32 years.  Been nose to the grindstone — chasing the dream.  What dream?  Well, the dream of an entrepreneur.  You see, I really started when I was 14 years old.  Hauling a bunch of glassware down to the swapmeet, all purchased at a discount.  Going to resell it and double my money.

Of course, at 14 years of age, your mom or dad is playing taxi driver.  But there I was, standing behind a folding table, pitching my wares to anyone passing by.  Could hardly believe I could do something like this.  You know, playing little entrepreneur.  What a thrill.

Google is installing super-fast fibre optic internet service in Kansas City. Will it usher in a new era in industry and society - or just enable faster web browsing and media downloads?

For technology consultant Bret Rhodus, Google's newest venture is an amazing business opportunity.

"This can be a game-changer," he says. "The opportunity for entrepreneurs is significant."

For art supply clerk Danni Parelman, however, it's just a chance to download more music.

The California internet giant has begun installing fibre optic cable that will give Kansas City residents download speeds of up to 1Gbps - about 100 times faster than the broadband internet service currently available to most Americans.

Curiosity, Creativity and Innovation have become sexy topics in the business community, business schools and the business press over the past decade.  Following are a handful of examples from some recent articles:

“Innovation.  These days, there’s hardly a mission statement that doesn’t include it, or a CEO who doesn’t promote it.“

What Innovation? Stop Trying So Hard (Goman, Carol Kinsey. Forbes, 2/21/2012)

In 1999, I wrote a tongue-in-cheek blues song called The Email Blues. My purpose was to poke fun at some of the email madness going on at that time.

It's 13 years later now and the email scene has become even weirder.

If I was going to write a sequel, it wouldn't be the blues, it would be the black and blues -- because that's how bruised most of us are feeling these days about email.

Bruised, abused, and beat up.

What qualities define the innovation economy? Which cities, which countries, will emerge as the Future 20 innovation economies? How can your startup, your multinational develop connections with them? Will future growth come from new innovation economy enterprises? How can we harness the power of social media data to create smarter innovations? Which cleantech innovations are delivering meaningful outcomes? What's next for smarter farming? Who are the world's game changers in mobility, energy, and life sciences?

These questions set the scene for The World Summit on Innovation & Entrepreneurship (THEWSIE), taking place in Boston, Massachusetts - America's leading innovation city - on September 26-28, 2012.

Now that we've all recovered after staying up too late Sunday night watching Billy Crystal simultaneously recognize and lampoon this year's big screen bests, I find myself wondering: Who would we ceremoniously lavish with praise in the entrepreneurial world? Who among the investors, entrepreneurs and advisors should be specially commended for their startup savvy and used as a benchmark for performers in years to come?

I think you'd start with the "best supporting" category and look at the law firms, investors, Board members, informal mentors, and other partners that provide the needed grease to help propel fledgling startups into the spotlight. Like the talented and long unrecognized Christopher Plummer, there are many prestigious firms and individuals who have built long careers helping individuals and companies improve their performance. As one of the first people engaged in the venture capital industry, David Morgenthaler has a body of support work worthy of an award. David's efforts to help accelerate entrepreneurs date back to the 1970s when he recognized the future of personal computing and placed his confidence in Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak. Although now retired from investing through his firm, Morgenthaler Ventures, he continues to actively contribute not only to the venture capital industry but also to the entrepreneurial ecosystem in emerging markets like his adopted hometown of Cleveland, Ohio.

As the parent of a 7 year old, it is my duty to ensure that my son has the best opportunity to become a well rounded, participating member of society. To do this, I find myself investing in his education early on. If someone would have told me that I would be spending what could amount to someone's college tuition on educating a child in primary school, I would have laughed at the thought. This however, is my reality. I am sure I am not alone. There are many parents who also want their children to have the best chance at success and are also investing in their education, starting as early as kindergarten. It's important to remember that learning opportunities don't end when the school bell rings at the end of the day. In addition to the usual academic requirements of reading, writing, and arithmetic parents can also instill entrepreneurial values as part of their child's ‘informal' education.

Citizens in Chattanooga, Tennessee, have access to one-gigabit-per-second Internet—that's 100 times the U.S. national average, and fast enough to download a two-hour movie in about five seconds. The only question is: what to do with it?

The city is hoping a contest with $300,000 in prize money will help answer that question. Entrants are invited to come up with clever ways of making use of the city's blisteringly fast Internet, which was installed in late 2010 with a $111 million U.S. Department of Energy grant, as part of federal stimulus efforts that also built out the city utility's long-planned smart grid.

In March of 2008, Perry Chen contacted me to ask for my help with fundraising--not the kind of crowd fundraising that he specializes in--but venture capital.  It was before Kickstarter got its "e" and it was spelled "Kickstartr."  I don't think it had even launched publically at the time.

I wasn't at a venture capital firm at the time, but since I had worked for USV and had also raised an angel round myself, a lot of people used to ask me about how to raise money.

When Perry first pitched, Kickstartr was about bands raising money to cut their next album.  That didn't sound like a huge business to me, because the dollar amounts raised wouldn't be very big and I didn't want to count on a bunch of bands to be successful fundraisers.

As the European e-Skills Week 2012 Campaign ramps up – backed by the European Commission ramps up across Europe – we are launching the Project Passion competition, a chance for young people to show your talent to the world and kick-start your career!

European e-Skills Week is an awareness raising campaign that is about putting the spotlight on the growing need get e-Skills and get a job.  The e-Skills Week Campaign is about inspiring a generation of young people to get digital and find their first job, e-Skilled and develop your business potential, or choose a career creative and inspiring career path. Each category winner in the Project Passion competition will receive a cash prize of €2.150, and runners’ up will win €1.000. First place prize winners will also receive an Xbox or Kinect, a Lumia smart phone from Nokia and paid internships/ shadowing opportunities in very cool companies to kick-start your career. Imagine being paid to do what you love!

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) today announced a new partnership to establish the National Cybersecurity Center of Excellence, a public-private collaboration for accelerating the widespread adoption of integrated cybersecurity tools and technologies. The State of Maryland and Montgomery County, Md., are co-sponsoring the center with NIST, which will work to strengthen U.S. economic growth by supporting automated and trustworthy e-government and e-commerce.

U.S. Senator for Maryland Barbara Mikulski, Maryland Lt. Governor Anthony Brown and Montgomery County Executive Isiah Leggett were at NIST today to announce the partnership with Under Secretary of Commerce for Standards and Technology and NIST Director Patrick Gallagher.

The lifelong mental benefits of exercising have long been known, from improving learning in kids to staving off dementia in seniors. Yet how working up a sweat leads to better cognition is much less clear. A study in the Journal of Applied Physiology reveals that the key may lie in the body’s power supply.

Just as a booming metropolis might build new power plants to meet a rising need for electricity, our muscles respond to the demands of exercise by producing new mitochondria, the tiny structures inside cells that supply the body with energy. J. Mark Davis, a physiolo- gist at the University of South Carolina, and his colleagues wondered if brain cells might do the same thing. While studying mice, they found that quantities of a signaling molecule, dubbed by researchers “a master regulator” of mitochondria production, increased in the brain after half an hour a day of treadmill running. The mice’s brain cells also had more mitochondrial DNA—distinct from the regular cellular DNA found in the nucleus—providing “gold standard” evidence of more mitochondria. It appears that the brain “adapts and changes by bringing more of these power­houses” online, Davis says. The increased energy supply allows the brain to work faster and more efficiently.

Do you have an appetite for some fresh fodder to spark your innovative ideas? This week, I’m highlighting three very different innovation blogs. Digest their content, and you’ll be feasting on a well-rounded diet of innovative insights.

InnovToday

Start off with an “appetizer” at InnovToday, where the authors explain that entries are purposefully kept brief “to provide readers with food for thought in a concentrated form.” Blogger Yann Cramer is an innovation learner, practitioner, writer and speaker; his blogging partner, Roobini Aruleswaran is a writer and poet. Their goal? To provide individuals, managers and leaders with insights and stories to help them fulfill their innovation potential more confidently and effectively.

ASU Venture Catalyst, part of ASU SkySong, has officially launched the 2012 application for the Edson Student Entrepreneur competition, to find and support the best new and innovative student startups in Arizona State University. Now entering its eight year, the Edson Student Entrepreneurship Initiative is the University’s premier student startup competition, and one of the largest privately funded business plan competitions at a U.S. university.

“We are thrilled to announce the launch of our 2012 application. Students can win up to $20,000 in funding as well as mentoring and office space to advance their venture ideas. More importantly, we have added over 70 leading mentors to the program in the last 8 months, including mentors in Silicon Valley, New York and Europe,” said Brent Sebold, Venture Manager for the Edson program. “We plan to build on the success of this past year's Edson cohort which included three of the five finalists in Entrepreneur Magazine's “College Entrepreneur of the Year” award and the eventual overall winner, G3Box,” he added.

It’s official: social media is here to stay, and companies late to jump on the social train are scrambling to snatch up the social butterflies of the online world to humanize their brands.

With the ad-skipping mentality and technologies available to customers today, soft-sell social marketing seems to be the saving grace of the advertising world. Customers now opt to do their own research instead of being bombarded with annoying, impersonal ads – so someone had better be at the helm when customers come calling. Employees are jumping at the chance to be that social helmsman, too. With perks like working from home or a coffee shop and bragging to their friends how they are professional Facebookers, social media jobs equate to a win-win situation and business is a boomin’.

After working over the past two years to help tech startups get started in San Diego, Brant Cooper tells me he’s sensing “a global renaissance in entrepreneurship.” It sure seems that way, if the attendance at a recent San Diego Tech Founders “demo night” is any guide.

San Diego Tech Founders is a virtual grassroots organization that Cooper created a couple of years ago for local tech entrepreneurs on Meetup Group, the social networking platform that makes it easy for people with common interests or issues to get together. It’s only loosely organized, and not well-funded. If there was no Meetup Group, Tech Founders probably wouldn’t exist. Nevertheless, it has become a magnet for a restless demographic in San Diego, young and tech-savvy adults who live online and who want to figure out a way to also earn a living on the Web. More than 900 people are registered members.

Imagine that you wanted a new home theater system. But instead of spending hours in Best Buy or on Amazon comparing configurations and assembling the parts you needed, you could signal what you wanted and a company would create it for you. You might simply Pinterest the elements you liked, including information about your space or noise limitations ("One-bedroom apartment on busy street in New York," or "suburban space that needs stuff protected from little kids"), and then have a retailer give you a personalized, optimal configuration.

Right now, social is largely seen as a way to amplify messages ("Like" us on Facebook!) or to create conversations around customer service ("We're so sorry you're having a problem," the persistent tweet from @ComcastCares). These two key functions — Marketing and Service — are regularly discussed as shaped by social era dynamics.

DreamIt Ventures, the startup incubator with programs in place in New York, Philadelphia, and, most recently, Israel, is announcing a year-long minority accelerator program called DreamIt Access. The program, launched with Comcast Ventures as its first investor, plans to launch 15 minority-led startups over the course of the next 12 months, starting with five companies participating in DreamIt NYC during summer 2012.

Like most startup accelerators, DreamIt Access is about providing expertise, mentorship, office space, community, access to investors, and various discounted and/or free services that help startups get off the ground. But unlike NewME, the minority-focused accelerator based in Silicon Valley, DreamIt Access participants will receive funding thanks to Comcast’s investment. Companies will receive up to $25,000 – that’s $5,000 for the startup, plus $5,000 for each founder up to four.

Startups have become the darling children of the world, it seems. Aspiring Mark Zuckerbergs, Caterina Fakes and Jack Dorseys are eager to launch the next big thing.

This rising entrepreneurial tide is having an impact on all sectors. The latest generation to enter the work force arrives at a time of high unemployment. Its members see large problems that need to be fixed, and often, they have little faith in incumbent institutions’ ability to solve them. In an attempt to change the world, these aspiring entrepreneurs are choosing to launch new ventures, for profit and non-profit, that embrace transparency, agility and innovation.

Pop quiz, hotshot: What’s the most important skill you must have in order to be successful as an entrepreneur, especially in an online business?

Is it salesmanship? Is it social media savvy, or SEO knowledge?

Is it writing and content marketing? (Because I know a great blog about that.)

Or is it tech stuff, like the ability to set up and manage a functional website, capture leads, manage an email list, and so on?