One of America’s great strengths is its diversity. There are few, if any, countries in the world that can claim a workforce as diverse, innovative and driven. Our talent pool is rich in culture, language and ideas that have made the U.S. the world’s leader in the development of new technologies. But here’s the thing: We are not reaching our full potential. Why? Because not every member of our society has equal access to the innovation economy.

For the U.S. to sustain and grow its competitiveness in a constantly changing global market, we need to make sure we leverage the diversity of our workforce. Thankfully, a national dialogue on inclusive economic competitiveness is emerging.

The future of education may be right here in Kansas City, tucked away in a modern building in Overland Park, Kan., bustling with teenagers.

The Center for Advanced Professional Studies (CAPS), part of the Blue Valley school district, takes an entrepreneurial, innovative approach to education that aims to provide more than 900 junior and senior high school students with hands-on, real world experience.

"We don't really act like a school," CAPS director Chad Ralston said.

The facility doesn't look like a school either. From the artwork and motivational quotes on the walls, to the modern, collaborative spaces, to "classmates," such as a working flight simulator, mock hospital patients, basketball-tossing robots and 3D printers, just about everything about CAPS is unique. There is a corporate boardroom, a state-of-the-art science lab, a high-tech athletic training center, a shop room that puts your typical high school shop class to shame, and open presentation spaces to share it all.

Debt and deficits have dominated our nation’s capital for the last two years. From the near government shutdown over a budget impasse in April 2011 to the debt ceiling crisis and subsequent credit downgrade in August 2011 to the recent brinksmanship to avert a fiscal cliff, it has been “all deficits all the time.”

And yet, amidst the fiscal obsession, a slow-moving economic emergency persists. The U.S. faces an overall “jobs deficit” of 11 million to make up the jobs we lost during the Great Recession and account for a wave of new entrants to the labor force. The number of poor and near poor in America skyrocketed from 81 million in 2000 to 107 million in 2011, nearly one-third of the U.S. population.

Given these trends, it is not enough for the federal government to simply get its fiscal house in order. Rather, it’s time for both sides to put aside deep ideological differences and work together to jumpstart economic growth.

You don't have to read many of my posts to know I am not a fan of the metaphor. (Copyball, Don't Skin the Turkey, Moldy Cheese, and Don't Spend Billions on a Metaphor). So it is with much hypocrisy that I publish this post about the investor and the entrepreneur.

"An eagle was sitting on a tree resting, doing nothing.

A small rabbit saw the eagle and asked him, 'Can I also sit like you and do nothing?'

No need to burn bridges: rehiring former staff can add additional skills to your talent pool, shake up creativity, provide a continuum of culture, and--best of all-- save money.

Kyle Leavitt had a dream job. As director of sales for Infusionsoft, a provider of marketing automation software for small businesses, he was part of a company with a strong culture that took care to encourage innovation and rapid execution of ideas. And if you felt like you didn’t fit in after two weeks of intensive training, you’d be paid to leave. “The excitement everyone had for what they were doing was contagious," Leavitt said. "l didn’t get that at my other jobs.”

Steve Jobs couldn’t hide his frustration. Asked at a technology conference in 2010 whether Apple might finally turn its attention to television, he launched into an exasperated critique of TV. Cable and satellite TV companies make cheap, primitive set-top boxes that “squash any opportunity for innovation,” he fumed. Viewers are stuck with “a table full of remotes, a cluster full of boxes, a bunch of different (interfaces).” It was the kind of technological mess that cried out for Apple to clean it up with an elegant product. But Jobs professed to have no idea how his company could transform the TV.

Scarcely a year later, however, he sounded far more confident. Before he died on October 5, 2011, he told his biographer, ­Walter Isaacson, that Apple wanted to create an “integrated television set that is completely easy to use.” It would sync with other devices and Apple’s iCloud online storage service and provide “the simplest user interface you could imagine.” He added, tantalizingly, “I finally cracked it.”

In the US, many entrepreneurs see grants as “free money,” since they are not loans and don’t have to be repaid. A grant is not an equity investment, so the entrepreneur doesn’t have to give up a stake in the company either. Typically they can be used to fund product development and commercialization that would otherwise require outside investors.

A good place to start looking is the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program, which is a lifeline for high-tech startups. A more general approach is to check out Grants.gov, which is a searchable directory of more than 1,000 federal grant programs. An advanced search tool is provided to search for a grant by eligibility, by issuing agency, or category.

Innovation has been a business buzzword for decades. The word is tossed around so often and in so many different contexts that it’s meaning and value have been muddied, but innovation is here to stay and it will be one of the tools that will get us out of our current economic mess.

Open innovation as a term is even more sensitive as it has not yet fully developed – and is not yet fully understood by most companies. Nevertheless, I believe there are several signs why open innovation is more than hype:

Comparing tech startups and the government is strange, I know. Nevertheless, having just finished a short course on economic development, I’m quite sure there are some parallels in the thinking of professors and civil servants in charge of the economy, and the thinking of the likes of Eric Ries of Lean Startup fame.

The first thing that resonated is some advice I’ve gleaned from successful entrepreneurs. Pick a goal, i.e. the mountain in the distance. Then, ignore every single step between you and the mountain, except for the next step. Once that step has been taken, look up, make sure you’re still headed for the mountain, then look down and again, ignore everything except the next step.

The Red Hot Chili Peppers (RHCP) may be one of the most celebrated rock groups of the ’90s and early 21st century, but their journey to success shares a Parallel Universe with that of a typical startup company. Initial enthusiasm was followed by a lack of traction as they struggled through the late ‘80s confronting tragedy, personnel changes and false starts. But through experimentation they fostered creativity and progress because they don’t fear failure. This energy lead to a uniquely recognizable brand of funk, pop and rock that turned into commercial success.

Leaders on both sides of the Atlantic have given the green light to start negotiations for a free trade agreement establishing the largest economic alliance in the world, which already accounts for some €455bn in trade and millions of jobs. “We are committed to making this relationship an even stronger driver of our prosperity,” US President Barack Obama, European Council President Herman Van Rompuy, and European Commission President José Manuel Barroso said in a joint statement.

“A future deal among the two most important economic powers will be a game changer. Together we will form the largest trade zone in the world,” added Barroso during a press conference in Brussels, presenting the recommendations of the high-level working group on growth and jobs, established at the EU-US summit in November 2011 to scope out the ambitious trade deal.

The central paradox inherent in the business of telecommunications over the past several years was at its most vivid in 2012. Having finally recovered fully from the global economic downturn and come to terms with the challenge of mass broadband and digitization, the industry had to contend with the ongoing issues of how to grow and become more profitable. We define digitization as the mass adoption of connected digital technologies and applications by consumers, enterprises, and governments—a revolutionary movement that is reshaping the sector.

On the one hand, data traffic over both wireless and fixed networks continued to increase at explosive rates. Traffic growth is driven by the massive uptake of smartphones and tablets, the mobile Internet, and digitization technologies such as cloud computing, and to a far lesser extent by rapidly increasing machine-to-machine services. Indeed, data traffic appears to have risen even faster than expected.

Could steel pipes or airplane wings one day repair a surface crack in their own structures, just as white blood cells trigger repair in teh human body to a scratch that has broken the skin? That’s one question researchers at BP’s Centre for Advanced Materials (BP-ICAM) are posing as a ten-year $100 million industry-university partnership funded by BP gets underway.

“The BP-ICAM gives us a pathway to develop critical mass in key fields that will have a real impact,” said BP-ICAM Director Phil Withers, professor of materials science at Manchester University’s Faculty of Engineering and Physical Sciences.

The first ICAM projects focus on three key areas with potentially high impact for industry: structural materials such as new metallic alloys that can work at higher pressures and more extreme temperatures; smart coatings that will enable materials to survive under harsher conditions over longer periods of time, including self-healing materials; and membranes, some of which could be used to desalinate water and separate water from biofuels.

Lots of start-ups in Silicon Valley aren’t just getting rich on paper. They are cashing out, long before they get to the public market.

The New York Times recently published an article on the large number of Silicon Valley companies that are not publicly traded, but that are valued at $1 billion or more by their investors. That is make-believe wealth, as many people commenting on the story noted. A company only finds its total value if it is purchased, or has an initial public offering; everything else is a combination of its funding history, a best guess compared with its peers, and a little bit of hope.

Former science writer and editor Tim Radford’s 25 commandments for journalists has quickly become the one list that science journalists around the world print and stick on their walls. The list is exhaustive and provides a framework for journalists. Its major themes are the need to write in a gripping, eloquent, honest and simple manner. Some of the guidelines are intuitive and well-known, others less so but equally important for journalists who aim high.

The Michigan Pre-See Capital Fund — a state equity investment fund that backs technology-based startups — recently put a total of $1 million into four companies across the state.

Fusion Coolant Systems, Local Orbit, New Eagle Products and Seelio all were awarded money from the fund.

Fusion Coolant Systems of Ypsilanti is developing advanced manufacturing coolant and lubrication systems.

Local Orbit of Ann Arbor services ecommerce and business management tools related to the food market.

New Eagle Products of Ann Arbor creates control systems solutions, complete with tools, products and services.

In deals with disclosed valuations, $46.8B was paid for private tech companies. 30% of deals account for 80% of that value. Eight private companies purchased for more than $1 billion in 2012 with 6 being US-based. The year saw 190 M&A transactions per month on average.

It wasn’t too long ago that the term ‘Smart City’ was not on very many people’s radar screens, but today smart cities are popping up all over the place and people are becoming more familiar with what that entails. In case you’re not familiar with the term a smart city uses information combined with technology to improve quality of life, reduce environmental impact, and decrease energy demand. This list of the smartest cities on the planet takes those factors into consideration, as well as the ‘smart’ plans the city might have for the future.

Last night President Obama proposed the launch of "a network of manufacturing hubs" through which industry, universities, community colleges, and governments will work together to develop and deploy new manufacturing technologies. That line in the State of the Union address probably had a lot of folks scratching their heads, wondering where it came from.  After all, we as a nation have gotten out of the habit of thinking much about manufacturing, how innovation works, and the work of inventing things.

So what is it all about?

As it happens, and as I wrote last summer, Obama’s manufacturing hubs proposal is not a one-off idea out of nowhere but in fact is one very smart and plausible idea that Congress and the nation really should embrace.

Whether I'm out on the speaking circuit, working with startups, back in Ann Arbor teaching MBAs, or just socializing in a coffee shop, I'd say there's one question I'm hit with more than any other. It comes in different forms, but the essence of the question is the same: "What does it take to be a successful entrepreneur?” Over the years, my answer has evolved. But I’ve found myself settling on ten traits that are shared in common by virtually every truly successful entrepreneur I’ve met, observed or studied. The true rock stars entrepreneurs are all: