Every day we hear about incredible improvements in the financial status of women. More and more women are the primary breadwinner in their household (almost 40%). Women-owned businesses are growing at twice the rate of all U.S. companies. A new survey by GfK Roper for NBC Universal stated that 65% of the women reported being their family's chief financial planner, and 71% called themselves the family accountant. The numbers look good. In fact, better than good. Women today control more wealth than ever in history. But there is still an important area lacking - women's access to big business funding. Venture Capital.

Amanda Steinberg, Founder of DailyWorth, a free daily personal finance email for women, has been trying to raise capital for her venture. What's missing? ... Women. "I'm raising seed capital for DailyWorth ... I'm fortunate to have a few worthy men stepping forward to explore angel investments. WHERE ARE THE WOMEN??!!" she recently ranted on her company's Facebook page.

When European settlers first came to North America, they saw flocks of geese so big that it took them 30 minutes to all take flight and forests that seemed to stretch to infinity. They came to two conclusions: that God’s plans for humanity could be completed here, and that they could get really rich in the process.

This moral materialism fomented a certain sort of manic energy. Americans became famous for their energy and workaholism: for moving around, switching jobs, marrying and divorcing, creating new products and going off on righteous crusades.

China and the United States highly value the fruitful scientific and technological results achieved in the past three decades, and agreed to start dialogue on aviation and railway cooperation, said a joint statement issued after talks between Chinese President Hu Jintao and visiting U.S. President Barack Obama in Beijing on Tuesday.

"The two sides applauded the rich achievements in scientific and technological cooperation and exchanges between the two countries over the past 30 years since the signing of the China-U.S. Agreement on Cooperation in Science and Technology," said the statement.

WASHINGTON – On Wednesday, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner and Small Business Administrator Karen G. Mills will convene a forum on small business financing issues for a range of key stakeholders including policymakers, lenders, and small business owners to explore new ideas and strategies for expanding access to financing for small businesses. The event, which the President called for last month, is part of a larger effort to help small businesses grow, create new jobs, and contribute to our economic recovery and to challenge the private sector to increase lending to small businesses.

GARY LOCKE, the secretary of commerce, has urged Congress to overhaul the nation’s patent law by the end of the year. Although a bill has been circulating since 2005, a fierce fight involving the high-tech and drug industries on a technical issue — how to measure damages when a company violates a patent applying to one component of a larger product — has kept it from reaching a vote.

The best way forward is for Congress to sidestep the damages question and instead add five amendments to existing statutes that would improve the processing of patents, reduce lawsuits and speed up the arrival of innovations on the market.

Does your organisation have an effective employee suggestions scheme? An increasing number of organisations in the both private and public sectors are finding that they can drive innovation and reduce cost by moving their suggestion box from the office wall to the intranet.

Siemens Automation and Drives is a good example. They employ 400 people in Congleton, Cheshire making electric motor drives. Their scheme is called Ideas Unlimited and it generates over 4000 suggestions per year of which some 3000 are implemented. The total savings are around $1.5m per year. Howard Ball administers the scheme part-time. The key is simplicity he explained when he addressed the national conference of ideasUK, a non-commercial association dedicated to employee suggestion schemes and recognition processes.

Having people ask to "pick your brain" can be the ultimate compliment to an entrepreneur. It makes us feel like we're experts in something, or that we've been successful enough at something that someone values our thoughts. But brain picking comes in many shapes and colors. Some brain pickers (BPs) are just looking for inspiration; talking with you stirs their own ideas. Others want resources--money, contacts, insider knowledge that will help them with their endeavors. None of these are inherently bad, but none of them are good if you aren't getting something out of the sharing.

I used to love it when people asked to pick my brain, especially early into the business. I might not have been drawing a paycheck, but by golly! Someone wanted to talk to me about something. It was a small sign of traction.

Fareed Zakaria wrote an excellent book, The Post American World: The Rise of the Rest, in which he said the relative decline of the US was due to political, not economic problems. As someone who’s covered the global economy for decades, and as an old Political Science major, the argument never satisfied. Fareed was right about the delta—the direction of decline, but wrong about the cause. It was economic, as well as political.

Now Fareed is saying what we conceed to be increasingly true—the US is losing its edge in innovation. And with that loss, comes the loss of geopolitical clout. President Obama’s trip to China is about soothing our banker, not pressuring for civil rights.

Ghana’s cultural policy is to be reviewed soon to give it a clear sense of direction, says Chieftaincy and Culture Minister, Alexander Asum-Ahensah. “The time has come to give the cultural sector a new direction that will take into account a policy guideline to enhance the capacity of the creative industries and their goods and services,” he said.

The minister stated this in a speech read on his behalf by the Chief Director of the ministry, Ms Lillian Bruce-Lyle, at a workshop organized by the Ghana Association of Phonographic Industry (GAPI) in Accra last Friday. The workshop on the theme, ‘Revision of cultural policy’ which reviewed the country’s cultural policy was organized in collaboration with the Business Advocacy Challenge Account (BUSAC) fund.

Only a slight breeze blew across the plains of Inner Mongolia on a recent afternoon, but the giant turbines at the Huitengxile Wind Power Field were spinning steadily. This facility, 200 miles northwest of Beijing, has 550 turbines churning out enough juice to power a small city, and inside a monitoring station, plant manager Zhang Jianjun points to a wall chart showing the 11 different suppliers of the high-tech windmills. Four are Chinese companies, but when Zhang is asked to pick his favorite, his nationalism is trumped by a desire for quality. "General Electric," he says, citing its reliability. "I'm excited when all of the turbines are working."

GE's roots lie in Thomas Edison's Menlo Park lab, the site of some of the most significant innovation in our history. Today millions of Edison's spiritual descendants—engineers, geneticists, programmers, entrepreneurs—are toiling in basic research across the country. But amid a profound economic slowdown, Americans have real doubts about their ability to maintain their edge in innovation, even as they agree that technological innovation is more important than ever.