New York, yeah. Silicon Valley, of course. But Greenville? Cleveland? Baltimore? These cities are famous for many things. Their lively tech scenes aren’t one of them. Yet as we’ve revealed in a series of articles over the past few months, some of the most innovative businesses and ideas are springing up in the least likely places. The reasons for the shift are complex and differ from one city to the next, but in many cases, they boil down to this: The Internet has lifted the cost and geographic barriers of starting a business. That, combined with the proliferation of local incubators and other support networks, has freed entrepreneurs all over the country to innovate, and take risks, without losing their shirt. Barriers remain: Talent still hugs the coasts and funding can be woefully hard to snag, even for the most dogged entrepreneurs. But the momentum persists. Who knows? Maybe the next Facebook will emerge from Phoenix, Arizona, or Grand Rapids, Michigan. Here, we zero in on thriving tech communities in 15 places you’d never think to look.

There’s plenty that even the most cutting-edge startup founders can learn from old-school Fortune 500 CEOs, stodgy though they may seem. Here are five lessons that fly in the face of the typical startup ethos.

The failure of household-name businesses--like Borders, Kodak and Blockbuster--due to a lack of entrepreneurialism has, rightly, spurred a lot of talk about what big companies can learn from startups. But while there's a lot to be said for shunning silos and management tiers that inhibit innovation, there's also plenty that even the most cutting-edge startup founders can learn from the acumen of old-school Fortune 500 CEOs:

Transformational developments are swirling around the banking industry — as they are in nearly every industry. Companies like Citigroup are reimagining bank branches. Startups like Simple are suggesting that it's time to get rid of branches altogether. Square, Swiff, Silver, and PayPal want to bring payments processing to smaller merchants. Mobile phone companies are getting into financial services. Microlending has exploded. Companies like Facebook and Tencent make hundreds of millions through microtransactions. The mobile wallet is coming, with Apple and Google lurking in the background.

Many of these trends seem to fit historical patterns of transformation, which means banks need to up their innovation game. Yet, here are some of the questions that audience members asked me at a talk I gave at a recent banking conference (courtesy of Pigeonhole, one of my favorite Singaporean startups):

It's no secret that many successful companies struggle to grow beyond their core offering. This isn't because organizations can't identify new opportunities or develop new and novel concepts; many can and do. Companies often have problems launching these concepts. Internal politics, risk avoidance, and the fear of failure weigh heavily on these growth initiatives. In the end, the company often fails the ideas long before the ideas can fail the company.

So how might businesses that found success in one area find new outlets for future growth? I believe that the start-ups of today and the skunkworks of the 1970s suggest ways larger organizations can pursue growth. Both of these structures create really important learning labs that help bring ideas to market.

I was lost.

I looked at the map and my heart raced as I admitted to myself — only to myself — that I had no idea where I was. It felt too humiliating to let the others know.

This was the summer of 1990 and I was leading a group of students on a 30-day mountaineering expedition. It was the first day of our trip and the students had no experience in the outdoors. They were relying on me. My anxiety level had been creeping up and was now at full tilt.

To be an entrepreneur, you have to be navigate lots of unknowns, and the path is fraught with risk. Once you are past a certain mental age, you know too many of the things that can go wrong, so you never start. Sort of like the old saying that if we didn’t have young men to fight our wars, we could achieve world peace in no time.

People who are young, or young at heart, don’t know all the negatives, or don’t worry about them. The result is that they achieve things that no one else ever thought possible. That’s the definition of a true entrepreneur. Many people, including Mike Michalowicz, in his highly irreverent book, “The Toilet Paper Entrepreneur,” have identified specific reasons for this:

Name: DoSomething.org

Big Idea: DoSomething.org is a platform that mobilizes teens to effect social change without needing. Issues range from recycling to teaching senior citizens how to use the Internet to bullying.

Why It’s Working: By creating campaigns that don’t require money, an adult or a car, DoSomething.org empowers teenagers to help others and do good.

When Nancy Lublin came in to DoSomething.org in 2003, the company was in shambles and plenty of debt. With experience from founding the career advancement non-profit Dress for Success, Lublin transformed DoSomething.org into a vehicle for social change for teenagers that launches a new campaign almost every week. Last year, DoSomething inspired 2.4 million teens to get involved with social change campaigns, and the team hopes to have 5 million active members by 2015. Campaign issues on DoSomething.org’s cause list include bullying, teen pregnancy and homelessness.

Maryland officials are preparing to dole out the first investments of the $84 million InvestMaryland program this summer, but they must first whittle down a list of 37 venture capital firm applicants to about half a dozen.

The funding will essentially make the state a limited partner in five to eight VC firms, which will be tasked with routing the funds back into Maryland tech and biotech startups in a traditional VC role. A list of recommended firms is due to be released later this month.

Entering the job market is impossible; at least, it is if you round down to the nearest level of possibility. Getting a first time job for a skilled role or changing jobs without having several winters’ worth of experience means that you’re in for a tough battle.

The problem is exacerbated when the same regurgitated career initiating advice is plastered all over job guides in popular magazines and on Alexa top 100 websites, in articles that are SEO’d to match every job search phrase you can possibly think of. Finding little gems of information that can help you cut the queue in your application and interviewing process is more difficult than giving up and starting your own business, so here are some that can hopefully be of some use.

Immigrants are assuming a bigger role on Main Street, according to a new report from the Fiscal Policy Institute's Immigration Research Initiative.

Immigrants now make up 18 percent of small-business owners in the United States, a six percent increase from 20 years ago.

The report found that 37 percent of immigrant entrepreneurs own a restaurant, 49 percent own grocery stores and 54 percent own laundry and dry cleaning services.

 Application Deadline for Cities Is July 23 

 
The challenge will start with the competitive selection of six cities, one in each of EDA’s regions. Each of the winners will receive up to $1 million to conduct their own two-phase competitions. In the first phase, winning cities will encourage teams of experts in such fields as transportation planning, economic and community development, business incubation, and engineering to submit economic development proposals for their city or region. The highest-rated proposals, as evaluated by a city-appointed review panel, will receive cash awards. In the second phase, the finalists from the first round will compete for a cash prize by developing comprehensive economic development plans.
 
The competition is a critical pillar of the Obama Administration’s Strong Cities, Strong Communities Initiative, which is working to connect government resources directly with communities to create jobs, improve the business climate, and address local and regional challenges.

The application deadline for cities wishing to be considered is July 23.

The Science Center’s QED Proof-of-Concept Program is seeking Business Advisors to enrich the development of life science technologies in collaboration with academic investigators in the Greater Philadelphia Region. The QED Program aims to demonstrate the commercial feasibility of selected projects by carefully matching Business Advisors with investigators in order to develop market-driven research proposals. Currently, we are building an accomplished group of advisors across multiple disciplines in the life sciences with the following qualifications and interests:

• Extensive experience in life sciences product development, marketing, new business development, or a related function.
• Ability to work with academic scientists (sharing leadership and influencing appropriately in an advisory role), Technology Transfer Office personnel, existing commercial sponsors, and potential licensees or private investors.

Currently Brad Feld is based at Foundry Group, a venture capital firm based in Boulder, Colorado he cofounded that makes early-stage investments in software, Internet, and IT start-ups from a $225 million fund raised in 2007. Foundry Group has made about 30 investments in the last four years, including one in Zynga, the company behind social networking games FarmVille and Mafia Wars. About to turn 45, Feld says he’s working 80-hour weeks and loving it.

What do you enjoy most about your work and why?

It’s simple – I love helping people create things.

The Michigan 21st Century Investment Fund launched in 2006 but the impact of the $109 million fund is just getting started.

Credit Suisse, which helps manage the venture capital fund of funds, released a report last week with some interesting statistics attached to it. The VCs that have received funding from the Michigan 21st Century Investment Fund have invested $97.4 million in 24 Michigan-based companies. Those start-ups now employ 790 people.

Most entrepreneurs I know are individually very innovative, but a successful startup can’t be a one-man show (for long). That means they need to build an innovative team, which is not a skill that most people are born with. In fact, some very innovative individuals, known as ‘idea people’ or inventors, often end up creating the most dysfunctional teams.

A typical approach to dealing with team dysfunction or no innovation process is to work around it, which normally leads to startup failure. The only way to build productive, collaborative, innovative, and cohesive teams is by resolving core dysfunction issues and implementing a structured process for innovation.

How much responsibility do colleges bear in helping launch the careers of their new graduates?

Until recently, not much. Many colleges followed the same tired playbook year after year: a career office tucked away in a corner of the campus, employer fairs, visits from corporate recruiters, and then, six months or so after commencement, a survey of graduates, few of whom responded (yet that didn’t stop the colleges from publicizing amazingly high job-placement rates).

Every now and then, you'll find a brilliant entrepreneur under the age of 20 that has, say, already created nuclear fusion.

Billionaire venture capitalist Peter Thiel has found that person, and 19 more just like him. He is giving them $100,000 to drop out of college and become a "Thiel Fellow."

That's an offer that's hard to ignore.

As a Thiel Fellow, these 20 young guns will have access to mentorship from the Thiel Foundation's network for two years. They'll be able to work on building revolutionary products, and technology.

EU scientists and member states will decide over the next six months which future high-tech industries – from a choice including robot servants and nano clothing – should receive a €1 billion European funding boost.

Six so-called ‘future and emerging technologies’ (FETs) - all based in the ICT sector - are vying for a prize of up to €100 million each year over a decade, with at least one pilot guaranteed to claim the bounty.

Officials told EurActiv that more than two of the pilots are unlikely to clinch the money.

The selection will be closely watched since any eventual winners will carry the endorsement that they are strong hopes for Europe’s industrial future.

A year after ICANN announced its plans to expand the TLD (Top Level Domain) namespace, we are finally able to see the application list for new TLDs. There are nearly 2 000 applications, each costing US$185 000. ICANN believes that each suffix will cost owners about US$25 000 per year to maintain and they will be required to commit to a 10-year maintenance agreement.

Among the applications are many variations on a theme and conflicts over potential ownership. As a result, these suffixes are all going through a review process. For the next seven months major players will have an option to veto the introduction of particular TLDs. Since there are so many applications and there are many conflicts that need to be resolved, ICANN is planning on releasing the new domains in batches of 500 in a go. The first batch should go live in about a year. Of course, the plan to expand the namespace so dramatically has been met with mixed opinion.