The Small Business Administration recently announced two new programs that will increase lending to businesses in disadvantaged areas and to those headed by minorities and women. Beginning in mid-March, Small Business Advantage and Community Advantage will allow mission-based financial institutions to issue SBA-guaranteed loans of up to $250,000. "These new 'Advantage' initiatives are aimed directly at getting more loans into these markets so these small business owners can get the capital they need …," SBA Administrator Karen Mills explained in a press release. While I agree with Mills that a lack of capital deters many minority business owners from starting businesses, I don't think further loan programs are the answer.

Far fewer blacks and Hispanics start businesses than whites, with combined incorporated and unincorporated self-employment rates at 11.6 percent for whites, vs. a mere 6 percent for blacks and 8 percent for Hispanics, according to analysis by Steve Hipple of the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Explanations for this gap include differences in interest in entrepreneurship, family background, and work experience, but I agree with the many economists who believe that the low net worth of minority households is one of the primary culprits. (The median net worth of minority households is $28,000, vs. $170,000 for white households, according to the most recent Federal Reserve Survey of Consumer Finances.) Here's where I differ from my peers: I say the solution to improving startup rates lies in improved access to equity investment—not debt.

Markets tend to move based on innovation that improves buyer experiences and productivity. Market leaders know this and constantly seek ways to innovate.

Trends In Thinking About Innovation

Most organizational leaders understand the importance of innovation but fail to manage its pursuit effectively. There are many flaws in organizational management of innovation, including process shortcomings and a lack of business discipline that result in internal barriers to success. Additionally, most organizations are risk-aversion and fail to learn from past mistakes in pursue of innovation. Past innovation failures are most commonly attributed to incorrect pricing, failure to meet customer needs, and being late to market, which can be mitigated by improving management processes and leadership thinking. Innovation starts and ends with thinking differently.

In a lingering recession, seed money to develop new technologies in the private marketplace is more difficult to find than ever. But for intrepid entrepreneurs with good—no, make that great—ideas, the federal government is willing to help. An array of programs designed to help move new technology to the marketplace and spur the economy exists across the federal spectrum.

Not surprisingly, the Small Business Administration is at the forefront of this effort with its Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) and Small Business Technology Transfer programs (STTR).

SBIR allows qualified small businesses to compete for research and development financing by proposing innovations that meet the needs of the federal government. The program is a highly competitive, three-phase award system, specifically designed to fund research and development activities that private sector investors may label “too early” or “too risky.” SBIR, and its sister, STTR, encourage small firms to undertake scientific research that helps meet federal R&D objectives, and have high potential for commercialization if successful.

Today’s guest contributor is my friend, Alisa Bowman, author of Project: Happily Ever After, which tells the true story of how she went from wishing her husband dead to falling back in love. She is also the creator of ProjectHappilyEverAfter.com.

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More than 6 years ago, my then unemployed husband came to me with a proposition. He wanted to open a bicycle shop café. The shop would sell bikes and related merchandise. It would include an open concept bike repair area, where patrons could hang out and watch as mechanics worked on the loves of their lives. And it would also sell espresso, Gatorade, and muffins—some of the staples that many serious cyclists rely on before, during and just after a long ride.

It was a brilliant concept. It was also the absolute perfect business for my husband—who is both an avid cyclist and has an MBA.

The start up costs (about $40,000) were scary, but reachable if we second mortgaged our home.

The problem, though, was this. We had a baby on the way, and I was self-employed. If my husband opened this business, he would have no income for a year or two or more, and he’d also be tethered to the shop. I would become, by default, a single mother. I would earn all of the money and do most of the parenting.

Winter Solstice Lunar Eclipse from William Castleman on Vimeo.

When was the last time the lunar eclipse and winter solstice coincided? The U.S. Naval Observatory says 1638; Starhawk, a prominent Wiccan, puts it at 1544. Needless to say, these coinciding events are a rarity. So, in case you missed it, we have a nice time lapse video shot by William Castleman in Gainesville, Florida. Castelman also produced this fine gem: The Milky Way Over Texas.

We’ve written about a number of investors and nonprofits looking to attract and keep companies in Michigan as a way to help the state’s economy kick back into gear. But Detroit Venture Partners is looking to go a bit further. The brand new venture firm wants its portfolio companies to move their operations right into the heart of Detroit, in the hopes of transforming the Motor City into a vibrant startup community like Boston and San Francisco, says CEO and managing partner Josh Linkner.

“We’ll strongly encourage people to move their business into the city of Detroit,” he says. “In Boston there is a great ecosystem and we’re trying to create something similar where companies play off each other. As we fund companies, we’re trying to build something in the heart of Detroit.”

The firm officially opened its doors on November 1st, with a few other heavy hitters working alongside Linkner, who founded and ran Detroit-based interactive promotional marketing firm ePrize, before moving to a chairman role this year. Dan Gilbert, founder and chairman of Quicken Loans and majority owner of the Cleveland Cavaliers, is also on board as a general partner of DVP, as is Brian Hermelin, founder and chairman of growth equity firm Rockbridge and chairman of Active Aero, a provider of Web-based systems for air charter management. The latter two were investors in ePrize, Linkner says.

Silicon Valley Bank, the banking unit of SVB Financial Group said it has signed a joint venture agreement in China with Shanghai Pudong Development Bank Co.

Silicon Valley will make a capital contribution of USD 75 mn to the joint venture and own a 50% stake in it, the company said in a regulatory filing.

Earlier this month, we were excited to add our first Silicon Prairie News contributor in our state's capitol city, Lincoln, Nebraska (see our post: "Welcome our new writers"). Our new writer, Kate Ellingson, won't begin contributing until early next year, and thanks to a website launch today, we already have a major item of news for her to follow up on in January (in addition to a growing list of other startups and entrepreneurs).

Nebraska Global, a Lincoln-based venture capital fund, launched its website today, giving the public its first glimpse of what's to come. Their site, nebraskaglobal.com, contains over a dozen pages of information, from covering the fund's mission to a listing of the companies it's invested in – the first being "Don't Panic Labs."

Forget about going to the gym -- that resolution is typically only good for about a month. What are you going to do for the fitness of your business in 2011?

NEW YORK, N.Y. - October 19, 2010 - Notwithstanding its economic and political problems, more Americans would like to live in California than in any other state. For the seventh time in a row since 2002 California tops the list of states where the most people would like to live if they did not live in their own states. The next most popular states are Hawaii, Florida, Colorado, Arizona, North Carolina, Oregon, Texas, New York and Washington.

Strange as this sounds, I discovered one of my best productivity tips on maternity leave.

Here’s what happened: like many people, I have exaggerated notions of what I can get done in a day. I wake up thinking that today is the day I’ll research and write a 5000-word article and land a new client and touch base with three other ones and set my travel for next week and come up with a new book idea and go give a speech in, say, St. Louis, in defiance of all known laws of physics. As the motivational poster in my middle school principal’s office put it, aim for the moon, and at least you’ll land among the stars!

Aside from being astronomically incorrect, however, I’ve discovered that this metaphor has another big flaw. Massive to-do lists set you up for failure. Because even if you do several things, you can’t possibly do everything. Shunting “write 5000 word article” from Tuesday to Wednesday to next week to never is just discouraging.

Martin Kleppman, a co-founder of Rapportive, a cool startup that adds social profiles of the people who email you to your Gmail, has a blog post up about Y Combinator, the top Silicon Valley startup accelerator, saying he didn't enjoy it.

Startups spend three months months at Y Combinator working like crazy and getting mentoring and support, and at the end crowds of angels and VCs beat each other up to put money into the companies. What's not to love about that for a startup?

The gist is basically this: when Rapportive entered Y Combinator, they already had a live product. Most startups who join Y Combinator have a demo at most, and so all the startups are focusing together on building their product, which creates more camaraderie and shared insights.

As the Defense Department’s public review last Thursday of its war strategy in Afghanistan points to a slow troop withdrawal in 2011, efforts to better understand how to spur growth after such conflicts are speeding into top gear. A new cadre of economists, military leaders and other specialists are writing a long-needed canon to guide how to re-build economies during their transition from war to peace using indigenous entrepreneurship. Expeditionary Economics (ExpECON), as the field is now known, is informing large questions of national security strategy, positioning economic growth as a more important component of the formula for strategic success. While I defer to these experts in assessing the entrepreneurial health of current war-torn economies, I thought it timely to take a look at some of the neighbors engaged in their conflicts.

I begin today with Pakistan – a nation whose political history, up to recent times, can only be described as tumultuous. The country spent more than half of its short independent life under a succession of military dictators and largely ineffective civilian regimes. With constant news about security threats, extremists, assassinations, corruption and, most recently, devastating floods, one should have little reason to expect much good news in terms of entrepreneurship.

I’m the least trendy person on the planet.  I’m the last one to recognize a trend and the first one to move away from a trend if I stumble upon one.  I know that sounds weird coming for a guy who has spent most of his career in marketing but it’s true.  I’m far more interested in recognizing patterns and catalyzing new trends than jumping on existing trends. I’m perpetually leery of data suggesting trends and allergic to anyone claiming to be a trendsetter.  So you can imagine my surprise when I received an offer from Jeremy Gutsche , founder of Trend Hunter, to receive and share a sneak peek of the top 20 trends from their 2011 Trend Report.

Trend Hunter claims to be the world’s largest crowd sourced trend network with 40,000 trend hunters who have identified 100,000 micro trends.  The trends are then crowd filtered to identify the most popular nougats and made available to Trend Hunter customers.  As a student of crowd sourcing platforms and a believer in the value of filters to help make sense of the daily fire hose of content we receive, I was curious to check out the platform and output from Trend Hunter.

To comprehend U.S. tax policy, you need to understand how taxes impact small business owners. That’s because when politicians discuss taxes, they almost always pay attention to their effect on those who own companies. So what does IRS data show about small business owners and taxes?

Business ownership is a bigger source of income for wealthy people than for those who have less money. IRS data show that income from business ownership accounted for 20 percent of the adjusted gross income (AGI) of tax filers with incomes of more than $250,000 in 2008, but only three percent of the AGI of those earning less than $250,000.

Time is running out if you want to buy gifts before the holidays are over.

If you're still scrambling for ideas on what to get for a busy road warrior, we have some cool gadgets that will make perfect last-minute gifts.

From productivity tools to e-readers, we tested out and researched some useful gear and services business travelers are sure to go crazy for.