Your Facebook friends would love an “Attaboy” from you when they post about their new jobs, or an “Awwww” when they share a puppy picture.

But what will you do when they offer you shares in their startup company?

That expansion of social media is on its way, as soon as securities regulators finish the rules for a new way to float private stock issues—equity crowdfunding.

The website went live last week & provides a primer on crowdfunding, a brief history, a sampling of current projects, and a form that's intended to make it easy to start your own project on GoFundMe.

The domain was shopped around during the last year and even offered to us (We turned it down as it didn't further our mission - A mistake perhaps?). The domain will help GoFundMe strengthen their positioning as the goto site for crowdfunding -- For those that can't use Kickstarter.

Good ideas are a dime a dozen. Anyone can come up with a good idea. What separates ideas from businesses—and success—is execution. Consider Thomas Edison. Countless inventors had come up with the idea of the light bulb, but none was able to execute the idea like Edison did. He made a light bulb that was commercially viable. Entrepreneurs like Edison give shape to ideas, transforming them into real products and services. This can be a daunting task for many NFTE students, who are new to entrepreneurship. Turning a dream into reality requires not only a lot of hard work, but a shift in mindset. Here are the four skills we try to impart that will help them turn their ideas into business plans:

MOSCOW — Like a dream patient conjured up in the boardroom of a pharmaceutical company, the Russian grandmother accepted the risks of the drug she was taking without complaint and cheerily endured even extraordinary side effects. Enlarge This Image

As a test subject in a Russian clinical trial for an experimental weight loss drug, Galina I. Malinina had to inject herself in the stomach daily. “No problem,” she said. “The needle is thin and the dose is small.”

The first time she did this at a hospital where long-faced, white-robed doctors stood by and observed her intently, Ms. Malinina soon vomited. After that, she threw up every day for two weeks, yet stuck to the regimen, something valued by companies, as dropouts are expensive.

One of the factors enabling wind industry growth has been a production tax credit of 2.2 cents per kilowatt hour. The credit expires at the end of this year, however, and Congress has yet to renew it. The credit is on the Senate calendar for this month. Congressional proponents hope that the bi-partisan credit receives the support it merits. Colorado Senator Michael Bennet is leading efforts to renew the credit and emphasized how the wind industry drives job growth and economic development. He also noted that the tax credit is a bi-partisan effort that deserves full Congressional backing.

Today’s business environment integrates information technology in products, services, and supporting business processes. The CIO is no longer the executive managing a cost center comprised of servers, switches, and routers. He or she is a business executive who must collaborate with C-Level business peers to achieve business outcome. No longer will technology expertise be the prevailing success criteria. CIOs must take on new roles. Following are six that are critical to achieving success in today’s dynamic and global marketplace.

1. CIOs must learn how to think like an Entrepreneur.  They need to focus on driving revenue and reducing cost in innovative ways.

Arts and culture has a $3.3 billion impact and accounts for 11 jobs per thousand residents in Greater Philadelphia, ranking the region first in job creation among 182 cities across the country, says a new report from the Greater Philadelphia Cultural Alliance.   Arts, Culture + Economic Prosperity in Greater Philadelphia, released on Monday, follows up on previous reports issued by the Cultural Alliance that measure the vast impact of the region's arts and culture sector. This report's finding are among the most impressive, with the sector contributing 44,000 jobs and $1 billion in income to the region. That includes $169 million in tax revenues for state and local governments.

Since 1986, I've asked more than 10,000 people where and when they get their best ideas. Less than 2% have said "the workplace." Based on my 25 years of working with a ton of innovation-seeking organizations, here's my take on why:

1. Too much to do, not enough time.

2. Too many distractions and interruptions.

3. You work in a risk averse organization.

4. Sleep deprivation.

5. Mental clutter.

6. Fear that someone will steal your idea.

7. You don't think of yourself as creative.

8. Boring meetings that put you in a bad mood.

9. You're not measured for the quantity or quality of ideas you generate.

10. Stultifying routine.

Entrepreneur magazine's annual Princeton Review report on business schools renews its rankings of the top entrepreneurship programs in the country. The roster is based on a survey of more than 2,000 institutions, looking at academics and requirements, as well as the percentage of recent graduates who've started up and the percentage of faculty who already have.

The survey also includes off-campus learning opportunities such as partnerships, clubs and competitions.

Last year, a record number of graduating students at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business chose to start their own companies. Some 16% of the Class of 2011 shunned traditional MBA jobs in favor of the start-up world, a three-fold increase from the 5% in the early 1990s and a third higher than the earlier 12% peak during the dot-com bubble.

Harvard Business School’s Arthur Rock Center for Entrepreneurship now boasts 34 professors who teach 26 courses on all aspects of entrepreneurship in the second-year elective curriculum. Indeed, every single member of Harvard’s class is now required to create a micro-business that is funded by the school. And Harvard’s annual business plan contest offers more than $170,000 in prize money to winners and runners-up. Yet, Stanford and Harvard are nowhere to be found in the 2012 ranking of the best business schools for entrepreneurship published this week by the Princeton Review and Entrepreneur magazine. Neither are Wharton, MIT Sloan, UC-Berkeley Haas, or Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Business.

Today, an open innovation challenge called Mozilla Ignite announced eight winning ideas for innovative applications that offer a glimpse of what the Internet's future might look like--and what the lives of Americans may look like as well.

Funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and hosted by Mozilla, the challenge called for stellar application, or "app," ideas from anywhere in the world that would advance national priorities such as health care, public safety, clean energy and transportation. This brainstorming round received more than 300 submissions examined by 38 expert judges, who awarded the eight winning teams prizes ranging from $1,000 to $5,000.

It's raining innovators across college campuses in Kerala. Bringing to the limelight some of the brilliant ideas and innovative projects from campuses is a unique initiative by Startup Village, India's first telecom incubator.

Promoted by the Department of Science and Technology, Technopark Trivandrum and founders of MobME Wireless with Kris, co-founder of Infosys as the chief mentor, the initiative, has launched an ambitious talent hunt.

The world may be getting flatter but a recent report by human resources firm Kelly Services on recruitment in the Asia-Pacific countries suggests that HR professionals need to devise “distinct, and often quite different, hiring, retention and reward strategies in different regions.” As Martin Nicholls, vice president of global solutions and services for Asia Pacific at Kelly Services notes, “As globalization increases, I guess the gap will narrow, but it’s pretty wide as of now.”

According to R. Ravi Kumar, professor of organizational behavior and human resources management at the Indian Institute of Management in Bangalore, culture-specific behavior has decreased as the workforce has become more globally-distributed. He predicts that in the future, “HR practices will get more and more standardized. However, culture-specific behavior will never be negligible, and however diminishing, it will remain vital.”

The tech boom in the San Francisco Bay Area has created intense competition for software engineers. Kids straight out of college can start salary negotiations at six figures, and rents are rocketing.

Scott Hassan, an early Google engineer and now an investor and entrepreneur, thinks he has the solution for companies that think they're wasting time and money chasing new hires: make it more practical for engineers living in cheaper places to telecommute to work. His company, Suitable Technologies, has developed a roving telepresence system that is five feet, two inches tall, placing its 17-inch screen at roughly the right height for a hallway conversation. It is not the first mobile telepresence system to hit the market, but Hassan says it has features that will make it more practical and less awkward to use than previous systems.

A hundred years ago, higher education seemed on the verge of a technological revolution. The spread of a powerful new communication network—the modern postal system—had made it possible for universities to distribute their lessons beyond the bounds of their campuses. Anyone with a mailbox could enroll in a class. Frederick Jackson Turner, the famed University of Wisconsin historian, wrote that the "machinery" of distance learning would carry "irrigating streams of education into the arid regions" of the country. Sensing a historic opportunity to reach new students and garner new revenues, schools rushed to set up correspondence divisions. By the 1920s, postal courses had become a full-blown mania. Four times as many people were taking them as were enrolled in all the nation's colleges and universities combined.

Our Network continues to grow in substance and scope...  

In the meantime, take the opportunity to welcome 14 new E100 from 9 countries added to our Global Knowledge Leadership Map – now representing 201 from 69 countries! Take a look at their capabilities and aspirations to see how they dovetail with your own.    

John Werner (USA) is an activist, athlete, change agent, connector, educator, idea generator, parent, photographer, social entrepreneur, technologist and founding member and current Chief Mobilizing Officer of Citizen Schools - a thriving national educational program with over 500 employees, an annual budget of $27 million, and programs in seven states and 16 cities. He is also the curator of TEDx Beacon Street - a unique blend of inspiring talks, stunning performances, and interactive Adventures.

BRUSSELS: The EU executive called Wednesday for a huge increase in investment in the cultural and creative industries, which account for up to 8.5 million jobs, saying they are a key motor for Europe's growth.  

Culture Commissioner Androulla Vassiliou, who wants a 37 percent hike in the next seven-year EU budget, believes Europe needs to maintain its edge in the cultural and creative field due to their impact on innovation as well as tourism, fashion and other high-end industries.

Not too long ago, as I was putting the final touches on a client presentation, I stumbled across a surprising observation. The best insights in my report didn’t emerge in my office, during conference calls, or at meetings. They somehow appeared in the bathroom.

Research on the nature of creativity suggests my experience isn’t all that unique. Often, the most effective way of solving a difficult problem is simply walking away. The moment we allow ourselves to disengage from the individual pieces of a puzzle is the moment a solution appears. It’s why Albert Einstein regularly went sailing and why Charles Darwin planned his day around a countryside stroll. Thomas Edison simply napped.

A few years ago, DisneyWorld executives were wondering what most captured the attention of toddlers and infants at their theme park and hotels in Orlando, Florida. So they hired me and a cultural anthropologist to observe them as they passed by all the costumed cast members, animated creatures, twirling rides, sweet-smelling snacks, and colorful toys. But after a couple of hours of close observation, we realized that what most captured the young children's attention wasn't Disney-conjured magic. Instead it was their parents' cell phones, especially when the parents were using them.

Those kids clearly understood what held their parents' attention — and they wanted it too. Cell phones were enticing action centers of their world as they observed it. When parents were using their phones, they were not paying complete attention to their children.