DIYBio.org, an online hub for sharing ideas on DIYbio (do-it-yourself biology) has grown to more than 2,000 members since its inception.

One of the movement’s rallying points is Genspace, a nonprofit laboratory in Brooklyn that is open to members of the public, regardless of scientific background. Similar labs have sprouted in Boston and San Francisco.

If you thought 2011 seemed like a big year for web startup funding, you were absolutely right. According to the latest MoneyTree report from PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) and the National Venture Capital Association (NVCA), 2011 saw the highest level of VC investment in Internet companies over the past decade.

$6.9 billion went into 997 VC deals in Internet-specific over the course of 2011, an increase of 68 percent in dollars and 24 percent in deals from the previous year, when $4.1 billion went into 807 deals. Internet companies accounted for 24 percent of all VC investments in 2011, compared to 18 percent in 2010, the MoneyTree report said.

More than 40 million people are unemployed in developed economies alone. In this video, McKinsey partners Byron Auguste, James Manyika, and Katrin Suder discuss the underlying causes of the jobs crisis and some of the ways business and government can cooperate to create the millions of jobs that are needed.

Addressing supply and demand

Our emerging perspective is that the jobs crisis in the developed world is not a product of recession alone, and will not be solved simply by restoring economic growth. Growth is necessary and desirable. But in many countries, the historical link between growth and job creation was weakening before the current downturn began.

A Chaska, MN-based renewable energy development company, SheerWind, is putting a new twist on wind power by moving the spinning blades on top underground. The new wind turbine technology, called Invelox, promises significant cost, reliability, power and esthetic improvements compared to current turbine technology.

It's in the running for a $100,000 grand prize at the Clean Energy Challenge in Chicago, hosted by an Illionois-based partnership of research institutions, corporations, investors, foundations, trade groups, and government agencies, and rewards the most innovative clean energy companies in the Midwest with cash prizes.

Population and consumption are no more separable in producing environmental damage than the length and width of a rectangle can be separated in producing its area—both are equally important. —Biologist Paul Ehrlich, speaking with Stanford University News about the revelation that Earth’s seven-billionth citizen was born in late October (Oct. 26, 2011)

Google has enough capacity to do all of genomics in a day. —Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory computational biologist Michael Schatz, as quoted in the New York Times article, “A Genome Deluge” (Dec. 1, 2011)

The public, and especially the political class, cherry-picks its science. If a scientist finds a promising treatment for AIDS or cancer, then he is a hero; if he warns about overpopulation, climate change, or toxic contamination of the environment, then he risks either being ignored or, worse, being subjected to ridicule. Such negative incentives reduce to a handful the number of scientists who are willing to speak out. —John Terborgh in a review of Tim Flannery’s book Here on Earth: A Natural History of the Planet (NY Review of Books, Oct. 13, 2011)

The National Science Board recently put together a huge report, Science and Engineering Indicators 2012, about how much money is being invested in science and tech R&D around the world (via The Atlantic).

It's showing just how many billions the Asian nations are investing to compete with the U.S. and the EU in producing intellectual capital (research, patents, property) — but that the U.S. still dominates in R&D spending worldwide. While China is graduating the most engineering students by far (34%), the U.S. is only turning out a shocking 4% of those grads.

Northern Kentucky leaders aim to leverage the region’s brainpower and business clout to create new high-paying jobs – and become the nation’s next great technology hub.

Today, they’ll launch UpTech, a business accelerator program expected to bring the world’s best and brightest technology entrepreneurs to Northern Kentucky. With the aid of Northern Kentucky University’s College of Informatics and more than 40 of the region’s top companies, UpTech’s goal is to turn fledgling ideas into viable business ventures that ultimately will transform the local economy.

Once upon a time, back in the days of yore, when entrepreneurs went by names like “Jeff Bezos”, Internet retailers were the investment rage, and Harvard still printed a face book of its students on paper, there was a ritual that many venture capital backed participated in. It was called the “initial public offering.”

Now, many of you are young and can’t remember the 1990s, so let me tell you about this ritual. The founders of companies would sell shares of those businesses to the public and the businesses would be listed on the stock exchange.

CEOs, investors, and board members frequently complain about ineffective board meetings. Steve Blank, Jeff Bussgang, Brad Feld, and Fred Wilson each have suggested board meetings could be improved by changing the format, process, or content.

Having good meetings starts by having the right people in the room (as discussed in the first installment of this series) and in having a good chair or facilitator for the discussion (as highlighted in the second). The board then can create the right agenda with a relatively simple, three-step process.

As states and metropolitan areas fight to regain ground lost during the economic downturn, the ability to innovate is proving increasingly crucial. Innovation allows economies to adapt as new technologies emerge. It enables existing companies to survive and thrive and encourages new businesses to develop. A strong innovation ecosystem facilitates the design of new products and the development of new production processes. Without it, states and metros will find themselves lagging behind in the next economy.

Recognizing the role that innovation will play in stimulating job creation and economic recovery in the decades ahead, Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam’s INCITE initiative seeks to position his state as a innovation-driven job growth leader by enhancing innovation capacity. As part of Haslam’s larger Jobs4TN economic development plan, this $50 million program will foster innovation, expedite commercialization of new technologies and products and support entrepreneurship in each of the state’s nine economic development regions.

KOCHI: India's first public-private partnership (PPP) telecom business incubator, 'Startup Village', is being set up on a 15,000-square feet space at the KINFRA Park in nearby Kalamassery and the first phase of the project will be inaugurated in February this year.

An agreement in this regard was signed between MobME CEO Sanjay Vijayakumar and Kerala Infrastructure Development Authority (KINFRA) Managing Director S Ramanath.

Startup Village will focus primarily on student start-ups from college campuses and would be modelled on the technology incubators in Silicon Valley. It aims to incubate 1,000 product start-ups over 10 years and start the search for a billion-dollar company from a college campus by the turn of the decade.

You and a pal have what you think is a great idea. You hack some code together and build a simple prototype. You get some feedback, like what you’re hearing and decide to go all-in on a start-up. You build some more, maybe convince another jiujitsu developer to join your little cadre on the come, and build enough product to demonstrate a vision that is ready for some angel capital. You take in $500k that will enable you to hire a few more engineers to get a beta product shipped. With the angel money you hope to build early customer traction and achieve a series of key operating milestones that will set you up for a Series A: then it’s off to the races. Scaling the technology team. Front and back-end engineers. Some product managers. Maintaining enough big-picture perspective not to lose sight of key architectural decisions. Pushing releases on a regular schedule. In short, it can get very complicated very, very quickly. Yet plenty of technical founders don’t have the experience of building and managing high-performance teams that meld creativity with productivity, a feat that is challenging even for the most experience engineering leaders. So what is a start-up to do?

The legislative compromise on a short-term payroll tax extension dominated headlines in late December, but few journalists heralded a provision that was included in the bill that will help small businesses and boost America’s economy: the six-year reauthorization of the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program.

The SBIR program helps empower our nation’s small entrepreneurs by funding a major federal Research & Development endeavor, creating new jobs and growing our economy. As a member of the Senate Small Business and Entrepreneurship Committee, I have been a long-time supporter of this highly successful program.

Small businesses – which are often underrepresented in government R&D programs -- employ 41 percent of our nation’s high-tech workers and generate 13 to 14 times more patents per employee than large firms. By harnessing the entrepreneurial spirit of small businesses and giving them the funding they need to be innovative, the SBIR program has spurred job growth and the development of advanced technology, like clean energy and life-saving therapies and devices. Because of the SBIR program, every federal department with an R&D budget of $100 million or more is required to award SBIR funding to small businesses.

Is it time to shelf the long-standing liberal arts-oriented education rich in literature and history in favor of more concentrated study of current events, biology, mathematics, foreign languages and computer programming? Will the need for "elegant minimalism" in a data-swamped world thrust design and the arts to the forefront? Should students focus on their passions rather than "core" subjects because what they'll need to know 10 years from now doesn't even exist yet?

In short, what skills and knowledge will it take for young people to win the best jobs in the future and create new opportunities for others?

Against that backdrop, Xconomy today released its inaugural Xconomist Report. Available for download here, it comprises a wide range of thought-provoking responses to a single question: "What should students be studying now to prepare for 10 years from now?"

Boeing executives announced this month that all existing operations in Wichita, Kan., would be shut down by the end of next year. Barring some unexpected act of salvation, Boeing will leave Wichita after eight decades as one of its biggest employers and most prestigious brands.  Downtown Wichita can be seen through the windows of the Kansas Aviation Museum.

With every New Year comes a slew of resolutions? Eat better, eat less, join a gym, actually go to the gym, quit smoking.  While well-intentioned Americans focus on getting more physically fit, how fit is your business when it comes to its legal business structure?  Have you been avoiding the question for years?

After all, as business owners, there are countless others things to focus on – keeping customers happy, finding new customers, entering new markets to name a few. Or maybe you formed one business structure years ago, but what may have worked for your business during its first few years of existence may not be optimal for you now.

The U.S. Small Business Administration supplied $6.5 billion in loans last year for New England companies, and this year is increasing the maximum size of individual borrowings from $2 million to $5 million for manufacturers, according to the agency's regional administrator.

Jeanne Hulit, who runs the SBA regional office in Hartford and is currently an acting associate administrator in the agency's Washington, D.C., headquarters, said last week during a banking conference at Foxwoods Resort Casino that the loan total supplied to New England businesses last year was a 14 percent increase from 2010. About 4,500 businesses in New England received loans last year guaranteed by the SBA, whose mission is to help smaller companies start up and expand.

The Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) 2011 Global Report finds an upsurge in entrepreneurship around the world - entrepreneurs are now numbering near 400 million in 54 countries - with millions of new hires and job creation expectations in the coming years.

The 13th annual survey of early-stage entrepreneurship worldwide, launched today at the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor 2012 Annual Meeting in San Francisco, is the largest single study of its kind. The GEM Global Report is authored by Professor Donna Kelley, Babson College, Professor Slavica Singer, J.J. Strossmayer University in Croatia, and Dr. Professor Mike Herrington, Executive Director of the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor and Director of the Centre for Innovation and Entrepreneurship at the University of Cape Town, South Africa.

“Thanks to an uptick in entrepreneurship worldwide, we now have nearly 400 million entrepreneurs starting and running businesses in the 54 economies surveyed,” said the report’s lead author, Donna Kelley, Associate Professor of Entrepreneurship at Babson. “Even better news is that over 140 million of these entrepreneurs expect to add at least five new jobs over the next five years. These figures and growth projections affirm that entrepreneurial activity is flourishing across the globe and that entrepreneurship, as an economic engine, is the best hope for reviving a weakened world economy,” she said.

Download the Report

In a recent special issue of TIME, I argued that India would eventually overtake China as the world’s premier emerging market. It’s a prediction that often produces snickers. How, skeptics ask, can India’s fractious democracy and inept governance overcome the clinical efficiency of China’s tight-fisted state? But I have always stood by that conviction.

My reasoning was that India’s superior and more commercially run private sector is stronger than China’s, and that ultimately, economic development is propelled forward by entrepreneurship and healthy, innovative private companies and banks, not by government planning and state-driven industrialization. India’s private enterprise, backed up by the freedoms of democracy, would come to trump China’s state-led, authoritarian growth model. Not only is history on my side — name one authoritarian regime that fostered vibrant, creative industries — but I also have my doubts about the perceived competency of the Chinese state. (That’s a subject for another post.) Yes, the Indian state may underperform the Chinese state, but, I felt, at the end of the day that wouldn’t hold back India’s economic miracle.