The fact that a great deal of the content produced by tech news sites concerns startup companies might make an observer from another planet think America is a veritable nursery for brilliant business ideas. The real truth is, since the "Internet bubble" burst in 2001, initial public offerings have not resumed the vitality levels of the late 1980s, let alone the boom years of the '90s.

This week, President Obama is scheduled to sign into law a bill that eases the Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) auditing and reporting requirements on new companies looking to go public, as well as effectively legalizing the principle of crowdfunding - pooling the resources of micro-investors to make small batches of seed capital available to early-stage startups. It's a move that's not without controversy, and not even the people who are happy with it are completely happy with it. But it could affect one thing right away: the level of buzz and information surrounding young IPOs, which no longer have to keep mum.

There's a lot to consider when you're hiring people. When you're a small business on a tight budget, you can't afford to make many mistakes.

"One good (employee) is worth more than 1,000 mediocre ones," said Scott Hintz, the co-founder of Tripit at the Small Business Summit 2012 in Manhattan. "Keep the team small, but make sure they're high-quality people," he said. "You need to hire problem-solvers."

On Thursday, President Obama is scheduled to sign the JOBS Act which makes it easier to raise funds online. (Although not as easy as the original bill would've made it.)

Every day we hear from yet another crowdfunding site crowing about the situation.

Most of them were alive and well before the JOBS Act and they built their sites with the previous legal restrictions in mind. Project owners couldn't sell pieces of their company or pay back the money.  Instead they gave away rewards for different levels of investing like copies of the product, limited editions or weird things, like dinner with the inventors.

After struggling to create your business plan for months, every entrepreneur likes to think that their document is inspirational and will reach someone who is smart enough to see the brilliance of the idea, intuitive enough to recognize their business acumen, and enthusiastic enough to offer the money required to make it happen.

Every serious investor, on the other hand, has a stack of these in their in-basket (email or real plastic) awaiting review, and is looking for the flaw or less-capable entrepreneur in each that predicts failure, allowing them to discard it like another piece of junk mail. Many VC firms and investment banks receive as many as ten plans per day, so it’s hard to get them salivating.

The hyped word innovation may soon be spelled innoflation as we are busy filling it with corporate lingo. Why then, do we still see so few results of innovation work outside power point descriptions and strategy discussions in the board rooms? Despite an ever increasing knowledge in how to manage innovation we still seem to struggle in getting it done. Why? There are strong psychological hurdles that stop us from going from thinking about innovation into doing innovation. The human factor revealed in our irrational psychological behavior explored in e.g. Prospect Theory are still somewhat white fields in the map of innovation. Follow Bengt and Susanna as they are delving deeper into the area of innovation psychology, searching for explanations that help organizations go from thinking innovation into doing innovation.

Today we’re adding a breath of inspiration to the whirlwind of information about how innovation should be managed in the organization. Caspar van Rijnbach provides twelve suggestions of what an innovative leader should be. Do you have more to contribute?

Be broad-minded: Innovation is not only about products or technology, the most profitable innovations are most often not in these areas, but in finance, business models, services and new businesses. See how you can innovate to receive faster, improve cash flow, or enhance the sales of your current products (besides just pushing your sales people to sell more);

On the steep slope of plummeting DNA sequencing costs rides the suggestion that whole-genome sequencing will soon be a part of the clinical experience for most patients. But researchers have now shown that deciphering the genetic code of most people would alert them to an increased risk for at least one of 24 common diseases, but fail to warn them about other diseases they will ultimately develop.

It's not easy to predict the ultimate usefulness of medical genomics, in part because the field is so young and not widely adopted. The researchers estimated the potential of the technique to alter a patient's lifestyle and medical treatment by studying disease rates from identical twins.

Question: I am considering joining a startup that is currently in the process of raising their next round of funding. I will be joining as a VP, reporting directly to the CEO, and considered an “executive”. Given the environment for this particular industry, it is very likely that the company will face a down round – perhaps as much as 50% of their last financing a year ago. What should I expect in terms of protection from both dilution and going under-water on my option prices given that I will be joining before term sheets and close of the round? Will my options be priced based on the previous round? Can I ask for some guarantees about % ownership and stock price post-funding?

Generally this is very hard to do. During your hiring process, you should address this directly with the CEO and ask him (a) what he thinks the prospect for a down round is and (b) if he’s willing to give you any guarantees on your stock position if one occurs. Most CEOs will say (a) I don’t expect there to be a down round and (b) no.

Assuming, as was argued in the second installment in this series, that the U.S. reforms its public education system and our high schools are graduating students who are creative, innovative, and critical thinkers, then college becomes the first opportunity where these capabilities can be applied on a much larger, and more-challenging, scale. One of the many benefits of attending college -- and, to a somewhat lesser extent, a two-year community college (because of its narrower geographic market area) -- is that the universe of students, and their respective life and academic experiences and attendant perspectives, are greatly expanded. The student body at a college with 2,500 students or a university with 25,000 students, respectively, will be exponentially less homogenous than a student's high school graduating class of 250, all coming from the same community.

The Department of Health and Human Services released a video of last week’s HHSinnovates program that honored six winners within the department that found innovative solutions to agency needs.

The first ever World Happiness Report was published last week by Columbia University's Earth Institute. Its editors included John Helliwell, Richard Layard and Jeffrey Sachs.

The Happiness Report details what makes people happy, what countries are the happiest, and many other factors involving general happiness.

My fellow Small Biz Trends columnist Joel Libava recently wrote a thought-provoking post asking: Are Green Businesses Still Golden? He points to some possible signs that the green business movement may be sputtering, such as the temporary shutdown of Chevy Volt production and solar panel maker Solyndra’s high-profile failure. He questions whether businesses will continue to invest in sustainable business models and products as the economy recovers, or if they’re simply too focused on making up for lost time and money.

Gene scans for everyone? Not so fast. New research suggests that for the average person, decoding your own DNA may not turn out to be a really useful crystal ball for future health.

Today, scientists map entire genomes mostly for research, as they study which genetic mutations play a role in different diseases. Or they use it to try to diagnose mystery illnesses that plague families. It's different from getting a genetic test to see if you carry, say, a particular cancer-causing gene.

But as genome mapping gets faster and cheaper, scientists and consumers have wondered about possible broader use: Would finding all the glitches hidden in your DNA predict which diseases you'll face decades later?

IT’S NOT JUST A SILLY QUESTION: BY ASKING OURSELVES WHAT WE DEMAND OF PEOPLE WE WORK WITH, WE CAN BETTER UNDERSTAND WHAT WE SHOULD DEMAND OF UI’S.

Recently I was listening to a friend grouse about a crappy co-worker who had just washed up in his department. As the litany of complaints grew longer and longer, his co-worker began to sound more and more like a really crappy smartphone. Bear with me for a second, while I list some of those complaints, because when you get through them, they each reveal something telling about what we demand of a good user interface--and how we should look at the products we create.

CONNECT’s newly released Third Quarter 2011 Innovation Report shows the dynamism of San Diego’s innovation economy in new tech company creation, patent activity growth and attraction of federal research grant dollars in the third quarter of 2011. In the Report, VC funding shows an increasing move to early stage San Diego companies.

The Report shows that 91 technology start-ups were established, compared to 76 in the previous quarter, an increase of 20 percent. In all, 237 new tech companies were established in the first three quarters of 2011. These ventures translate into 200 new jobs in the third quarter and 500 for the first nine months of 2011. Throughout California, tech start-ups created more than 1,690 jobs in the third quarter and 4,300 for the first three quarters.

This data shows that 2011 may be shaping up as the best year for startups in San Diego since 2007. Software companies were the most prevalent start-ups in the third quarter of 2011, with 27, while pharmaceutical/biotech/medical companies showed the sharpest increase with 22 new companies – twice the number formed in the second quarter of 2011.

Venture-backed initial public offering (IPO) activity marked its strongest opening quarter, by number of issues and dollars raised, since the first quarter of 2007.  Bolstered by increased stability in the broader U.S. stock market indices, 19 venture-backed companies went public in the United States during the first quarter of 2012, raising $1.5 billion, according to the Exit Poll report by Thomson Reuters and the National Venture Capital Association (NVCA).  By dollars, the quarter registered a 10 percent increase compared to the first quarter of 2011, when 14 venture backed companies raised $1.4 billion.  For the first quarter of 2012, 86 venture-backed M&A deals were reported, 24 of which had an aggregate deal value of $2.7 billion.

What does a real-life CEO have in common with the central figures of a fictitious Mafia crime family in The Godfather? According to Justin Moore, CEO and founder of Axcient, plenty.

Moore is a serial entrepreneur, early-stage advisor, and angel investor. He’s currently at the helm of Axcient, a company he founded that provides backup, business continuity, and disaster recovery services to the small and mid-sized business (SMB) market. Right now, Axcient is protecting more than 2 billion files and applications for businesses across North America.

And other thoughts from Steve Jang, avid surfer and co-creator of the social music app SoundTracking. "You get that timing, you pop up, you find your balance, and you ride that wave--and you have to do that over and over."

Steve Jang is the cofounder and CEO of Schematic Labs, whose social music app SoundTracking just hit its one-year anniversary. The app is steadily approaching 2 million users, and its ranks include the likes of Snoop Dogg. Collectively, they’ve shared 3 billion of what SoundTracking calls “music moments.” I caught up with Steve Jang to talk about why SoundTracking is like the New Yorker cartoon caption contest, why running a startup is like surfing, and why my life is boring.

A new list of the best companies in the world includes huge polluters and companies that make deadly weapon technology. Is this what we’re calling ethical these days? Or is being labeled "ethical" available for a price?

Based in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, Rockwell Collins had 2011 revenues of $4.85 billion, putting it just outside the top-10 U.S. aerospace and defense companies. It makes navigation systems for fighter jets and business aircraft, as well as products like the FireStorm Integrated Targeting System (video), and NavStrike™ 3.3 munitions-guidance system. Its clients include the Department of Defense, as well as militaries in places like Saudi Arabia and Bahrain.

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