Cities are the engines of innovation. While repeated so often that it has become a cliché, the wisdom behind this is predicated on the power of cities to aggregate people, allow for collaboration, the cross-pollination of ideas, and the spread of information. One of the places where this most often occurs is within the walls of the research university.

We know that cities produce an inordinate amount of scientific output. The science journal Nature even devoted a special issue to the importance of cities and their relationship to science. We know many of the outputs of science at the city level (such as papers and citations), and even some of the inputs (such as the number of students and researchers), but there is one area where data are lacking: the amount of science-related funding that a given city pulls in.

The Congressional Research Service recently published findings on the current conditions of federal support of academic research, highlighting the threat that constrained university, state and federal budgets places on critical basic research. Although there is growing recognition that R&D is crucial to the long term health of the nation's science and technology sectors, data from the report shows U.S. colleges and universities have seen a decline in financial support at the federal, state and private levels. The situation is worsened by the conclusion of federal stimulus funding for university research and a decline in revenue for 35 states in FY12.

While academic R&D is funded from a variety of sources, the federal government has consistently provided the majority of funding, and according to data from the National Science Foundation, six agencies are the major funders. In FY2009, these agencies represented about 96 percent of the estimated $31.6 billion obligated for S&E R&D that year, with the National Institutes of Health providing about 65 percent of those funds. The other five are: National Science Foundation (13 percent), Department of Defense (9 percent), National Aeronautics and Space Administration (3 percent), Department of Energy (4 percent), and Department of Agriculture (3 percent). With the election now over, many are looking to President Obama who stressed the need for increased federal R&D funding for research on the campaign trail to determine whether this trend may or may not change in the years to come.

On November 15, the Securities Exchange Commission (SEC) will host the "SEC Government-Business Forum on Small Business Capital Formation," an annual forum focused on the capital formation concerns of small business. This year's agenda will focus on the implementation of the Jumpstart Our Business Startups Act (JOBS Act), specifically equity-based crowdfunding regulation. The forum also will look at issues related to capital for small business that were not addressed by the JOBS Act.

Free to the public, the day-long forum will start at 9:00 a.m. ET with a morning panel discussion that will be webcast live on the SEC's website. A panel of experts will discuss the implementation of the JOBS Act and small business capital formation issues not addressed by the JOBS Act. During the afternoon breakout sessions, participants will have the opportunity to join a crowdfunding-focused breakout group via a teleconference intended to help formulate specific policy recommendations for the implementation of equity-based crowdfunding regulations. To participate in the teleconferences, either in person or by teleconference, individuals must register online by November 12.

Veterans aren't starting as many businesses as they used to, according to a new study by the Kauffman Foundation. The foundation, which promotes and studies entrepreneurship, found that veterans accounted for more than 12 percent of all startups in 1996. By 2011, only 6 percent of new businesses were started by veterans. The biggest reason for this decline in startup rates among veterans is that the veteran population is aging. Most veterans of the Korean War, for example, are in their 80s, and many Vietnam War veterans have reached retirement age.

Looking at Tuesday’s election results, it’s clear the United States has morphed into five distinct political nations. This marks a sharp consolidation of the nine cultural and economic regions that sociologist Joel Garreau laid out 30 years ago in his landmark book “The Nine Nations of North America.”

In political terms there are two solid blue nations, perched on opposite coasts, that have formed a large and powerful bloc. Opposing them are two almost equally red countries, which include the historic Confederacy as well as the vast open reaches between the Texas panhandle and the Canadian border.

ACA has three main priorities in tax policy in order to ensure a healthy environment for angel investment in innovative startup companies:

• Establish a federal tax credit as an incentive for more angel investment in innovative companies. 
• Improve several provisions of the Qualified Small Business Stock laws and regulations to make the program more relevant to equity investors. 
• Make the 100% gain and Alternative Minimum Tax exclusions on Qualified Small Business Stock permanent

Companies like Apple and Samsung are the public face of the smartphone and tablet boom, but they all rely on ARM, the British company that licenses the energy-efficient processor designs required by mobile devices. Those chips were once considered significantly less powerful than the x86 processors found in desktops, laptops, and servers—a market dominated by Intel—but that gap appears to be closing. Microsoft is exploring a switch to ARM’s technology for traditional computers, suggesting that ARM’s technology will soon shape more than just mobile computing. ARM’s CEO, Warren East, met this week with MIT Technology Review’s senior IT editor, Tom Simonite.

The seeds of a new economy are sort of in the ground but not quite covered in soil. That’s the current status of crowdfunding, an opportunity to create a tidal wave of entrepreneurism, and to change the investing climate.

Entrepreneurs come in different varieties. Some are serial and can raise cash on a whim. But most are an entirely different species: nervous, apprehensive, insightful, skilled and with a little bit of daring dying to get out. The jump to entrepreneurism is going to be life-changing for them.

America's top business schools are filled with students training to be the next generation of CEOs. Jonathan McEuen, a second-year Wharton MBA, pulls 19-hour days, starting his morning at 5 AM and then collapsing at midnight. In addition to attending classes, he's launching a medical technology startup and is co-president of the Wharton Scotch & Whiskey Club. He schedules his days down to the minute, balancing the demands of school against the rest of his life.

TED, a global nonprofit devoted to "Ideas Worth Spreading" will focus its February 2013 conference on "The Young, The Wise, And The Undiscovered." Out of more than a thousand applicants, they've selected 21 fellows who they think represent that concept, and will change the world.    They'll attend a boot camp on how to spread their ideas throughout the world, be mentored by the TED community, and attend the 2013 conference. They come from all over the world and range from scientists to artists to entrepreneurs. Keep an eye out for them in the future:

It seems Nigeria’s Silicon Lagoon, based in Lagos is upping its innovation game. The region recently saw the launch of the ‘Lagos Angel Network,’ reports VC4Africa. The aim of the network is to help foster tech startups in the Lagos area. The angel investor platform hopes to bring “together individuals and organisations seeking to invest in and mentor Nigerian tech start-ups”. The initiative is headed by Tomi Davies, CEO of TVCLabs a Technology Business Incubation Company based in Lagos. The network currently consists of 15 Angel investors, who are each expected to commit at least US$6 000 a year to a common investment pool.

In 2007, Google reached out to a startup it wanted to buy called Zlio. Zlio was founded in 2006. It let anyone open an online store, even if they had nothing of their own to sell. Stores could be populated with products from Zlio's partners, such as Apple. Google told Zlio it would work quickly to get the acquisition deal done. It emailed Zlio's founder, Jeremie Berrebi, and detailed everything he would need to send over to get the acquisition approved by Larry Page, Sergey Brin and Eric Schmidt.

How do you get people to buy stock in your company on crowd-funding sites? The same way you get them to give money for anything else.

As soon as the final rules are hammered out, the JOBS Act will kick in and let small businesses sell equity stakes to big groups of average investors online. It’s a lot like the crowd-funding model sites like Kickstarter and Indiegogo offer, except the backers get shares in the company.

The best way to get ready for this new setup is to take a look at what works in crowd funding right now, say entrepreneurs and experts. There are time-tested strategies that help a money-raising campaign succeed, they say—and those rules will hold true for stock sales.

Wisconsin legislators should pass an early stage capital bill and invest more in the state’s broadband and high-speed computing networks to help spur the technology-based economy here, according to a report released Wednesday by the Wisconsin Technology Council. The report, "The future is now: Four strategies for Wisconsin's high-growth economy," is part of a series of papers released by the Tech Council, a bipartisan, nonprofit science and technology policy adviser to the governor and the state Legislature.

The promotion of creative economy has taken root in Finnish political thinking. Can this “success story” be replicated?

As the industrial production is steadily moving to low-cost developing countries, the whole of Europe has started investing in knowledge-based economies. And it has proven to pay off. In the recession-stricken European Union, the cultural and creative sectors is one of the most stable employers, offering jobs over 8.5 million people. It also generates between 3.3-4.5% of the region's GDP. According to a recent paper produced by the European Commission, the CCI sector is a “largely untapped resource” in the European economy. Its authors claim that: “The contribution that cultural and creative sectors can bring to social and economic development in the EU is still not fully recognised”. 

Accordingly, last year the European Commission published a study from the Utrecht School of the Arts that looked into the Entrepreneurial Dimension of Cultural and Creative Industries. The research was commissioned to examine the challenges facing the CCI sector. It turned out that the problems have been similar across the whole of Europe: a lack or little access to financing, shortage of business skills and a fragmentation of the CCI market. However, there are several European countries that have successfully dealt with these challenges. Finland is one of them. 

There are benefits for startup medical deviceand drug development companies to court regulators like the U.S. Food and Drug Administration early to ensure strong communication on what’s expected and what a comany’s product(s) can deliver. But on the other hand,there can be some unforeseen challenges as well. And of course the FDA has been known to change its mind and request more and more data.

This was one of the engaging discussions at the Greater Philadelphia Alliance of Capital and Technologies IMPACT conference convening venture and angel investors and the entrepreneurs with whom they invest.

A great two-minute pitch can win a startup some significant cash these days, from elevator pitch contests at MIT, Purdue, Duke and elsewhere.

To help entrepreneurs get started writing a solid pitch, the Harvard Business School created a nifty interactive tool that breaks the process down into five steps: explain who you are, what value you provide, why you’re unique or better than others and what your immediate goal is (or what you want the person listening to do) , and then review and refine all of that.

You can type each of those elements into the Elevator Pitch Builder, and it compiles them and then analyzes what you’ve written to estimate how long it will take to recite and how many words you repeat. It also offers a few general pieces of advice.

As a newly re-elected President Obama reminded Americans early Wednesday morning, creating jobs and getting the economy back on track are the nation's top priorities. To better understand what actually works to get the economy moving again, the administration should look at the nation's most successful cities and metro areas. As TIME's Rana Foroohar predicted in September, with the election behind us, we may start to see a shift away from the stale "tax cut" versus "stimulus" debate to a new economic policy paradigm where cities in effect "become the petri dishes in which we do different growth experiments."

A recent analysis of competitiveness and job growth across U.S. metros conducted by Economic Modeling Specialists could not be more timely. It provides a detailed assessment of the metros that have generated the most robust job growth based on "unique regional factors rather than national trends." To do so, it conducted a shift-share analysis of employment trends for the 100 largest U.S. metros for the period 2010 to 2012. Shift-share analysis, the study notes, helps "distinguish between growth that is primarily based on big national forces (the proverbial 'rising tide lifts all boats' analogy) vs. local competitive advantages." Its regional competitiveness assessment is based on subtracting the the number of jobs expected for each metro (or MSA) based on national economic trends from the region's total jobs, adding that:

Maryland voters affirmed Tuesday night that undocumented immigrants should be allowed to attend public universities and pay in-state tuition, while Oklahomans declared that affirmative action should be barred in education and other public settings. The DREAM Act was a solid winner in Maryland, taking 59 percent of the vote. The electorate upheld a bill passed by the state legislature in 2011 that allows illegal immigrants to pay in-state tuition to attend the state’s public universities and colleges. Opponents sought to overturn it via popular vote, but those efforts fell short at the ballot box.

Housing for the poor doesn’t need to be horrible. The Richardson apartments in San Francisco are offering up high-class digs in the hopes of helping to lift its residents out of poverty. 

Low-income housing generally isn’t all that nice; stories like this about single-room occupancy buildings (SROs) with infestations, leaking pipes, and overflowing toilets aren’t uncommon. That’s starting to change, however, now that cities are realizing that quality low-income housing can provide a stepping stone to stability for residents. In San Francisco’s Hayes Valley neighborhood, the recently completed Richardson Apartments provide formerly homeless residents (many with physical and mental disabilities) with beautiful living spaces and social services.