Jeanie Nobis got laid off twice in five months — from the same job.

"I got laid off in August" 2008, she said. "... And then they called me back."

Nobis was rehired by the metal production company she'd worked at for the fall and holiday seasons. Then, in January 2009, she lost her job for good.

Her mother-in-law, Barbara Nobis, owns Grandma Barb's Pies. The two live next door to each other. While she was still employed, Jeanie Nobis liked to help her mother-in-law bake goods to be sold at local farmers markets.

Entrepreneurship may be connected to a region's underlying creativity, especially in arts and media, a new study finds.

The study, by Martin Prosperity Institute colleague Kevin Stolarick, José Lobo of Arizona State University, and Deborah Strumsky of the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, examines the possible connection between the creative class and levels of entrepreneurial business formation across metro regions.

Recent McKinsey research on the supply-and-demand outlook for energy, food, steel, and water suggests that without a step change in resource productivity and a technology-enhanced expansion of supply, the world economy could be entering an era of high and volatile resource prices. Nothing less than a resource revolution is needed, but that’s within reach: as the exhibit below shows, 15 resource productivity priorities represent 75 percent of the total productivity prize. To learn more about opportunities that will help some companies to build profitable businesses and others to control their costs and risks, read “Mobilizing for a resource revolution” (January 2012).

The question of how to grow U.S. innovation and, in so doing, sharpen the nation’s competitive edge is one for which there are myriad answers. Is the solution improving the patent laws, changing the immigration laws, upending the educational system — or, perhaps, all of the above?

The Washington Post invites you to share your ideas for how best to encourage U.S. innovation. It’s a problem for which nearly everyone has a solution, but now is your chance to put your ideas up against others’ and endorse ideas that you support. That’s right: We’re crowdsourcing the solution to improving America’s ability to generate the next great inventions.

A recent study published in an American Psychological Association journal, Emotion, suggests that early birds are generally happier than night owls.

More than 700 respondents, ranging from ages 17 to 79, were surveyed and asked about their emotional state, health, and preferred time of day.

Self-professed "morning people" reported feeling happier and healthier than night owls. Researchers hypothesize that one of the reasons could be because society caters to a morning person's schedule.

In the last 14 years, the amount of money requested in grant applications to the National Institutes of Health (NIH) has risen from $4.4 billion to more than $13 billion. The main contributing factor for that increase, according to a blog post by Sally Rockey, the NIH’s Deputy Director for Extramural Research, is the near doubling of the number of applicants—from 19,000 in 1998 to around 32,000 in 2011.

“These results are not unexpected, but it is interesting to see the actual numbers,” Rockey wrote. “And this information helps define the biomedical research enterprise that interacts with NIH.”

To build an innovation ecosystem out of nothing, it’s commonly believed there’s an unwritten recipe which goes something like this: first take a large university engineering department, mix in 1 part venture capital and 1 part government funding, stir, and shape into an incubator.  Layer a handful of startups on top, and bake for 3 months, liberally applying media coverage at regular intervals. At the end of 3 months, remove from incubator, and repeat with a new batch. After a year, a brand new Silicon Valley is ready. 

A nonprofit in Thailand is transforming remote communities along the Myanmar border by supplying them with off-grid energy.

The three-martini lunch has gone out of vogue in the recent years, but maybe, just maybe, it's time to return to the time-honored vermouth- and gin-soaked tradition of the 1940s, '50s and '60s.

Going back to the liver-pickling lunch tradition may improve the creativity and problem-solving abilities of America's professionals while helping to offset some of the pain caused by the post-recession hangover. Moreover, the art of the martini has never been more alive in our great metropolises than it is today. What better time is there to experience great art than during your lunch break?

At the Iowa State Fair, a vast wonderland of sweets and deep-fried treats. Emma Wagler, 9, eats a caramel apple as she explores the fair with her mother, Stephanie, and sisters Isabell and Sophia (who are eating apple slices with a dipping sauce). 

Small business owners know that their customers are headed online. That’s why you’re working hard to create a Web site that attracts customers, understands their problems, and sets your business up as the answer to that problem. But how do you know if your site is working? If it’s meeting the objectives you originally set out and if you’re connecting with your customers?

You could guess or you use Web Analytics to help you understand exactly what is happening on your Web site.

If you’re a site owner and you don’t have an analytics platform running (Google Analytics is powerful and free), you’re missing out on all the ways analytics can help grow your business. How can it do that?

What would happen if painter Claude Monet were to start a company? If sculptor Auguste Rodin molded a business plan? If Maya Lin, creator of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, led a corporate retreat?

Turns out, today's worker can learn plenty from history's best innovators, say Michael O'Malley and William Baker, authors of "Every Leader Is an Artist."

"Great art and leadership are culminations of hundreds of minute decisions that largely are guided by taste and judgment," O'Malley told IBD.

We have investments in a lot of companies that are growing very quickly. They end up on the calling (now emailing) lists for a bunch of VC firms who have an outbound deal flow program. These emails ofter appear immediately after a large financing is announced.

Recently, I’ve been forwarded a few of these emails from CEOs of companies I’m an investor in with the question “how do I deal with this?” I realized I was giving the same advice each time so I figured it was time for a blog post on the issue.

One of the toughest and yet most important questions you will be asked by savvy potential startup investors is “What is your sustainable competitive advantage?” Yet many entrepreneurs, maybe in their passion for their new product, gloss over this one, or even announce that they have no competition.

Think about each of the three words for the full meaning of the phrase. “Sustainable” means over the longer term – not just today. First to market, for example, is not sustainable. It may buy you a few months, but if you show traction, competitors with deep pockets will catch up and bypass you quickly, jeopardizing all your investments.

One of Tallinn's most high-profile technology business centers, the Tehnopol Science Park, opened a new incubator on August 14 aimed specifically at helping fledgling tech companies get off the ground. The Tehnopol Startup Incubator offers 800 square meters of office space, meeting rooms and demo rooms - enough to accommodate 16 new enterprises and a total of 60 people, Tehnopol said in a release.

For an aspiring entrepreneur, gaining admission to DreamIt Ventures, an Israeli “startup accelerator” that provides seed funding, mentorship, work space and advice from accountants and lawyers in exchange for 9 percent of the startup’s common stock, is a big coup.

So when Nuseir Yassin, 20, a rising sophomore at Harvard who was born and raised in the Israeli village of Arraba, won a spot in DreamIt’s New York City summer program with a mix of Israeli and other fledgling companies, he couldn’t have been happier.

America’s upstairs neighbor, Canada, is developing more support for its rising women entrepreneurs and minorities thanks to a mentorship program that will assist them with starting tech companies.

Driven Accelerator Group offers 12-week winter and summer programs for individuals with early stage tech start-up companies and who they identify as having high potential for a successful digital business. Based in Toronto, Driven Accelerator’s team of mentors provide weekly workshops on running companies efficiently, access to software developers who test digital prototypes and organize a demo-day to make five-minute pitches to Toronto’s top investors.

Name: JOLT Accelerator Program

Team: Sue McGill, Krista Jones, Kerri Golden, Barry Gekiere, Sarah Katyal

Category: IT, Communications & Entertainment

Website: www.joltco.ca

Year Founded: April 2011

JOLT HQ: MaRS Commons, Toronto

About JOLT: JOLT is MaRS Discovery District’s first early-stage accelerator program dedicated to building high-growth web and mobile startups that promise to transform the way consumers and businesses interact with technology.

JOLT is more than a program; it is an innovation model — we accelerate the R&D process and transform how web and mobile products and services make their way into the market.

Searching for patterns in these relationships, Robert Moore, co-founder and CEO of venture-backed data-analytics company RJMetrics, crunched Crunchbase, a public database of VC deals. In a blog post published today, he says that that well-known firms such as Accel Partners, First Round Capital and Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers tend to invest with a tight circle of friends.

Benchmark Capital shares 36 investments with DAG Ventures, which rarely invests in a company alone. At the other end of the spectrum, Edison Venture Fund invested alone in 53% of its companies.

In its latest report card for Canada, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), noted Canada’s inability to bridge its stubborn commercialization gap. The extensive document noted there has been a visible shift in government policy away from funding core operating activities and toward sponsored research.

Research, of course, is necessary to generate innovation. However, little of Canada’s research ever reaches the commercial market. The trouble, says the OECD, is that there is a lack of alignment between the research being performed at the academic level and the needs and demands of industry. As such, the international body recommends providing greater incentives to academics to ensure their research is “relevant to business needs,” including an offer of some form of ownership over the final, commercialized product.