Once or twice a week, Bill Draper comes to Buck's Restaurant in Woodside, California to eat breakfast and close deals.

Draper moved to the Bay Area in 1959 to join his father, William Henry Draper, who started the very first venture capital firm in the west: Draper, Gaither & Anderson.

Three years later, Draper decided to strike it on his own, and founded Draper & Johnson Investment Company with his friend Pitch Johnson.

The University of Maryland School of Pharmacy has launched a Center for Translational Medicine (CTM) under the leadership of Joga Gobburu, PhD, FCD, MBA, to help improve medical product development efficiency.

“By establishing the Center for Translational Medicine, the School of Pharmacy is demonstrating its commitment to improving the drug development and regulation process,” says Natalie D. Eddington, PhD, FAAPS, FCP, professor and dean of the School of Pharmacy. “As a leader in the field of pharmacometrics, Dr. Gobburu’s expertise as director of the center will enhance our educational and research programs and will lead to substantial partnerships with the pharmaceutical industry and other collaborators.”

Venture capital and rainfall have always been in relatively short supply in San Diego. Yet somehow this semi-arid region has managed to grow and even thrive as a center of life sciences, technology, and cleantech innovation.

Now, as part of a broader strategic initiative, some of the nonprofit organizations that helped establish San Diego as an oasis of innovation are going to Northern California and Boston in search of new sources of venture funding. Next week, for example, half a dozen local Internet startups will trek to San Francisco to make presentations to Bay Area venture investors as part of a roadshow organized by Connect, the prominent nonprofit promoter of San Diego technology and entrepreneurship.

A “startup renaissance” could finally shrink America’s record-high youth unemployment rate. At least that’s how John Harthorne, CEO of startup accelerator MassChallenge, sees it.

Harthorne is the founder and CEO of MassChallenge, a successful Boston-based competitive startup accelerator that grants $1 million to startups that have the “highest impact.”

Those high-impact startups end up growing and hiring young talent, he says.

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation    has committed up to $220 million for the next five years to Rockville-based Aeras, a nonprofit dedicated to developing new vaccines for tuberculosis.

The grant extends the Gates Foundation’s longtime backing of Aeras, whose pipeline includes several mid- and early-stage TB vaccine candidates being developed through pharmaceutical and academic partnerships. The $220 million represents about half of what Aeras needs to meet its vaccine development targets through 2016, the nonprofit said in a news release Wednesday.

It dawned on me last night that as of tomorrow TechStars will have three programs running at same time with about 40 companies actively engaged in programs in Boston, New York, and San Antonio. Last week David Cohen, the co-founder and CEO of TechStars announced that he had raised a new $28 million seed fund called Bullet Time Ventures II. The final companies are being selected for The Kinect Accelerator.  The TechStars Boulder applications for this summer’s program close on Friday March 16th.

Not including the active programs, 126 companies have gone through TechStars since we ran our first program in Boulder in the Summer of 2007. We publish all of the results – as of now 110 are still active, 8 have been acquired, and 8 have failed. 772 people are employed by these companies. The percentage of companies getting funded at the end of a class has increased from 70% in 2007 to 90%. When we started, companies received $12,000 to $18,000 depending on number of founders. Today, they receive that, plus $100,000 in the form of a convertible note.

Potential immigrants with the skills and ability to innovate and add to the growth of the economy will be the targets of a new immigration plan being set up by the government, according to Citizenship and Immigration minister Jason Kenney.

The plan to hasten the immigration process for “high value innovators” will replace the immigrant entrepreneur program which the government stopped last year, according to a report from the Globe and Mail.

“We want the next Bill Gates or the next Steve Jobs. We want those folks with the brilliant ideas that are going to generate sustainable jobs for a long time to come,” Kenney said in an interview with the newspaper.

Millennials, the generation of young Americans born after 1982, may not be the caring, socially conscious environmentalists some have portrayed them to be, according to a study described in the new issue of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

The study, which compares the traits of young people in high school and entering college today with those of baby boomers and Gen X'ers at the same age from 1966 to 2009, shows an increasing trend of valuing money, image, and fame more than inherent principles like self-acceptance, affiliation, and community. "The results generally support the 'Generation Me' view of generational differences rather than the 'Generation We,'" the study's authors write in a report published today, "Generational Differences in Young Adults' Life Goals, Concern for Others, and Civic Orientation."

Former Yahoo engineer Andy Baio is "embarrassed" by the patents filed in his name.

Writing in Wired, he said "I thought I was giving them a shield, but turns out I gave them a missile with my name permanently engraved on it."

That got us wondering. If patents really are weapons, who's got the biggest, baddest army in the tech world?

Part of being a blogger is constantly advertising your ideas as unique. Even if you maintain your own site, you have to establish credibility. Writing guest blogs on other prominent sites is one of the most effective ways to make yourself known as a thought leader in your niche. Here are a few tips for pitching ideas to other bloggers.

1. Know the blog

You’ve got an amazing topic in mind, and you want a reputable site take a chance on you. You can increase your odds of being picked up by doing some research.

This week the eyes of the tech world were firmly fixed on Austin, Tex. for South by Southwest Interactive. Partly because of that event, Austin is often mentioned with Silicon Valley and New York City as one of America’s great tech hubs.

Let’s not forget about Seattle. Cost of gas, energy, and real estate (not to mention natural beauty) are just some of the reasons why the Emerald city is not only one of the best places in the country to live, but also one of the most attractive places for startups to bootstrap or for bigger companies to make the hires necessary to scale their operations.

Would-be entrepreneurs have numerous resources for advice and inspiration. Books, seminars and mentors all offer valuable information and advice.

So do the movies. After all, story telling is a fundamental tool in education. Some people learn best from actual experiences of others.ADVERTISEMENT Click on the photo above to see 11 of the must-see movies for entrepreneurs.

Remarkable bosses aren’t great on paper. Great bosses are remarkable based on their actions.

Results are everything—but not the results you might think.

Consistently do these five things and everything else follows. You and your business benefit greatly.

More importantly, so do your employees.

1. Develop every employee. Sure, you can put your primary focus on reaching targets, achieving results, and accomplishing concrete goals—but do that and you put your leadership cart before your achievement horse.

In 2005, I took the plunge from climbing the corporate ladder to entrepreneurship.

It wasn’t a conscious decision. More done out of frustration with the way communication results were handled (or not handled) inside agencies.

I thought I had a better way.

I did have a better way, but it took me five years to get the business to a point that we could do things differently. To the point other business leaders would listen to something so radically different than what they were hearing from other PR/marketing/communication firms.

“You see a lot of people thinking they have an idea and can just outsource the development. It won't work that way.”

That's the advice of Patrick Ambron, Co-Founder and CEO of BrandYourself, a website that helps people control their own Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) search results. As a 24-year-old entrepreneur who turned down $750,000 from one group of investors because they weren't the “best fit” for his company, Ambron knows a thing or two about making tough decisions. And after finding another group of investors and taking in $1.25 million during BrandYourself's first round, Ambron knows how to raise money.

This year's Innovation Union Scoreboard shows that most Member States have improved their innovation performance. This allows the European Union to maintain a clear lead over the emerging economies of China, Brazil, India, Russia, and South Africa, but not to close the existing gap with innovation leaders such as the United States, Japan and South Korea. More efforts are therefore needed so as to address the EU's weaknesses. One area in the spotlight is related to firms' innovation activities.

The Laurence A. Baiada Center for Entrepreneurship will transition from a center of excellence within the LeBow College of Business at Drexel to a University-level institute, Drexel University President John A. Fry announced.

“This step forward is a meaningful one for Drexel,” Fry said. “By building upon its established model for success, the Baiada Institute will elevate its mission, uniting Drexel’s entrepreneurial spirit with experiential education and pragmatic guidance for start-up businesses.”

New report shows that innovation is led at regional and community level in Canada

Canada's Public Policy Forum today released Leading Innovation: Insights from Canadian Regions, a report from an initiative which sought to uncover what makes some of Canada's key regions more innovative, and what lessons can be learned from these leading examples. Seven sessions were convened in regions across the country over the course of six-months featuring participation of entrepreneurs, business leaders, policy makers and researchers. The report is the result of a collaborative venture between the Public Policy Forum, BMO Financial Group, Deloitte, Business Development Bank of Canada (BDC), the Government of Ontario and the Canadian Tourism Commission.

The quiet, workman-like atmosphere of your office is actually not making your brain work as hard as it could. A little noise can go a long way toward getting you better ideas.

Researchers have shown that a flexible schedule helps employees be healthier, happier, and more productive. If your boss still isn’t convinced that you should work wherever you want, here’s some more evidence to bolster your case: A study in the Journal of Consumer Research says that working in coffee shops and other moderately noisy places boosts creativity.

On Monday night, health entrepreneurs, investors and industry insiders celebrated a new class of “healthcare transformers” as well as the industry’s complete and official arrival in the digital world of SXSW.

StartUp Health and Health 2.0 hosted a happy hour at The Hangar Bar in Austin and introduced two entrepreneurs who will be participating in the three-year program designed to help the companies build a sustainable growth business in the health sector. Nadeem Kassam of Basis and Hesky Kutscher of MotherKnows.com were at the event.