In early 2012 I started researching all the biggest providers of crowdfunding services, and hadn’t even heard of some of the companies I researched. Life seemed to evolve around the single biggest player, Kickstarter, with others far behind. What I realized during my research, was the small players are going to stay small, while the major players are going to grow exponentially as crowdfunding matures. With crowdfunding holding such strong roots to “crowds,” it’s an obvious assumption.

One of the companies I discovered, GoFundMe - a Cinderella of the crowdfunding world if you will, has shown great strides in pulling away from the pack. In the past 6 months alone, they’ve tripled their revenue. Now they are a partner of ours - and rightfully so, because we only partner with winners - but their metrics speak for themselves.

Tandem Capital, the Silicon Valley startup accelerator that focuses exclusively on early-stage mobile businesses, is today revealing the six companies that are participating in its most recent batch. The seed fund and accelerator raised its second, $32 million fund in June, which it uses to offer $200K convertible notes (in exchange for 10 percent equity) to the startups participating in its accelerator. Like other accelerators, Tandem works closely with its startups on everything from strategy to product design and marketing, offers free work space and daily meeting.

Unlike the many others in the space, however, it keeps its batches small (generally two to six teams) in the belief that smaller class sizes mean higher returns and success rates. Its program is also 6-months long, although this tends to be open-ended, as there’s no demo day or graduation day and entrepreneurs are given the choice to remain at Tandem’s headquarters after the program ends.

Since Kickstarter’s inception three years ago, 30,000 projects have been backed by more than two million people, the company reports. But these are the success stories of Kickstarter, so what about the failures?

The company — built on the concept of crowd sourcing funds for innovative, avant-garde, unexpected and often unimaginable projects — has made its stake as a platform where inventors can take chances.

“The fact that Kickstarter allows creators to take risks and attempt to create something ambitious is a feature, not a bug,” Kickstarter’s blog states. “Some creators get in over their heads dealing with processes that are new to them.”

Open-source innovation and “crowdsourcing” have become increasingly common in many industries. If yours is among them, you should know whether the interests of firms that supply it with proprietary solutions are likely to clash with those of companies that use open-source ones instead. A McKinsey team suggests that you find out by asking three questions. To learn what they are—and for a general framework to help you understand the answers—read “Managing the business risks of open innovation” (January 2012).

Canada is the once-upon-a-time country, start of countless stories of invention and aspiration.

How else to explain this nation’s ability to punch so far above its weight on the world stage since confederation.

Think of the innovation Canada has delivered in that short time, the creativity that helps define a prosperous, energetic and forward looking people.

Simple things like the humble zipper. It was a Canadian innovation, patented in 1917 by one Gideon Sundback.

I JUST arrived in Shanghai, but I’m thinking about Estonia and wondering about something Presidents Clinton and Obama have been saying.

Wired magazine reported last week that public schools in Estonia are establishing a program for teaching first graders — and kids in all other grades — how to do computer programming. Wired said that the curriculum was created “because of the difficulty Estonian companies face in hiring programmers. Estonia has a burgeoning tech industry thanks in part to the success of Skype, which was developed in Estonia in 2003.”

For a few, delegating comes easily, maybe too easy. For others who are perfectionists, letting go of even the most trivial task is almost impossible. If you are in this second category, you probably don’t like the references behind your back that you are a “control freak” or a “micro-manager.”

Business school professor John Hunt notes that only 30 percent of managers think they can delegate well, and of those, only one in three is considered a good delegator by his or her subordinates. This means only about one manager in ten really knows how to empower others.

Does size matter? Apparently so — at least when it comes to getting your big idea funded by strangers.

New York, Los Angeles, and San Francisco, three of the most populated metropolitan areas in the U.S., are the top three Kickstarter cities in America when it comes to total funds raised, according to data compiled by ThingsWeStart.com. Chicago, Austin, and Boston also make the top 10 list.

As any entrepreneur knows, running a successful business takes time, effort, and commitment. Without these three factors in play, many business owners can be shown the door to failure.

According to the Small Business Administration (SBA), more than half of all small businesses close their doors in the first five years, while two-thirds are out of business after a decade. The reasons for such failures include lack of capital, poor planning, and not enough business experience. With that in mind, it’s hard for entrepreneurs to strike gold even once, but twice – that’s when the real expertise comes in.

Recent Forbes articles have offered ample discussion of the traits of a successful early stage company, but today I’d like to take a closer look at the personality strengths of the actual entrepreneur. I’ve often wondered if some personality types are better suited than others. I would maintain a definite “yes.”

Gallup Chairman and CEO Jim Clifton’s book, The Coming Jobs War, has a description for entrepreneurship—he calls it the “scarcest, rarest, hardest energy and talent in the world to find.” Forbes Contributor Dan Schwabel interviewed Jim Clifton in Oct. 2011 here. Aside from age (we’ve been talking about that quite a bit lately), educational background, and number of prior companies, successful entrepreneurs are ones who’ve learned or developed a very specific set of functional traits, Clifton maintains.

“Established technology is being given a federally funded new lease on life,” athenahealth CEO Jonathan Bush said. “Traditional health software now is on Medicare, being kept alive like grandma.” Bush dubs this program as the “cash for clunkers” program for health IT leaving no doubt what his opinion is regarding the legacy vendors’ solutions.

“I know of no industry where technology is as despised as it is in health care. It’s a statement that it took government money to incentivize healthcare providers to finally do what virtually every other industry has done .”

Prevailing business culture these days is obsessed with speed. People are obsessed with fast prototyping, failing fast, and getting to market fast. But too often people don’t stop to think whether their innovation efforts are going too fast. It’s almost as if the word premature is fast becoming as taboo in the boardroom as it is in the bedroom.

Daily life at a startup is inherently exciting. Since capital is limited, teams are small, allowing each employee to wear multiple hats and fulfill fluid job descriptions, all to reach unprecedented goals.

Brainstorming sessions are intimate, voices are heard, creativity is appreciated and innovation is implemented. It’s quite the contrast to corporate America, where endless cubicles often keep an employee’s task list monotonous.

As any entrepreneur knows, running a successful business takes time, effort, and commitment. Without these three factors in play, many business owners can be shown the door to failure.

According to the Small Business Administration (SBA),more than half of all small businesses close their doors in the first five years, while two-thirds are out of business after a decade. The reasons for such failures include lack of capital, poor planning, and not enough business experience. With that in mind, it’s hard for entrepreneurs to strike gold even once, but twice – that’s when the real expertise comes in.

“Established technology is being given a federally funded new lease on life,” athenahealth CEO Jonathan Bush said. “Traditional health software now is on Medicare, being kept alive like grandma.” Bush dubs this program as the “cash for clunkers” program for health IT leaving no doubt what his opinion is regarding the legacy vendors’ solutions.

“I know of no industry where technology is as despised as it is in health care. It’s a statement that it took government money to incentivize healthcare providers to finally do what virtually every other industry has done .”

Building and maintaining bridges across rivers, creeks, and watercourses has always been a challenge for both engineers and local governments. Witness Riley Hill, one of my distant ancestors whose low bid in 1861 to construct a bridge across Caraway Creek in Randolph County, North Carolina, won him the contract. To his dismay, the bridge fell down. Of course, he tried to collect damages from the county court, but no such luck. Sad to say, but getting wet, figuratively speaking, seems to run in the family genes.

When RIM co-founder and former University of Waterloo Chancellor Mike Lazaridis handed me my degree four years ago, the world was a very different place. BlackBerry was the world leader in smartphones, its stock was at a record high, and the company was clearly seated as the crown jewel of Canada’s tech ecosystem. It was undeniable proof that the country could build a world-class tech company.

Today, well, things have changed. Canadian Business published RIM’s obituary, and according to University of Toronto Business Professor Joseph D’Cruz, Canadian entrepreneurs “should not dance with the giants” of Silicon Valley.

Most entrepreneurs tend to avoid this area of the business, and as a result are badly surprised by cost realities, and investor expectations. They seem to think that financial projections are simply invented numbers for investors, and not useful. In reality, it’s like jumping in your car for a long hard drive with no destination in mind. Chances are, you won’t enjoy success from the trip.

What is a business financial model, really? In most cases, it is merely a Microsoft Excel spread sheet loaded with your cost and revenue projections for your startup, starting now in time and extending at five years into the future. For more value, a few variables can be added, like product volume growth rate, and number of salesmen, for “what if” analyses.

I recently came across a book that I felt would interest Forbes readers -  “Serial Innovators: How Individuals Create and Deliver Breakthrough Innovation in Mature Firms.”  As the title suggests, there’s a focus on examining what traits help individuals succeed with repeated innovations – in mature environments that may not normally be hospitable to substantive change.

“Serial Innovators” is co-authored by three professors – Abbie Griffin,  Raymond Price and Bruce Vojak.  The book was published in May 2012 by Stanford University Press.   The authors also discuss the book and their findings in a YouTube video of that same title.