A South Bend, Indiana start up announces the launch of a new virtual marketplace. PrototypeUS, located at Innovation Park at Notre Dame, is the brainchild of Heather Short-Davis and Christina Herceg Tembo. "PrototypeUS is a web-portal that will connect innovators from all over the world to area manufacturers in order to create working prototypes," says Short-Davis. "We want to help bridge the gap that is often referred to as the 'valley of death' for an innovator."

National Science Foundation (NSF) Director Subra Suresh today detailed the president's $7.373 billion fiscal year 2013 budget request for the agency, emphasizing that new knowledge resulting from federal investments in science and technology is needed to ensure the nation's future prosperity and global competitiveness.

As part of the President's Plan for Science and Innovation, his budget sustains the commitment to double funding for three key science agencies: NSF, the Department of Energy's Office of Science and the National Institutes of Standards and Technology laboratories. The fiscal 2013 budget for NSF includes an increase of $340 million, or 5 percent, over the fiscal 2012 enacted budget level.

President Obama on Monday proposed a 1.5-percent increase in federal spending on basic scientific research for the coming fiscal year, with his heaviest emphasis on driving technologies calculated to have economic benefit.

Mr. Obama, making his annual budget recommendation to Congress, outlined a governmentwide spending plan totaling $3.8-trillion, just 0.2 percent above current-year spending. The president's outsized support for research has been a pattern throughout his four annual budget outlines, even as the nation's economy has struggled.

CEOs lead some of the busiest lives in the business world, but that doesn't mean that they don't have time to curl up with a book (or e-reader).

What are some of their favorite reads? Many of them reference business books as sources of inspiration, but others are partial to fiction or sci-fi.

As president of the Association of University Technology Managers (AUTM), I’m in a unique position of hearing from university technology managers who want more opportunity to interact with industry, and industry members who want to identify the latest breakthrough innovations. Industry investors and their academic licensing counterparts already come together for dealmaking at the AUTM Annual Meeting and at the BIO International Convention, but now we have a new resource to further augment in-person networking.

This month AUTM launched the AUTM Global Technology Portal (GTP)—a website which is a “one stop shop” for companies to search university technologies available for licensing and tell universities about their needs. The GTP will make it easier for universities and corporations to find each other and begin licensing and partnership discussions. If you’re not searching for anything specific, you can simply browse organizations, capabilities, or available technologies. You can also search by keyword and set up email alerts to learn about future related postings. If there is a particular university you’re interested in, you can even “follow” that university and get alerts when it posts new data.

President Barack Obama's fiscal 2013 plan calls for tax increases for many business owners and less money for Small Business Development Centers, Portfolio.com reported. But the budget does contain a few nuggets specifically aimed at encouraging would-be entrepreneurs.

Polls show business owners are concerned that continued large deficits will lead to higher taxes and higher interest rates. Obama’s budget proposal doesn’t do much to ease those concerns.

Wisconsin's controversial venture capital legislation appears to be dead, at least for the current floor session.

The legislation, a holdover from last year, has been bogged down by months of debate and concerns about how much taxpayer money should be spent to try to boost venture capital investments — and whether programs involving certified capital companies, known as CAPCOs, would be involved.

"Well, in my opinion it is (dead)," said state Sen. Alberta Darling, R-River Hills, who led Senate efforts to draft venture capital legislation. "We've done our homework, we know this is something we want to do, but in my opinion we don't have the cash right now."

Quebec's venture-capital leaders are cautiously optimistic about their market after investment in emerging companies grew 48 per cent last year in an annual survey made public on Tuesday.

A total of $549 million of investment was reported in the province. And the top funded companies in Canada were all located in Montreal: Enerkem Technologies Inc., which received $90.3 million, Enobia Pharma Inc. with $40.8 million and Beyond the Rack Inc. with $36.6 million.

Quebec was roughly tied with Ontario for the most dollars invested with a 36-per-cent share of Canadian venture-capital investment. The increase was good news after a poor showing in 2010 when the market declined by nine per cent.

Canada’s venture capital firms posted strong growth in small business financing in 2011, with 34% more money going to 24% more firms than the year before, the Canadian Venture Capital & Private Equity Association said Tuesday.

According to data compiled by Thomson Reuters, Canada’s venture capital firms invested $1.5-billion in 444 companies last year, the association said.

But Canada’s VC spending boom also faces an abrupt conclusion. The amount of money raised by Canadian VC firms in 2011 remained at about the $1-billion level achieved in 2010, suggesting the positive figures represent a lull in Canada’s otherwise ongoing startup financing crisis.

Welcome to our annual guide to the businesses that matter most, the ones whose innovations are having an impact across their industries and our culture. Click a company name to view the entry, or determine your own ranking of the top four companies using a series of quizzes, games, and brainteasers.

DEVELOPING A CULTURE OF INNOVATION DEPENDS ON HAVING AND KEEPING THE RIGHT PEOPLE, AND YOU DO THAT BY RECRUITING, RETRAINING, AND REWARDING.

Innovation relies on people more than other processes. This reliance on employees, management, and executives in an organization requires that the “right” people are attracted, and then given the appropriate tools and techniques for a sustained innovation success. Their passions and capabilities also must be ensured to align with the needs and expectations of the firm. Let’s take a closer look at the three Rs.

Charges of the watchful eye of Big Brother have not surprisingly greeted a Cleveland Clinic plan in which the hospital will raise insurance premiums by 21 percent on employees who don’t participate in a wellness program.

Critics will no doubt argue that the wellness program requirement, like the Clinic’s ban on hiring smokers, is another example of the U.S. sliding toward a nanny state in which people are essentially forced to change their behaviors to suit someone else’s priorities.

Recently, a 12-year-old Irish boy named Harry Moran wrote a mobile app called PizzaBot. It hit the Mac App Store and within a week, it had surpassed Angry Birds, attracting fans from around the world.

Harry was an instant YouTube celebrity, and during a Public Radio International interview, he revealed was already hatching ideas for new games.

Welcome to the lighter side of the App Economy, in which software applications have the potential to be downloaded by millions in the blink of an eye and far greater opportunities are on the horizon.

There’s a perfect storm brewing thanks to globalization, a tough financial climate, and incredible technology disruption. To compete and win, today’s businesses simply have to be better engaged with their customer, partner, supplier, and employee communities.

As the possibilities of the Internet continue to increase, tech startups will soon be searching for people well-versed in new information technology specializations. For those who want to beat the competition to these hot job openings, develop a solid expertise in a sector of IT — now.

I asked a panel of successful young entrepreneurs to predict the IT skills tech startups will be looking to hire throughout the coming year.

“Mad scientists”—rule-breaking geniuses whose resistance to convention sometimes produces radical innovations—are both a blessing and a challenge to R&D organizations. Recent studies suggest how such rogue innovators can shape a company’s culture and what can be done to channel their influence.

As organizations grow, the need for efficiency leads to a tendency to rigidify the channels of information and decision-making. This loss of operational flexibility eventually creates a white space from which the mythical “mad scientist” emerges.  But many companies start out as nothing but a collection of mad scientists and then slowly rigidify, gradually transitioning these individuals out of the company as they move towards finished products. Others hire them as they need more ideas in their pipeline as a result of over-stratification and stagnation. The mad scientist is really an organic part of an organization’s evolution, not an anomaly that emerges heroically. He or she is a counterforce; an offsetting mechanism against the rigor of the established order, which may threaten to stifle creativity.

It's Valentines Day. Time to step back from working 24/7 and make sure your loved ones are still in love with you. That's a joke, but there's some truth in too.

I spent some time with a founder/CEO yesterday who is doing a remarkable job building a really important company that is growing as fast as any company I've worked with. We talked about the sacrifices an entrepreneur makes and its toll. He said that his wife and kids are hugely supportive but not particularly engaged in his work. I think that's pretty typical of what I see out there.

The dictionary definition of a mentor is “an experienced and trusted advisor,” or “leader, tutor or coach.” The definition of a critic sounds similar, “a person who offers reasoned judgment or analysis.” The big difference, of course, is that a mentor looks ahead to help you, while a critic looks backward to tell you what you did wrong.

We can all learn from both of these approaches, but in my view the mentor is far more valuable than a critic. A mentor’s goal is to help you build your strengths to avoid problems and pitfalls, while a critic feels compelled to point out your weaknesses.

Last week, I shared how we should be encouraged by recent developments to ramp up efforts in support of America’s new and young job creators—including legislation put forth by President Obama at the end of January. While there still remains a small window to get something done, Washington’s old timers emailed me afterwards to remind me that tackling the challenges of passing reforms during an election year is very hard and patience is in order. But as Bob Litan, vice president of Research and Policy at the Kauffman Foundation succinctly put it in an op-ed last week, the political climate at the federal level “doesn’t mean we’re out of ammunition.”

States have made great policy moves to inject entrepreneurial dynamism to our economy before and can do so again. The Kauffman Foundation’s State of Entrepreneurship Address delivered last Thursday offered several examples of policies states can implement to spur more entrepreneurship. Based on a collaborative study with the National Governors Association, the Kauffman Foundation issued A Startup Act for the States to guide policymakers at the state level. I share the main insights with you here.

If you are an entrepreneur, then it is fairly easy for you to use a general rule of thumb to come up with the valuation you are likely to get for your startup — depending on the stage of the company (seed, series A and later stages) and the scale of success or the merit of your idea. And that is possible, thanks to numerous blog posts, tattling tongues and other new sources of information.

However when it comes to hiring employees at the early stages of a company, no one really has a clue about how they should be compensated — cash, equity or what combination of both? Why is that? Because a lot of the salary and equity-related data is never really shared by startups, argues Naval Ravikant, co-founder of startup funding market place, AngelList. The market, he points out is very opaque and as a result you don’t have much consistency in terms of who gets paid how much and more importantly how much equity an early stage employee gets.