The Commonwealth Financing Authority (CFA), through the New Pennsylvania Venture Capital Investment Program, today approved a $3 million investment to help Pennsylvania's early-stage companies grow and create jobs.

"Governor Corbett is committed to assisting young job-producing companies access key financing in order to grow and expand their businesses," said Department of Community and Economic Development Secretary C. Alan Walker. "Today's investments provide loans to venture capital companies looking to invest in growth-stage companies throughout underserved areas of the commonwealth."

With the NCAA men’s college basketball tournament set to begin, college basketball fans around the United States are in the throes of March Madness. Anyone who has seen a game knows that the fans are like extra players on the court, and this is especially true during critical free throws. Fans of the opposing team will wave anything they can, from giant inflatable noodles to big heads, to make it difficult for players to focus on the basket.

But one way a player might be able to improve his chances at making that free throw is by tricking himself into thinking the basket is bigger than it really is. That’s the surprising conclusion of a study forthcoming in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.

Venture capital investing has traditionally been the domain of the wealthy, but that could change with the passage of new legislation that will allow entrepreneurs to raise money from a much broader swath of the public — and give ordinary investors the chance to own a piece of the next Google, Facebook, or Twitter.

Tucked inside the Jumpstart Our Business Startups (JOBS) Act that passed the House of Representatives with bipartisan support Friday are “crowdfunding” provisions that would relax federal restrictions that have been in place since the 1930’s effectively barring the non-wealthy from investing in startups.

Many people think startups are up and to the right all the time. But more services exhibit this "startup curve" than any other growth pattern. Of course, some never get past the trough of sorrow. But many do. Mostly by staying focused on the problem they are trying to solve and working diligently to get to the promised land.

I had lunch with an entrepreneur yesterday who I've been working with for two decades now. On his most recent project, it took him years to get to the promised land. But he is there now, usage is scaling, customers are renewing, and the business is finally making money. It was great to see that and he was justifiably proud of the accomplishment.

When asked in December, “Which schools in the Greater Boston area are direct competitors of Babson College,” President Len Schlesinger responded, “None.” And can you blame him? For the 19th consecutive year, Babson’s MBA program has been ranked number one for entrepreneurship by U.S. News & World Report, beating out Harvard and MIT.

While Schlesinger is the first to admit there are a lot of great business schools in Boston doing significant things in entrepreneurship, he claims, “This is all that we do.” Lesson learned? “The focused player wins every time.”

About 3.7 million Americans live within a few feet of high tide and risk being hit by more frequent coastal flooding in coming decades because of the sea level rise caused by global warming, according to new research.

A blog about energy and the environment. Go to Blog » If the pace of the rise accelerates as much as expected, researchers found, coastal flooding at levels that were once exceedingly rare could become an every-few-years occurrence by the middle of this century.

Before we can begin to judge the success of Massachusetts’ venture programs, we need to determine their aim and gauge whether it’s worthwhile in the first place. The Commonwealth is in a somewhat unusual position, in that the state is already home to one of the largest concentrations of venture dollars and entrepreneurial activity in the world. So unlike many forays by governments into venture capital where the goal is jump-starting some modicum of startup activity, Massachusetts needs to justify its activity with reference to specific gaps in the state’s innovation ecosystem.

Google is known for its employee perks — free food, free transportation, and on-campus massages are some of the best known.

This has helped Google continue to attract and retain talent in the face of competition from pre-IPO startups like Facebook and Twitter.

One of the most valuable perks is a set of free classes known as Google EDU.

Lunch is just lunch. Knowledge stays with you forever, even if you leave Google.

Ideas are over-rated. Y Combinator announced today that you don't even need an idea to apply for its upcoming program.

What gives?

According to the Y Combinator blog:

"A lot of the startups we accept change their ideas completely... Reddit was originally going to be a way to order food on your cellphone... Scribd was originally going to be a ridesharing service."

It’s the flaws that show the character and the quality of a company. Not that we’re looking to make mistakes, but the truth is, mistakes happen. And how you deal in the tough times can set you a part from others in your industry.  I just finished reading the March 2012 Trend Briefing, FLAWSOME. Turns out that being human is in. Cool, since we can’t be anything else.

Today, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and Intel Corporation announced an expansion of their ongoing collaboration to utilize technology to further economic and social development around the world. The two organizations have launched 20 public-private partnerships over the last five years in Latin America, Asia, Africa and the Middle East. Their joint activities included projects that trained teachers in the effective use of information and communications technologies (ICTs), provided technology support for schools, improved the quality of education, and brought PCs, connectivity and digital content to youth.

The word "innovate" can be traced all the way back to 1440. It comes from the Middle French word "innovacyon," meaning "renewal" or "new way of doing things".

Exactly what innovations actually happened in 1440 (rounder oxcart wheels?) is anybody's guess, but whatever they were, it's likely they improved the quality of life for more than a few people.

These days, the "innovation thing" is something of a no-brainer. Every company worth its low-salt lunch has identified innovation as a core competency needing to be developed.

Who in their right mind (or is it right brain?) can deny the value of improving things? Isn't this what human beings, those grand inventors of the microchip and the chocolate chip, are supposed to do?

We all know about the explosion of Apple tech products, the ever-expanding number of mobile applications in the App Store — and the near $100 billion in cash that Apple is hoarding. Yet one question that has gone mostly unanswered is how many jobs Apple has generated (and supported) with its mind-boggling growth.

Last week Apple released results of a study done by the Analysis Group of Boston — a firm commissioned by the tech giant — to measure its employment impact in the US. The results:

47,000 current US jobs at Apple 257,000 indirect (or support jobs) in manufacturing of components, transportation, professional services, etc. 210,000 estimated iOS App Economy jobs, a figure derived using the same methodology as a study from Mike Mandel for TechNet.

It’s that time of the year again: March Madness is starting today, and once again, many of the games will be shown while most of us are at the office. Luckily, all 67 games will once again be streamed online. Only this time around, viewers will have to pay to join in on the fun. Unless they’re Comcast cable TV customers, that is, in which case games can be streamed for free – under certain conditions.

I guess it’s time for an explanation: The NCAA is charging fans $3.99 for the ability to watch the entire tournament online. In exchange, they’re providing unlimited access to all the games through a web browser as well as dedicated iOS and Android apps. Users will be able to pay for their accounts either through Paypal or iTunes, and once you pay on your iPhone, you’re free to switch to the browser or an Android device, and vice versa.

Leuven is one of the most prominent examples of knowledge based regional development in the world. Intensive collaboration between the local government, KU Leuven University and the Business community Leuven has resulted in a thriving innovative economy.

This success has now even reached the point were Leuven is too small and expansion is needed beyond regional borders. Genk is the region which Leuven is extensively working with. This former mining city is transforming it’s economy to a knowledge driven economy. The inter-regional collaboration with Leuven provides Genk a fast track for this transition.

Kitchener - It's a one-day conference, true. It's also the place to be for everyone who's anyone in tech in Waterloo Region. More than 500 delegates attend the Tech Leadership Conference each year, sharing ideas, meeting new people and causing collisions to accelerate your business. Don't miss it!

Communitech’s 2012 Tech Leadership Concert runs Tuesday April 10, 7:30am - 4:45pm, at Bingemans Conference Centre, 425 Bingemans Conference Centre Drive, Kitchener.

Legendary scientist, inventor, futurist, and all-around tech icon Ray Kurzweil is at the ongoing South By Southwest Interactive conference in Austin, Texas, where today he headlined one of the event’s most highly anticipated keynote sessions. So we were very, very excited to be able to meet Kurzweil yesterday afternoon for an interview with TechCrunch TV.

I don’t know about you, but when I get the opportunity to sit down and chat with someone like Ray Kurzweil in his hotel suite, I basically stay and continue to ask questions until he or she kicks me out. We ended up with such a wide-ranging talk that we’re breaking it down into two segments. In this first half of our interview, watch Kurzweil discuss why we need more young entrepreneurs, how today’s consumer app landscape proves his Law of Accelerating Returns, how education is stuck in the 19th century, why privacy isn’t as big of a problem as we think, and lots more.

The last decade has seen an increasing realization among economists and policymakers that innovation has become the central economic growth driver and a key to improved standards of living. This awakening to the importance of innovation-based economic growth has spawned a fierce race for global innovation advantage among countries. To advance their competitiveness in this race, many countries are implementing thoughtful and constructive innovation policies aimed at boosting their use of information and communications technologies, helping their companies become more productive and innovative, and facilitating the creation of new companies that produce high-value-added products and services.

Despite the many case studies and op-eds you might read on the importance of "innovation" as a strategy, in real life many businesses are struggling to be innovative. It doesn't mean that they can't come up with enough new ideas or that they don't have creative people on staff. Instead, executives might find that they cannot implement innovation within their company's structure, or that they get bogged down by distractions that only seem to be taking them on the path to inventions that are timely--and potentially profitable.

In addition, many of the barriers to corporate innovation are forces that are much bigger than internal ones. These hurdles range from the economic challenges in Europe; entire industries dying or at least experiencing troubling states of transition (print and television media, for example, or investment banking); and the shifts in global financial power that are taking place (the rise of China and India, among other "emerging" markets).

We've been focusing for the past several columns on angel investing in Oklahoma. Angel investors are wealthy people who supply much-needed seed and early-stage capital to startup companies.

To recognize why angel investing is so important, it helps to spend a little time looking at the evolving realities of the venture capital world — formerly the primary source of capital for startup companies.