In the past, most early-stage startups went down one of three well-worn paths. They either rented office space from a business incubator, in the hope of running into investors and business partners; applied to an accelerator program like TechStars or Y Combinator, which provide mentorship and networking over a set period of several months in exchange for equity; or winged it and worked independently from their kitchen tables. All three paths have their pros and cons.

But now there’s a fourth way to get started. A coalition of four groups inspired by Steve Blank, the Pescadero, CA-based author, serial entrepreneur, and startup guru, today announced the formation of a four-week, online-only “pre-accelerator” course intended to help entrepreneurs create, refine, and test business models with help from volunteer mentors. Modeled after Blank’s Lean LaunchPad classes, which have been taught at Stanford, UC Berkeley, Columbia, Caltech, Princeton, and the National Science Foundation, the first classes will begin in 25 cities around the world on Nov. 28.

Startups get all the glory when it comes to innovation, but intrapreneurship--or, creating from within an established company--is much trickier. Here's the 4-step playbook for making it work.

What would you add to this playbook? Tell us in the comments section below.

When it comes to innovation, entrepreneurship gets a lot of attention. But every day, people are generating new products and business models within established companies as well. This so-called intrapreneurship may seem cushier--after all, a corporate parent eliminates some risks of a startup--but it’s often a challenging and delicate proposition.

Historically, government at all levels has relied on decent pay, generous benefits and stable employment to attract workers. As a result of the economic downturn, each of these attractions has been significantly diminished, leaving public leaders scrambling.

Other factors are at work, from the political pressure to be leaner and more efficient to the expansion of interest in work-life balance programs to the explosion of social media. The sum of all these moving parts is that for government to build its 21st-century workforce, old models must be discarded in favor of "next practices"--contemporary, progressive and practical strategies and tools to attract, retain and optimize talent.

Hurricane Sandy was barreling towards the coast and the news reports were grim. This would be the worst storm to hit the Northeast region since, well, maybe ever. A confluence of factors—it was slow-moving, widespread, clashing with a winter storm from the west and cold air from the north, and hitting land at high tide on a full moon—could lead to disastrous flooding, loss of power for millions, billions of dollars in damages, and lost lives.

Meanwhile, my kids were delighted. When it became clear over the weekend that school would be closed Monday, they squealed in delight and started to make plans for how to spend the time—how much TV they were going to watch, how much candy they were going to eat. They bubbled with excitement as we got ready by shopping for food and supplies, filling bottles with water, putting candles in each room, and connecting with neighbors. We listened to news reports and tracked the storm on the internet. The city was abuzz as people prepared.

Mountain View, Calif. - Tucked into the upper floor of the Computer History Museum, above the Babbage Engine, the Hall of Fellows, and decades worth of artifacts, perhaps the most unknown incubator in the Valley is ironically working on identity.

Since 2005, the Internet Identity Workshop (now known simply as IIW) has brought together the brightest people working on answering the most basic question on the Internet – who are you?

Last week, IIW held its 15th three-day conference, attracting among others lawyers, venture capitalists, government wonks, Ph.D students, scientists, CEOs, CSOs, CTOs, CIOs, privacy experts, psychologists, reputation specialists and identity geeks.

From Nature magazine.

The United States is reeling under the impact of a massive hurricane named Sandy, the second to hit the northeastern states in two years. Flooding and widespread blackouts have crippled New York City and parts of New Jersey. Even the upcoming US election is taking a back seat, as President Barack Obama has quit the campaign trail to oversee the federal response. Throughout, there has been frequent talk of global warming as a potential driver of such events, but scientists and the media are still struggling with how to communicate the complexities. Nature takes a look at the science behind the storm.

What is making Hurricane Sandy so devastating? First and foremost is the sheer size of the storm. As it approached the United States’ eastern seaboard on Monday, hurricane-force winds (more than 118.5 kilometres per hour) extended some 280 kilometres from the centre of the storm, peaking around 145 kilometres per hour. Tropical-storm winds registering above 63 kilometres per hour extended outwards for up to 780 kilometres.

We’re not used to thinking of ourselves as animals. But as Jason Samson sees it, climate is as important in shaping the distribution and movement of humans as it is in other animals.

The McGill-trained ecologist and fellow researchers have been using modeling techniques similar to those used to define the ecological niche for plant and animal species to explore the correlation between climate patterns and population growth in the contiguous United States between 1900-2000. And what they discovered was a pronounced population shift away from areas within the U.S. with cool and seasonal climates, towards those areas that are warmer and drier year-round, and they found that this was the case even when it meant moving further away from agricultural lands.

Who's your hero? Who do you want to emulate, and why?

To find out who inspires startup founders to create and grow their companies, we asked eight successful young entrepreneurs from the Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC) about the individuals that they looked to emulate in their businesses and their lives.

1. Elon Musk

As a serial entrepreneur myself, I envy anyone that can successfully juggle multiple projects at once. It's one thing to do it with moderate success, but it's astounding to see it carried out at the multi-million dollar revenue level. Elon Musk, the current CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, is also the Chairman of Solar City. Previously, he was a co-founder of PayPal. The fact that all of the aforementioned brands have such immense success is very inspiring to me. It's obvious that Elon has learned to optimize his time and focus on his priorities every single day. While I don't expect to ever come close to mirroring Elon's success, he is a great example of a well-diversified entrepreneur that has found success through a great deal of hard work and innovation. - Logan Lenz, Endagon

The late Jane Russell famously starred in “The Outlaw” in 1943. In 2006, at 84, she was singing Cole Porter songs in a review she helped create called “The Swinging Forties.”

Other examples of mature creators include these:

At 96 Martha Graham premiered her choreographed work The Maple Leaf Rag.

Sidney Sheldon wrote his last novel at about age 87.

Edward Albee won a Tony award for a new play in 2002, at age 75.

At 97, architect Oscar Niemeyer was developing one of his most ambitious projects.

This special presentation features a panel of Stanford alumni reflecting on their personal entrepreneurial experiences at Stanford and in the vibrant Silicon Valley ecosystem. This conversation follows a presentation of remarkable results from the Stanford Innovation Survey, measuring the economic impact of Stanford alumni engaged in entrepreneurial activity.

Nothing drives growth in Ann Arbor's emerging new economy more than software and IT these days. And driving that growth are two distinct engines: start-ups scoring big sums of seed capital and growing companies hiring considerable numbers of new employees.  

Software/IT firms accounted for the creation of 285 new jobs in the Ann Arbor area, according to stories reported here in Concentrate over the third quarter of this year. During that period, a handful of Ann Arbor-based software start-ups cumulatively landed $3.75 million in venture capital, and TreeTown welcomed yet another venture capital firm that plans to specialize in early investment in local tech firms.

I believe it was Scary Spice who first uttered the genius that is; “Tell me whatcha want, what ya really, really want!”. Perhaps that was Ginger, either way, Ace of Base was far better. In Open Innovation and Crowdsourcing we are seeing a rise of enterprises and government agencies that “really want to crowdsource”, but they might not know exactly why they want to, other than they believe it can help them innovate faster and on less spend. We of course applaud this movement as all boats rise in an environment and market such as this. But beyond the hype or macro-generalities, let’s dedicate a few paragraphs to discuss what you really, really want in Open Innovation and Crowdsourcing as it pertains to digital asset creation. At TopCoder, we have 3 pillars of digital asset creation. Let’s quickly define each.

8:22 p.m. | Updated LOS ANGELES — The Walt Disney Company, in a move that gives it a commanding position in the world of fantasy movies, said Tuesday it had agreed to acquire Lucasfilm from its founder, George Lucas, for $4.05 billion in stock and cash.

The sale provides a corporate home for a private company that grew from Mr. Lucas’s hugely successful “Star Wars” movie series, and became an enduring force in the creation of effects-driven science fiction entertainment for large and small screens. Mr. Lucas, who is 68 years old, had already announced he would step down from day-to-day operation of the company.

Every entrepreneur can learn from a mentor, no matter how confident or successful they have been to date. Even one of the richest, Bill Gates, still values his friend Warren Buffett as his mentor. Yet these relationships require special efforts on both sides to be productive and satisfying. Mentoring is not as simple as one person giving the other all the right answers.

Some of the best mentoring relationships don’t involve monetary compensation, but none are free. The first cost is networking to find a mentor who is willing and able to give adequate focus to the relationship. In any case, it is good form to offer compensation, such as a small monthly stipend, plus expenses, and perhaps a 1% ownership in your startup, to show your commitment.

After you decide to incorporate your business and choose a business structure, you need to decide which state to incorporate your business in. This means that, as part of the process of forming a legal entity for your business, you need to choose a state to incorporate in and which to make your filing in.

Many people want to know, “What is the best state state to incorporate a business?” Or “Can I save money on taxes by incorporating my business in a different state?”

First of all, let’s get one thing straight.  Innovation is NOT technology.  Technology is often a driver and enabler of innovation, but innovation itself is more about the cultural, and behavioural shifts that occur in society as a result of a new technology, product, service or belief. And for something to be considered truly “innovative” it must drive substantial positive change, so we are not talking about the Spork here people.

Innovation also tends to arrive in clusters; at certain points throughout history, humanity has overflowed with new ideas, products services, art, literature, philosophy and technology and I believe that we are living through one of these clusters right now.

Innovation in business is the development of new customer value through solutions that meet new needs, inarticulate needs, or current needs in new ways. Innovation in and of itself is the key to a company’s survival. It is the lifeblood of a company.

That said, innovation is not always easy, and it does not come by itself. It requires a culture and desire to deliver that needs to be nurtured and reinforced by its leadership and a backed by a structured process approach.

I’m not sure what you’re going as for Halloween, but I’m pretty sure that your costume isn’t nearly as good as Josh Sundquist’s.

Sundquist, a former Paralympic skier who lost his left leg to cancer as a child, is dressing up as the leg lamp from the 1983 classic A Christmas Story:

Conventional research on raising capital focuses on the two usual suspects that inhabit balance sheets: equity and debt. But as authors Alex Edmans and William Mann remind readers in a recent Wharton research paper, selling non-core assets also fills corporate coffers with cash.

"Financing Through Asset Sales" probes the choice to issue equity or sell non-core assets such as a division or a plant. As a means of raising cash, under what conditions are asset sales or equity issues likely to add more value? Edmans, a Wharton finance professor and a faculty research fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research, and Mann, a Wharton PhD candidate, have an answer.

They propose three forces behind decisions to sell equity or sell non-core assets, which they call the camouflage, correlation and certainty effects. These three effects pierce a veil that up to now has concealed underlying causes of corporate strategy and market reactions. Resulting insights, they say, furnish managers with a better framework for reaching decisions about the amount and purpose of financing, pivotal factors in the long-term viability of any business large or small.

Blueprints help people envision the future in a clear, practical way. What will the finished work look like? How will we create it? What possibilities does the new creation hold? In this article innovation architect Doug Collins introduces a blueprint for the practice of collaborative innovation. The blueprint helps people envision their organization as they transform it through the practice.

The following quote from Peter Koestenbaum’s Leadership: The Inner Side of Greatness affects me greatly. I think about his words all the time.

“The ground rule is that all authentic products (including services) must contain within them at least one element or module of leadership information. Thus, whatever else you sell, you are also selling leadership help to your customers. This is a fundamental principle of ethical and successful business transactions.”