Sci-fi/fantasy author Neil Gaiman's commencement speech at The University of the Arts in Philadelphia is getting passed around like crazy.

You can watch the video, read the transcript or check out his six key points below:

"First of all: When you start out on a career in the arts you have no idea what you are doing.

On the heels of Renaissance Venture Capital announcing earlier this month that it had its first close of $60 million on its second fund, the Michigan Venture Capital Association (MCVA) released its annual report on the state of Michigan’s venture ecosystem. Its findings? More venture capital—a 64 percent increase in the past five years—and more deals. This optimism seems to square with regional venture capital data released by MoneyTree in April, which reported five deals in Detroit during the first quarter of 2012, with a total investment of $15.1 million. According to the MoneyTree report, the last time five deals were closed in Detroit in a single quarter was back in the second quarter of 2000. By contrast, three deals worth a total investment of $1.5 million were closed in the first quarter of 2011.

Facebook has been accused of many things: ripping off individual investors by selectively disclosing bad news to big investors before its IPO; increasing cynicism about Wall Street and damaging the IPO market; being a ridiculously pointless waste of time. Can we add “destroying innovation” to the list of charges?

On the Huffington Post, entrepreneur Steve Blank lays out the case against Facebook, arguing that its success, and that of other social-networking and social-media companies, is diverting venture capital from serious if unglamorous research with a more uncertain payoff – the sort of research that truly visionary venture capitalists should be supporting. Instead of “investing in a blockbuster cancer drug that will pay them nothing for 15 years,” Blank laments, VCs are throwing their money at the latest and possibly greatest social-media idea in hopes of scoring a quick return when it goes big. 

The following mobile marketing case studies and examples showcase the power of using SMS marketing to build and grow business. You can use it to generate text message marketing ideas for your organization and for general benchmarking.

CASE STUDY #1: DUNKIN’ DONUTS DRIVES LOCAL SALES Dunkin’ Donuts wanted to introduce its hot lattes to young adults in the Boston area. Their October campaign delivered a mobile coupon for a $0.99 small hot latte to 7,500 targeted opt-ins (high school and college age students). This was supported by Boston radio DJs on Thursday mornings that month, as well as 400,000 mobile banner ads on Boston-targeted mobile websites. SMS coupon redemption training was provided to over 1,000 Dunkin’ Donuts staff.

If you are an entrepreneur for the first time, or entering a new business area, it’s usually worth your time to assemble an Advisory Board of two or three executives who have travelled that road before. But if you select the wrong people, or use them incorrectly, the impact will not be positive for your company or your image.

For perspective, you need to remember that boards of advisors, unlike directors, have no formal power or fiduciary duties, but rather serve at the pleasure of you the business owner. But they are not likely to stroke your ego, or be cheerleaders. They need to tell you the truth about your business, good or bad.

The Cincinnati Business Committee is hoping to reveal by the end of June how it will accelerate the development of the region’s “innovation economy.”

CBC Executive Director Gary Lindgren won’t say what’s in the plan, but he did confirm Thursday that the innovation task force launched by the CBC one year ago is close to releasing its final report.

We got a glimpse of some of the plan’s elements this week, when University of Cincinnati    officials revealed they’re considering an investment of up to $10 million in the initiative.

In the past month I’ve traveled to Berlin, Amsterdam, London and Hawaii and I keep hearing the same debate over and over again: ‘How can we become the next Silicon Valley?’

The answer is: You Can’t.

Having observed the special sauce that makes up Silicon Valley, I’ve found it’s a delicate balance of a number of attributes that cannot easily be replicated. That doesn’t mean to say other places in the world should stop investing in startup culture or entrepreneurship; I believe one day other tech cities in the world could be bigger than Silicon Valley in terms of output of high growth technology startups, because other places have attributes and industries that the Valley does not. But, for now, Silicon Valley is number one and it will stay that way for the foreseeable future.

Most companies have already started, or have even finished, hiring summer interns. Sadly, many times, the intern who shows up on the first day is not the person represented in the résumé or throughout the interview. Employers should be able to spot and correct early warning signs, as well as be prepared to teach new interns the tricks of the trade in order to create a successful work environment for the intern and your company.

Two definite signs that an intern is not going to work out are a lack of questions and tardiness. Alone, each shows that the intern is not committed to the job and has no interest in improvement. Together, they’re dangerous to the company. Additionally, today’s college students spend a lot of time with texting, Twitter, and Facebook. Oftentimes, this leads to young professionals not understanding the difference between work time and personal time. It’s a clear warning sign of impending trouble when interns cannot abide by these workplace rules. Other deal breakers include inappropriate language, a distasteful attitude, and inappropriate behavior. Being insensitive and rude only contributes to a hostile work environment. All of these can be corrected if clear boundaries are set in the very beginning on what’s considered appropriate use of time and conduct in a professional workplace. Much of this can be avoided by providing mentoring and coaching for the intern so he can work and learn professional protocol in a non-threatening manner.

A plan backed by the U.S. Department of Labor would allow entrepreneurs to collect unemployment benefits while they build a business, an acknowledgement of startups’ growing importance to the American economy.

The plan, called Self-Employment Assistance Programs (SEA), allows people collecting unemployment who “have proven to be good candidates for self-employment” to continue receiving checks while they build new businesses, according to the Department of Labor.

Startups and entrepreneurs are drowning in the information overload, where the volume of data created is like a new Library of Congress every 15 minutes. That creates a huge gap between data and meaning, and makes quick decisions and action ever more difficult. We all need to take a little more time to think.

On the other end of the spectrum, some people “over-think” things to the point of inaction. Acting without thinking, and thinking without action, are both deadly to a startup. The challenge is to find the right balance, and to make the thinking deep and reflective thinking.

In his recent book, “Consider,” Daniel Patrick Forrester talks about how some successful entrepreneurs, like Bill Gates, former CEO of Microsoft, force some think time in their schedule by abandoning the office for a cabin in the woods every few months for some reflective thinking. Others simply reserve an hour every morning for private thinking, despite a densely packed schedule.

Venture capital tax credits are tax breaks granted to specialty investment companies in exchange for them investing in certain types of new or expanding Oklahoma businesses.

The specialty companies — including Bank of Oklahoma subsidiary Cottonwood Valley Ventures Inc. — receive 20 percent of their investments back in the form of tax credits that can be used to avoid paying an identical amount in taxes.

The tax credits are transferrable. That means the specialty companies can sell or give them to individuals or companies that can use them to lower or eliminate their tax liabilities.

"The things we fear most in organizations -- fluctuations, disturbances, imbalances -- are the primary sources of creativity." - Alfred North Whitehead

"The chief enemy of creativity is 'good sense.'" - Pablo Picasso

"Everyone who's ever taken a shower has had an idea. It's the person who gets out of the shower, dries off and does something about it who makes a difference." - Nolan Bushnell

"I can't understand why people are frightened of new ideas. I'm frightened of the old ones." - John Cage

The game is over. That game where they get to hire you for 40 years, pay you far less than you create, and then give you a gold watch, and then you get bored, you get depressed, and you die alone.

It wasn’t that fun of a game anyway.

When I had a corporate job I would wake up depressed. I couldn’t move out of bed. The sun would be coming in. A cat on the fire escape staring at me through the window. Even it was more excited to be alive than me. And, by the way, I had the best job in the world. I interviewed prostitutes for a living at three in the morning.

Innovation Works' annual meeting last week pulled together much of the entrepreneurial community of Pittsburgh -- people who have owned businesses for a decade or more; people who finance businesses; and people who are starting businesses and need money to grow.

There in a single room on the South Side, 500 people who represented more than five millennia of working experience were on hand to hear the latest update from the South Oakland-based tech incubator -- and to help others just starting out. They had lots of advice for would-be entrepreneurs.

Microsoft has announced the launch of a programme that aims at incubating and supporting 10 start-ups that are focussed on cloud technologies. The four-month incubation programme has been introduced in Seattle, U.S., and Israel.

The programme was launched in Beijing on May 22, along with the media announcement in Bangalore. The programme, ‘Microsoft Accelerator for Windows Azure', will host 10 select “early stage” start-ups on-site for four months and take them through a deep immersion programme. Start-ups can apply online till July 1, and any entrepreneur who is building applications that can be built using the cloud platform and can operate in any business or market segment is eligible.

Two years ago, Amith Nagarajan and his wife, Bridget, were planning to move their family from Nashville to New Orleans to be nearer to her native Ponchatoula. Nagarajan founded and still runs Aptify, a management software company, but he is also an active entrepreneur, and he and Bridget were both looking to invest in promising young start-up companies. He expected to base himself in New Orleans and spend a lot of time on airplanes looking elsewhere for investment opportunities.

It hasn't turned out that way. So far their investment company, Abstraction Ventures, has invested in 13 young companies -- 11 of them in or around New Orleans. Typical investments range from $25,000 to $100,000.

"I've pretty much focused all our energy here because there's so much opportunity," Nagarajan said recently. "As far as I'm concerned, as an investor, there's no reason to go anywhere else."

The Windy City is famous for one big giant startup Groupon, but the folks at Chicago’s newest incubator, Catapult, believe there will be many more, and — for a short while at least — it hopes to play host to the next big Web sensations from the Midwest. Catapult only opened its doors in March, but on Tuesday it welcomed a wave of seven new startups in residence.

Catapult doesn’t bill itself as an incubator. Rather it calls itself a collaborative community, and it definitely gives off commune-type vibe. It’s a not-for-profit entity that rents 12,000 square feet of building space in Chicago’s downtown River North neighborhood. The incubator is investor agnostic, and new startup residents are selected democratically. The founders of current Catapult companies vote on whom to accept and whom to deny.

Passing by an Oakland restaurant recently where a local tech CEO was engaged in an intense business lunch with an executive from a major out-of-state venture capital firm, Innovation Works CEO Rich Lunak said he saw the future of the city's tech sector.

And he believes the signs indicate that future is much closer than many, both in and out of the city, realize.

"The region's been showing great momentum in this area. People are taking notice, not only locally, but nationally," he said.

Crowdfunding is fuelled by innovative new ideas. But without proper planning and execution, even great ideas can fall flat.

With a success rate of 44 per cent, more than half of all Kickstarter projects don't meet their funding goals.

By researching past projects to see what works, and what doesn't, you can improve your odds, and design your crowdfunding campaign for success.

Ever find yourself going over and over a problem in your business, only to hit a dead end or draw a blank?

Find an innovative solution with one simple technique: re-describe the problem.

"The whole idea behind creative problem solving is the assumption that you know something that will help solve this problem, but you're not thinking of it right now," explains Art Markman, cognitive psychologist and author of "Smart Thinking." Put another way, your memory hasn't found the right cue to retrieve the information you need.