Will investing additional broadband resources in university towns create new inventions that ultimately create high-value jobs? According to last week’s op-ed piece by New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, the answer is yes. Friedman makes a compelling case that today’s growing mountains of available data will become the new raw material of industrial innovation. He writes, “The best of these ecosystems will be cities and towns that combine a university, an educated populace, a dynamic business community and the fastest broadband connections on earth. These will be the job factories of the future.”

University towns contain a rich resource of raw data, scientific knowledge and highly educated scientists and researchers. However, just harboring a research university should not automatically qualify a town for additional broadband. Friedman omits one major piece of the puzzle: many college towns lack a strong industrial base, meaning they are not home to manufacturing companies, nor to populations of people who make their living bringing products to market.

Crowdfunding is the latest and greatest way to raise money for a new business, or even a new product or service you want to launch.

But importantly, Crowdfunding offers a ton more value than just the initial funding it provides, pretty much making it a no-brainer for entrepreneurs to use.

Before I get to the "hidden benefits" which make Crowdfunding so valuable, I need to provide a little background on the concept of Crowdfunding.

Twenty minutes into my daughter's tennis lesson, trying to be efficient, I began to pick up the loose balls on the court. Her instructor stopped me. "Parents," he said, "can mollycoddle their kids, but when they're with me, they clean up their own mess."

Entitlement is pervasive in American culture. The athletes and coaches who traffic drugs or abuse children because the rules don't apply to them; millennials who, at a time of high unemployment, expect more concessions and perks, not fewer; politicians who can legally buy and sell stock based on non-public information. As Aldous Huxley wrote, "Most human beings have an almost infinite capacity for taking things for granted."

There you are, a successful entrepreneur, you have built up your company from scratch, taken it to where you want to go and then decided the time is right to exit. The cash is in the bank. What next? Start another one, retire to the beach, breed rare pigs?

Max Niederhofer, founder of Qwerly which he sold late last year to Fliptop, found himself in that enviable position. But for Mr. Niederhofer the decision he took was a surprise, even to him. He became a VC.

It’s awesome to meet someone who talks about their life experience so clearly their true Role is unmistakable.

If you are used to thinking of ‘Role’ as a person’s job title or function, then let me explain. Every kind of organization has overarching needs – a reason for being, a plan for the future, a means for surviving and growing, and so on. Most people have within them a desire to contribute to their group – their ‘team’ – by serving one or more of these big-picture needs. Some people are not very much aware of it, but for those who are, it can feel very much like their mission in life. This is what I mean when I speak of Role with a capital ‘R’.

With the 2011 edition of The Global Innovation Index (GII), edited by Soumitra Dutta, INSEAD eLab is steering the global debate on innovation to new dimensions where ingenuity and creativity are recognized, and where efficiency matters.

At the core, the GII benchmarks 125 countries/economies by averaging out their innovation conditions (input sub-index) and results (output sub-index), details below. The GII adopts a broad definition of innovation aimed at capturing, among others, outputs in copyright-related industries, as well as emerging markets’ breakthroughs in so-called frugal, reverse, and inclusive innovations. This year, Switzerland, Sweden and Singapore top the ranking, followed by Hong Kong (SAR, China), Finland, Denmark, the US, Canada, the Netherlands and the UK in the Top 10.

Twenty years after the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, the sustainable development agenda continues to focus too exclusively on the environment — driven by environment ministries, with woefully insufficient progress overall.

And over the past 20 years, development has moved us closer to the risk of exceeding “planetary boundaries” of our Earth system — from the climate to biodiversity, to land use. Yet while facing these challenges we must further enhance efforts towards bridging the development divide between the North and the South, as well as securing greater social equity and human wellbeing.

It is therefore essential to ensure that in the future, those dealing with our economies also commit to sustainable development and the ‘greening’ of our economic systems. This is why the Rio+20 world summit will focus on the green economy “in the context of sustainable development and poverty eradication”.

As the high unemployment rate lingers, many unemployed or underemployed people are considering making 2012 the year they start their own businesses. But where do you start? Here are 10 tips about key things to consider before taking the entrepreneurial plunge from experts at community colleges that are members of the National Association for Community College Entrepreneurship (NACCE) ( http://www.nacce.com ). Celebrating its 10th anniversary this year, NACCE represents community colleges nationwide that play an active role in economic development in their communities by providing quality entrepreneurship educational programs and services such as incubation and mentorship.

The 10 Tips

1. Have a Solid Idea - According to Tim Mittan, Director Entrepreneurship Center at Southeast Community College in Lincoln, NE, "When you are looking to start your own business, make sure your idea is everything you want it to be. Remember, you will be doing this every day and you want your days to be fun, not a drag. If you enjoy what you are doing, you will never feel like you are going to work. Stay flexible as you plan, but stay focused on your idea. You may have to conduct extra research, but take the time and do it right."

“Even during times of economic downturns, products that provide innovations that meet customers’ changing needs will prevail in the marketplace.  Innovation keeps companies relevant to consumers.”  So says The Three-Dimensional Leader: Negotiating Your Mission, Resources and Context, which also lays out four ingredients to bring out a team’s creative potential.

Innovation requires 1) imagination, 2) coordination 3) synergy from diversity, and 4) getting the customer’s view.

Local economic boosters love to remind anyone who will listen that the Washington region boasts the greatest concentration of technical or knowledge workers in the country. The implication, of course, is that we’re right out there on the technological edge alongside Silicon Valley, Austin and Boston.

It makes for a wonderful marketing story, but it’s fundamentally misleading. What the numbers don’t tell you is that almost all of this high-tech work is done for the government — and therein is the problem. For even with this impressive ecosystem of firms, workers and advanced technology, the region hasn’t yet spawned a critical mass of companies providing technology products and services for consumers and private businesses.

The number of jobs in America is growing, and with that, full-time wages are also shooting up in parts of the country.

The PayScale Index tracks how many times private-sector wages have changed since 2006, and found that between Q4 of 2010 and Q4 of 2011, 18 metro areas saw at least some wage growth.

While energy and tech jobs continue to see the most wage growth, construction and manufacturing jobs are finally starting to move in that direction.

If Facebook IPOs at a $100 billion valuation later this year – per the plan – it will mint more than a thousand new millionaires. We spoke with a former Facebook employee who did his own digging into what kind of employees got how much stock, and when they got it. Then we came up with this handy flow-chart. It answers the question we're all dying to know: Is that guy or gal you know who works or worked at Facebook about to become a millionaire?

Lay-offs are everywhere on Wall Street these days, but as long as there are banks, there will be bankers.

So someone has to get hired right? We wanted to know who. The first year analyst will probably still have to come from the right school, be a well-rounded individual, and have stellar excel skills.

But obviously, not everyone is looking to be a first year analyst.

Email marketing has had to deal with its fair share of industry rumours (a.k.a. myths) during its many (largely successful) years of existence. Thankfully most of them never actually materialize, and those that do are promptly dealt with, which is how we end up with an increasing set of ‘best practices and standards’. Standards that are constantly evolving and refining themselves alongside the technology and client specs they feed off.

Then there are those rumours that just don’t seem to go away. Everybody has their two cents’ worth, which just seems to fuel the fire, and before you know it there’s widespread panic over something that should have been laid to rest long ago. We take a look at a few of the worst culprits, let’s hope that next time they don’t come back to haunt us.

1. More Subscribers = Higher Conversion Rates

You’ve got an email database of 30 million ‘subscribers’? Wow, that’s great! You’re going to make a fortune! Not likely. Unfortunately the size of your email database does not directly correlate with your conversion rate. In order for you to have a chance of reaching the conversion rate you so desire, it’s vital that each and every subscriber on your database has opted in to receive your email newsletters. This ensures your list remains targeted, with subscribers who are actually interested in what you’re offering.

Thanks to advances in chemistry and software, researchers can soon sequence a human genome for $1,000 in a day.

Back in July, Jonathan Rothberg, CEO of the Connecticut-based biotech company Ion Torrent, predicted that his company would develop a chip that could sequence an entire human genome by 2013.

This week, the company surpassed that prediction with a new tabletop sequencer called the Ion Proton. The company introduced the device at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas on Tuesday, although the sequencer is only available to researchers at this point.

The expert committee’s main criteria of selecting projects included competitiveness of the proposed solutions and the presence of an innovation component.

The National Innovation Fund has summed up the program of technology business incubation by selecting 40 projects totaling 245.4 million tenge, according to KazTAG citing the press service of the organization. Sector-wise, more than 30% of selected projects pertained to agriculture, 20% to construction and production of building materials, 17.5% to energy and 15% to information and telecommunication technologies. The program involves industrial parks in Almaty, Karaganda, Astana, Ust-Kamenogorsk, Uralsk, and Shymkent.

“The purpose of business is to create a customer.” — Peter Drucker.  Could Drucker be wrong?  Maybe and maybe not but now consultants and know it all pundits are spinning customer creation as the holy grail to all 21st Century sales and marketing efforts. I am sorry, no I am not, but I don’t buy it.

A business doesn’t create a customer they come ready made. Customers are looking for suppliers to meet their needs but in the 20th Century mentality suppliers look for customers to meet their needs.  It doesn’t work that way in the minds of the 21st Century customer and yet many suppliers still think that way.  Look around and you’ll see suppliers consumed with CRM , RM, QM, CM and all the other acronyms  and now social media tricks aimed at capturing, not engaging, the customer.  Now suppliers are talking about another consultant speak mantra of the month—Customer Creation Tools & Techniques

Early stage investor Fortify.vc will open the doors to a new business At a Digital Capital Week event in November, Mayor Vincent Gray spoke about the need to lure more technology companies to Washington. (Steven Overly - The Washington Post) incubator program on Monday for as many as 15 startups, choosing office space in the District after a $100,000 grant from the mayor’s office lured the firm away from neighboring Arlington.

The city’s economic development office has made a more concerted effort in recent months to engage the technology community in the District, which has become a burgeoning hub for startups with little involvement to date from city officials.

The deal came together in a matter of weeks. Fortify co-founder Jonathon Perrelli met with officials at the Office of the Deputy Mayor for Planning and Economic Development just a few days before Christmas to discuss a deal.

A plan is a decision about what you’re going to do. It can be as detailed as you choose and potentially complicated. Or it can be core and more simple. I’ve noticed that when you’re running a one man, one woman show or any type of small team, it’s easy to get lost in the details. So make the details second to the beautiful parts of the vision.

For example, it’s the new year and we have fitness resolutions dancing in our heads. But instead of thinking of the 4 or 5 workouts a week and the diet changes, you could choose to focus on a flat tummy in your favorite shirt, a shopping spree at the 20 pound mark, how fun Zumba classes are on Monday nights and the new tasty gourmet meals that you’ll discover, etc.

Ontario is supporting 15 projects that will help drive innovation and increase partnerships among the entertainment and creative sector while ensuring our place as a leader in the creative economy.

Through the Entertainment and Creative Cluster Partnerships Fund, Ontario is helping promote capacity building, marketing, innovation and skills development in the book and magazine publishing, film and television, music, interactive digital media and commercial theatre industries. This support encourages new industry collaborations, leverages partnerships and will help strengthen these industries across the province.

Supporting Ontario's creative industries is part of the McGuinty government's plan to strengthen the economy and create good jobs for families.