Today is another historic day for startups and our economies. It is the opening day of the fourth Global Entrepreneurship Week, the world’s largest celebration of the innovators who launch startups that bring ideas to life, drive economic growth, and expand human welfare. In three short years, Global Entrepreneurship Week has expanded to more than 120 countries and this week organizers are expecting nearly 11 million people to show up at over 40,000 planned events and activities.

New firm formation remains a creative and messy process that fits well with such a grassroots movement. But unlike political movements, nascent entrepreneurs are not railing at institutions or waiting for resources or direction. They are waking up, thinking, creating, solving, collaborating, mentoring and making it happen. This week is about such people who see a glass as half full and a less predictable world as an opportunity. GEW is now mapping the entrepreneurial ecosystems that will support those individuals, building the networks that will mentor them and finding the partners and even financial backers that will propel them. A global movement allows their great ideas to be floated across the world for resources that will catalyze their growth.

When it comes to Silicon Valley startups, success stories are a dime a dozen. Where it really gets interesting is when you start talking failure. And no one has a more unique view on failure than Dave McClure, founding parter of VC and incubator firm 500 Startups.

"The alternate name we came up with for 500 Startups was 'fail factory,' says McClure. "We're here trying to 'manufacture fail' on a regular basis, and we think that's how you learn. Getting used to that, bouncing back from that, being able to figure out what people hate and turn that into what people love...if you're not willing to take the risk of failing and not experience failure, you're never going to figure out what the right path is to success."

Dear President Obama,

Recently, you challenged university leaders to step up and find new ways for universities to contribute to their region’s economic well-being.  But current university economic development programs may be missing the mark.  The bedrock of a region’s economic prosperity will not be built by university programs, patents and workshops alone.  The best way for universities to improve the local quality of life might be by sharing their wealth more directly with local and state economies — by paying federal, state and municipal taxes.

Economic prosperity results when residents enjoy a high quality of life that’s aided and enhanced by a healthy tax base.  In the words of poet James Oppenheim, sung by striking women textile workers a hundred years ago: “Yes, it is bread we fight for, but we fight for roses too.”  It’s that simple.  Regions flourish when people have good public schools, reasonable tax rates, easy commutes, clean and safe streets and abundant recreational opportunities.

The Obama administration today rolled out a new billion-dollar initiative that will reward the “most compelling new ideas” for lowering costs and improving care of Medicare and Medicaid patients with lucrative federal grants.

The  Health Care Innovation Challenge, to be run by the Department of Health and Human Services, will provide between $1 million and $30 million over three years to individual organizations or coalitions that develop sustainable, new approaches to boosting health care quality and efficiency.

Funding for the program was included as part of the 2010 Affordable Care Act, parts of which are now slated for a review by the Supreme Court.

MONTREAL, QC, Nov. 13, 2011 /CNW/ - Grand Challenges Canada CEO Dr. Peter A. Singer today announced a pioneering new funding program for creative and dynamic developing world innovators.  The announcement was made at the 2011 Global Health Conference.  "Rising Stars in Global Health" is a program designed to encourage developing country innovators to pursue their original and bold ideas to tackle some of the most difficult global health challenges.

"Grand Challenges Canada believes that some of the most effective life-saving breakthroughs come from developing country innovators," said Dr. Peter A. Singer, CEO of Grand Challenges Canada.  "Who knows the people, the health challenges, the impact and the potential for solutions better than motivated local innovators? Often promising local ideas do not have the support to be developed. We want to change that."

Australia has had mixed success when it comes to being a nation of innovators. A recent federal government report concludes that while Aussies are great at incremental innovation - which primarily means adapting overseas innovations - we fall behind when it comes to creating our own opportunities and bringing new things to an international marketplace.

Our bias towards incremental innovation is nothing to be ashamed of. Australia's resource and agricultural industries are some of the most competitive in the world due to our ability to improve existing technologies. And despite our country's size, we are blessed with the people, education and capital to foster success. So if it is not resources that are holding us back, is there something about our culture that discourages that big-picture thinking?

COLUMBUS, OH – Six organizations were named winners of SSTI’s 2011 Excellence in TBED award, serving as national models for states and regions investing in science, technology and innovation to grow their economies and create high-paying jobs. Among the winners, a newer program was selected as the first Most Promising TBED Initiative, recognized for a creative approach to growing industry clusters.

“The success stories from this year’s winners characterize why support for tech-based initiatives is imperative for improving the national economy,” said Dan Berglund, SSTI president and CEO. “The diversity in size and geography of these programs demonstrate that many different approaches can be taken with equally impressive outcomes.”

Awards were presented on Nov. 8 during SSTI’s 15th Annual Conference in Columbus, OH, attended by local, regional and national leaders in economic development. The following initiatives were named 2011 recipients of SSTI’s Excellence in TBED award:

Telling Your University Research Park Story How are you telling your story? Is your messaging strategy working to provide the right exposure for your park? Are you enabling community support by educating the community about your effectiveness? Are you communicating with the right people--attracting new companies and collaborations to your park? The Advanced Research Park Marketing Learning Lab is offered at the 2011 International Conference. This refreshed pre-session will give you the resources and tools to successfully market your research park. The session topics will include:

Marketing Overview

Join AURP for the Marketing Learning Lab to identify your target audiences, develop your message and learn how to use the tools you need to tell your story.

Nov 09, 2011 (Commerce Department Documents and Publications/ContentWorks via COMTEX) -- Accelerating innovation is the key to creating more high-wage jobs. And the Commerce Department's National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) will play a significant role in helping federal labs and U.S. industry speed up the innovation process under a new Presidential Memorandum issued Oct. 28.

Through its existing role coordinating the Interagency Workgroup on Technology Transfer, NIST will help lead agencies with federal laboratories to develop plans that establish performance goals to increase the number and pace of effective technology transfer and commercialization activities in partnership with non-federal organizations. The group also will be responsible for recommending opportunities to improve technology transfer from federal labs and for refining how tech transfer is defined, to better capture data on all of the ways it happens.

No man is an island, and every entrepreneur needs a support network. While it’s important to have a network of peers, friends and family, it’s equally important to have a mentor to act as a sounding board, hold you accountable and be the voice of reason.  But finding the right mentor is about more than just finding someone you admire and asking them for advice.

So we asked members of the Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC), an invitation-only nonprofit organization comprised of the country’s most promising young entrepreneurs, this question:

“As a Gen Y entrepreneur, what do you look for when seeking out mentorship from business leaders?”

For many firms, developing new products for consumers around the world is the most visible manifestation of innovation - the "real deal." But many people still see India as a place where other people's ideas are made or executed and not where innovation begins. (After all, you don't hear about an Indian equivalent to Google, iPod or Viagra.) Bu they're wrong. In more than 600 captive research and development (R&D) centers across India today, corporations are designing and building amazing new things.

For example, GE's John F. Welch Technology Center has developed a string of technological marvels. A transparent roof spanning 300 meters without any central supports. Adevice to display integrated anatomical information from a CT scan with live functional information from a PET scan. A car bumper that self-destructs on impact (rather than destroying, say, the leg of an unlucky pedestrian). The markets for these wonder products are truly global, encompassing the United States, Europe, Asia and, of course, India itself.

Computers — the boxes that we consult in the form of tablets, mobile phones and desktops — are wonderful, but they take away from what it is to be human and to really connect with one another. So the challenge and opportunity that lies ahead is how to get the computers out of computing, said Mark Rolston, the chief creative officer at frog. Speaking at the GigaOM RoadMap conference in San Francisco, Rolston took the audience through a vision of omnipresent computing.

18 super cute turkey's even the vegetarian can eat :)

Edible Turkey Craft Round Up:

1: Turkey Brownie Bite @ Inside Bru Crew

When an earthquake shook the mid-Atlantic states this summer, the US Geological Survey got help gauging the accuracy of its seismographic equipment from ScienceforCitizens.net users who Tweeted details about their location and the impact they felt. University of Waterloo researchers have also relied on Science for Citizens for help calibrating weather-reading instruments by comparing satellite-based estimates to the site’s users’ measurements of actual snowfall where they live. And scientists at the Paleontological Research Institution who recovered a mastodon fossil from Hyde Park, NY, a decade ago are still learning about Pleistocene ecology from Science for Citizen volunteers who have been sifting through the 22 tons of matrix that was excavated there.

Wayne Sutton has been asking venture-capital investors and Silicon Valley executives a question that's not often broached here in the epicenter of the technology industry:

"Why aren't there more black people in tech?"

The vast majority of top executives at the leading Silicon Valley tech firms are white men. Women and Asians have made some inroads, but African-American and Latino tech leaders remain a rarity. About 1% of entrepreneurs who received venture capital in the first half of last year are black, according to a study by research firm CB Insights.

Entrepreneurs often get confused as to when to raise venture capital versus venture debt. Their confusion is understandable as the terms of venture debt and venture capital converge at the margin and misconceptions abound.

Equity is permanent and debt must be repaid, right?

The primary difference between venture debt and venture capital is that debt must be repaid. VCs are also very interested in getting their capital back plus a profit. There are some current market-dynamics which make the distinction between the repayment of venture debt and the liquidity needs of venture capital blur.

I’ve written before on 10 reasons Parents Should Not Send Their Kids to College and here is also Eight Alternatives to College but it’s occurred to me that the place where college has really hurt me the most was when it came to the real world, real life, how to make money, how to build a business, and then even how to survive when trying to build my business, sell it, and be happy afterwards. Here are the ten things that if I had learned them in college I probably would’ve saved/made millions of extra dollars, not wasted years of my life, and maybe would’ve even saved lives because I would’ve been so smart I would’ve been like an X-Man.

1. How to Program - I spent $100,000 of my own money (via debt, which I paid back in full) majoring in Computer Science. I then went to graduate school in computer science. I then remained in an academic environment for several years doing various computer programming jobs. Finally I hit the real world. I got a job in corporate America. Everyone congratulated me where I worked, “you’re going to the real world,” they said. I was never so happy. I called my friends in NYC, “money is falling from trees here,” they said. I looked for apartments in Hoboken. I looked at my girlfriend with a new feeling of gratefulness—we were going to break up once I moved. I knew it.

I walked out of a meeting of executives Friday with five business cards — and each one of them was a different shape and size.

It raises the question: Does creativity matter when it comes to business cards? Is there a payback for the extra money (sometimes thousands of dollars) that is spent for design, printing and in some cases diecutting?

It was no surprise that the creative cards came from marketing and ad people. (Look to the right to see the cards I collected).

Want a culture of innovation? Choose a few of the following guidelines and make them happen. If not YOU, who? If not NOW, when?

1. Remember that innovation requires no fixed rules or templates -- only guiding principles. Creating a more innovative culture is an organic and creative act.

2. Wherever you can, whenever you can, always drive fear out of the workplace. Fear is "Public Enemy #1" of an innovative culture.

3. Have more fun. If you're not having fun (or at least enjoying the process) something is off.

4. Always question authority, especially the authority of your own longstanding beliefs.

5. Make new mistakes.

People with creative ideas, intellectual talents and personal ambition drive innovation. From advances in science, mathematics and health care to new technologies, products and companies, America has always relied on individual and collective breakthroughs in human knowledge and production to enhance our lives and our economy. As the nation continues to find ways to improve the educational and life opportunities of its own citizens to help spark innovation, we should not ignore an obvious source of human capital--those from other nations.

If America wants to solve its innovation problem, solving its immigration problem would be a good start.