Some people might look at what Brentt Baltimore did and shake their heads in disbelief. Last year, Baltimore, then a senior majoring in economics and finance at Claremont McKenna College in California, turned down a six-figure job at a Los Angeles area hedge fund. Instead he took a $33,000-a-year position at a venture capital firm in Detroit. This, even though he has about $38,000 in student loan debt.

Baltimore, 24, is part of a small group of recent graduates who are forgoing large salaries to work for startup businesses in Detroit, Las Vegas, Cincinnati, Cleveland, New Orleans, Baltimore and Philadelphia and Providence, R.I. He chose his job with the help of Venture for America, a nonprofit organization that selects fellows to work in cities that aren't the usual magnets for young college graduates. By August, 108 fellows will be working at 70 companies as part of the two-year program.

For a profession full of business strategy experts, it’s impressive how rarely and narrowly the venture capital industry is subjected to conventional competitive analysis. Ask yourself: who are the VC’s customers? Limited partners (LPs) are probably the technically correct answer, but startups would certainly be the more fashionable one. It’s a reasonable debate. Either way, one’s the supplier and one’s the customer. Hell, maybe they’re both customers and VC’s are some kind of glorified broker. But the fact that there isn’t a popular consensus illustrates how impotent we’ve been at examining the industry.

Amidst the flurry of actions in Harrisburg as the fiscal year came to a close, legislation creating Innovate in PA was passed by both legislative bodies and signed, yesterday, by Governor Corbett. Innovate in PA is an initiative that was led, in our region, by a partnership between the Ben Franklin Technology Partners of Southeastern PA and the Greater Philadelphia Alliance for Capital and Technologies (PACT), with the goal of increasing investment capital for emerging and early stage technology enterprises.

The Innovate in PA tax credit program provides tax credits for insurance companies whose bids for those credits are expected to net at least $75 million to address the seed capital needs of start-up companies and small businesses that are growing and expanding in Pennsylvania and will facilitate job growth, new patents and products, and increased tax revenues for the Commonwealth. The proceeds from the sale of the credits will be distributed through the Ben Franklin Technology Partners, the Ben Franklin Technology Development Authority’s Venture Investment Program and the Life Sciences Greenhouses.

It’s always been tough to start a new business, even when the bottom line was just making a profit to stay alive. A few years ago, a second focus of sustainability (“green”) was added as a requirement for respectability. Now I often hear a third mandate of social responsibility. Entrepreneurs are now measured against the “triple bottom line” (TBL or 3BL) of people, planet, and profit.

The real challenge with the triple bottom line is that these three separate accounts cannot be easily added up. It’s difficult to measure the planet and people accounts in any quantifiable terms, compared to profits. How does any entrepreneur define the right balance, and then measure their performance against real metrics?

Do Silicon Valley VCs have a negative bias against women entrepreneurs, making it more difficult for them to raise venture capital than men?

If you look at the statistics, it would seem so. Women entrepreneurs raise just 4.2 percent of overall venture funding in the U.S., according to research from the Clayman Institute for Gender Research at Stanford University. Part of the reason women entrepreneurs raise such a small portion of overall capital is simple math. Overall, there far more male than female entrepreneurs – though that’s changing quickly – and in the tech startup space, there aren’t enough women with computer science degrees (only 12 percent of computer science degrees are awarded to women).

For small-business owners and bootstrapping startup founders, it's tough to completely retreat from work. If you’re an entrepreneur, you may feel there’s too much on your plate, no one to take over, and that any downtime will lead to lost business. It's not easy to decide when to take a vacation.

However, even a tiny vacation is critical, both for your personal health and sanity, as well as for your business. Studies show that as leisure time decreases, we experience more negative emotions, more stress, more health problems and lower life satisfaction. Even if you love what you do, you can’t live on work alone. Taking time off is essential to recharging your batteries and avoiding entrepreneurial burnout.

Ten years ago Clayton Christensen, Jeff Dyer and I were struck by a question that led to over a decade of research: what makes some individuals, and the organisations they lead, more innovative than others? We interviewed and observed hundreds of entrepreneurs, inventors, and other innovators around the world, and collected data on 6,000 more in over 80 different countries to understand how they created and sustained high-performing cultures of innovation.

We found three key elements that consistently drive innovation: people, processes and philosophies (what we call the 3Ps). We found that highly innovative organisations built their people, processes and philosophies around five fundamental “discovery skills”. Innovators ask provocative questions that challenge the status quo. They observe the world like anthropologists to detect new ways of doing things. They network with people who don’t think like them to gain radically different perspectives. They experiment to test new ideas and experiences. Finally, these behaviours trigger new associations which lead them to connect the unconnected, thereby producing disruptive ideas. An organisation’s investment in and ability to leverage these three facets of innovation sets it apart.

President John A. Fry announced July 1 the launch of Drexel Ventures, an innovation fund, incubator and technology transfer within the University. The program will provide support for faculty, students and alumni to create new businesses while fostering economic growth and development in the Greater Philadelphia region.

“How do we take all the talent that we have here in Philadelphia, keep it here and allow it to function within an innovation ecosystem that produces new business, new jobs and creates a virtuous cycle? …We are trying to say to our Drexel students and our Drexel faculty, ‘If you’re someone with an idea that you would like to take to market, we will provide the infrastructure for you to do it,’” Fry said.

When Samsung opened the doors to its Silicon Valley accelerator in Palo Alto on Thursday night, the company announced it was already looking ahead, working to debut another one in New York City by September.

Under the umbrella of the company's Open Innovation Center, the accelerators are part of Samsung's efforts to support software startups. "As a company that produces world-class hardware, we know we have to have a really great and thoughtful integration of software within hardware," said David Eun, executive vice president and head of the Open Innovation Center.

At the beginning of March this year I returned from a family vacation in Italy, Greece, and Turkey; packed up my apartment in D.C.; and flew on a one-way ticket to Mexico. A few weeks later I launched my new website and began actively building my business as a nomadic entrepreneur – and it was the best decision that I have ever made.

I’ve been in the entrepreneurship world for awhile now working at startups, VC firms, and non-profits and even running an entrepreneurship center at a university. I had clients of my own but I wasn’t fully committed to my own journey through entrepreneurship until I took the leap and figured out a way to combine my passion for entrepreneurship with my passion for travel. Now, I help first-time entrepreneurs plan, launch, and grow businesses that will fit with their overall lifestyle goals and I do it while living in a different country every month or so and exploring entrepreneurial ecosystems around the globe.

We're entering the tech doldrums—that time after Apple, Google, and Microsoft have held their big conferences and Samsung, Nokia, and the rest have done their big product reveals. In a few months, we'll be speculating about what will be the hot holiday products.

But right now is when I like to take stock of those things that still irritate me as a technology user. Rather than shove more products down our throats, why can't they just make the current ones we have work right? In an era when so much is done in software rather than hardware, and updates flow over high-speed networks, there's just no reason why giant tech companies can't fix these problems. 

Remember the JOBS Act? The 2012 law touted by President Barack Obama as a "game-changer" was going to free entrepreneurs to tap into oceans of online funding from small investors, spurring the creation of businesses and jobs.

Don't hold your breath. Although the Securities and Exchange Commission has yet to write final rules for this form of "crowdfunding," the initiative is best described as follows: dead on arrival.

Philadelphia has a wealth of minority business leaders who work hard to make business in Philadelphia thrive. The Philadelphia Business Journal and presenting sponsor Wells Fargo are pleased to announce the 2013 Minority Business Leader Award Winners. (See photo gallery for winners.) The program is in partnership with Old School 100.3 and Univision. Winners will be recognized at an awards program on Thursday, August 8, 7:30am – 9:30am at the Crystal Tea Room, Wanamaker Building.

These days, if your startup does not have an Internet home base up and running, you are not ready for business or potential investors. Customers go there to check on the details of your offerings and verify that you are not a scam, investors look there to check out your management and sales approach, and suppliers expect to find contact information.

There should be no doubt that an Internet presence is as basic to success in business today, as brick and mortar was a hundred years ago. Yet I am amazed to see US Census Bureau data from 2012 that at least 50%, maybe up to 75%, of small businesses still have no presence at all. These are soon to be the walking dead, and the competitors you can beat today.

Brainstorming business ideas around the table with friends is fun. When it comes time to make some decisions, there’s a number of questions that need to be asked and answered honestly before diving into the deep-end. Take a  personal inventory before you plunge into the entrepreneurial world and start with our short questionnaire.

Can I make my vision a reality?

Don’t be discouraged if you didn’t jump up and shout “Yes!” Questioning yourself is an important part of your first foray into entrepreneurship. After you get out of your comfort zone, you’ll find that your reactions to new ideas and businesses will change.

On July 10, the SEC announced that the ban on general solicitation has been removed for small businesses seeking startup capital, allowing for sweeping changes in the way businesses find funding. This announcement is a productive step forward to fully enact the Jumpstart Our Business Startups Act (JOBS Act) passed in early April of 2012. With general solicitation now permitted, startups have the opportunity raise money from a wider range of investors – potentially accelerating their funding. What does this ruling mean? Fundable explains via this infographic.

We recently wrote about Rep. Marsha Blackburn's nearly 100% fact free oped about how we need stronger copyright and patent enforcement to encourage innovation. I wanted to revisit that article to drill down on one point:

America has always been a society that rewards good ideas and protects property rights in a free-market capitalist system, not one premised on permission-less innovation where others can free-ride or take someone’s creation without even asking. It’s wrong to deny creators and innovators the fruits of their labor or to deprive them of their individual right to profit for the work they legitimately create.

That’s why the U.S. Constitution under Article I, Section 8 recognized these natural rights and empowered Congress to secure them in a way that advances honest and legitimate activity.

What makes an entrepreneur successful?

Some people believe it's the ability to innovate. However, many startups are refinements of existing business models or improvements on how everyday products and services are delivered.  Being innovative helps, but it's not the deciding factor.

How about access to capital? It's admittedly difficult to start a business if you don't have the money to get it started.  Even so, there are plenty of successful startups that survived on the thinnest of shoestrings for their first few years.

A few weeks ago, we brought you the highlight responses to a Reddit list asking what things Americans do that the rest of the world finds bizarre.

Of course, there's an endless list of things that reveal major cultural differences.

Today, we bring you a follow-up list to a related thread: which is also on Reddit.

Here were some key ones.

As the nation celebrates the role of the Army, Royal Navy and the RAF, on Armed Forces Day today, (Saturday 29 June) a military charity has said that if MoD helped nurture an entrepreneurial mind-set from the day recruits joined up it could save the department money and be better agile thinkers.

Richard Morris, the Founder and CEO of Heropreneurs, the only military charity to help and support Service leavers, military spouses and armed veterans into business said: