Entrepreneurship is the one of the most popular clubs at U.S. business schools these days, and the field is gaining momentum. As more educational institutions dive into social entrepreneurship, we’d like to share with them and their students one of the primary ingredients for turning promising ideas into success stories.

With more than a decade working with field-based social entrepreneurs from the developing world through our Global Social Benefit Incubator, we feel our mentorship program is the secret sauce.

Mentors help social entrepreneurs build their businesses, often by learning with them how to overcome obstacles that range from government antipathy and a dearth of distribution channels to a lack of talented human capital. These are radically different than the challenges they have faced in their Silicon Valley careers.

How can a bus tour, a book, and a crowdfunding initiative help reverse the trend of youth unemployment and underemployment? Scott Gerber and the folks at the Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC) believe their new #FixYoungAmerica campaign will spark an entrepreneurial revolution in 2012 and be part of the solution to restore the “American dream” to millions of young people.

On Friday, President Obama will continue to highlight the successful trend of insourcing – companies from around the world bringing jobs back and making new investments here in the United States – at the Rolls-Royce Crosspointe jet engine disc manufacturing facility in Prince George County, Virginia. The President’s Blueprint for An Economy Built to Last lays out a number of ways we can encourage insourcing, support investment in our manufacturing sector, and create good jobs here in the United States, and today’s announcements build on those efforts.

The President will announce a new proposal for a National Network for Manufacturing Innovation, to build a network of up to fifteen Institutes for Manufacturing Innovation around the country, serving as regional hubs of manufacturing excellence that will help to make our manufacturers more competitive and encourage investment in the United States. The President’s Budget proposes a $1 billion investment to create this new National Network for Manufacturing Innovation.

Puffed quinoa? Mini cookies? Maybe throw in some blueberries, cinnamon or chia seeds? Whatever you want in your breakfast bowl, a newly hatched startup called Cerealize wants to sell you a subscription to it.

The startup’s eleven founders met at the start of an unusual hackathon called The Startup Bus on Tuesday. They’ve spent the past four days alongside other teams of entrepreneurs putting together a pilot site — while in transit to South by Southwest in Austin.

“We basically haven’t slept in four days,” says co-founder Falon Fatemi. “And we have been partying while launching a startup. It’s a bonding experience.”

The National Research Foundation (NRF), a Singapore government agency, has picked eight more incubators for its Technology Incubation Scheme (TIS).

The eight incubators are: Get2Volume, Golden Gate Venture Investments, Incuvest, Jungle Ventures, Red Dot Ventures, The Biofactory, The Network Fund (TNF), and WaveMaker Labs. Full details in the press release.

Under TIS, the NRF will co-fund up to 85 percent of total investment per company, or up to S$500k (US$400k), with the rest topped up by the venture firm. Only Singapore-based startups need apply.

The White House has announced that the Department of Health and Human Services' Chief Technology Officer, Todd Park, will take that title again at the federal level as the next U.S. CTO.

Chopra announced in late January that he would be stepping down and return to Virginia, but hasn't yet said what he'll be doing next.

Park has described his role at HHS as that of an "entrepreneur in residence," which meant, in practice, spending a lot of time working to change the way HHS handles data.

Are you a lark or an owl? Do you do your best work in the morning or the evening?

If you’re a morning person, who jumps out of bed ready to take on the day but feels sluggish by the time afternoon or evening hits, you might think you should do your most creative work at the beginning of the day, when you’re fresh. Likewise, if you’re a night owl, and feel barely awake until mid-afternoon, it’s logical that you’d save your most creative work until late at night.

But a new research study by Mareike Wieth of Albion College and Rose Sacks of Michigan State University finds otherwise (hat tip to the folks over at PsyBlog). The researchers asked 428 students to tackle six problem-solving tasks at different times of day. Those who identified themselves as morning persons actually did better on “insight”-based problem solving—tasks that required original thinking—in the evening. Night owls’ performance was the opposite, with more of their “aha!” moments coming earlier in the day.

“A good government implies two things,” wrote James Madison in 1788. The first is “fidelity to the object of government, which is the happiness of the people.” The second is “a knowledge of the means by which that object can be best attained.”

Over the past 224 years, those means have changed. Today, federal and local government agencies undertake challenges that Madison could scarcely have imagined – from space exploration to promoting mass access to higher education to addressing epidemics of obesity and diabetes, to protecting citizens and soldiers from terrorists. In a vast country like the United States in a world of lightning-fast change, it no longer makes sense to presume that governments possess, or even understand, the best ways to address pressing needs and promote “the happiness of the people.”

There is no doubt in my mind that venture valuations have become incredibly stretched.  I have been thinking about why that is and what will come of it.

First off, here are the factors contributing to the stretching of valuations.  It starts with the genuine potential for building hugely valuable businesses, which is based on four key factors:

1. The immense possibility for scale on the Internet — global businesses with millions of customers can be created in relatively short time periods.

The recently released Halo Report, an effort by CB Insights, Silicon Valley Bank and the Angel Resource Institute to collect data on angel investments, finds that angel groups did 573 deals last year, putting $873 million into young companies. That’s not much considering that venture capitalists were involved in 3,673 deals and invested $28.4 billion, data from the National Venture Capital Association shows.

The press release accompanying the report says that “Angel investors … appear to be taking on an increasingly important role in driving entrepreneurship throughout the United States.” That may be true, but if it is, it isn’t because of angel groups. If venture capitalists provided 35 times the money invested by angel groups and angel activity is “driving” U.S. entrepreneurship, then most angel investment activity must be occurring outside of groups.

BioHealth Innovation, Inc. (BHI), a new regional private-public partnership focusing on commercializing market-relevant biohealth innovations and increasing access to early-stage funding in Central Maryland, announced today it has entered into a Partnership Intermediary Agreement (PIA) with the National Institutes of Health’s (NIH) Office of Technology Transfer (OTT). As a partnership intermediary for NIH OTT, BHI will assist, counsel, advise, evaluate and cooperate with small businesses or educational institutions to make productive use of technologies from a federal laboratory.

“We are thrilled to partner with NIH to accelerate technology transfer and the commercialization of early-stage research,” said Richard Bendis, BHI Interim CEO. “This Agreement will allow health care industry experts to proactively identify market-relevant technologies being conducted at one of the finest research institutes in the world to better capture the commercial value of those technologies. Ultimately, the goal is to advance human health care while growing jobs in Central Maryland.”

Download the Press Release

Whether interviewing for a job or making a presentation, weaving a strong personal narrative could be the one thing that keeps you on top. Here are a few tips to turning on your personal branding story without turning off your audience.

I was recently chatting with an up-and-coming professional speaker about some of the best presenters I've seen on stage. I immediately launched into an unplanned sales pitch for Gary Vaynerchuk, or Gary Vee, as many of us know him online. Within minutes I was citing important milestones in Vaynerchuk's life, such as his pre-school move to the United States from what is now known as Belarus, his experience operating a number of lemonade stands when he was just eight years old, and his college years working in his parents' liquor store. After I walked away from the conversation, I tried desperately to recall when I had seen the best-selling author speak, or more importantly, if I had ever met him in person.

Findings:

An analysis of the production location of U.S. exports—particularly in the nation’s 100 largest metropolitan areas between 2009 and 2010—reveals that:

• U.S. exports grew rapidly in the first year of the nation’s economic recovery. Specifically, U.S. export sales grew by more than 11 percent in 2010 in real terms, the fastest growth since 1997. In terms of job creation, the number of U.S. total export-supported jobs increased by almost 6 percent in 2010, even as the overall economy was still losing jobs.
• Large metropolitan areas powered the nation’s export growth. Taken together, the largest 100 metro areas produced almost 65 percent of U.S. export sales in 2010, three-quarters of the nation’s service export sales and 63 percent of manufacturing export sales. The largest 100 metropolitan areas produced the majority of export sales in 30 states in 2010. Export sales from Midwestern metro areas generated the fastest growth in direct export-production jobs.

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In the midst of intense global competition for innovation supremacy among countries, the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF) and the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation released today one of the most comprehensive assessments ever undertaken of countries' innovation policies. The Global Innovation Policy Index benchmarks the effectiveness of the innovation policies of 55 countries – including virtually all EU, OECD, APEC and BRIC economies – and provides a framework for making effective policies.

The Policy Index assesses the countries against 84 indicators grouped across seven core innovation policy areas: 1) trade and foreign direct investment; 2) science and R&D; 3) domestic market competition; 4) intellectual property rights ; 5) information technology; 6) government procurement; and 7) high-skill immigration.

The Biotechnology Industry Organization (BIO) applauds the House on the passage of H.R. 3606, the Jumpstart Our Business Startups (JOBS) Act. The JOBS Act, which passed the House by a vote of 390-23, contains several provisions which would make the pathway to capital formation more attainable for small biotechnology companies.

The JOBS Act creates an “on-ramp” to the public market for emerging growth companies, allowing them five years to focus on conducting critical research that can lead to cures for debilitating diseases before having to divert funds to costly regulations. Through this legislation, emerging growth companies would be exempt for their first five years on the public market from the compliance burdens of Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) Section 404(b), which SEC studies estimate cost companies up to $2 million per year. An on-ramp would ease certain accounting and disclosure requirements for a company’s first five years. In addition, the legislation would:

Expand the eligibility requirements of SEC Regulation A to include companies conducting direct public offerings of up to $50 million; Increase the limit that requires private companies to register with the SEC from 500 to 1000 shareholders; and Require the SEC to revise Rule 506 of Regulation D to permit general solicitation in direct public offerings, broadening the investor base.

If people in your company are not innovating, their excuse is probably on the following list. So, take a look, note the ones that are most common, and start exploring ways to help people go over, under, around, or through them. (While you're at it, see if you any of YOUR excuses are on the list).

1. I don't have the time.

2. I can't get the funding.

3. My boss will never go for it.

4. Were not in the kind of business likely to innovate.

5. I've got too much on my plate.

The first time I met Russi Lala, he gave me a copy of his book Celebration of the Cells: Letters from a Cancer Survivor, saying "that should keep you out of mischief for a few hours."

I hadn't heard that phrase since my schooldays and I'd never expected to encounter it again in middle age. But here was this old world Parsi gentleman using it on me with a delightful twinkle in his eyes. I had dropped in at Lala's flat in the Parsi enclave of Cusrow Baug in Colaba to request him to do an article on Ratan Tata, who has just been ranked No 1 in Corporate Dossier's 'India Inc's Most Powerful CEOs' survey.

He demurred at first, saying he was biographer to the previous generation of Tatas - JRD, Jamsetji, Dorabji - and didn't know Ratan all that well. But as it turned out, he had several anecdotes from the few times he had met the man, more than enough for the article we needed. Lala has now published a new book, titled The Art of Effective Giving, with a Foreword by Ratan Tata.

At the risk of stating the obvious, all universities are similar, but each one is different.  Just when you think you’ve got a key piece of university tech transfer strategy figured out — like peeling the proverbial onion — you unearth another layer you haven’t even considered.   (Actually, in this case, onions are much too stolid and predictable – maybe raking leaves on a windy day would be a better analogy.)  That’s why formal “one size fits all” tech transfer education and policy aren’t always productive once you get beyond the outer layers of the onion, er —  I mean the basic mechanics of the process.

Why am I thinking about onions, university technology commercialization strategy, and education?  I recently spent two days hunkered down in a classroom at the University of Utah with half a dozen tech transfer directors and administrators, plus Utah’s TechVenture’s staff, vice president Jack Brittain and director Bryan Ritchie.  In a nutshell:  I received a vivid reminder of the staggering degree of diversity in the U.S. university innovation system.

Health and Human Services Department Chief Technology Officer Todd Park will be the next federal CTO, replacing Aneesh Chopra, the White House announced Friday.

Park made millions in healthcare technology before joining HHS in 2009. He initially was hired as the department's "entrepreneur in residence."

According to a June 2011 report in The Atlantic, Park, by age 24, had co-founded the health care technology company Athenahealth. "Nearly 10 years later he made a fortune when the company went public with a market capitalization exceeding $1 billion," the magazine reported. The Atlantic and Nextgov both are part of Atlantic Media.

A paradigm shift is needed in Europe if we are going to foster the rise of a private entrepreneurial creative class to address issues including sustainable development, information technology, alternative energy and overall European growth.

Conventional thinking tends wrongly to dissociate technology from industrialisation; but the fact is that they are symbiotic. As a result, countries with overly-developed service sectors like the US, UK and France have lost significant ground to countries in Asia and to Germany.