It is nearly a year since the last annual report on innovation across Europe as reflected in the annual Innovation Union Scoreboard, so a fresh one should be reaching us some time next month. The scoreboard measures the application of innovation by Member States using a basket of 24 performance indicators to decide whether you are first in class, running but keeping up, or failing to deliver in the innovation sweeps. The last scoreboard had us firmly with the “innovation followers” camp, one of four categories defined by the process along with innovation leaders, moderate innovators and the modest innovators.

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As the U.S. economy gains strength and states are in their best financial position in years, governors are proposing unconventional tactics to create jobs, especially in health care and high-tech.

The approaches range from luring more immigrants to Detroit; making western New York the center for genomic research; to paying off nursing students’ college loans in New Mexico.

In crafting their proposals, many governors are trying to respond to a common complaint from employers: They are ready to hire, but can’t find workers with the right skills.

Image: Nurse practitioners Michele Knappe, left, and Julie Zimmer go over a patient’s chart at Ingalls Family Care Center in Flossmoor, Ill. The need for health care workers is expected to surge in the next decade, and several governors are pushing proposals designed to attract more qualified applicants. (AP) 

More than half the world’s population lives in cities. There is clearly a significant benefit to living in a large permanent settlement with many other humans–the prospect of housing, work, theatres and restaurants, potential friends and mates, to name just a few. 

But is living in a large city greener than living in a small one? Today we get an answer thanks to the work of Erneson Oliveira and pals at the Federal University of Ceará in Brazil. These guys have analysed the CO2 emissions from every square 10 km in the US, as determined by study called the Vulcan project from Arizona State University.  And they use this to work out the amount of carbon dioxide generated by its cities. They then ranked cities by size to see how the CO2 emissions scale.

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Equity crowdfunding is about to come to unaccredited investors the United States, but some of the Securities and Exchange Commission’s proposed rules are hugely impractical.

If we don’t push the agency to implement some fixes, crowdfunding may be dead on arrival.

It’s historic when Congress passes legislation with nearly unanimous bipartisan support. Such was the case with crowdfunding in 2012: It passed the House with 96 percent approval and the Senate as part of the JOBS Act with 73 percent approval — not too bad in an era of “broken Washington.” It has been almost two years since President Obama signed the bill into law. In October 2013, the SEC released 585-pages of proposed rules for debt and equity crowdfunding.

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Scientists have demonstrated an amazing proof-of-concept, using a technique called intracortical micro stimulation (ICMS) that allows amputees to feel sensory-rich information in real time. The technology is a remarkable breakthrough, and represents a huge stop toward creating devices that give amputees a sense of touch; the introduction of more life-like assistive devices has the potential to greatly increase the quality of life for users.

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In Steve Martin’s hilarious 1990 mob spoof, My Blue Heaven, his character laments, “Everyone thinks they have a sense of humor, but then they don’t.” In the same way, many of us think we know our strengths and, more important, our weaknesses.

However, the level of self-awareness it takes to truly evaluate the areas where we need improvement isn’t very common--and it’s tough to develop, says Denver-based leadership consultant David M. Dye, founder of Trailblaze, Inc. and author of the self-published The Seven Things Your Team Needs to Hear You Say.

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The office can be an overwhelming and tricky landscape. To help you navigate the often uncertain terrain of work-life, we’ve tapped a panel of experts to answer your trickiest questions. In this new weekly series, we'll find answers to any dilemma you throw at us--from how to get people to notice your fledgling business to the best way to handle a difficult boss or ethical grey area and anything in between.

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In study after study, strategic thinkers are found to be among the most highly effective leaders. And while there is an abundance of courses, books, articles and opinions on the process of strategic planning, the focus is typically on an isolated process that might happen once or twice per year. In contrast, a true strategic leader thinks and acts strategically every day.

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Along with a bunch of other, more headline-grabbing numbers, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported this morning that 14.4 million Americans were self-employed in January. Of those, 9.2 million were unincorporated self-employed workers and another 5.2 million were incorporated.

That’s interesting, given that back in January 2000 (which is as far as the BLS tally of the incorporated self-employed goes), the number of self-employed was  … 14.4 million. Since then there have been some modest ups and downs, but overall no change. And as you can see in the chart below, the long-term trend in the percentage of workers who are self-employed actually appears to be downward:

I often talk about what I’m looking for when I meet with an entrepreneur. Above all else I’m looking for a genuine passion for what the entrepreneur is doing. It’s even a direct quote in my Twitter bio.

Of course passion isn’t enough. You need a set of innate skills that differentiate you from the thousands of others who set out on your similar journey. You need a great concept in which you will build something that is truly unique and that will be valued by your customers. But without a passion for what you do I am dubious about your chances for success.

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Cardialen is one of the most promising medical startups to come out of St. Louis in recent years. It recently raised $3 million in venture capital, and it’s close to starting clinical trials for a device to treat atrial fibrillation, the most common type of irregular heartbeat. The device was invented by Igor Efimov, a Washington University professor of biomedical engineering, and the firm was nurtured by private and public investment groups here. From a St. Louis point of view, there’s only one thing wrong with this picture: Cardialen is now based in Minneapolis.

Image: The Gateway Arch is lit up in this view from the east taken on Nov. 22, 2001. Photo by Andrew Cutraro of the Post-Dispatch 

Believe it or not, there are some tech companies that aren’t interested in smartglasses or smartwatches. MC10′s approach to wearable technology has been to completely re-imagine how that technology can be used to monitor and improve a person’s health. It’s technology that can take your vitals, monitor for possible trauma, and even improve the outcome of surgical procedures.

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The high-tech sector has remained stable during the financial crisis with 19% higher wages and an unemployment rate consistently below 4%, according to a new study by the Belgian university KU Leuven (KUL). The high technology business has grown two and a half times more than all other job sectors since 2000, says the study, High-technology employment in the European Union.

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Curious coffee drinkers waited in line for hours Sunday to order a "dumb coffee."

A coffee shop called Dumb Starbucks opened in the Los Feliz neighborhood of Los Angeles this weekend, serving up dumb iced coffees, dumb lattes and not-so-dumb viral marketing. The mysterious store ripped off the official Starbucks logo and menu, but claims to have no affiliation with the Seattle-based coffee giant.

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This weekend Dong Nguyen let the world know that his wildly successful mobile game Flappy Bird was ruining his “simple life”. In a series of tweets, he explained that it had nothing to do with legal issues and he does not want to sell it, he was simply done with it.

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 The States are labeled here by the most frequent Google searching asking “Why is (insert state name) so (blank)”. The results are hilarious and for the most party pretty accurate depictions of each state.

This a rather favorite topic of discussion the business world. In conversation with Mayura Balasubramanian, Co-founder of Craftizen & ISB Alumnus (Class of 2004) , Riddhi Kapoor, a PGP student at Indian School of Business seeks to find an answer to the age old question.

Tell us about your life post business school

- I've been a risk taker professionally, which stems from never really planning for more than two years at a time, and also being a self-admitted drifter! I’ve moored across vastly different sectors – from a real estate consulting firm to working with a nationally renowned artist to being with an international donor organization (UNDP) to the higher education sector (ISB) and finally dropping anchor in social entrepreneurship.

To be successful as an entrepreneur, you don’t have to be a fabulous person, but it helps. Some people, and some entrepreneurs, have that something extra, like Simon Cowell is searching for on the X-Factor, that you can’t quite put your finger on. But the entrepreneurs that have “it” seem to be able to effortlessly get team members, investors, and customers to follow them anywhere.

In a book on this subject from a while back, “The Essentials of Fabulous,” Ellen Lubin-Sherman, who has been tracking fabulous people most of her life as a writer and journalist, tried to net “it” out. She identifies less than a dozen primary qualities for fabulous people in general, and I have honed and tuned these to ten that apply especially to entrepreneurs, in my experience:

Can a real estate developer create the feeling of an urban neighborhood, complete with its grit and culture, in the suburbs? Assuming it’s possible would such a place attract the kind of employees that technology companies today are competing to hire?

That’s the challenge venerable Seattle real estate developer Wright Runstad & Company has set out for itself and its partners with the Spring District, a multi-phase redevelopment project now under construction in suburban Bellevue, WA.

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Asia’s largest economies—led by China, Japan, and South Korea—now perform a larger share of global R&D than the United States, whose high-tech manufacturing activity is now nearly matched by China’s, the policy making body of the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) concluded.

The NSF’s National Science Board (NSB) yesterday released an updated edition of its biennial Science & Engineering Indicators report—the latest of several reports to warn of slipping American dominance in science & technology activity. Last month a team of researchers published a study in the New England Journal of Medicine that the U.S.’ global share of biomedical research spending declined—from 51% in 2007 to 45% in 2012—as spending fell during the period when adjusted for inflation from $131 billion to $119 billion.

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