Zappos.com sustains their culture while growing rapidly by offering new hires $2,000 to leave.  Yes, that’s what I said . . $2,000 to leave.

The Internet clothing and shoe retailer reached over $1.9 billion in gross merchandise sales in 2009. Their growth is powered by service and a whimsical culture. Essential to this growth is attracting people to work there who find it natural, according to one of their core values, to be “a little weird at times.”

Many of us think of ourselves as “non creatives” – creativity is left for the artists, painters, musicians… Everyday we drone on with meetings, emails, reports, and more meetings. However, what we fail to realize is that we can be creative too. In fact, creativity can help us in achieving our daily goals and tasks.

I did a random sampling of dictionaries and online references, and dare say that “creativity” is usually misunderstood. The definition of creativity encompasses the act of forming new ideas, transcending traditional rules or patterns. Thus, it is a concept that can be applicable anywhere.

While the rising economic tide is lifting manufacturing in many regions of the U.S., there are a few spots where it’s higher and more lucrative than others, with wages above the national average and even above the local average for all jobs.

It’s 21st Century industries leading the way, and the jobs call for more education and a higher degree of skill than manufacturing jobs did in the past.

More education and skill required usually means more money in the paycheck — you don’t need a slide rule to figure that out.

The five top regions for manufacturing have two main areas of production in common — computers and electronics, notes the new study released by Brookings’ Metropolitan Policy Program.

Biopharma giants eager to cut R&D costs but also to recover depleted pipelines are trying to fill the gap left by retreating VC firms. They are launching new funds designed to invest in promising startups. Corporate venture funds played a role in 25% of early-stage U.S. biotechnology financing deals during the first half of 2011, up from 15% for all of 2010, reports PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) and the National Venture Capital Association (NVCA).

For example, Merck Research Ventures Fund, the $250 million fund created by Merck & Co. last year, will collaborate with Flagship Ventures to create then fund firms developing new drugs for unmet medical needs. A month earlier, in March, GlaxoSmithKline and the VC affiliate of Johnson & Johnson, Janssen, announced a €150 million (about $200 million) fund focused on companies with first-in-class or best-in-class drugs. Also in March, Russia’s $10 billion state-owned technology fund Rusnano and U.S. VC firm Domain Associates committed $760 million. The money will go toward U.S. pharmaceutical, diagnostics, and medical device companies, creating a manufacturing plant, and increasing Russian drug development.

It is not uncommon for European entrepreneurs to come to the Silicon Valley to learn how to launch globally. However, they often play “the startup game” by the wrong rules. With scarce venture resources in Europe, founders learn to compromise way too much and accept what’s typically unacceptable by those who build great, successful companies with global potential.

Having talked to dozens of entrepreneurs from outside of the U.S. shortly after they arrive to take their first steps in Silicon Valley, I have observed a set of common false beliefs that most of them share. Even if they have great products, great teams, and endless motivation for working hard in their startups, the crucial first step for them should be to get rid of some misconceptions about the startup game… ASAP.

This summer, Pegasus Global Holdings will begin building a city from scratch in the desert just outside of Hobbs, New Mexico, that will look not unlike Hobbs itself. The Center for Innovation, Testing and Evaluation will be modeled on a mid-sized, mid-American town of about 35,000 people. Hobbs, located just outside the Texas border in the Southeastern corner of the state, is just a bit larger than that. The new city--CITE, as the locals and out-of-town developers call it--will similarly have a kind of downtown, a retail district, residential neighborhoods, and collar communities. It will have functioning roads, self-sustaining utilities, and its own communications infrastructure. It will not, however, have a single permanent resident.

Many observers of the venture capital industry have questioned whether its best days are behind it.  They are frustrated by the past decade of subpar returns for the sector.  The most recent report to weigh in on the troubles of the industry was produced by the esteemed Kauffman Foundation.

There are obvious reasons the industry has had less-than-desirable returns, including: massive over-funding of the sector, huge increases in inexperienced venture capitalists that took a decade to peter out, and the massive correction in the value of the public stock markets that closed many exit opportunities for half a decade.

Ok, I’ll admit it. I made a mistake. I tried to pack all the awesome hidden Google easter eggs into one article… and, really, there are way more than 17 ‘tricks’ built into Google products or entertaining sites to be found by clicking “I’m feeling lucky”. So, if you’re finished evading the ghosts in Google’s version of Pacman and you’re looking for some more awesomeness, read on.

This is the claim in Enrico Moretti’s new book ”The New Geography of Jobs”. This book is excellent, I strongly recommend it. I could write dozens of blog posts about this book, and indeed I think I will write several. But one interesting argument he makes is that Richard Florida is wrong that making a city an interesting place to live is a good prescription for economic development. On Moretti’s account, hundreds of millions of dollars have been spent attempting to use arts and culture as an engine of economic development. While it is true that economically successful cities tend to be culturally rich and open-minded, he argues that Florida essentially gets the causation backwards.

He cites two prominent examples. One is Seattle, which was an economically struggling city with a declining population until Microsoft relocated there from New Mexico in the 1980s. This lead to Seattle becoming a software hub with lots of innovative companies, which in turned created a demand for a rich cultural scene. Because history clearly shows the catalyst to development was Microsoft’s decision to relocate, this is almost a natural experiment to show how innovative clusters generate nice places to live, and not vice-versa.

If you haven't noticed, the tech sector is on fire. Venture funding has led to new rounds of hiring in California, while startups are maturing into established companies, with many eyeing IPOs.

Some of today's successful tech industry executives have taken unorthodox paths to becoming tech leaders, including dropping out of high school or college. But dropouts make up a tiny percentage of the success stories in the high tech field and beyond. It is true that young people today are light years ahead of past generations in mastering new technologies and adopting innovation. But nothing changes the fact that a 21st century economy requires a 21st century education. Bypassing post-secondary education or training in favor of jumping into the workplace is a disservice to a global society in a competitive world.

In 1999, I wrote a tongue-in-cheek blues song called The Email Blues. My purpose was to poke fun at some of the email madness going on at that time.

It's 13 years later now and the email scene has become even weirder.

If I was going to write a sequel, it wouldn't be the blues, it would be the black and blues -- because that's how bruised most of us are feeling these days about email.

Bruised, abused, and beat up.

Decades of research have shown that students are very interested in being their own bosses. In the ’90s, for example, a Kauffman Foundation study found that two-thirds of high school students wanted to become entrepreneurs. Unfortunately, the same study found that more than 80% felt they had not learned anything about entrepreneurship in school. In 2011, the National Chamber Foundation and Junior Achievement got essentially the same responses from high school students in a nationwide study.

I’ve been trying to rectify this situation since the 1980s, when I set out to teach students that it was possible for them to be self-reliant and to start a business. We thought this would be a fairly easy goal, especially with the support of a policy from the new U.S. Department of Education stipulating that all career and technical programs should teach entrepreneurship.

The pharmaceutical industry rightly calls the stage in drug development between basic research and clinical trials the “Valley of Death.” This is when a potential treatment that’s worked in mice, monkeys, and the like catapults to a phase 1 clinical trial to assess safety. It’s rare.

Francis Collins, MD, PhD, director of the National Institutes of Health, calls this period “where projects go to die.” The reason: $.

Matthew Herper writes in Forbes that the cost of developing a new drug is $4-11 billion, not the $1 billion that Pharma often claims. Yet even that $1 billion is unimaginable, especially when you put a face on a rare disease and witness what the family goes through to leap to phase 1.

COMMENTARY Everyone goes through the same stages of human development on the road to adulthood and maturity. Unfortunately, some of us get stuck in one stage or another, stunting our growth and rendering us dysfunctional.

We look just like ordinary adults, but we actually behave a lot more like children, acting out, throwing tantrums, and generally making life miserable for everyone around us.

It's pretty much the same thing with executives and business leaders. The only difference is that, instead of just messing up their own lives like ordinary people, dysfunctional leaders influence the lives, livelihoods, and investment portfolios of hoards of employees, customers, and investors.

The White House unveiled a new mobile initiative on Wednesday, May 23, that’s intended to reshape how government agencies utilize mobile platforms in serving the public.

To kick-start the initiative, federal CIO Steven VanRoekel and federal CTO Todd Park released a report on mobile strategy titled Digital Goverment: Building a 21st Century Platform to Better Serve the American People, a “12-month road map” to assist agencies meet goals for a more mobile government.

This is probably the question I am most asked about entrepreneurship.  But rather than tell you my answer, I’m going to give you someone else’s.

As part of an economics unit, my daughter’s fourth grade class at the Onaway School in Shaker Heights Ohio learned about entrepreneurship.  After having a short discussion with me, the class played the Hot Shot entrepreneurship game developed by the Kauffman Foundation and Disney.  Then they were asked to write a blog post explaining what makes entrepreneurs successful.

Their answer, which I have produced below in italics, is telling.  It isn’t all that different from what leading academics and government policy makers say makes entrepreneurs do well.

By now, most people know that one of Steve Jobs’ key insights in launching Apple came from wanting to build a computer that could replicate the artistic typefaces he learned about in a calligraphy class after dropping out of Reed College in the early 1970s.

Perhaps less well known is that John Mackey started Whole Foods out of an old Victorian house in Austin in 1978. His goal was not to make money per se — he leaned toward socialism at the time — but to help vegetarians sustain their healthy lifestyle.

Or take Fred Smith. The real impetus for launching FedEx came after serving as a Marine platoon leader — and later as an air controller — in Vietnam between 1967 and 1969. He saw how the military had perfected a ground-and-air logistics system that moved massive amounts of items large and small in a remarkably efficient way and decided to replicate the model for the private sector.

Continuing a pace begun in December of 2011, the Business Development Bank of Canada (BDC) has recently invested $63 million in three new venture capital funds: Rho Canada Ventures II, Celtic House IV and iNovia Capital III.  These three investments help to create venture funds totaling over $300 million in capital from BDC and other co-investors.  Beginning immediately and continuing over the next 5-7 years, these three funds will invest in up to 35 promising young Information and Communications Technology companies across Canada, working to help them develop into global leaders in their industries.

"Because of the quality of their managers and the ongoing support they offer to investee companies, these three venture capital funds perfectly satisfy BDC's objectives:  to help build world-class technology companies in Canada and strengthen the country's venture capital industry," explained Neal Hill, Vice-President, Fund Investments at BDC Venture Capital.

Over the past few years, I've worked with and interviewed hundreds of CEOs, authors, entrepreneurs, and creatives. One key factor that separates inspiring and successful leaders from those who are trying to make it is decisiveness. 

Last year, when I was working with Seth Godin to build The Domino Project, he constantly pushed our team to make more decisions. His theory was that it didn't always have to be the perfect or right decision so long as we took the risk and decided.

As part of Seth's publishing experiment, I began working with Derek Sivers to edit, publish, and market his book. Through this experience, I become intimately familiar with his "Hell Yeah" approach to decision making. It's stuck with me since and has proved to be a productive go-to framework for making things happen.