DJ Patil pulls a 2-foot-long metal bar from his backpack. The contraption, which he calls a "double pendulum," is hinged in the middle, so it can fold in on itself. Another hinge on one end is attached to a clamp he secures to the edge of a table. "Now," he says, holding the bar vertically, at its top, "see if you can predict where this end will go." Then he releases it, and the bar begins to swing wildly, circling the spot where it is attached to the table, while also circling in on itself. There is no pattern, no way to predict where it will end up. While it spins and twists with surprising velocity, Patil talks to me about chaos theory. "The important insight," he notes, "is identifying when things are chaotic and when they're not."

In high school, Patil got kicked out of math class for being disruptive. He graduated only by persuading his school administrator to change his F grade in chemistry. He went to junior college because that's where his girlfriend was going, and signed up for calculus because she had too. He took so long to do his homework, his girlfriend would complain. "It's not like I'm going to become a mathematician," he would tell her.

The United States ranks 14th in the world in wages and compensation for manufacturing workers, according to new data released by the Department of Labor's Bureau of Labor Statistics. That's on par with Ireland and Italy and far behind Norway, Denmark, Sweden, and Germany, among others. American manufacturing workers earn an average of $34.74 in total hourly compensation, just 60 percent of the $57.53 that workers in top-ranking Norway receive. The table below shows the total hourly compensation (including benefits) as well as pay for time worked for the top 20 countries in 2010.

Every other week another startup accelerator seems to pop up promising to help you grow your business by offering a mix of money and mentoring.

If you’re thinking of applying to you, you should ask yourself: Is an accelerator right for me and my business?

Vancouver-based GrowLab is looking for applications for their next cohort, so they have taken on the task of helping you answer that question.

A new report by Jeremiah Owyang out last week describes the growing proliferation of social media across corporations and shows exactly how out of control things have gotten. Owyang, an expert on the topic who is part of the Altimeter Group, has a lot to absorb here. He surveyed 144 corporations using social media along with 27 software vendors who have various management tools to help. One of the nice things about this report is he lists his sources explicitly, so you know the quality of the information. On average, a company has 178 different corporate accounts on various social networks. And that isn't counting the personal accounts. That is a lot of stuff to manage.

Email has become unmanageable. For all of us. You hear it everywhere — people talking about their snowed in inboxes, the constant distraction, their deteriorating social lives. It’s all emails fault. For some, like cyberlaw professor Lawrence Lessig, the problem has become so surmountable that they have had to declare Email Bankruptcy — an especially tantalizing solution.

But you don’t have to throw up your hands and give up. It is possible to get the situation under control with simple, low-maintenance tips and tricks. Yes, whole seminars have been devised to make people believe they need elaborate labeling or folder systems to keep tabs on their lives, but that isn’t the case. Here’s a list of ten to-dos to keep your inbox sane and safe in 2012.

By now it is common knowledge that being severely overweight puts people at increased risk of suffering from heart disease, stroke and diabetes and that obesity—defined as weighing at least 20 percent more than the high side of normal—is on the rise. According to one estimate, the U.S. will be home to 65 million more obese people in 2030 than it is today, leading to an additional six million or more cases of heart disease and stroke and another eight million cases of type 2 diabetes. Many clinicians have already begun seeing families in which the grandparents are healthier and living longer than their children and grandchildren.

Chris Dixon had an excellent post yesterday titled Recruiting programmers to your startup. The post, and the comments, are full of super useful stuff that every entrepreneur should read carefully.

I sent the link for the post out to the Foundry Group CEO email list and it generated a great discussion thread, including one of the companies sharing their full day interview / evaluation process which includes a four hour coding exercise. Among the feedback was a great short list of four addition things that Niel Robertson, the CEO of Trada (and an amazing programmer in his own right) has learned over the years.

Be careful who you pick to do the interviewing. You want to showcase your best engineers in the

While it is true that this blog is the third most popular innovation blog in the world, and while it is also true that, last year, I was voted the #1 innovation blogger in the world, both of these factoids pale in comparison to what I am about to present to you in the next paragraph.

Today, I finally realized what all of my blogging has been about for the past four years. Not to monetize my efforts. Not to build the brand of my company. Not to win friends and influence people. No way.

infoDev's Annual Report 2010-2011, which was released today,shows an impressive account of all infoDev activities and accomplishments over the past two years. Fiscal years 2010 and 2011 have represented a period of significant redefinition for infoDev, while exhibiting at the same time a period of great productivity.

infoDev's latest Annual Report references how, thanks to growing donor support, it was able to take a more holistic approach for the program, focusing on innovation, technology and entrepreneurship. The program maintained its strong ties with its grassroots network of entrepreneurs and business incubators. That network has supported 400 incubators in 107 countries, has catalyzed 25,000 firms, and has helped to create 250,000 jobs.

Great entrepreneurs have long been the epitome of people with a great work ethic. But many complain to me that it is becoming harder and harder to find team members and employees who demonstrate and live the same culture. Somewhere along the way, work ethic seems to have been replaced by a pervasive sense of entitlement, especially in the younger generations.

As the new year starts, now is the time to assess your own situation, set out clearly what you expect from each and every team member, and unleash the entrepreneur inside every employee. As a guide, I enjoyed the analysis of Eric Chester, in his new book “Reviving Work Ethic,” which provides a leader’s guide to ending entitlement and restoring pride in the emerging workforce.

If they want to compete successfully in the future, companies should hold off on rapid ideation and faster commercialization until they take an unflinching look at what is truly stifling breakthrough innovation. In this article, Soren Kristensen provides insight on how honest self-reflection can free you from your biggest impediment to growth.

Globalization, emerging markets and mobility have prompted all businesses to reassess their viability, shifting breakthrough innovation from a competitive advantage to a competitive imperative.

Many companies are hanging their hopes on the promise of improved customer insights via new social media, crowd sourcing and listening channels. In theory, the potency of these ideas will catalyze a new organizational velocity around innovation, making them first-to-market with audience-pleasing products and services that previously proved elusive.

Many creative African-American entrepreneurs joined millions of risk-taking innovators racing into the startup frontier in 2011 with dreams of developing their passions into the next big marketplace disruption.

Yet, African Americans face some unique economic challenges, which, ironically, could compel their competitive spirits in 2012.

It’s early, but 2012 just may be the Year of the Urban Innovator.

Here are five bold predictions I believe will change the economic landscape for Black and urban America this year, contributing to an overall economic benefit for the nation.

New York City and Abilene, Texas, are both classified as major cities, though they're drastically different in a couple of ways.

One is population. New York has 8.3 million residents, while Abilene has 116,000, barely above the 100,000-person threshold for big-city status.

Another is traffic. Abilene is the nation's best major city for commuters, while New York is the worst, according to a new On Numbers study.

Fifty-eight percent of Abilene's workers drive from home to their jobs in less than 15 minutes. That's twice the national average of 28.7 percent.

1. "It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change." - Charles Darwin

2. "Change before you have to." - Jack Welch

3. "People don't resist change. They resist being changed!" - Peter Senge

4. "Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself." - Leo Tolstoy

5. "The world as we have created it is a process of our thinking. It cannot be changed without changing our thinking." - Albert Einstein

I’ve always said that startups are all about execution. Sometimes I encounter self-proclaimed entrepreneurs who have been “thinking” about a concept for many years, and haven’t started yet. Some of these may be visionaries, but none are real entrepreneurs.

Entrepreneurs live by the principles discussed by Leonard A. Schlesinger, President of Babson College, in his book titled “Action Trumps Everything” which he wrote in conjunction with friends Charlie Kiefer and Paul Brown. In it he explains how the power of entrepreneurial action helps people create what they want in an uncertain world.

One of these principles is that action trumps thinking, when the future in unpredictable. This one caught my eye, since the future of everything for startups these days is unpredictable. Here are some of his key reasons that I can relate to on this one:

If you have a good idea that could be turned into viable business, Arizona may have $250,000 for you.

As part of its efforts to create more jobs, the Arizona Commerce Authority this year will double the total amount of innovation grants it will award to small businesses to $3 million.

The idea is to create more home-grown businesses, speed up the commercialization of inventions and help small businesses in hopes they someday will become larger employers. It is an economic-development concept that has grown popular throughout the country.

Startups seem to be growing faster now than ever.

For example, it took Path's first version one year to reach 1,000,000 downloads. Now, less than two months after its relaunch, the app has been downloaded 2,000,000 times (it's also a much better app this time around).

Fab's first iteration was a failure, but since its relaunch in April it reached 1 million users no sweat.

We looked at today's hottest startups and found when they crossed the 1,000,000 user or download milestone. We also through in a few big tech companies like Facebook and Twitter for the sake of comparison.

I just read about a company that is on its third pivot. When is enough is enough?

The founder is young and sharp. He'd be a valuable asset at any other tech company, but he can't seem to throw in the towel.

Some pivots, of course, work.  Path is a great example.  So are Fab and Turntable. But most don't.

So what's a smart, young entrepreneur to do when they realize their startup is failing? When should they call it quits and crawl back to corporate America? Or at least to someone else's successful startup?

An Olympic games, a U.S. presidential election and the end of the world are already planned for 2012, but we’re more excited about the startups.

Here are six of them (in no particular order) that we expect to help define the coming year. We chose companies based on the momentum they gained in 2011, promising new takes on old problems and, in one case, the possibility of an IPO.

Biotech pilgrims are gathering today for the biggest industry frenzy of the year, the JP Morgan Healthcare Conference. This confab in San Francisco’s Union Square is the singular place each year where essentially all industry mover/shakers—and many wannabes—gather for a marathon week of investment scouting, dealmaking, publicity seeking, job-hunting, and schmoozing.

I’ve been going to this conference for at least seven or eight years (but who’s counting?) and look forward to meeting lots of interesting people and digging up all kinds of news every year. It’s the best time to meet industry players face-to-face, and hear about the latest trends at work, in an action-packed few days. Most everybody here is brimming with optimism—or least putting on their best game face—about how they’re going to make new drugs, devices, or diagnostics that will leap tall buildings with a single bound in the coming 12 months.