspace or Plug Snd Play in SF and Silicon Valley for three teams for each of its cohorts for three months. The deal applies retroactively, too, meaning FounderFuel and partners the Canadian Technology Accelerator and the Consulate General of Canada will be sending 9 teams from its existing three cohorts of graduating startups down California way.

The Silicon Valley pilgrimage is already a standard part of many a Canadian startup’s growth pattern: scouting out talent, connections and most importantly, funding in San Francisco and the surrounding area is almost de rigeur, especially considering the relative shyness Canadian VCs have when it comes to investing in very early stage startups. The program from this partnership will do a lot to help make that journey easier for companies who want to also continue building and iterating on product with small teams while seeking out  relationships and opportunities south of the border.