Last week, in a well-reported address, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg made an impassioned argument that stimulating innovation is an essential federal economic role around which Democrats and Republicans can and should find common ground. Bloomberg called innovation “capitalism’s most powerful force” and said “Unless we innovate, we cannot hope to succeed. And if we do innovate, there is no way we can fail.”

The mayor then laid out six steps towards creating an innovation-based economy: instill confidence, promote trade, reform regulations, cut business taxes, invest in job training, and fix immigration.

It’s been a tough business year, but I hope you are all taking some time off this holiday weekend, to celebrate with the family. Even those of you who are not Christian and see Christmas as just another day should still enjoy the holiday spirit, take a break from work, and count your blessings.

Yet there will be some entrepreneurs can’t seem to make the decision to take a break. They forget that they became entrepreneurs, according to a poll by Startups.co.uk, for just this flexibility. Nearly 90% of respondents said decision-making freedom was very important, closely followed by more flexibility for a better work/life balance.

Related reasons, like personal satisfaction also ranked close behind, with 70% of respondents claiming it was a key advantage to running their own business. Only 32% of entrepreneurs cited money a key benefit of running their own firm. This indicates that lifestyle and satisfaction factors are often more important than financial ones.

Its been argued that innovation and "enterprise is everywhere but unseen" this is as much case in the informal economy as it is within the fledgling network of laboratories and research institutes sprinkled across the continent. The challenge of developing a viable science engine that feeds a robust autocatalysing ecosystem is not due to the lack of homegrown invention and discovery. The constraints range from a siloed culture that is somewhat divorced from its own indigenous productive clusters to a mentality that insists on traditional top down hierarchies and methodologies.

In today’s knowledge economy, creativity and innovation have taken on an important role in organizations. The imperative to change and develop creative or innovative processes has become critical to remain competitive. Although organizations might agree that innovation is important to gain a competitive edge, they run into challenges of time, current organizational structure, funding and lack of support from managers.

For many organizations, innovation will require deep-rooted changes – a changed mindset, prioritizing short-term and long-term goals, leadership style etc. Innovation can only flourish in a “fear-free zone” that has a culture which promotes customer focus and advocacy, constructive questioning and curiosity, and individual initiative. Experimentation must be encouraged as a primary means for learning and advancing ideas to the next level.

According to BNET’s marketing material, 69 percent of you are managers with an average of 33 employees and 17 percent of you are in executive or senior management. While you’re primary responsibility may be to manage and motivate others, you and I both know you’re also paid to think and come up with ideas.

That said, the modern business world is complex, competitive, and full of distraction. We’re all overworked, under-resourced, and overloaded with communication. In Is Thinking an Endangered Management Skill, we discussed the problem of not having time to think. But how about when you’re too stressed, too distracted, or for whatever reason, the synapses aren’t firing and inspiration simply won’t come?

My title must seem like a contradiction. What can solitude have to do with leadership? Solitude means being alone, and leadership necessitates the presence of others—the people you’re leading. When we think about leadership in American history we are likely to think of Washington, at the head of an army, or Lincoln, at the head of a nation, or King, at the head of a movement—people with multitudes behind them, looking to them for direction. And when we think of solitude, we are apt to think of Thoreau, a man alone in the woods, keeping a journal and communing with nature in silence.

Leadership is what you are here to learn—the qualities of character and mind that will make you fit to command a platoon, and beyond that, perhaps, a company, a battalion, or, if you leave the military, a corporation, a foundation, a department of government. Solitude is what you have the least of here, especially as plebes. You don’t even have privacy, the opportunity simply to be physically alone, never mind solitude, the ability to be alone with your thoughts. And yet I submit to you that solitude is one of the most important necessities of true leadership. This lecture will be an attempt to explain why.

In a year that was filled with stories of a massive Gulf of Mexico oil spill, Republicans regaining control of the House of Representatives, unemployment distress, worries over home foreclosures, WikiLeaks and cyberattacks, 2010 gave us an overflow of stories about water-bound creatures as well.

Sharks, whales, dolphins, Great Barrier Reef deep-sea marine life and even crocodiles made headlines and provided unforgettable images.

111th Congress (2010 election cycle)

Chairman: Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.)

Ranking Republican: Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-Maine)

With the recent rumor that Google’s YouTube unit was looking at acquiring video content company Next New Networks, it’s clear that anything can happen in the rapidly growing online video space.  While some are shocked to see that Google may cross over and own content, the rumor does sound plausible:

• Next New Networks generates the vast majority of its views on YouTube and if the companies were under one umbrella, it would remove some of the monetization obstacles and challenges Next New Networks probably faces when trying to sell their YouTube inventory.
• YouTube, meanwhile, has massive online video street credibility but totally lacks the human sensibility required in media and content in particular to take a rising star on the site and take them to the next level.  That is Next New Networks’ business.

Here’s to the end of our 31st month publishing NewGeography.com. It’s been another good year of steady growth. Thanks for reading, for the good natured arguments, and your submissions. We hope your holiday season is relaxing and safe (for me it’s a 350 mile drive across the frozen tundra.)

Here’s a look at of some of our most popular pieces over the past year.

Venture capital has gotten harder to obtain in the recession years (VCs, like everyone else, have gotten more conservative with their investments). That’s why today’s innovative startup entrepreneurs are seeking financing from a new type of source: the “super angel.”

Halfway between traditional angel investors and venture capitalists, super angels combine the traits of both in a way that makes them well-suited to help today’s innovative entrepreneurs. Knowledge@Wharton recently took a look at what’s going on in the super angel arena. Here’s what you need to know:

• Like angels, super angels are often former entrepreneurs. What’s different is that many of them came out of groundbreaking tech companies, such as Google and PayPal, giving them insider insights into what makes innovative business ideas succeed or fail.

Entrepreneurs have to know when and how to say ‘no,’ and be good at delivering the message. All startup leaders are besieged with requests for their time, attention, talent, money, or influence, and sometimes even good requests won’t fit into the time and energy you have available.

Startups require focus, so you need to say ‘no’ to some things, in order to do the important things well. This is really the principle of displacement, which dictates that everything you do rules out other things that you don’t do. It’s impossible to do everything.

For most of us, having to say ‘no’ somehow feels like a rejection, so we hate to do it. Instead, too many entrepreneurs just say ‘yes,’ and regret it afterward. So here are some tips that I have accumulated over the years that can help you say the right thing the right way:

1. Give yourself time to think. Before responding with an enthusiastic ‘yes’ that you never meant, or a cryptic ‘no’ that will ruin a relationship, ask for time to mull it over. It’s acceptable business practice to say that you need to check your calendar first, or pass the request by other principles before deciding. Commit a date for the final decision.

For those celebrating, it’s Christmas time! And if there’s a blogger on your Christmas list, here are 11 social media-related gift ideas in case you’re still wondering what to get them. Trust me, any blogger would be happy to receive any one of these great presents (hint, hint, hint).

What’s wonderful about the list too is that many of the gift ideas for bloggers extend beyond Christmas to provide joy and happiness throughout the coming year for your favorite writers! And most of the ideas don’t cost anything either!

I know…yesterday’s post said it was time to work on a book proposal for the rest of the holiday.  But I woke up with this blog idea, and it was a lot easier to write than a book proposal or the guest post I’m struggling with for the TalentCulture blog.

With so many lists to choose from, how can you choose which list to choose from?

We've done the work for you. Here is our highly meta list of the top ten Top Ten lists from 2010.

The Osmond Brothers got it wrong. One bad apple CAN spoil the whole darn bunch. And that’s especially true in the startup world. A negative and selfish employee can start a contagion throughout the company, causing other employees to act the same way and sucking up more of management’s time, says Stanford Professor and author Bob Sutton in this entrepreneur thought leader lecture given at Stanford University. Reforming those bad apples is possible, but there comes a point where you have to cut your losses.

Thousands of meters below the ice near the South Pole lies one of the most unusual observatories ever constructed. The instrument's nervous system comprises 86 strands of light detectors, stretching down into the ice sheet like oversize strings of pearls. Each strand features 60 basketball-size detectors, spanning the depths from 1,450 to 2,450 meters below the surface. And the body of the observatory is the ice itself, an abundant medium with an astonishing natural clarity.

Altogether, the instrument, known as IceCube, spans a cubic kilometer of ice. Scientists have for years been taking data using the partially built observatory, but on December 18 the 86th and final string of detectors was lowered into place, marking the completion of construction on the estimated $270-million project. The observatory will likely start running at full strength in April, according to communications manager Laurel Bacqué.