According to 2011 data released on Wednesday by the U.S. Census Bureau, 15% of individuals in the United States live below the poverty line. While down from 15.1% last year, it remains statistically unchanged and near a record high. Today, more than 46 million people live in poverty in America, more than at any point in the country’s history.

However, compared to the poorest countries in the world, the poverty rate in the U.S. is relatively modest. In some countries, the poverty rate is more than five times the U.S. current figures. In Haiti, the highest in the world, 77% of residents live in poverty. Based on data from the World Bank, 24/7 Wall St. identified the 10 countries with the highest poverty rates.

Art Jacoby’s turn as chief of the Tech Council of Maryland was intended as a stop-gap gig, meant to fill the interregnum between the departure of the Old Boss and the arrival of the New Boss. This summer, the council’s board quietly made Jacoby the New Boss, dropping the “interim” of his job description.

Perhaps his promotion didn’t merit an announcement because, practically, nothing had really changed. Since his arrival in January, Jacoby has never really acted like anything but the full-time CEO.

As much as it may pain you to cede total control of the company you founded, don't become a victim of your own success--if you're dropping balls while trying to juggle the roles of founder the CEO, it's time to bring in another set of hands at the top.

It takes months--or even years--of concepts, crazy fanatical visions, and sleepless nights to morph a great idea into a successful business. As most technology vendors will tell you, a vision requires the support of a core team to foster its initial growth and turn what’s just a concept into a technology that sells.

The best leaders unite two opposing qualities: humility and confidence--both of which Abraham Lincoln had in spades.

Great leaders can create or save a country or company. Awful ones can shatter them, destroying billions of dollars or millions of lives. And, while this may seem impossible, the best and worst leaders can be surprisingly similar.

We can all think of leaders who, because they were incompetent or mad or simply evil, would have been a catastrophe under any circumstances. Many, however, fail for subtler reasons. Leaders find both their greatest successes and their greatest failures usually come from doing things that most people, in the same situation, would not do. When such decisions work out, we idolize the people who made them.

San Francisco Venture Initiation Program members have made significant progress during the summer term.  This week we highlight two ventures: CarHound and BuckSprout.

CarHound is a marketplace solution for new car buying founded by Andrew Liu (WG’12). CarHound helps make car buying painless for consumers by conducting an online reverse auction with local dealers. Customers visit CarHound.com and tell CarHound what they want, and within 48 hours CarHound finds a competitive and guaranteed out-the-door price from a local dealer. Customers simply make an appointment to go pick up their car, or with some dealers can even have the car delivered to their house!

We can thank entrepreneurs for much of the success of the global economy over the past half century. And if we're going to emerge from the worldwide economic slump, entrepreneurs will lead the way.

Most leaders and policymakers don't have a clue about what makes entrepreneurs successful.

These driven, creative individuals know plenty about battling adversity. They've overcome infrastructure and regulatory hurdles to start their businesses. Often, they've fulfilled an unsatisfied demand and, in many cases, actually built demand by introducing new products to the market.

For students who want to become entrepreneurs, Massachusetts-based Babson College ranks No. 1 for its undergraduate and graduate MBA entrepreneurship programs, according to U.S. News and World Report’s 2013 ranking of the United States’ best colleges and universities. The annual survey results were released this week.

Following Babson for second best undergrad program in entrepreneurship was Indiana University Bloomington, with Los-Angeles based University of Southern California placing third overall. For entrepreneur-focused MBA programs – which U.S. News says can help students channel creativity, participate in business plan competitions, and launch a business -- Stanford University ranked second and Harvard University third.

Tim Kane, at the Hudson Institute, has a new paper out with a simple title: “The Collapse of Startups in Job Creation”. His paper is basically a slightly politicized version of the charts put out by the Bureau of Labor Statistics last month, under the headline “Entrepreneurship and the U.S. Economy”. The first two charts are particularly striking. The first one looks at the number of startups in America — companies less than one year old.

Tech entrepreneurs take note: Convertible notes are not free money and, if not structured properly, can prevent you from raising additional financing.

Investors speaking at the TechCrunch Disrupt SF 12 conference in San Francisco this week had this gem and a few other choice observations about early-stage financing for start-ups.

“We’ve had companies come in for their Series A and not realize  that  they’d already given up 25% of their company” in the seed round,” said Sequoia Capital Partner Alfred Lin, referring to the fact that convertible notes are unpriced, but convert to equity stakes when founders go on to raise a priced Series A round. He added: “That you raise money at a higher valuation than your friend? That’s a false milestone for you.”

America isn’t what it used to be when it comes to manufacturing. In 1950, it accounted for one in every four jobs in the U.S. Now it is less than one in ten. But Willy Shih, professor of management practice at Harvard University, argues that these jobs are critical to the economy and innovation in technology markets. Shih was part of a group of Harvard Business School professors who came to Silicon Valley this week to convince the region’s leaders that America’s competitiveness is slipping. Sure the region is creating plenty of jobs in social networking and apps, but that’s not going to save the country. So says Shih, a self-described “hardcore manufacturing guy.”

Fifteen professors created reports on the subject and found in an October 2011 survey of 10,000 HBS alumni across the economy that 71 percent of respondents expect U.S. competitiveness to decline over the next three years. About 1,700 of the respondents had to personally make decisions about whether to leave the U.S. for jobs overseas. That’s pretty bleak. Much of the blame falls not only on education but the U.S. tax code, political system, structural deficits, the costs healthcare, manufacturing policies, and immigration issues. But Shih believes that getting an understanding of the complex issues is critical to fixing them.

The third in a series of regional public workshops to gather ideas for the National Network for Manufacturing Innovation (NNMI) will take place Thursday, September 27, 2012, at the Arnold and Mabel Beckman Center of the National Academies of Sciences and Engineering in Irvine, California.

The NNMI is a collaborative effort announced by President Obama in March 2012 with the goal of improving the U.S. manufacturing sector’s competitiveness and innovation performance, focusing on the scale-up of new product and process technologies.

Invited speakers to the September 27 workshop will include industry executives, local and state leaders, and administration officials. The workshop will also feature interactive discussion sessions on topics key to the success of the NNMI and the proposed Institutes for Manufacturing Innovation.

Online pre-registration is open until September 18, 2012. Registration after this date is on a first-come, first-serve basis, should space remain available. Early registration is encouraged. For more information, contact Calit2 – University of California Irvine at (949) 824-9622, or email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

To register, go to www.manufacturing.gov/amp/event_092712.html

Please feel free to share this invite.

Mention Apple, Facebook, Google and Amazon, and their transformational innovations immediately come to mind. Not surprisingly, they're ranked one-through-four on Fast Company's 2012 "World's Most Innovative Companies" list. All are also on "The 50 Most Innovative Companies in 2012" list put out by MIT's Technology Review except Amazon; it was eliminated in the 11th hour this year for the disappointing reviews of its Kindle Fire, and will undoubtedly be back next year. But these lists can be misleading; the omnipresent public personae of these companies lead us to sometimes forget that innovation starts small, and has simplicity at its core.

With all the news we see daily about their new introductions, profits, stock prices, gigantic new campuses and more, it's easy to forget that all of these companies began life with very poignant and simple missions. Their initial innovations, regardless of the complex algorithms or the fancy programming, adhered to fundamental principles around simplicity of design, use and purpose. Great innovators, and those that tend to sustain innovation, cut through complexity to clear the way for their fervent mission. They have what we should call high Innovation IQ.

Innovation is key to a company's survival, regardless of the size or type of organization. But there are many myths and common misconceptions when it comes to how innovation is achieved. Many people think innovation is all about generating ideas, or ideation. While it's true that every innovation must start with an idea, it is actually the delivery and execution of processes that lead to sustained Innovation. In fact, when it comes to achieving a culture of innovation, execution may be the biggest challenge.

This Forbes article offers some food for thought regarding other common myths about innovation:

1. A great leader never fails at innovation. This is certainly a myth because without risk, there can be no innovation and that means failures will inevitably come along the way. Innovation is too much for one leader to tackle alone, so in turn leaders should practice a tolerance for failure and an enthusiasm for risk taking throughout the organization. Make failure a learning experience!

When he came to Wharton, Dean Thomas Robertson outlined a vision of business as a tool for advancing society and creating economic opportunity for all people.  It’s a wonderful and high-minded ideal and one that I believe to be true.

In many ways, the transformative power of business is encapsulated in microfinance institutions (MFIs) – hybrid organizations that adopt business principles to address poverty by making small loans to impoverished people.  Over the last 20 years, microfinance has become a globally popular anti-poverty intervention and a great example of how business acumen can be applied to help address social problems in sustainable ways.  It is also an area that has benefited from the ingenuity of Wharton student Charlie Javice (Wharton Undergrad Class of 2014), and her team, who have launched PoverUP to help take the microfinance model in exciting new directions.

Best effort:

·      Mentors will make their best effort to provide good and timely advice to student project teams.

Confidentiality:

·   Mentors will maintain the confidentiality of any proprietary information of the student teams. They will act as though they are bound by a standard non-disclosure agreement.

Israel is a first-tier innovation hub, second in the world only to Silicon Valley in its concentration of start-up companies.

However, it seems as though European companies have yet to get that message. US companies and investment funds currently make the vast majority of all investments in the Israeli market.

Conservation scientists have released a list of the 100 most threatened species in the world, which are likely to go extinct if immediate actions aren't taken, they say.

The list was released today (Sept. 11) in a presentation at the World Conservation Congress in Jeju, South Korea, and compiled by more than 8,000 scientists affiliated with the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN).

The 100 most threatened species, from 48 different countries, will be first in line to disappear completely if nothing is done to protect them, according to a release from the Zoological Society of London, whose scientists were involved in producing the list.

Startup accelerator DreamIt Ventures targeted Austin, Tex. for its next expansion back in July, but now it has a home within the city.

The accelerator program’s companies will now be housed at the Capital Factory, a co-working space that many consider the heart of Austin’s tech community.

DreamIt has launched 80 companies since 2008, including SCVNGR/LevelUp, SeatGeek, Adaptly, Notehall and others. It plans to add another 39 companies over the next year, with about 10 from Austin. The Austin accelerator program, announced back in July, will help groom startups leading up to the city’s South by Southwest (SXSW) event in March. To get into the program, you must be an Austin resident (or be willing to relocate for the duration of the program). Applications are being accepted through Oct. 26, with the program kicking off in December.

New research out of BYU shows that 45 minutes of moderate-to-vigorous exercise in the morning actually reduces a person’s motivation for food.

Professors James LeCheminant and Michael Larson measured the neural activity of 35 women while they viewed food images, both following a morning of exercise and a morning without exercise. They found their attentional response to the food pictures decreased after the brisk workout.

A European Commission survey of some of Europe's top corporate investors in R&D has found they intend to carry on investing despite the ongoing economic crisis.

The survey illustrates the importance that these companies place on R&D as a key factor for their future growth and prosperity, according to the Commission. The front runner is the software and computer services sector, which expects R&D investment to grow by 11 per cent per year on average. In-house R&D is seen as the most relevant driver of innovation by the surveyed companies, followed by market research and related activities for new product introduction.