After a series of recent European tech conferences, Silicon Valley continues to dominate. Tech venture capital on this side of the Atlantic still remains relatively small, due to bureaucracy, language problems.

It was hard to ignore the dominance of Silicon Valley at this year's LeWeb tech conference last week in Paris - nearly all the speakers and featured guests were from California's famed tech hub.

While European innovation is picking up speed, it is starting from a long way behind the American startup scene - participants at the conference blamed over-cautious investors and misguided government spending.

I highly recommend mapping your organization or community genome. Understanding the basic genetic code or wiring of any organization is key to understanding what drives the behavior of both internal and external stakeholders. Intimate knowledge of the genome’s chromosomal makeup is a prerequisite for alignment and making meaningful progress. It explains why employees, customers, and collaborators are attracted to an organization or why they aren’t. Passion for an organization, community, or movement is coded at the genetic level. If you want to transform an organization or a system, forget process reengineering and think genetic reengineering. If you want to launch a movement make your genome transparent and accessible to anyone with a similar genetic make-up.

I offer up the BIF genome as an example and with the hope you will improve it. The Business Innovation Factory (BIF) is catalyzing a movement to transform the next decade. This is no time to think small! Together with a growing community of passionate innovators we are re-imagining the future of education, health care, energy, and entrepreneurship. We have identified and mapped 11 chromosomes that comprise the genome of the BIF innovation community and transformation movement. Do they resonate with you? Do you share a similar genetic make-up? If yes, do we have a movement for you!

Gina del Monte wasn't planning to go to college in Philadelphia - until she visited St. Joseph's University.

Growing up in Wildwood, she had her sights set on schools in Washington when a friend at St. Joe's took her on a tour of the campus.

"I looked around and said, 'This is it,' " she said. "I just fell in love with the area."

Now a graduate, del Monte lives in Manayunk, working as an account analyst at the Graham Co. in Center City.

Del Monte is part of what Campus Philly says is a growing trend of students choosing to stay in Philadelphia.

Have you ever read about a start-up and were so intrigued that you wanted to invest in it? And then learned that unless you knew someone involved in the company it was nearly impossible? A new online investment service called MicroVentures might just get you in the door.

The Austin-based company matches companies seeking money with investors looking to invest anywhere from $250 to $5,000 or more. Microventures helps investors learn about companies they may never have heard of, and helps them invest smaller sums, which is virtually unheard of with traditional investing. There is no fee or obligation to invest.

There’s an old business maxim that goes “Where performance is measured, performance improves. Where performance is measured and reported, performance improves dramatically.” And pretty much every manager has observed the truth in it.

Humans, though, can only focus on so many things at once. So, measuring the right things is the key to effectiveness.

When you’re running a software company, there are seemingly hundreds of things to measure. It can be difficult to identify and keep your eye on what really matters. Over the years, and through the various stages of our growth, I’ve found the things we measure at Infusionsoft change as our business matures and evolves. Of course, we’re always measuring revenue, profit and cash, but other things are less obvious and can easily get lost in the mix.

There are only so many adjectives you can use to describe your achievments. LinkedIn has just released the most overused words and phrases in members’ LinkedIn profiles in the U.S., and the results aren’t surprising.

Extensive experience took the top spot followed by Innovative and Motivated. Other popular keywords used in member profiles include Results-oriented, Dynamic, Proven track record, Team player, Fast-paced, Problem solver and Entrepreneurial. Results are similar for members outside the U.S. For example, France’s most-used word is Innovative while Spain’s most popular buzzword is Dynamic.

A one-year follow-up study on seniors who participated in a strength training exercise program shows sustained cognitive benefits as well as savings for the healthcare system. The research, conducted at the Centre for Hip Health and Mobility at Vancouver Coastal Health and the University of British Columbia, is published today in the Archives of Internal Medicine.

The study is the first to examine whether both cognitive and economic benefits are sustained after formal cessation of a tailored exercise program. It builds on the Brain Power Study, published in the January 2010 issue of Archives of Internal Medicine, which demonstrated that 12 months of once-weekly or twice-weekly progressive strength training improved executive cognitive function in women aged 65- to 75- years- old. Executive cognitive functions are cognitive abilities necessary for independent living.

I like studying what works and what doesn’t. I focus more of my time on the former, but often learn more from the latter. I compile tactical, earthy techniques from my mentors’ books and sprinkle in a bit of technology. Think of my maneuvers as real-world Google Analytics, but with a focus on extrapolating future conditions and outlining countermeasure options for when the shitake hits the fan.

With that introduction…Here is my list of the seven best places to close a deal in Silicon Valley. It’s meant to give you a home-field advantage even when you’re on the road. It’s street smart to have an array of spots to close deals; here is a window into mine.

1) Menlo Park Starbucks

Meetings that happen in the office on Sand Hill road are official. Official meetings suck.

GUELPH — Guelph innovators now have more provincial support to help them speed their ideas to the global marketplace or to craft them into new businesses.

Glen Murray, Ontario’s Minister of Research and Innovation, announced an initial expenditure of $886,000 to set up the Guelph Innovation Centre, the latest of 14 such centres that are part of the Ontario Network of Excellence.

Local researchers, manufacturers and entrepreneurs with commercially viable innovations now have access to a host of resources geared to hastening new businesses and/or the commercialization of new products. The development is part of the province’s ongoing push to build the knowledge-based economy, foster innovation and create new jobs.

Nothing defines a leader more than their communication style and effectiveness. How we’re perceived is often subject to change, though. If we need lessons we don’t need to look any further than this (admittedly subjective) list of the Best and Worst Communicators of 2010 from the world of politics, entertainment, sports and the news.

This annual list of best and worst communicators is from Decker Communications, a prominent San Francisco based executive communication training and coaching company that’s been training– and assessing– leaders for over 30 years.

According to Ben Decker ( the company’s President) and Kelly Decker (Executive Vice President) here is this year’s somewhat surprising list of those who showed how the perception of their leadership is tied directly to their ability to communicate.

The EU must prioritise investment in education, training, research (fundamental and applied), development and innovation as well as key technologies if it is to safeguard its sources of future growth and jobs, according to EU research and industry ministers. The recommendation is one of many contained in the conclusions on the 'Innovation Union' initiative issued by participants at the latest Competitiveness Council, which took place in Brussels, Belgium on 25 and 26 November. The Innovation Union is one of a number of flagship initiatives launched under the banner of the Europe 2020 strategy.

In their conclusions, the ministers stress : 'Scientific excellence and basic and applied research, supported by world-class infrastructures, life-long learning, training and higher education, in particular in science and engineering, as well as incentives for commercialisation of results, are preconditions for an efficient innovation system.'

When entrepreneurs go looking for investors, most call on independent venture capital firms. But there’s another place companies can seek investment capital: major corporations.

Many big companies have venture arms that invest in growing small companies. Corporate members of the National Venture Capital Association include such well-known names as General Motors, Kaiser Permanente, Citigroup, Dow Chemical, Johnson & Johnson, Nike, Microsoft, Google, Intel, and Adobe.

In recent years, the proportion of corporate venture capital has shrunk slightly, relative to all venture investments. A PricewaterhouseCoopers/National Venture Capital Association/MoneyTree report on Corporate Venture Capital from 1995 to 2009 showed corporate VC peaked at 16 percent of all venture capital investment in 2000 but shrank to 7.4 percent in 2009. In these uncertain economic times, companies have grown more cautious about investing in startups.

You want to show your employees appreciation with a gift this holiday season. But you don’t necessarily want to hand out trinkets that will inevitably create more waste by getting tossed in the closet or the trash can. Rather, think seriously about giving employees an eco-friendlier holiday gift this year.

Here are five green gift ideas for employees to get your mind rolling:

1. Reusable travel mug – Reusable mugs are a nice way to encourage employees to avoid creating styrofoam or paper waste. There are lots of options, of course, at local gift and home furnishing stores. If you need some inspiration, the JOEmo Leak-Proof Coffee Mug gets high marks from the consumer product reviewers at the Hammacher and Schlemmer Institute, or you could opt for a biodegradable porcelain one, such as the Eco Cup.

Last week we had some of the biggest and brightest names in new media take the stage at the Time Warner Center for our first-annual IGNITION: Future of Media conference.

If you missed it, no worries. Here's the 5-minute version...

By breaking ranks with the remaining four member states on creating a common patent, the larger group may ultimately force the holdouts to join them or be left behind.

A forceful number of countries – 23 members of the European Union – said they will work together to create a single patent system to protect the design of products sold across their borders.

After debating rules on a common patent for a decade, a majority of countries said on Friday (10 December) that there appeared to be no way to reach a unanimous vote on the issue of languages.

So they are moving forward under a rarely used provision of the Lisbon Treaty known as "enhanced cooperation".

The low scrubland of densely packed succulents is in full fall color, a carpet of green fading brilliantly to red and gold. This 2.5-acre oasis, located among a barrens of blacktop roofs that stretches east to Broadway and west to the Hudson River, would be an impressive sight even if it wasn’t sitting atop the U.S. Postal Service’s 1933 landmark Morgan Processing and Distribution facility in midtown Manhattan.

The biggest green roof in New York City and one of the largest in the country, the Morgan facility’s verdant covering was completed in December 2008 and has thrived since. As the inscription above the landmark James Farley Post Office might have it, the roof has been affected by “neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night,” and has flourished through freezes and thaws, through summer rooftop temperatures that reach 150 degrees, and through weeks of drought and torrential summer storms, despite never being watered, weeded, or fertilized.

If you think "I better not start a startup now, because the economy is still bad" you will be making a comparable mistake to the people who thought during the dot-com bubble "all I have to do is a startup, and I'll be rich." In reality, what matters more is who you are, not when you do it.

Like Paul Graham says, I see startups succeed or fail every day based on the qualities of the founders. The economy has some effect, certainly, but as a predictor of success it’s a rounding error compared to the founders. If you're worried about threats to the survival of your company, don't look for them in the news. Look in the mirror.

Here are some pragmatic reasons from Paul and others to highlight why you might not want to wait for the next business explosion before taking the leap:

Alternatives are not as tempting. If your alternative is no job security, and low pay, why not work for yourself and build your startup? You'll be investing your time and energy into something with more potential upside in future. If you're talented and have always toyed with the idea of a startup, financially it makes sense to do it now.

When Lebron James played his first game as an ex-Cav in Cleveland earlier this month, he was booed by 20,000 aspiring brain-drain border guards still upset about his decision to take his talents to South Beach… and out of Ohio. Ironically, the native Clevelanders I heard complain about this most were actually ex-pats who had taken their talents to Chicago years before. In doing so, they’d followed a well-worn path out of northeast Ohio – one so commonly understood that it could be invoked last year without any real explanation in those viral “Cleveland Tourism” videos.

As blogs like Burgh Diaspora rightly and routinely point out, “brain drain” is a canard when framed simply as a fear about talented native young people leaving a city. The aim of cities like Cleveland and Pittsburgh should be to attract migrants from elsewhere to bring in new talent, not to fret about their own citizens migrating elsewhere. “Rust Belt Chic” shows how young people are already moving to the region to arbitrage the rust belt’s cheap costs of living and the often hidden economic opportunities.