Start-ups are the future of the American economy. Considering two out of every three new jobs are created by small businesses,* innovative new companies are becoming more important than ever before. Helping spur the development of small businesses are business incubators, which provide the resources new organizations need to get off the ground. In Northeast Ohio, incubators are taking a leading role in developing our entrepreneurs, placing The Plus on the cutting-edge of economic development.

Continue reading to learn about some of the region’s unique business accelerators and programs, which are helping to revolutionize the future of Northeast Ohio.

The Nashville Entrepreneur’s Organization is launching a program to help entrepreneurs spur their fledgling companies forward — at a time when calls for that type of business development is taking on a fever pitch in Nashville.

The group, a membership organization for entrepreneurs whose companies boast $1 million or more in annual revenue, has launched its “Catalyst” program to help companies reach that benchmark. Catalyst is part of a partnership with the Nashville Entrepreneur Center, which Gov. Bill Haslam earlier this week elevated as a key part of his economic development strategy.

“Our members want to give something back to the business community that has allowed them to be successful, and what better way to give back than by helping others succeed?” Debbie Gordon, EO Nashville chapter president and president and CEO of S3 Asset Management and Snappy Auctions, said in a statement.

Nowadays people may admire China’s economy, but not Chinese creativity. Chinese architecture and art, music and movies are derivative, and many a Chinese enterprise is merely a carbon copy of an American one. China’s best schools may produce the world’s best test-takers, but the United States’ best schools produce the world’s most creative talent.

In his book The Social Animal, David Brooks outlines the four-step learning process that teaches students to be creative: knowledge acquisition (research), internalization (familiarity with material), self-questioning and examination (review and discussion), and the ordering and mastery of this knowledge (thesis formulation and essay writing).

Where should you look to find the most creative, flexible, forward-thinking people in your organization - at the top, or in the rank-and-file? For years, the answer provided by research seemed a straightforward one: powerful people are more creative. But thanks to a recent set of studies, it's clear that the story is a bit more complicated than that.

Being in a position of power certainly changes you - not necessarily in an evil way, but there is a definite shift in how you perceive the world around you when you're the one in the driver's seat. You think in a more abstract, big-picture way. You become more optimistic, more comfortable with risk, and more open to new possibilities. (A series of studies by Cameron Anderson and Adam Galinsky showed that when people felt powerful, they preferred riskier business plans with bigger potential rewards to more conservative plans, divulged more information and were more trusting during negotiations, chose to "hit" more often during a game of black-jack, and were more even likely to engage in unprotected sex during a one-night stand.)

A hard-hitting review of engineering research in Irish universities and its potential for making a contribution to economic development was recently published by the Irish Academy of Engineering. The figures show that in the four years from 2005 to 2009, the last government spent €1.35 billion of public funds on research in our universities, with 85 per cent allocated to the disciplines in sciences, 8 per cent to engineering and 7 per cent to other, mostly arts, disciplines.

If this level and pattern of expenditure is to be continued, it is surely necessary, in the current economic climate, that it is critically evaluated by Minister for Education Ruairí Quinn with regard to its contribution to the national economy. In particular, it is important to look at the output we would expect to get from such expenditure of taxpayers’ money.

Our country’s patent system is about to get an overhaul. Both the Senate and House have proposed separate but similar bills that would radically change the way patents are filed, granted and disputed.

It’s yet to be seen what version will make it to the President’s desk, but as the discussion over the patent process heats up — especially now that the two groups need to come to some compromise — the decades-old conversation about the worth of a patent is sparking again.

I have led and been part of many technology-based startups that have benefited greatly from holding patents, in particular one mobile-based patent that was very attractive to investors and later on became a significant asset as we looked to exit.

But the truth is, getting a patent isn’t easy or cheap and it doesn’t by any stretch guarantee revenues.

The rate of sea level rise along the U.S. Atlantic coast is greater now than at any time in the past 2,000 years–and has shown a consistent link between changes in global mean surface temperature and sea level.

The findings are published this week in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

The research, funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF), was conducted by Andrew Kemp, Yale University; Benjamin Horton, University of Pennsylvania; Jeffrey Donnelly, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution; Michael Mann, Pennsylvania State University; Martin Vermeer, Aalto University School of Engineering, Finland; and Stefan Rahmstorf, Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, Germany.

A big bundle of news out of Montgomery County government, private biotech and academia just came down at the BIO conference in D.C. Wednesday afternoon:

• MoCo's long-languishing biotech tax credit will get a modest infusion of $1 million over the next two years. The credit, passed in March 2010 without any funding, will piggyback on the highly-sought-after state Biotechnology Investment Tax Credit, which provides a credit of up to 50-percent of qualifying investments in Maryland bio firms. Some council members were obviously ill at ease with passing a first-of-its-kind tax incentive and letting it fall by the wayside, as reported by the WBJ's Michael Neibauer:

Young basketball players spend hours dribbling up and down the court aspiring to NBA stardom. Now, new Stanford University School of Medicine research suggests another tactic to achieving their hoop dreams: sleep.

In a study appearing in the July issue of SLEEP, Cheri Mah, a researcher in the Stanford Sleep Disorders Clinic and Research Laboratory, has shown that basketball players at the elite college level were able to improve their on-the-court performance by increasing their amount of total sleep time.

The study suggests that “sleep is an important factor in peak athletic performance,” said first author Mah. In the paper, she and colleagues wrote that “athletes may be able to optimize training and competition outcomes by identifying strategies to maximize the benefits of sleep.”

Staring up as cascades of colorful light bloom noisily from the dark sky—that's how many Americans will conclude their Independence Day. Behind the pretty image, however, fireworks rely on basic physical and chemical principles. So just how do fireworks work? Various corners of the internet, including this website, have tackled the topic before.

In 2003, Scientific American published "What are the physical and chemical changes that occur in fireworks?", an Ask the Experts feature by University of Missouri at Rolla professor Paul Nicholas Worsey.

For many researchers, it’s important to love not just their work, but also their workplace. A productive research environment—and a fun, casual atmosphere to alleviate the stress of doing science—is a commonly cited plus of the institutions, both small and large, that topped our 9th annual Best Places to Work in Academia survey.

From year to year, institutions that garner the highest ranks are home to a relatively small number of researchers. Part of their strength lies in a strong sense of collegiality and the attention provided to researchers’ needs. The University of Dundee in Scotland, ranked #6 among international institutions this year, creates an atmosphere that is as playful as it is rigorous. Once a year, life scientists leave the lab for a weekend retreat to party in true Scottish style—with whisky, kilts, and exuberant dancing that leaves participants sore for days afterward. Though the university employs fewer than 500 full-time life science researchers, a collaborative research environment aids the development of special programs, such as a group of scientists that helps spot potential drug targets across labs and translate them into medicines.

Threadless.com started in 2000 after artist Jake Nickell won a T-shirt design contest in an online forum called “Dreamless.” Dreamless was a site Nickell frequented, where he shared his designs with fellow illustrators and programmers who would post designs, critiquing each other’s work and informally competing to produce the best designs. Nickell wondered, “What if the best designs in the Dreamless community could be printed on T-shirts and sold?”

Customer Ownership in Product Design Ensures Success

In the beginning, the Threadless community was created to give artists and designers a place to submit their design ideas and give those designs a home—on the unexpected canvas of a T-shirt. This idea exploded into a fast-growing community reaching far outside the initial graphic and computer-designer circles that first came to Threadless.com.

I heard a great phrase the other day: “he’s a 99% committer.” It was in the context of trying to get something to closure where I felt like someone had committed but it was ambiguous. The person ultimately committed and all was good, but there was some question about outcome for a few days. To be clear, I separate this from a process issue – where the person is on board personally but going through an internal process with a partnership, an investment committee, or a decision making group. Rather, I’m focusing on the person who is able to make a unilateral decision, gets 99% of the way there, and then leaves it a little open.

I pride myself on making quick and definitive decisions. However, when I reflected on this phrase, I realize that I’ve played out the 99% committer role a few times in the past year. In each case, I made things more difficult for everyone, including myself, but not simply taking the extra time and energy up front to get to 100%. In one case that I can think of I let things drag on at the 99% point for several months; in another it was only a few weeks. In both cases, I let plenty of extra anxiety build up on my end as I wasted time churning on the 99% decision rather than figuring out what I had to do to get to 100%, running things to ground, and being done one way or the other.

These days I see a surge of new startups as we fight our way out of the recession. If you are not starting one yourself, the next best thing is joining one as a partner, or as an early employee. It takes much the same preparation to make you the best entrepreneur, or the best job candidate. Of course experience is the best teacher, but you need to get the job to get the experience.

According to Ford R. Myers, a noted career coach, and author of “Get The Job You Want, Even When No One’s Hiring,” many job seekers and career changers make the mistake of halting all their efforts during the summer, believing that nobody will be hiring until early fall. He and I believe that summer is the perfect time for starting a new career.

Private equity firms have swooped up web hosting and domain registry company Go Daddy Group for $2.25 billion.

The acquirers include KKR & Co., Silver Lake Partners and Technology Crossover Ventures. The hope is to expand the company internationally, make more partnerships, acquire other companies, and recruit talent, said Bob Parsons, chief executive and founder, in an interview with the Los Angeles Times. The deal is part of a trend of heightened merger and initial public offering activity in the tech industry. Silver Lake recently sold Skype Global to Microsoft for $8.5 billion after buying it from eBay for $2 billion two years ago.

Back in Skype’s early days, it was adding users so fast that it liked to boast that it was “the fastest growing, globally available communications tool in history.” Well, by at least one measure (registered users 9 months after launch), mobile video chat service Tango is outpacing Skype. Tango now has 17 million registered users across both Apple and Android devices, only 9 months after it launched. By comparison, Skype celebrated 9 million users on its first birthday back in 2004.

Today, Skype has more than 600 million registered users, so Tango still has a long way to go. But the company wants to reach 100 million users over the next year. (Don’t we all?). If it does that, it will certainly earn the title of fastest growing communications tool.

Are startup founders who play poker statistically more likely to succeed in business? Beats me. But I do know that there are many lessons that founders can learn from poker players. As we all know, poker used to be relegated to smoky casinos and the back rooms of seedy lounges. But, in recent years, poker has become a game for the masses. Kids who once idolized athletes now idolize the “e-athletes” they see playing poker on TV.

Now, I’m not going to ask you to start wearing dark glasses and try to stare down the office supply salesman as he tries to convince you to buy your pens and Post-it Notes from his company. But, I am going to ask you to think about a key aspect of poker playing that is very applicable to businesses.

July 2, 2011 (SOUTH BEND, Ind.) -- South Bend economic leaders are hoping ideas springing from the University of Notre Dame can rev the economic engine of the northern Indiana city.

The executive director of a not-for-profit group that encourages business development in St. Joseph County says he believes Notre Dame can help perform some of the same research and development functions that Studebaker and Bendix Corp. did in years past. Project Future's Pat McMahon says the group hopes to get ideas from throughout the region

For the longest time, being an entrepreneur in the Philippines meant engaging in businesses that bought and resold products, or provided a service in a particular locale, or offering relatively low value-added products and services to an undemanding public.

For the most part, the risks borne by Filipino entrepreneurs looked modest compared to those carried by their Western counterparts – especially in the IT-based businesses in the United States – where most would either succeed or fail in a spectacular fashion.

“That’s why the country is the way it is. There are a lot of people shortcuts here: The easy buck,” says Dado Banatao who chairs the US-based Philippine Development Foundation (PhilDev) of the Ayala group of companies.