Kiplinger, font of finance advice, business forecasts and informational analysis, has released its annual "Best Cities" for the next decade list. But despite its focus on money, Kiplinger did not solely base its research on average annual incomes, salary hikes, or cost of living. Although those monetary issues are major concerns in choosing a city for living, people need more. They need art and culture, education and innovation. And these days, riddled by the economic and environmental concerns that plague large metropolitan areas, cities offering of out-of-the-box solutions also draw residents.

Kiplinger thought of all these aspects in creating their list.

In our search for top destinations for your future, we focused on cities where governments, universities and business communities work together to supercharge the economic engine. And it is no coincidence that economic vitality and livability go hand in hand.

Creativity in music, arts and culture, plus neighborhoods and recreational facilities that rank high for coolness attract like-minded professionals who go on to cultivate a region's business scene. All of which make our 2010 Best Cities not just great places to live but also great places to start a business or find a job.

SANTA CLARA, CA--(Marketwire - July 13, 2010) - TiE today announced the formation of TiE Angels, an angel investment group comprised of charter members of TiE Silicon Valley. The group's mission is to provide entrepreneurs access to seed capital and ongoing strategic and operational support. Many TiE charter members, who are some of the most creative business thinkers and company builders across the world, are already investors in, and advisors to emerging companies. With its objective of expanding access to capital for early stage companies, TiE Angels is a natural extension of TiE's primary goal of fostering entrepreneurship.

"Since its inception, TiE has served exceptionally well as a mentor, educator, and advisor to entrepreneurs who have created great companies with early-stage funding from our venture capital colleagues," said Mr. Vish Mishra, TiE Silicon Valley President and Venture Director of Clearstone Venture Partners, a successful early-stage venture capital firm with $700M of committed capital to technology innovators. "TiE Angels will now fill that role by providing seed capital to put promising entrepreneurs on the first-rung of the success ladder, a crucial need in the current economic environment."

SAINT JOHN, NEW BRUNSWICK - It's not easy to attract investment these days - entrepreneurs must show both that they have a product that's needed and that there's a market willing to buy that product.

So says Richard Bendis, president and chief executive of Philadelphia-based Innovation America, who was in Saint John last week to speak at a meeting on the provincial energy hub. Bendis began his career in the private sector and is an experienced venture capitalist. The public/private organization he now heads advocates economic development based on innovation, something Bendis is passionate about.

The Telegraph-Journal sat down with Bendis who shared his thoughts on what entrepreneurial ventures - in particular those based on emerging technologies related to a "cluster" like the so-called energy hub here in New Brunswick - need to be successful.

"In the past, it used to be that if you could prove that you had proof of concept, you might be able to get some private-sector capital," Bendis says.

But with the economic crisis, he says, it's become more difficult for entrepreneurs to find money at an early stage.

Apparently some Facebook users are still worried that one day Facebook is going to charge. To calm those fears, Facebook now says on its front page it will "always" be free (via All Facebook).

As Blue Fountain Media's director of business development, I often find myself in the position of being the first person an entrepreneur or executive talks to.

Many of the clients who come to us are small-business owners, entrepreneurs and startups.

While they are almost all intelligent, driven and savvy businesspeople, when it comes to understanding how the web works, a great majority have no idea how to use the web to their business's advantage.

This is not an indictment of my clients. Most websites fail when it comes to delivering new leads, new clients and new revenue.

Display screens integrated into contact lenses (image above)? Micromechanical medical devices? Pervasive biosensors? A big challenge in the development of wearable and implantable gadgets is how to power them. Years ago, I wrote about efforts to develop a "glucose fuel cell" and other possible technologies to scavenge power from the human body itself. In the new issue of Smithsonian, Michael Belifore looks at the latest developments in that field, much of which is funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA)'s Starved Electronics program. Belifore is the author of The Department of Mad Scientists: How DARPA Is Remaking Our World, from the Internet to Artificial Limbs. From Smithsonian:

Obviously, our bodies generate heat—thermal energy. They also produce vibrations when we move—kinetic energy. Both forms of energy can be converted into electricity. Anantha Chandrakasan, an MIT electrical engineering professor, who is working on the problem with a former student named Yogesh Ramadass, says the challenge is to harvest adequate amounts of power from the body and then efficiently direct it to the device that needs it.

Reena Jadhav talks to Randy Williams, founder of Keiretsu Forum, about angel investing on her show, "Cashing Out: Exits and Valuations with Reena Jadhav."

In this segment, Randy talks about what entrepreneurs need to have in place to attract angel funding. He also talks about how much the Keiretsu network invests in angel rounds and what percent of the company a startup should be willing to give up for angel capital.

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Got balls, got money, and madly in love with promising startups?

You’re destined to start your journey on angel investing!

Think about it. You invest your own money and report to no one but yourself.

Cut a check if you like; close the checkbook if you don’t.

You always have the final say ‘cos Golden Rule says that “he who has the gold makes the rules.”

Despite the fact that the state is constantly teetering on the brink of bankruptcy, California remains at the top of the venture capital heap churning out the most deals with the most dollar volume in the second quarter of 2010.

A new report from private company research firm CB Insights reveals that California companies took more than 50 percent of total venture dollars in the second quarter with financings breaking the $3 billion funding mark and more than half of those funds going toward health care and Internet companies. In addition to California, two other states--Massachusetts and New York--accounted for 70 percent of the total venture funding pool, an 11 percent increase over last year.

The majority of chief executives at privately held technology companies expect to receive bonuses this year, according to a new poll, but how satisfied are they with their incentive compensation process?

It depends on how structured their compensation plan was.

ExpertCEO, a Web site that helps connect about 1,700 senior executives from all types of companies, polled its technology CEO members in June to understand the structure and process of their compensation. Of the 64 CEOs who responded, 80% say they are eligible to earn a performance-based bonus in 2010.

Kauffman Labs for Enterprise Creation, an initiative of the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, today launched a competitive search for aspiring founders to start high-growth, transformative companies in the burgeoning education market.

The Kauffman Labs Education Ventures Program will identify up to 20 top entrepreneurial concepts for the education market and work with the aspiring founders to establish their organizations. Those selected will be immersed in an intensive program designed to catalyze the creation of companies with the potential to generate thousands of jobs and dramatic economic benefits.

Learn more about how the Education Ventures Program will equip founders with the time, resources and skills to take their ideas from thought to implementation.

Silver Spring, Proximetry, SmartSynch and SDG&E debate how to build out the grid.

For more than a year, I’ve been writing that the U.S. financial ecosystem for venture capital-backed startups is crumbling and placing the U.S economy in jeopardy at a time when countries such as China and India are producing far more sophisticated startups than ever. For so long, it seemed that these concerns fell on deaf ears.

I’m heartened to say that this message, at long last, may finally be getting heard in Congress.

I met last week with a small group of venture capitalists and 8 members of the New Democratic Coalition – members of the House of Representatives–including Joe Crowley (D-N.Y.); Betsy Markey, (D-CO); Jared Polis (D-CO); and Laura Richardson (D-CA)—all of whom have a stated commitment to innovation and entrepreneurship. We met on Silicon Valley’s Sand Hill Road in a meeting organized by Silicon Valley Bank.

New technologies and a growing capacity for innovation are playing fundamental roles in the search for answers to the current economic situation. At the Wharton Global Alumni Forum in Madrid, three executives from Spain's high-tech sector and two entrepreneurs in Africa's growing technology sector took part in a panel session titled, "Technology and Innovation: Panaceas or Chimeras?" The session was moderated by Alberto Durán, founder and CEO of Rio de Janeiro-based Mundivox Communications.

To set the stage for discussion, Durán noted during the panel and in a later discussion that, while technology and innovation will help create the basis for societal growth, it is demographics that has "completely changed the economics of the way we live, and is creating both immense opportunities as well as immense challenges." As an example, he pointed to the 85 million plastic water bottles that are thrown away every day. "The pile of bottles in the middle of the Pacific is twice the size of Texas, yet we don't talk about that," he stated. "Political will is needed to address these issues. Today we can create amazing financial instruments to fund real estate, telecom and other industries. Why don't those instruments exist to fund new technologies for plastic? Someone has to come in and say, 'Look, we need to do this.' It is political will that will make this happen."

2007. That's the last time we saw any true innovation in mobile hardware. That's the year that the first iPhone was introduced. Here, we are now, three years and three versions of the iPhone later and we've seen no significant innovations in mobile hardware. Sure, we've seen cameras with better resolution and faster processors, but those are just natural evolutions of technology that would be happening anyway. There has been no innovative development of hardware (or it's interactions) since that first iPhone set the new standard for mobile devices and how we use them.

If there's no innovation happening in the hardware world at this time, then where does it happen? It happens the only other place it can: software. Android devices are no more innovative, from a hardware standpoint, than the iPhone. The thing that differentiates them is the software, the content available. It does us well to remember, also, when the iPhone first came out, it was closed to developers. Only when third-party developers started building applications did it truly become a "must-have" device. One look at Apple's advertising validates this. Most of their advertising, these days, centers around applications that run on the device, not the device itself. Software developers are now responsible for creating content that is making these devices indispensable. Once again, content is king.

The next time you twist an ankle or discover a strange rash, try using ZocDoc. It's an online service that makes the process of finding a doctor and scheduling an appointment much less painful.

ZocDoc asks you for a few simple bits of information: Your zip code, your insurance provider, and the kind of doctor you want to see. Then it gives you a list of local doctors, with pictures, patient ratings, and available appointment times. Click on a time and you're set. The whole experience is sort of like making an appointment at the Apple store (i.e. well-designed and easy).

You, too, can meet a venture capitalist. Bain Capital Ventures, with $1.5 billion under management and early-stage investments in companies like LinkedIn, Staples and DoubleClick, is reaching out to the masses.

On Wednesday, the venture capital affiliate of the private equity firm Bain Capital opened  a virtual center connecting entrepreneurs with like-minded individuals and its network of industry experts. The Bain Capital Ventures Innovation Center, leveraging social networks on Facebook and LinkedIn, may seem like just another network for entrepreneurs. But it is providing regular public access like no other major venture capital firm has before, mainly to help entrepreneurs refine their business ideas.

Each Friday from 3 to 5 p.m. Eastern time, entrepreneurs can meet with at least one Bain Capital Ventures staff member (principal, managing director or associate) for 15 to 20 minutes at Bain Capital Ventures’ Boston office or at the Venture Cafe in Cambridge, Mass. Some of 33 managing directors, principals and associates will rotate each week into the office hours.

The deadline for submitting an entry is August 27, 2010. Awards winners will be announced on October 27, 2010. EDA's Innovation in Economic Development Awards (Formerly the EDA Excellence Award Program) recognize innovative economic development projects or strategies of national significance. The awards are designed to showcase best practices and highlight outstanding results.
This year's award categories are:

Innovation in Regional Innovation Clusters (RICs)

The entry advances the development of geographic concentrations of firms and industries that do business regionally, across sectors.

Innovation in Commercialization

The entry promotes the commercialization of university research and technology, business incubators and research parks to foster job creation.

Innovation in Global Export Promotion

The entry successfully promotes American goods overseas and manufacturing revitalization, bolstering competitiveness abroad and creating higher-skill, higher-wage jobs.

Innovation in Green Technology

The entry promotes innovative strategies in the development of environmentally-friendly technology, projects, or partnerships that attract substantial private capital investment and create higher-skill, higher-wage jobs.

For information on the application process and selection criteria, download the Entry Brochure.

Once you've read the Entry Brochure and are ready to submit your entry, Click Here for the online application form.

Spain’s victory yesterday in the World Cup in Johannesburg marks the conclusion to an exciting competition. However, with the media pointing to some of the dashed economic expectations among South Africans these past few weeks, I decided to inquire a little more into the entrepreneurial part of South Africa’s economic development equation which led me to uncover some important trends and opportunities suggesting that the country might be well on its way to achieving the goal set forth by the country’s new president, Jacob Zuma, to create 4 million new jobs by 2014.

According the Gallup World Poll, 29% of South Africans are planning to start a business in the next 12 months. This is below the median of 41% for Africa, but on the positive side, we know from local witnesses that many of those plans are increasingly materializing. Nontokozo Hlangweni from Endeavor South Africa explained to us that the scarcity of jobs has helped push a sort of entrepreneurial energy that drives young people to become their own employers. Not surprisingly, Small and Medium enterprises (SMEs) are recognized as vital in the development of the South African economy. According to South African reserve bank findings, the total economic output of SMEs is more or less 50% of the country’s GDP. The SME sector also employs more than60% of the total labor force. The task at hand is to continue building an environment that supports new business creation and to foster, through policies and programs, businesses with high-growth potential. The key to a true entrepreneurial-growth strategy is to enable young firms to grow.