With its legislative agenda for job creation stuck for the foreseeable future, the Obama administration has turned inward, looking to the federal bureaucracy for new ways to jump-start the economy.

Lately its gaze has settled on the Small Business Administration. Yes, it has proposed merging the SBA into a much bigger government agency dedicated to business and trade.

But an arguably more consequential decision came in December, when the SBA unveiled a new $1 billion program to invest in young companies by loaning money to venture capital funds.

FLOODGATE Fund co-founding partner Ann Miura-Ko believes it's the business model that matters most, rather than the business plan. A well-thought out business model that is data-driven and scenario-focused will be seriously considered. According to Miura-Ko, models do a better job of unearthing assumptions about a company's users, customers, pricing, demand creation, sales channels, supply chain, and overall logistics - all critical components to building a successful venture.

Young people should be offered a good job within four months after leaving school, EU leaders will say at an informal summit today (30 January), according to a draft statement obtained by EurActiv. The measure was criticised as empty rhetoric by European socialists.

Stimulating employment among young people is the first priority to spur economic growth in a recession-hit Europe, says the four-page document that EU leaders are expected to adopt later today.

“A particular effort needs to be made immediately to improve labour supply and reduce youth unemployment,” read the draft conclusions of today's EU summit in Brussels.

In the 21st century economy, having strong innovation skills is critical. This year, instead of the proverbial New Year’s resolution to lose weight or get a new job, why not commit to building your innovation ability? This article discusses the urgency for building your innovation skills, and outlines some simple and effective ways for doing it.

As you sat watching the fireworks explode in the night air, bringing yet another year to an end, you may have quietly committed to a resolution that this was finally going to be the year that you take the plunge and start your own business. Naturally, you’re a bit of a geek, so it will most likely be in the tech sphere.

The idea has been brewing in the back of your mind for years and, for some unknown reason, the time finally seems right to take those unguided steps and break away from the security of your 9-5 job. Just knowing you are about to follow your passion makes you feel energised and reinvigorated, spurring you to hand in your notice to your boss with the hope that one day you will be driving past him in your new Ferrari and wave.

Several commentators have recently highlighted the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor’s finding that the share of U.S adults starting or running a new business increased by 60 percent from 2010 to 2011. While I understand the desire to focus on the positive after so many years of declining entrepreneurial activity in the United States, I’m not sure the GEM results really signal good news about entrepreneurship.

To see why requires an understanding of the difference between the stock of entrepreneurs and the flow into entrepreneurship. Think of entrepreneurship like a bathtub of water. The stock of entrepreneurs is akin to the level of water the in the tub. The flow into entrepreneurship is similar to the amount of water coming through the faucet. Unmeasured in this analogy is the flow out of entrepreneurship, which is like the amount of water going down the drain.

We're all awaiting with bated breath for the Facebook S-1 to drop this week. According to various leaks, Facebook's operating profit was around $1.5 billion in 2011 and its revenues were something like $4 billion. We'll know soon enough whether that's true, but if so, it makes Facebook's reported $85-100 billion valuation sound insane.

Is it?

Well, anyone can argue that it's high. But we don't think it's insane.

In anticipation of the Facebook IPO this week and the thousands of young millionaires it will spawn, the runway success of the social network is a good reminder that sometimes you can get rich by starting a startup or by working at one.

Not quite. David E. Weekly thinks equity is a lottery ticket. Weekly, who helped found Hacker Dojo and PBworks, wrote a guide for startup guys.

Hoping to seed the next world-changing idea, New Enterprise Associates is setting up shop at Harvard University.

The new fund, dubbed The Experiment Fund, will include a yet-to-be determined amount carved out of the $2.5 billion NEA XIII.

NEA will invite other investors in coming weeks to participate in the new venture, which will bankroll Boston-area students looking to turn big ideas into big business. NEA doesn’t have a full presence in Boston and will seek at least one local VC firm to provide hands-on support for the newbie entrepreneurs.

The Canadian Advanced Technology Alliance is sounding alarm bells over newly proposed American legislation that could allow earlystage U.S. firms to raise funds through social networks.

Unless Canada enacts similar measures, the Canadian tech industry lobby group says, the plan could spark an exodus of promising firms and lure more Canadian startup money south of the border.

"Many Canadian startups have great ideas, but they never get funded," said John Reid, chief executive of CATA. "Now the U.S. will add new legislation that will make it easier for small investors to invest in early-stage companies. Technology entrepreneurs are highly mobile and may simply decide to start their new businesses in the U.S. if that is where they have access to startup capital.

Pouring at least one glass of milk each day could not only boost your intake of much-needed key nutrients, but it could also positively impact your brain and mental performance, according to a recent study in the International Dairy Journal.1 Researchers found that adults with higher intakes of milk and milk products scored significantly higher on memory and other brain function tests than those who drank little to no milk. Milk drinkers were five times less likely to “fail” the test, compared to non milk drinkers.

Researchers at the University of Maine put more than 900 men and women ages 23 to 98 through a series of brain tests – including visual-spatial, verbal and working memory tests – and tracked the milk consumption habits of the participants. In the series of eight different measures of mental performance, regardless of age and through all tests, those who drank at least one glass of milk each day had an advantage. The highest scores for all eight outcomes were observed for those with the highest intakes of milk and milk products compared to those with low and infrequent milk intakes. The benefits persisted even after controlling for other factors that can affect brain health, including cardiovascular health and other lifestyle and diet factors. In fact, milk drinkers tended to have healthier diets overall, but there was something about milk intake specifically that offered the brain health advantage, according to the researchers.

The Tech Coast Angels investor group placed more than $10 million last year in Southern California companies, said investor Jack Florio, a spokesman for the group.

The total invested was the highest since 2007, with the most deals since 2005, Florio said. Tech Coast Angels is an association of individual, or "angel" investors in Southern California, who collaborate on investments.

Of the 36 deals completed in 2011, 19 were new and 17 were follow-on investments, Florio said. Individual investors contributed 90 percent with the rest coming from the group's Angel Capital Entrepreneur (ACE) Fund.

North Carolina’s “green” industry – touted in some circles as the “next big thing” – hasn’t yet started putting up large enough numbers to become an engine of economic recovery.

Private investments in renewable energy projects — including wind and solar — will generate only $6 million in state tax credits in fiscal 2012, according to a new report. Credits aimed at encouraging development of new alternative fuel production and distribution facilities are expected to hit $100,000.

Have you noticed that there are very few job listings for business development, marketing, operations, and other business-related functions at startups? It seems like all the non-technical jobs get snatched up before they are even made public.

Well, that is sort of true.

What many people don’t realize is that there is a big secret behind finding these business jobs in StartupVille: these jobs usually start with investors.

Good morning from Mountain View, CA, and from the close of the 2012 Personalized Medicine World Conference, which brought together thought leaders of business, government, healthcare-delivery, research and technology. Four themes that emerged from this year’s program:

• Greater optimism, triggered by the 2011 approvals of two major oncologic agents paired with companion diagnostics: vemurafenib (Daiichi Sankyo and Roche / Genentech) for patients with metastatic melanoma with a mutant biological pathway known as BRAF V600E and crizotinib (Pfizer) for patients with non-small-cell lung cancer that overexpresses a protein called ALK. Walter Koch from Roche and Hakan Sakul from Pfizer proudly discussed their development processes and speedy approval timelines. Those approvals were also cited by several other talks as examples of major progress made in the quest to deliver the right drug to the right patient.

For better or for worse, art often imitates life and vice versa. Films like Jerry McGuire, Bad Company and Swimming With Sharks have become iconic depictions of what it’s like to navigate the corporate world while TV shows like Entourage give us a glimpse into what it’s like to be a movie star.

So what are those must-see movies every aspiring entrepreneur should see? Here are 10 recommendations from 10 young entrepreneurs.

1. ‘Wall Street’ With Michael Douglas

“The original Wall Street (1987) movie is a classic, as is Scarface (watch your ego!), and The Corporation– a documentary that chronicles what happens when you give a corporation the same legal rights as a person, but none of the same responsibilities or accountability.”

The business practice of brainstorming has been around with us so long that it seems like unadorned common sense: If you want a rash of new ideas, you get a group of people in a room, have them shout things out, and make sure not to criticize, because that sort of self-censoring is sure to kill the flow of new thoughts.

It wasn’t always so: This entire process was invented by Alex Osborn, one of the founders of BBDO, in the 1940's. It was motivated by Osborn’s own theory of creativity. He thought, quite reasonably, that creativity was both brittle and fickle: In the presence of criticism, it simply couldn’t wring itself free from our own minds. We could only call our muses if judgments didn’t drag us down. Osborn claimed that this very brainstorming process was the secret to BBDO’s durable creativity, allowing his ad guys to produce as many as 87 ideas in 90 minutes--a veritable avalanche. "The brainstorm had turned his employees into imagination machines," writes Jonah Lehrer in a long, excellent article in The New Yorker. But as Lehrer argues, the only problem with all this is that brainstorming is total bullshit.

The global market for mobile health applications for smartphones is expected to nearly double in 2012, rising to $1.3 billion, according to a new report.

While a projected doubling in growth is certainly impressive, it pales in comparison to what the mobile health apps market experienced in 2011, when it grew seven-fold to $718 million, according to research2guidance, a German firm that specializes in research into mobile markets.

Nonetheless, the market for mobile health apps is in its “embryonic state” and has plenty of room for growth. The market’s anticipated $1.3 billion size in 2012 is only a fraction of the overall $6 trillion global healthcare market, according to the report.

You’re on the way to a meeting. Traffic seems to be slowing. A text comes in: “You’re going to be late. Take the next exit for alternate route.” It’s from Google.

This is not Google’s version of Siri. It’s a result of the company’s push to use data it collects from you in novel ways that could be helpful, or unsettling.

"That’s not something I want my computer telling me. It’s creepy,” said Kurt Opsahl, senior staff attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a nonprofit digital rights advocacy organization located in San Francisco.

Venture-capital investment in Midwest health care startups jumped in 2011, with Minnesota leading the way, according to a report released Monday.

Life-sciences firms across the Midwest pulled in a total of $810 million in financing for the year, up from $739 million in 2010, the study from Cleveland-based BioEnterprise    Corp. found. Minnesota came out on top for the year, accounting for $223 million of the total.

The report tracked deals for 11 states and western Pennsylvania. The report examines investments in the medical device, health IT, health care services and biopharmaceuticals industries.