As an entrepreneur, your job is to be one step ahead of the market, always ready with the next big idea. Whether you want to design a new product or disrupt a market, you need to be able to come up with creative solutions for problems of everyday life.

Creativity often eludes us because we're accustomed to certain norms. "We're highly socialized and have fixed assumptions about what the world looks like," says Barry Staw, an organizational behaviorist at University of California, Berkeley. "You have to try to envision another world."

To coincide with National Preparedness Month, the International Economic Development Council (IEDC) has just launched the newly redesigned RestoreYourEconomy.org website.

IEDC developed RestoreYourEconomy.org, with funding from the U.S. Economic Development Administration, as a one-stop resource for economic development organizations and chambers of commerce seeking to assist businesses after a disaster, rebuild their local economy, and encourage resiliency among local businesses and government.

The new RestoreYourEconomy.org features:

• A new appearance, with enhanced functionality and improved navigation;
• Videos featuring interviews of economic recovery practitioners as well as recordings of training sessions;
• “Learn” section to download recent webinar recordings from IEDC’s 2012 webinar series;
• Preparedness advice on action steps to take in advance of a disaster to become more resilient;
• Recovery suggestions on how to deliver financial and technical assistance to impacted businesses, develop an economic recovery plan, and navigate federal assistance programs;
• Resources, including publications with practical advice, news articles, links to valuable websites, and free training resources;
• Case studies, featuring communities that have turned their local economies around and emerged strong and better prepared;
• “Suggest a Resource” option to submit ideas for the site.

Visit and bookmark RestoreYourEconomy.org today!

Ad company Kontera tracked data from 15,000 publishers to find out when people are using their PC versus iPhones, Android phones, and tablets, which are lumped as "mobile" in the chart below. This chart shows for each hour of the day what percentage of total mobile and PC content is consumed. As you can see, mobile usage is strongest from 6 PM to midnight. PC usage is strongest from 11 AM to 5 PM.

3. Assign Oversight and Support Responsibility to a Senior Manager When the knowledge base underlying a project is fragmented and project teams are scattered over multiple locations, miscommunication, conflict, and stalemates over crucial decision making are much more likely. Project teams often struggle to handle these problems constructively over a distance, especially when disagreements become personal, and so senior managers have to take on a formal role as arbiter, risk manager, support provider, and ultimate decision maker.

Contrast this with the more familiar world of single location projects, where senior managers can give the go-ahead to an innovation project and then step back and let the team get on with it. This hands-off approach works because on-site executives can rely on informal communication and feedback mechanisms to maintain oversight. Being on the spot, they’re more likely to become aware of difficulties early on and can intervene when necessary to resolve them.

Well-defined problems lead to breakthrough solutions. When developing new products, processes, or even businesses, most companies aren't sufficiently rigorous in defining the problems they're attempting to solve and articulating why those issues are important. Without that rigor, organizations miss opportunities, waste resources, and end up pursuing innovation initiatives that aren't aligned with their strategies. How many times have you seen a project go down one path only to realize in hindsight that it should have gone down another? How many times have you seen an innovation program deliver a seemingly breakthrough result only to find that it can't be implemented or it addresses the wrong problem? Many organizations need to become better at asking the right questions so that they tackle the right problems.

Here are three stories of organizations in very different fields that did a spectacular job of defining the problem. This in turn attracted the right kind of innovators and led to breakthrough solutions.

"There is always an easy solution to every human problem — neat, plausible, and wrong." Little did he know it when he penned these words, but journalist H.L. Mencken was tapping into the very core of behavioral decision making and the need to understand and compensate for it.

Every day, senior managers are tasked with making very significant strategic decisions for their companies, which usually require support by teams of internal and external experts and a heavy dose of research. Theoretically, knowledge-based decision making underpins every successful organization. But, as Plato pointed out, "Human behavior flows from three main sources: desire, emotion, and knowledge." First-hand experience and best sellers like Daniel Kahneman's Thinking, Fast and Slow have confirmed an even broader range of behavioral vulnerabilities and vagaries in our abilities to make decisions as human beings.

BIO President and CEO Jim Greenwood penned an op-ed for the September issue of BioPharm International on the importance of technology transfer from academia to industry, as encouraged by the Bayh-Dole Act of 1980.

The Bayh-Dole Act, which permits and encourages industry to partner with research universities to turn federally-funded basic research into new and valuable products, is a critical factor in driving America’s innovation economy. Because of this legislation, the U.S. leads the world in commercializing university-based research to create new companies and good, high-paying jobs throughout the country.

Small businesses are lacking imagination and rely on bank overdrafts or personal cash for additional funding when other options are available, according to research by information company Experian.

A survey of  300 SMEs looking at how and why they have sought additional finance revealed that information about alternative sources of finance are yet to make any significant impact on many directors.

The biggest reason young, talented workers leave for new jobs? They’re not learning enough, writes Diane Stafford of the Kansas City Star: “Hirers often complain that their young workers jump ship quickly. A study published this summer in the Harvard Business Review confirmed that young top performers—the workers that organizations would most like to stick around—are leaving in droves.

Investing in entrepreneurs and startups is a fun but different world from investing in conventional stocks, bonds, and commodities. First of all, it’s more of an investment in people than in a business, since the startup is usually an idea barely half-baked when they need your money. Secondly, the risk is very high, since as many as 90% of startups fail in the first five years.

On the plus side, it’s an opportunity to get in early and really help make things happen that will change an industry, or change the world. It’s an opportunity for that “big bang” return of 10X to 100 times your initial investment, like early investors in Google, Microsoft, and Apple. Finally, it’s an opportunity to “give back” what you have learned in your own career for the next generation.

Eight hours of sleep, researchers say, will make you thinner, happier, smarter, hornier and richer. We post a lot of infographics on how Americans should get more sleep. But here's the thing. It was revealed in an extensive time use survey by the Bureau of Labor Statistics that most Americans are getting TOO MUCH sleep.

Plenty of people go on business lunches, but not everyone has mastered them. Think about it: Pick the wrong venue and you can send the wrong message. Pick the wrong dish and you can look distracted. Pick up (or don't pick up) the wrong check and you can just look rude.

“Mamas don’t let your babies grow up to start construction companies,” could be the first line of a country song about new business failure rates. Five years after starting, the share of mining companies remaining alive is nearly 15 percentage points higher than the fraction of construction businesses still in operation (52.3 percent versus 36.4 percent).

In the figure above, I have plotted the five year survival rates for new companies founded in 2005 using data from the Census Bureau’s Business Dynamics Statistics.

While there are many sources of data on start-up failure rates, these are probably the best. They come from a longitudinal database of businesses that government economists and statisticians created by linking together annual administrative records, such as unemployment insurance filings. (The use of administrative records eliminates errors that emerge from efforts to survey company owners.)

CHATHAM, Mass. — Beachgoers on Cape Cod may have spotted several sharks this summer, but when Chris Fischer and his crew — former subjects of History channel’s “Shark Wranglers” — went looking for the great whites here this month, there were none.

For days, crew members scanned the sea from their converted crabbing vessel, the Ocearch, anchored in federal waters three miles off the Cape. They made scouting missions in smaller boats. They tossed out chum and waited, their boredom and disappointment growing as they turned to their computers or played basketball on deck.

Your eyes work with your brain to teach you about the world. You learn to recognize objects, people, and places, and you learn to imagine new things. A startup called Vicarious thinks computers could learn to do likewise, and it's building software that tries to process visual information the way the brain does.

Vicarious hopes to combine neuroscience and computer science to create a visual perception system inspired by the neocortex, the wrinkly outer portion of the brain that deals with speaking, hearing, seeing, moving, and other functions.

The Innovation Union Scoreboard 2011 is the second edition of a study carried out by the Maastricht Economic and Social Research Institute on Innovation and Technology. Both reports have been produced as part of the PRO INNO Europe Initiative, which is primarily aiming at analysing national innovation policy performance. It is explicitly stated that the views expressed by the authors does not necessarily correspond to the position of the European Commission. As its predecessor, Innovation Union Scoreboard 2011 applies a methodology based on the aggregation of 25 different indicators into one composite indicator reflecting a country’s average innovation performance and allowing comparative assessment of strengths and weaknesses of particular innovation systems. To ensure comparability, data about the state of art in regards to human resources, financial support, entrepreneurial activity, investments, generated intellectual property, etc. is taken mainly from the Eurostat database, but also from internationally recognised sources such as OECD, Science Metrix, Scopus, and Thomson Reuters. Due to a time lag in data availability the report reflects performance in 2009/2010. The information about the innovation performance, segmented into 8 different innovation dimensions, is ideally suited for policy-makers to draw conclusions about where they should direct their efforts at in order to close the gap between their country and the innovation leaders. Even though some of the areas where development is lagging behind can not be easily and directly influenced by policy interventions, the well-structured, reliable and comparable information in the report facilitate the policy discussions.

The inaugural Baltimore Innovation Week continues this week, with events being put on by the Greater Baltimore Technology Council, Venture for America, Startup Weekend and more. Check the Innovation Week calendar, or read on below to figure out which events to attend.

Social Enterprise Alliance Mid-Atlantic Summit: Held at the University of Baltimore’s Thumel Business Center, the Social Enterprise Alliance Summit will bring together practitioners and researchers in the relatively new field of social enterprise—businesses whose “primary purpose is the common good.”Monday, Sept. 24, 8 a.m. Thumel Business Center at the University of Baltimore, 11 W. Mt. Royal Ave., Mount Vernon, Baltimore city. RSVP. $50.

The university startup sector has been showing a lot of interest in the crowdfunding model as a funding model for university startups. The JOBS Act provides a mechanism for raising capital for startups using a crowdfunding model. The SEC must put regulations in place by the end of 2012 which will spell out details of the process. Companies such as Kickstarter have been providing a platform for crowdfunding for artistic and charity projects since 2009, but contributors do not receive equity.

So, will the crowdfunding model work for university startups? University spinout founders need to realize that they will face the same challenges as other startups seeking to raise capital. As crowdfunding platforms become prolific, many startups will try to use the model. Investors will seek out those startups with the most favorable risk return balance – favoring businesses with strong growth prospects, an experienced management team and low risk technology.

Having a big brand behind your startup can do a lot for a company’s name. Pepsi — one of the biggest names in the world — launched an incubator in Brazil today, helping local entrepreneurs create companies, while using their sprightly teams for PepsiCo-brand marketing projects.

The incubator program is called PepsiCo10 and will accept business proposals from students to businessmen who provide “emerging technologies that can be applied to brands to engage consumers in new ways to help drive sales.” The program was originally launched in 2010 in the United States and was later expanded into the United Kingdom and broader Europe.

(MoneyWatch) I'm incredulous when I read or hear people talking about some kind of prototypical entrepreneurial profile. Many well-meaning experts, and even empirical research, would have you believe that most successful entrepreneurs fit an identifiable personal mold. But based on my own experience, and my associations with many entrepreneurs -- both successful and not so much -- over two decades, this is simply not true. Some common myths and misconceptions about the personality of entrepreneurs:

The risk-taker myth: This is the classic notion that entrepreneurs are big risk-takers. Certainly some are -- starting a business is inherently, and statistically, risky in and of itself. But the majority I've known are, in fact, quite risk-averse. Or more accurately, they're willing to take necessary risks that they can stomach. Many have no choice but to personally guarantee loans, putting their savings and even their homes on the line. Aside from the risk of outright failure, such extreme personal leverage is often the biggest gamble a small business founder will want or need to take. For sure, there are "skydivers" and all-in gamblers out there who will wager not only their own money, but that of others as well, sometimes on long-shot ideas. But in the great landscape of small business, they are the exception and not the rule.