Back in the old days of labor unions and skilled craftsmanship, there was a clear ascension to the ranks of the employable: emerging talent would serve as an apprentice, thoroughly developing a specific trade or skill.

Here we go again. Welcome to Apprentice Economy Version 2.0.

Many blogs and major articles, including posts on YouTern, have pointed out that a college degree no longer equates to a job offer. As the economy settles into new realities, employers are expecting more of candidates with a fresh education and little experience.

Angel investment into young Kiwi companies climbed to record levels beyond $53 million last year, according to the New Zealand Venture Investment Fund (NZIF).

But the government-backed fund said the industry’s wings are still too small and new venture capital funds were needed to ensure companies receiving angel investment remain in New Zealand.

NZIF invested $53.8 million across 103 deals during 2010, as recorded in its Young Company Finance Index.

After most of the students and staff had left University of Cincinnati for Spring break Friday, Gov. John Kasich visited UC and met with university officials to view research being commercialized for uses ranging from Crayola toys to military.

Gov. Kasich met with Ohio Board of Regents Chancellor Jim Petro and UC President Gregory Williams then toured the Novel Device Lab in Rhodes Hall, guided by associate professor of engineering and applied sciences Jason Heinkenfeld.

I’m a sucker for any event promising an interdisciplinary experience and an opportunity to dive into the unknown between silos. I was fortunate to attend, Make it Better, a recent symposium at the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) on art, design, and the future of healthcare. It delivered. I was reminded of the old Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup commercials. You got your art in my science! No, You got your science in my art! Art and science, two great tastes that taste good together. It amazes me in today’s always on and connected world we still have to be nudged, or for many, blasted out of our silos to experience the magic of interdisciplinary thinking and doing. The timing couldn’t have been better for a participative conversation about combining art, design, and healthcare. There is growing recognition that our US health care system is unsustainable. The imperative is to transform from our current “sick care” system to a “well care” system. We need to go from an institution-centered approach to a human-centered approach. We need to go from tweaks to transformation. Art and design can be key enablers for transforming health care.

Those who roam around ProfHacker headquarters are a creative bunch. Or, we like to think we are. We create ProfHacker posts about being creative. We write about using creative approaches in our research, writing, or teaching, having creative lunches, thinking of creative ways to spend end-of-the-year budget funds, or even finding creative ways to care for our children when they are sick. A few years ago, Nels reviewed the book Organizing for the Creative Person by Dolores Lehmkuhl and Dolores Cotter Lamping. Just this week, in fact, Natalie wrote about “creative workarounds.” See? We’re a creative bunch.

Creativity is fine and good, but what happens when that creativity you think you need isn’t available to you? It’s blocked. It’s dormant. It just disappeared. My suggestion? Push it. And push it intentionally. This intentionality can push you out of stasis and into action.

Fresh headlines cross my desk almost weekly about the crisis in the pharmaceutical business. Jaw-dropping sums of money, about $65 billion a year, flow into the pursuit of new medicines. Yet every year we hear the same old refrain—a pathetic number of new FDA-approved drugs, just 21 last year—come out the other end.

This highly unproductive endeavor has caused endless hand-wringing and finger-pointing. Some like to blame the FDA for being too much of a hard-ass, setting impossible standards for safety and effectiveness. Others accuse scientists for overpromising about the benefits of the genomics revolution, then failing to deliver. Wall Street is an easy boogeyman, given its fast-money obsession that is out of whack with the long-term financial support drug development requires.

This morning in London, the UK’s answer to Startup America launches, titled – guess what? – Startup Britain. That similarity aside, the initiative has been put together by a number of existing UK entrepreneurs and is not being backed by any government money, unlike the Obama initiative. Instead, we have here a ground-up entrepreneur-led initiative which is seeing over 60 leading brands offer services to up-and-coming startups in the UK. This is not specifically about tech startups – but it may well appeal to that sector.

The campaign is being launched by Prime Minister David Cameron, who is known to be very pro-enterprise. In a statement he said: “We need to see a country where new businesses are starting up on every street, in every town; where entrepreneurs are everywhere. We put out a call to business to rise up and help us drive the recovery and Startup Britain is part of the answer to that call.”

Lots of stories this weekend about the improvement in the California jobs picture, especially in the technology community. The number of tech jobs in San Francisco is finally regaining the dot-com peak, albeit in less office space, which is an interesting augury for the future of commercial real estate.

Of late there has been a growing buzz in the early stage investments space – lots of seed stage funds, incubators and entrepreneur mentoring platforms have come up – which is definitely a very encouraging sign.

An interesting innovation in this area is the advent of crowd funding platforms for startups, which – simply put – allow the crowd (people like you and me) to participate in the early stage funding process. (You can give GrowVC a whirl in case you haven’t already – a global platform that connects entrepreneurs with funders and mentors. Another similar example is AngelList. In a way, SecondMarket also allows one to get a piece of the pie of private unlisted firms, although it is more of secondary sale)

There is a crisis in academe, and it extends beyond, and predates, our current financial woes. Limited budgets, skyrocketing costs and complexity, and growing competition, both domestically and abroad, have driven even those in the upper echelons of academe to devote ever-increasing portions of their time and energy to the money and management of research, rather than to the research and teaching itself.

From that crisis, a new career path is rapidly developing, and it is already having an impact. Research-development professionals—academic administrators who help faculty members plan and attract grants for their research—are being employed by a growing number of universities and institutes. In 2010 the National Organization of Research Development Professionals was established as part of a grass-roots movement to build a peer community. In June, I will become its second president.

A new scientific study positions walnuts in the No. 1 slot among a family of foods that lay claim to being among Mother Nature’s most nearly perfect packaged foods: Tree and ground nuts. In a report here today at the 241st National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society, scientists presented an analysis showing that walnuts have a combination of more healthful antioxidants and higher quality antioxidants than any other nut.

“Walnuts rank above peanuts, almonds, pecans, pistachios and other nuts,” said Joe Vinson, Ph.D., who did the analysis. “A handful of walnuts contains almost twice as much antioxidants as an equivalent amount of any other commonly consumed nut. But unfortunately, people don’t eat a lot of them. This study suggests that consumers should eat more walnuts as part of a healthy diet.”

A great doctor understands your medical history so he or she can give the right medication dosage when you are ill. If you’re a New York City foodie, you certainly enjoy great service at your favorite restaurants. And many people can recall a repairman simply because he always had the right suggestion for a household repair.

These examples demonstrate how and why customers chose small businesses to frequent. And if you ask New York Times bestselling author Gary Vaynerchuk (@garyvee on Twitter), he’ll tell you the instances of considering earlier experiences and how much the service provider cared, when deciding on future purchases, are blossoming.

His new book, The Thank You Economy, explains how this notion has become an online movement that rethinks business value offline.

This interview with Doreen Lorenzo, president of Frog Design, an innovation firm in San Francisco, was conducted and condensed by Adam Bryant.

Q. What were some big influences for you early on?

A. Certainly my parents. Their view was, whatever you want to do, we’re fine with it. I wanted to major in theater. They said: “Fine, that’s terrific. Go for it.” And they were incredibly supportive. And my father told me, “Don’t ever say no to anything.” That is always in the back of my mind, and it’s something that I use in leadership, too. You’re presented with an opportunity. Maybe you’ve never taken on a challenge like that before. But don’t say no. You take that leap and you take that risk.

Federal ethanol mandates, which have led to a steady increase in the production of ethanol made from corn, are a major reason why food prices worldwide have reached record levels in the past several months, according to some economists.

Earlier this month, the United Nation's Food and Agriculture Organization reported that global food prices had risen for eight consecutive months, reaching the highest levels since the agency started tracking prices in 1990. The prices are high in large part because of steadily growing worldwide demand for food, and because of natural disasters that have hurt harvests, but they're also affected by government policies.

I’ve been founding and running technology startups since 2004. During that time I’ve had my ups and downs and made my fair share of mistakes.

Three weeks ago I started my 4th company, Fab.com. Technically Fab.com is a reincarnation of my 3rd company, fabulis which later was renamed fab.com, but we’ve changed our business model and our market focus dramatically and essentially done a re-start. (fabulis was a gay-targeted social network while the new Fab.com is a private-sales site for design enthusiasts). As one of our investors said, “that’s the mother of all pivots!”

I’ve previously written several blog posts (like this one) about the myriad of lessons I’ve learned from building technology startups.

More than 2,000 people have applied to the EU's 'Erasmus for Young Entrepreneurs' scheme, a programme that the European Commission hopes will replicate the success of its celebrated student exchange programme. However, only 600 have managed to find a placement so far, highlighting a mismatch between supply and demand.

While it is much younger and less well-known than the student exchange programme which inspired it, the European Union's 'Erasmus for Young Entrepreneurs' (EYE) scheme already has a growing group of supporters.

More than 2,000 young and aspiring entrepreneurs have applied to take part in EYE since the programme was launched in 2009.

Believe or not, Madison will attract national attention this year, and none of that attention will have anything to do with a Badger sporting event.

Thanks to the efforts of hundreds of academicians and business people alike, the Capital City will welcome two national conferences for the first time in 2011: the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) National Conference and the 19th Congress for the New Urbanism.

SBIR: Creating Bridges of Opportunity
First up, in April, will be the SBIR Conference, first announced by former Gov. Jim Doyle at last year's Chicago's BIO 2010 International Convention. The U.S. Small Business Association's office of Technology administers the SBIR (and the STTR, Small Business Technology Transfer) programs each year, and its spring and fall conventions provide small, high-tech businesses access to representatives from 15 federal agencies which are required each year to dole out 2.5% of their research budgets in small business grants. That amounts to $2 billion in funding each year, driving home the importance of establishing connections between small businesses and federal contacts. This year's SBIR Conference, scheduled for April 11-13, is more than a nod to the region's thriving high-tech industry, it is a win-win for all industries.

President Obama has given us a strong vision of what it’s going to take to win the future – that’s by out-innovating, out-educating and out-building the rest of the world. In order to realize that vision, America must keep up with the pace of technological advances that are greatly impacting the global economy. The truth is that in the 21st Century, world economies are trying to do more with limited resources, and part of that ultimately means we can not have an energy sector that is rooted in the infrastructure of the past.

The U.S. Economic Development Administration (EDA) realizes that investments in clean technology can help to ensure that these new energy tools enable an America that is as economically sustainable as it is environmentally sustainable.

It's a disturbing notion. With all that I've written about the great benefits of positive human synergy, you would think this thought would never cross my mind.

The whole can be less than the sum of its parts.
In a group or on a team, you expect at least some of the people to inspire each other, to think creative thoughts, to translate them into productive solutions, and to form a community of work teams that make innovative things happen. And yet, time after time, committees, executive teams, boards, and government agencies charged with important responsibilities get mired in the details, are stymied by self interest, or just end up rubber-stamping the status quo.

Why?

When someone comes up with an important innovative mission, they need to attract energized team members to help them plan and execute. But at the earliest stage, the vision needs to get moving and there isn't time to give anyone a 'thumbs down.' You get followers and you hope they'll be OK, whether or not you would have been likely to pick those particular ones under different circumstances. Sad to say, some will just be along for the ride. This happens a lot in large organizations, where the politically astute can readily sniff out personal, as opposed to team, opportunities.

Pervasive, elusive and tough, cancer has proved to be a formidable foe against generations of bright and well-funded researchers.

Although there was never an official declaration, military rhetoric became the cliché among journalists covering cancer research as President Nixon signed the U.S. National Cancer Act in December 1971. The "reconnaissance" might be completed in labs and "offensives" inside the body, but like the war on drugs and the war on terror, trying to root out this disease has been more difficult and more expensive than originally hoped.