It’s hard to think of any major portion of President Obama’s health policy that hasn’t engendered intense argument. But one at least comes close: the provision of the 2009 federal stimulus law that pushes medical practices to update their record-keeping for the 21st century. The aim is to ensure that all of the nation’s medical records are computerized by 2014. There seems to be a broad consensus that increased use of electronic data will improve the quality of health care in the country and ultimately lower costs.

And here’s why. In roughly three out of four doctors’ offices in the country, patient charts are still updated by hand and stored in vast, color-coded filing cabinets. If a patient changes doctors, the file has to be mailed or faxed and the new doctor often has trouble reading the previous doctor’s hen scratching. Patients walk out of a medical office with one or more tiny pieces of paper to get prescription drugs filled. When they come back for a follow-up, they have to bring a bag full of drugs so the doctor will know what the patient is taking.

New business incubators are a sure-fire way to nurture great entrepreneurial ventures; the data bears that out.

According to a new study from the U.S. Department of Commerce Economic Development Administration, business incubators are a better source of regional business growth than any type of government-sponsored public works initiative.

The EDA data reveals that incubators generate 20 times more jobs than community infrastructure projects, and at a bargain in the process. The study says that business incubators can produce such jobs at a rate of $144 or $216 per job, compared to $2,920 to $6,872 for public works projects like road and water projects.

As Americans are no doubt feeling a familiar post-Thanksgiving bulge in their waistlines, Gallup data reveal insights into how those who say they have ever lost weight made it happen. Americans who have succeeded at losing weight at some point in their lives -- representing 52% of all U.S. adults -- are more likely to mention various dietary changes than efforts at exercising as the most effective strategies to drop pounds. However, exercising (31%) and eating less (23%), specifically, lead the individual responses.

FORTUNE -- Earlier this year, drug giant Pfizer (PFE) announced plans to slash spending on research and development by a third. Its shares closed that day up more than 5%. Two days later rival Merck (MRK) went the other way, saying it would maintain existing R&D levels. Its shares fell by nearly 3%. Investors had sent Big Pharma a very clear message: Stop spending so much money to create new drugs, even if you're losing exclusivity on your older drugs through the so-called patent cliff. It's cheaper to just buy developed molecules from private startups.

Unfortunately, such sentiments elevate short-term dollars while ignoring long-term sense. They're reflective of Wall Street's callous indifference toward America's health, even when that health is literal.

Peter Diamandis is the very definition of a change agent. Possessed of inspired vision, unflagging energy, and a dedication to leadership, he has been responsible for more real-world innovation than most people dream of in a lifetime.

Diamandis has made an impact partly through the typical vehicle of entrepreneurs everywhere: A string of bold startups stretching back to his days as a medical student at MIT. Lately, though, he has harnessed the machinery of competition to produce serial breakthroughs in organizations he does not personally manage.

Getting what you want often requires you to do things that you have never done before–to step outside your comfort zone.  In order to do that in a manner that consistently makes sense to you, you have to get clear about what you want. John Mariotti says,

“All of life is a negotiation.”

And if he’s correct, then it’s time to become a deal maker.  In “You Don’t Get What You Deserve: You Get What You Negotiate,” John points out that making deals

Every year at this time, ReadWriteWeb picks out the best of the Web over the past calendar year. Our annual Best Of series will be even bigger and better than ever in 2011! We have no less than ten themed 'top 10' lists coming your way over the following four weeks before Christmas, each prepared by a different member of our writing team. We'll also survey the top trends of 2011, along with other regular features such as Best BigCo and LittleCo of the year. To kick things off, today we present our list of the 10 best social network and social media products of 2011.

Almost every Web product these days has some kind of social element. But to make this list, the product has to have social networking or community building as a core part of its offering. So without further ado, here are our top 10 Social Web products of 2011:

Can you turn a scientist into an entrepreneur? The National Science Foundation and Stanford University are trying to find out.

Twenty-one teams of scientists and engineers who’ve developed technology backed by the NSF are in the midst of an intensive class taught through Stanford to see if they can learn to launch start-ups and even become entrepreneurs.

Called the NSF Innovation Corps, the program aims to commercialize technology inside U.S. university laboratories and to get the scientists out of those labs and into conversations with prospective customers—often strangers–about how to adapt their technologies into products.

Plenty of late-stage financing will be available for cleantech start-ups over the next few years, but seed/Series A money is another matter.

There’s been a pile of negative news about cleantech start-ups recently. I’ve heard it said more than once in the past month that venture-backed entrepreneurship clearly isn’t working here, so maybe we should all pack our bags and go home. Given the human bias to extrapolate individual events into overarching trends, I figured now would be a good time to review the data so far about cleantech VC performance – and I stress data, not anecdote or assertion! – to see what we can learn.

At Practice Fusion, it took us three years to get to our first million dollars in revenue. Electronic health records is a hard market to crack and I was incredibly naïve. But here are seven lessons I learned along the way.

Know your rock bottom and know your pain threshold. I was watching The Wire, and a woman at a Narcotics Anonymous meeting was saying, “I set a rock bottom I would never go below,” but she kept going below it. What I’ve learned in this process is that your company will be an addiction. Think up front about how far you are willing to go. Will you sell your house? Your car? Give up time with your friends? Family? In 2008, we were close to going out of business. I’d sold my house and car and had another house in foreclosure. I was in denial a lot. I’d gotten into a motorcycle accident a few years earlier. The settlement check came and I used the check to make payroll. When we got funded I was four years behind on my taxes and needed two root canals. What are you willing to give to pursue your dream? You will most likely have to go beyond that.

Nominations are currently being accepted for the Kauffman Junior Faculty Fellowship in Entrepreneurship Research. The Kauffman Foundation will award up to seven Junior Faculty Fellowship grants to faculty members in the United States whose research has the potential to make significant contributions to the body of literature in entrepreneurship. Each Fellow's university will receive a grant of $40,000 over two years to support the research activities of the Fellow.  

Nominees must be tenured or tenure-track junior faculty members at accredited U.S. institutions of higher education who received a Ph.D. or equivalent doctoral degree between Jan. 1, 2007 and 
Dec. 31, 2010. For more information or to nominate a qualified junior faculty member, visitwww.kauffman.org/kjff. All nominations must be submitted online by 5:00 p.m. CST on Monday, 
Jan. 23, 2012. Nominees will then have until 5:00 p.m. CST on Monday, March 12, 2012 to complete their online applications for consideration for the fellowship.

We all know the saying "If you want something done, give it to a busy person." It’s sound advice--but it’s also a dangerous habit unless you step back occasionally to see what impact it might be having on the busy person’s experience at work. For most managers, having a "go to" person is a great asset, but make sure you don’t overdo it by going to the same person again and again.

This is a dilemma for most managers. It’s only natural to assign tasks to the most accomplished people on your team. And while that might make sense if the only goal of a manager were to get things done, one of the things we've stressed in this column is that the real goal of leadership is to get things done while creating an environment that is engaging and encourages long-term growth.

According to a recent index released by Forbes, many policy changes have made Canada the best country for business. The index evaluates countries on property rights, innovation, taxes, technology, corruption, freedom (personal, trade and monetary), red tape, investor protection and stock market performance. Canada jumped three spots from the 2010 survey, getting high marks for Personal Freedom (#1), Red Tape (#3), Investor Protection (#5) and Trade Freedom (#7). It also had a noticeable improvement in its tax ranking—thanks largely to a “Harmonized Sales Tax” and reduced corporate and employee tax rates. Is this resulting in a better climate for Startups?

Another study, "The Power of Many: Realizing the socioeconomic potential of entrepreneurs in the 21st century" named Canada the “most entrepreneurial ecosystem of all the G20 countries.” Just check out the Startup Canada campaign partners for a glimpse at the many components of this ecosystem.

The 2011 National Venture Capital Association (NVCA) Yearbook is out and includes the latest statistics that describe the activity of the US venture capital industry (source: Thomson Reuters). The publication includes metrics regarding commitments made to venture capital funds, venture capital investments into entrepreneurial companies, and venture-backed exits (mergers and acquisitions and IPOs). The publication also includes appendices regarding portfolio company valuation guidelines, international accounting convergence and venture capital activity outside the US. Here are some interesting graphs that are included in the Yearbook:

Ireland’s tech sector is putting the country on the global map for venture capitalists, eager to tap into the best technologies being pioneered on the planet right now. Already Ireland’s tech sector gleaned €161.9m in investment in the first half of the year.

This is a jump of 58pc for the same period in 2010.

More than 100 guests converged in Dublin for a William Fry breakfast briefing, ‘Raising Venture Capital’.

Shay Garvey of Delta Partners said the reason why Ireland’s technology sector is garnering the most VC investment is because businesses in this sector are demonstrating the greatest potential at the minute.

Redg Snodgrass has Mr Ed buried in his backyard. That's right, the horse that played the talking horse lies underneath his family's farm in Oklahoma.

So how did that story play as a pick-up line at his last job, a Silicon Valley start-up making a mobile phone dating app called Skout?

"It works great for the cougars, but the younger girls don't know who Mr Ed is," he says. "If they're in the 40-plus range, I'm in. For the younger

As an entrepreneur, I’ve been invited to guest lecture for entrepreneurial programs at colleges from Harvard to the University of Michigan. Each time I stood before a group of aspiring entrepreneurs, I couldn’t help but wonder whether people could actually learn the needed skills and qualities to become a successful entrepreneur, or if we’re born into said skills.

I did some research and, synthesizing my findings with my own experience as an entrepreneur, concluded that people are born with some of the traits and characteristics needed to be a successful, innovative entrepreneur. However, these characteristics can always be improved through education and experience.

The newly minted “Silicon Sixth Avenue” is exactly what our city, county and state have been clamouring for: a high density of young, technology enabled risk takers. With nationally renowned start-ups bookending a Silicon Valley-style incubator, this new technology corridor is already seeing the kind of positive generation-to-generation externalities that lead to true wealth.

So what now?

For anyone who has ever seen the Home Shopping Network or bought a memory foam pillow, you know what NASA means to the average household: from the road grooves before stop signs that have reduced highway traffic accidents by 85%, to the super-absorbent polymer called sodium polyacrylate that has significantly reduced the number of leaks from baby diapers, NASA has had more impact on earth than in space. According to NASA, “since 1976, over 1,600 documented NASA technologies have benefited U.S. industry, improved the quality of life, and created jobs.”

If we want to create jobs in America, we must welcome foreign-born innovators. "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses of immigrant entrepreneurs yearning to breathe free": This is the message we need Lady Liberty to shine forth into the world.

Yet Ellis Island has put up a velvet rope line. To vital job generators, we are saying, "There's no room for you."

Inviting immigrants in to create jobs may seem counterintuitive, but the facts are clear. Immigrant-led innovation is key to creating U.S. jobs. According to statistics from Partnership for a New American Economy, 40% of Fortune 500 companies were created by immigrants or their children. Further, between 1995 and 2005, 25% of high-tech startups in the United States had at least one immigrant founder, and these companies have created more than 450,000 jobs.

MANILA — Americans calling the customer service lines of their airlines, phone companies and banks are now more likely to speak to Mark in Manila than Bharat in Bangalore. Enlarge This Image

Over the last several years, a quiet revolution has been reshaping the call center business: the rise of the Philippines, a former United States colony that has a large population of young people who speak lightly accented English and, unlike many Indians, are steeped in American culture.

More Filipinos — about 400,000 — than Indians now spend their nights talking to mostly American consumers, industry officials said, as companies like AT&T, JPMorgan Chase and Expedia have hired call centers here, or built their own. The jobs have come from the United States, Europe and, to some extent, India as outsourcers followed their clients to the Philippines.