If Francisco Aguilar and Dave Young get their way, police officers and firefighters will someday carry baseball-shaped, throwable cameras along with the rest of their equipment.

As the founders of Bounce Imaging, Aguilar and Young are developing spherical, camera-laden gadgets that can be tossed into dangerous places—such as the rubble of a building leveled by an earthquake—and then wirelessly relay 360-degree panoramic images of the scene back to a tablet or smartphone.

The United States may be the centre of the 21st century invention and ideas renaissance, but a new ranking shows Asia’s emerging markets are catching up.

The top four businesses ranked in Forbes 2012 list of World’s Most Innovative Companies are based in the United States. But Robin Li, China’s self-made billionaire who studied in New York before returning home to set up Baidu, the Google of China, is proof innovation can spread.

The Forbes ranking builds on the book, The Innovator’s DNA, by Hal Gregersen, INSEAD’s Abu Dhabi Commercial Bank Chaired Professor of Innovation and Leadership, with input from Credit Suisse HOLT. It measures companies based on an “Innovation Premium”, an indication of the premium the stock market gives a company because investors expect it to launch new offerings and enter new markets.

Could Europe's perceived weaknesses actually be a source of strength? INSEAD launches a school-wide initiative to find out.

There is a widespread perception that Europe is currently undergoing a crisis of confidence and much evidence seems to justify this. In a recent Forbes Magazine study of the world's most admired companies, in the U.S. six of the ten most successful companies cited were created after 1970 – in Europe none of them were. Clearly small companies doing business in the U.S. have less trouble expanding their markets and scaling up their operations quickly.

Explanations for this disparity include greater cultural and linguistic diversity in Europe and a perception that European governments regulate business too rigidly. But are these inevitably handicaps or could European companies' experience in dealing with these obstacles actually be turned into an advantage?

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.

What’s fascinating about presidential elections—perhaps more than any other event—is the way that intelligent people can view the same set of facts and see totally different things.  Not a day has passed since Barack Obama’s re-election, and already the pundits are out in force.

Some say Obama’s diverse “rainbow coalition” marks the demographic transformation of America, where aging white men make up an increasingly smaller share of the electorate.  Others say it is about wedge issues, like immigration, that appeal to key interest groups like Hispanics.  Still others say it is about class warfare, between the haves (who built America) and the have nots (who want their piece of the pie).

I've been doing some fascinating research lately on the origins of common objects in our lives -- things we see daily, but often take for granted.

Like the Stop Sign, for example.

Most people think the Stop Sign was created to regulate traffic. Not true.

According to Dr. Ellison Burke of the Global Institute for Slowing Things Down Before You Hurt Yourself Badly, the origin of the Stop Sign has nothing to do with traffic -- and dates back several thousand years.

MADISON – Improving access to investment capital for entrepreneurs, building a more educated workforce, creating a stronger business climate and speeding technology from the lab to the marketplace are major themes of the Wisconsin Technology Council’s 2010-2011 “white papers” report.

The Tech Council is the bipartisan, non-profit science and technology policy adviser to the governor and the Legislature, and a catalyst for tech-based development in Wisconsin. The Tech Council periodically issues “white papers” and special reports to assist those policymakers.

“The ideas offered in the Tech Council’s 2010-11 white papers are intended to set the table for a renewed public discussion about improving the state’s tech-based economy,” said Mark Bugher, chairman of the Tech Council. “As the state enters an election year in which a new governor and Legislature will be elected, the candidates for those public offices and more deserve to hear some of the best ideas our board can offer for transforming Wisconsin’s economy.”

U.S. President Barack Obama has issued a proclamation naming November 2012 National Entrepreneurship Month. In the declaration, he says, “This month, and during Global Entrepreneurship Week, let us renew the spirit of innovation that has fueled more than two centuries of American progress and promises to drive us in the years to come.” This marks the fourth straight year that President Obama has issued a proclamation in support of entrepreneurs to coincide with Global Entrepreneurship Week (see previous proclamations for 2009, 2010, 2011).

“A global battle unlike any the world has ever seen approaches.  November 9 th-18th, Startup Weekend teams will compete as a part of Global Entrepreneurship Week…”

That’s the promotion for a startup competition set for November 9-19, the “world’s largest startup competition.”

“This year’s edition of Global Startup Battle is going to be bigger and better than ever. More than 1000 teams in more than 100 cities compete for world startup domination…"

The 2012 Rhode Island Innovation Index: Benchmarking the RI Knowledge Economy is a comprehensive benchmarking report to measure and track over time Rhode Island's knowledge enterprise and innovation capacity. A joint project of the RI Science and Technology Advisory Council and the Greater Providence Chamber of Commerce, the report uses twenty-three key indicators to paint a picture of how our state fares in important categories like R&D performance and patents issued that can be used as a tool by public and private leaders to make data driven decisions on how to grow and sustain a knowledge-based, innovation economy.

The startup space has become increasingly crowded with companies trying to help you find dates, find good deals or connect with new people online. But what about the ones that have the potential to change your life? From a tool that lets you remotely lock and unlock your door to a ride-sharing system that helps you get around easily, there are several startups that aim to make life better for people every day.

Startup Risk Calculator reveals business risks, provides probability of success, offers strategies to increase likelihood of success

FAYETTEVILLE, AR – November 5, 2012 – EquityNet (www.equitynet.com) announced today the debut of their free Crowdfunding Tools. The release of a Startup Risk Calculator is the first in a series of free crowdfunding tools and will be followed soon by a free Business Valuation Calculator.

The Startup Risk Calculator helps entrepreneurs identify and evaluate business risk and calculates the probability of whether a business will succeed or fail. Free, fast, and easy, the Start Risk Calculator provides business owners a snapshot of their individual business risk profiles based on eight key risk factors.

The Startup Risk Calculator asks questions chosen from the wide-ranging list of questions used in EquityNet’s patented business planning and analysis software Enterprise Analyzer™, and the calculator’s results helps entrepreneurs better understand how to improve their odds of business success. Entrepreneurs answer questions that deal with amount of capital investment; difficulty in obtaining funds; quality of financial management; degree of business planning; annual industry growth rate; management experience; and industry experience. The Calculator immediately generates the company’s odds for success (defined as the business still operating) within a given timeframe identified by the business owner. The results are based on real-world data gathered by EquityNet from over 500,000 businesses across North America.

When I began writing about entrepreneurship over 30 years ago, “entrepreneurship education” was an almost unheard-of concept. Today, entrepreneurship education at the nation’s colleges and universities is booming. In its latest annual ranking of the top entrepreneurial education programs, The Princeton Review sorted through some 2,000 graduate and undergraduate offerings.

Both the general public and would-be entrepreneurs strongly believe in the importance of entrepreneurship and the power of entrepreneurial education. In a study last year by Buzz Marketing and The Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC), 89 percent of respondents thought entrepreneurial education was crucial given the state of the economy and job market. And in a report from Junior Achievement Innovation Initiative and Gallup, 95 percent of employers and 96 percent of employees believe America’s workforce must become more entrepreneurial for the U.S. to stay competitive. Just 10 percent feel entrepreneurial ability was an innate trait.

A decade and a half into the Web revolution, we do much of our banking and shopping online.   So why can’t we vote over the Internet? The answer is that voting presents specific kinds of very hard problems.

Even though some countries do it and there have been trial runs in some precincts in the United States, computer security experts at a Princeton symposium last week made clear that online voting cannot be verifiably secure, and invites disaster in a close, contentious race.

“Vendors may come and they may say they’ve solved the Internet voting problem for you, but I think that, by and large, they are misleading you, and misleading themselves as well,” Ron Rivest, the MIT computer scientist and cryptography pioneer, said at the symposium. “If they’ve really solved the Internet security and cybersecurity problem, what are they doing implementing voting systems? They should be working with the Department of Defense or financial industry. These are not solved problems there.”

We seriously love our smartphones and tablets. So much so that we’ll see a larger install base of smartphones and tablets than PCs by around halfway through next year.

For now tablets and smartphones aren’t likely to replace desktop computers entirely, but the fact that 821-million of them will have been sold by the end of this year is as strong an indication as any that we’re moving toward the post PC era. Or at the very least, a definition of PC not restricted to the desktop.

According to tech research company Gartner, those 821-million smart devices will account for 70% of all devices sold this year.

Growth in the sector isn’t about to stop either. By 2013, 821-million smart devices will have become 1.2-billion, with tablets showing especially significant growth. Gartner reckons that by 2016, even businesses will be buying triple the number of tablets they are now.

President Obama, who won re-election Tuesday night, has already hinted how he might deal with higher education in a second term. The question now is how much of that agenda he will be able to accomplish in the next four years, given the budget crises he will face and the expectation that Republicans in Congress will continue to oppose his priorities. The president’s victory means that colleges can expect the White House to continue to stand up for federal financial aid, as well as for federal research money, in the likely fierce budget battles in the coming months. But the depth of the financial issues the country faces means that federal dollars are likely to be limited, and the president's support is more likely to halt deep spending cuts than it is to find new money for higher education programs.

Once you’ve decided on a business structure and a location for your new business, it’s time to get ready to launch your business.  This is an exciting time because it’s where you start putting your business into action and making your ideas a reality. Starting a business is a big undertaking that requires attention to detail, investment of resources, and the coordination of multiple contributions coming from all directions – just like the launch of a Space Shuttle.

Every Space Shuttle launch started with a “countdown” on the launching pad to help the engineers and support staff ensure that all the equipment was working properly and all of the processes were in place for a successful flight. In the same way, as you get ready to launch your business, it’s important to be thorough in completing all of the necessary steps and “checking the boxes” along the way.

A question that I often hear debated these days is whether a new startup should focus on growth or profits. First of all, the glory days of “dot.coms” are gone, when investors “didn’t care” about profitability, and all the money went to growth.

In the long run, everyone wants both profitability and growth, but the question is still which comes first. Most startups and investors I know don’t have unlimited funds, so the first question they should ask and do ask today, is “When is your company going to be profitable (self-sustaining)?”

Of course, growth is implied in that equation, and is also required for maintaining a sustainable competitive advantage. The challenge is not to undermine growth by a blind focus on profits. You might sell one of two of your widgets for $1 million each, entering profitability immediately, but then die because you can’t grow sales at that price.

As someone who grew up with entrepreneurial parents, I can say without hesitation that there is no job experience that can completely compare with the rewards and perils of such a career path.  Although many would prefer to be employed, even employed by large or in the past, bureaucratic organizations, many of those employed in the U.S., as we all know, are employed with small business (using the basic standard of five hundred or less employees).  A quick look at the data shows this interesting breakdown

A search for an office with an energetic vibe led Livefyre, a company that provides software for posting comments on websites, to undergo a rite of passage for new Silicon Valley businesses. It joined an accelerator, a sort of business academy for startups.

For eight months, the team sat in a bullpen with fellow entrepreneurs at KickLabs, one of a long list of accelerators in and around San Francisco. Anyone who needed help could get it from a neighbor or the accelerator’s staff, which regularly doled out advice and arranged meetings with potential investors. “There was high energy,” says Jordan Kretchmer, Livefyre’s chief executive. “The staff did a lot of walking about and asking, ‘Is there anything you need today?’”