China has been a Godsend to Detroit. Even as Ford Motor, General Motors, and Chrysler have stumbled in recent years, the country has provided a nice boost to sales of American cars equipped with traditional internal combustible engines.

But when it comes to electric vehicles…well, China has its own plans.

The country is spending billions of dollars to develop home-grown battery and motor technology, hybrids, and full plug-in cars, trucks, and buses. And to protect its nascent industry, the Chinese central government has recently issued draft guidelines that limit foreign investment in certain electric vehicle components and require overseas firms to disclose intellectual property secrets to Chinese companies.

Is now the time to leave your job? With unemployment hovering just above 9 percent, the obvious answer would seem to be, “No way.”

Millions of people are turning their backs on the obvious answer, leaving their jobs in record numbers, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics figures quoted in a recent story from Bloomberg News. In May, almost two million Americans quit their jobs voluntarily, up 35 percent from January 2010.

The Bloomberg story points out that generally, job-hopping is a sign of an improving economy. I would love for that to be true, but I think it’s only part of the story.

Being a good entrepreneur means being able to effectively convince an investor that you have a great idea, persuade partners that your approach is right, and convince potential customers that the solution is right for them. If all your ideas are intuitively obvious to everyone, you probably aren’t thinking outside the box, or don’t really have the next big thing.

The process and tactics involved in winning over others with your views have has been studied extensively by Howard Gardner, and documented in “Changing Minds: The Art and Science of Changing Our Own and Other People’s Minds.” It turns out that the same principles apply to changing your own mind (learning new things), as well as others.

The first company to emerge from Peter Thiel's great "stop going to college and create a business" program is being led by a 20-year-old who doesn't quite fit the dropout description Thiel was going for. In fact, despite his age, Andrew Hsu has three degrees from the University of Washington and was working on his PhD in neuroscience when he left to develop the idea for his company.

That business, a social-gaming company called Airy Labs, emerged from stealth mode today with a $1.5 million investment from Thiel, Google Ventures, and Foundation Capital. The company makes social games geared at teaching kids math, reading, and science skills.

Late one night, Michael Koetting, a University of Texas at Austin (No. 185) sophomore, couldn’t crack a calculus problem. Since 90% of UT students use Facebook he wondered who might be online with a similar homework hiccup. Then a light bulb went off: What if he came up with an application that would allow him to video chat and instant message with people who might know the answer?

A year later 378 Beta users are testing Hoot.Me, which allows them to interact with one another via video and instant messaging. To make Hoot.Me profitable, Koetting and fellow students Gaurav Sanghani and Sid Upadhyay plan to sign up professional tutors and collect a transaction fee when they sell time through the app.

People who live to 95 or older are no more virtuous than the rest of us in terms of their diet, exercise routine or smoking and drinking habits, according to researchers at Albert Einstein College of Medicineof Yeshiva University.

Their findings, published today in the online edition of Journal of the American Geriatrics Society, suggests that “nature” (in the form of protective longevity genes) may be more important than “nurture” (lifestyle behaviors) when it comes to living an exceptionally long life. Nir Barzilai, M.D., the Ingeborg and Ira Leon Rennert Chair of Aging Research and director of the Institute for Aging Research at Einstein, was the senior author of the study.

When smart phones first took off, many software companies figured people might want to view files on the small screens, but few thought anyone would use them for  creating, editing, and commenting on documents, spreadsheets, and presentations. "We were proven wrong," says Raju Vegesna of Zoho, a company that offers online office tools.

Businesses are demanding things like spreadsheet and document editing tools that work anywhere, on any device. In response, large and small companies are now providing cloud-based office productivity applications for smart phones and tablets.

New York City's mayor, Michael Bloomberg, announced last month that his administration would offer land and up to $100 million in infrastructure upgrades to a university willing to build an engineering or applied sciences campus in Brooklyn's Navy Yard or on Roosevelt or Governors Island. Already, Stanford and Cornell have expressed interest in submitting a bid.

Behind the initiative is the hope that within a few decades, New York will attract a "critical mass of technology entrepreneurs," capable of producing hundreds of innovative companies and jobs.

Last week World Business Chicago hosted a delegation of visiting journalists from the United Nations Press Corps. The global contingent of reporters came from Chinese newspapers, Japanese magazines, Swedish public radio and more. We took them on a behind-the-scenes tour into the exciting world of Chicago’s innovation ecosystem, including Tribeca Flashpoint Media Arts Academy, 600 West Chicago (home of Groupon & Lightbank) and the startup incubator, Excelerate Labs.

At Tribeca Flashpoint, CEO, Howard Tullman wowed the group with a sophisticated presentation of the technologies available to students and teachers at his school. The journalists asked questions about whether the technologies developed there are commercialized and what kinds of jobs the students get after graduation. Tullman explained their tech commercialization process and discussed the school’s industry connections with Hollywood, major videogame companies and more.

After watching startups like Facebook, Zynga, and Groupon explode in valuation, VCs are now pouring money into the next crop of startups.

Valuations are skyrocketing as VCs compete to get in the next hot deal. They don't want to miss out.

And suddenly, a lot of founders are finding themselves in the billion-dollar club.

Do they deserve it? Let us know in the comments.

In our country’s spirited debate over energy, innovation and the economy, perhaps no phrase has been uttered more often than “green jobs.” While the precise meaning of “green job” continues to be a topic of debate, I would submit that jobs in the algae industry are indeed at least a little shade of green.  Or maybe blue-green.

In today’s biofuels industry, most of the growth has centered on jobs for those workers who have already been trained in the fields of construction; engineering; chemistry and biology; sales and marketing; legal and administrative, and others. The industry now supports tens of thousands of direct and indirect jobs across the country and up and down the value chain – from Ph.D-level microbiologists to plant personnel to legal counsel to metal fabricators and truckers; from the labs of San Diego to the ethanol plants of Iowa to the offices of Silicon Valley.

That is something we rightly celebrate as an industry. It also something policymakers in Washington D.C. would be wise to recognize as they continue to seek ways to create jobs and spur economic growth.

The United States’ chief technology officer, Aneesh Chopra, and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services Director Alejandro Mayorkas asked during a May 23 meeting with academics, executives and lawyers at Stanford Law School what the government could do to help Silicon Valley. The response was unanimous: Fix the immigration system immediately.

Chopra and Mayorkas acknowledged that, in the current political climate, it would be extremely difficult to get any significant immigration legislation enacted. But they went on to say that there may be simple tweaks to policy — tweaks that don’t require congressional approval — that could make a difference. Then, on Aug. 2, Mayorkas and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano announced they would be making those tweaks a reality.

Jared Bernstein is an economist with roots firmly planted in the liberal side of American political thought. Before joining the Obama administration as an economic adviser for Vice President Biden, he was a senior economist at the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute, known for its strong stands on labor issues. In May, Bernstein left the White House, accepted a position as a senior fellow at Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, and began blogging prolifically on economic policy.

So if you want to grasp just how hopeless the Obama administration's post-debt ceiling deal "pivot to jobs" will be, Bernstein's analysis is a good place to start. Because if he can't put a hopeful spin on the prospects for new job creation policies, no one can.

A week ago, an explosion in Oslo shocked the world. When most people heard about the tragic and unreal news, they instantly jumped to the conclusion that al Qaeda was behind it and a new war on terrorism was on its way. It was humbling and eye-opening to learn that a lone Norwegian extremist had plotted and executed the slaughter. Jens Stoltenberg, Norway's prime minister, announced that Norway would pursue "[m]ore democracy, more openness and greater political participation," thereby showing that the country would not be intimidated by violence. This is quite a different response to terror than what we have seen within the U.S.A. after 2001's Sept. 11 attacks or in the U.K. after the attack on the Underground train system in 2005. Does Stoltenberg's reaction reflect creative political thinking?

Politicians have a huge impact on countries' creativity and their subsequent economic development; however, it is rare to hear political institutions proposing creative new ideas. Roosevelt implemented the "New Deal," Truman the "Marshal Plan," Bush declared "Global War on Terrorism," and Obama bailed out the banks and the U.S. automotive industry. Whether you agree with the ideas or not, they were all radical and new.

I see both side of the table – right from startups sharing their term sheets (for feedback/suggestions) to VCs sharing how crazy have valuations moved up in the last few years. Over the last year or so, there is almost a ‘herd’ mentality (of funding ecommerce business) that has obscured the funding space in India.

Based on my interaction with startups, VC firms and their *off-the-record* reasons to invest in ecommerce business, here is probably the most apt correlation that I could come up with – that is of seven deadly sins and ecommerce space in India.

EAST LANSING, Mich. — If you build it (the right way), they will give.

The “it” is a website designed to encourage crowd funding, an online method of matching people willing to donate money for a cause. The “give,” of course, is money.

Rick Wash, an assistant professor in Michigan State University’s College of Communication Arts and Sciences, says existing crowd funding sites are good, but could be better. And he is using a grant of nearly $400,000 from the National Science Foundation to develop ways to make these sites more effective.

In particular, Wash is interested in improving upon sites that can assist online news-gathering operations – sites such as “spot.us” – and those that can help college and university fundraising.

“On a typical crowd funding site, it’s difficult for people to find projects that are exact matches for their interests,” Wash said. “Our project will help identify ways to make it easier for matches between donors and projects to occur.”

Toronto - Young, smart and out of work, Robyn Brophy applied to 95 different jobs before she scored her first interview and job. For a part-time nanny position.

Brophy, 24 and a Bishop's University grad with a BA in sociology, is grateful for the work. But she also needs to hold down another part-time position to make ends meet.

"You get a little turned off when you get out of university with this great degree and you're so excited, and then you don't get hired," Brophy says. "It's very, very damaging to your confidence when you know you have a lot to offer and no one will let you offer it," she adds.

When 22-year-old Neal Cook started his summer internship with Lambertville, New Jersey software developer Front Rush LLC this past May, he thought he’d be making coffee and emptying trash . And he did, just like many other college interns in similar positions. But that was the first week on the job. By the second week, the Temple University sports management major was asked to develop – and run – his own technology business.

Running Front Rush, known for its software program that eases the recruiting process for college athletic coaches, is a full-time job for the firm’s co-founders Brad Downs and Sean Devlin. Recently, the pair developed a cloud-based tool that tracks sales online and creates friendly competition in the office, leading to increased productivity. Realizing this could be its own full-fledged business, Downs and Devlin entrusted Cook, the firm’s first college intern, with the full-scale start-up, launch and management of the business.

Are employees at your small business being rewarded fairly for their efforts? Think carefully—this is a loaded question. What matters isn’t whether you believe they are being rewarded fairly, but whether they think they are.

Why should you care what your employees think about this? Well, workers who don’t feel they are fairly rewarded are likely to become resentful and seek to leave your business at the first opportunity. With the current economy, of course, that might not happen right away. But while these workers are “stuck” at your business, do you think they’re putting forth their utmost effort?

Teacher Katie Rieser once purchased a $700 student response system, better known as “clickers,” for her high school classroom with money she raised online. Now a new startup called Socrative is offering a way for teachers like her to create a similar tool with smartphones or laptops — for free.

Buying the clickers several years ago allowed Rieser to ask students an “exit” question at the end of each class that checked for both individual understanding of new concepts and common mistakes.

“It’s really helpful for me to have that right in front of me and be able to see what kids are understanding and what they’re not,” she says. “Even if it just comes down to, ‘Did he understand directions?’ ”