As part of the No Worker Left Behind law [PDF], Michigan has created a Green Jobs Initiative which provides statewide, regional and local resources and training opportunities in alternative energy, green building and construction and retrofitting, and sustainable business practices.
If you’re unemployed or looking to re-educate and change careers, you can identify training opportunities for [...]

Google is threatening to do to venture capital funding what it has done to the search, browser, applications software, advertising and publishing worlds: turn the status quo upside down. The company has been quietly making relatively small investments in the $500K range in promising technology startups since 2Q 2007 — and then typically buys [...]

Loved this New York Times illustration from the book review of Bill Bishop’s The Big Sort, which I found over on Richard Florida’s blog, The Creativity Exchange.

Nice reference to the Crustacean Period, and a strong suggestion that here in Michigan we have to evolve our economy and the way we do business, lest we be [...]

WSJ’s Tech Blog recently published a profile of the ‘typical’ tech entrepreneur, based on a survey by the Kauffman Foundation. Here are the typical characteristics:

founded their $1,000,000-plus company, on average, at 39 years of age
more than 90% have completed a college degree
four times as likely than the general public to have attended an Ivy-League [...]

A package of bills (with broad bipartisan support) was under consideration Tuesday in the Michigan Capitol which will provide business tax incentives to film producers, video game developers, and other entertainment based ventures. The key component of the legislation introduced last week is a 40% business tax break for firms engaged in moviemaking in [...]

UPDATE 12-5-07: The 6% services tax enacted by the Michigan legislature went briefly into — and then out of — effect, on December 1, 2007. The repeal legislation retroactively exempted all potentially covered transactions from tax liability.
Business owners who are subject to the new services tax must register with the State of Michigan, Department of [...]

I just posted the updated and revamped Trademark Use FAQ. Trademarks are becoming more and more important with the rise of lifestyle goods and the social network, as people claim their affinity for brands and product lines as a means of self identification and a way of quickly locating potential friends with common interests. The [...]

Expansion Management magazine ranks Ann Arbor, MI #1 in the USA for knowledge workers. Some of us were in a local cafe recently, discussing downsized Pfizer workers (and downsized auto-industry-related and auto supplier technology people) and how we want them to stay here in our local economy. Some local law firms are offering [...]

ANN ARBOR, MI — Arborlaw PLC announced that it will roll out the “Lemon-A-Squared” grant, joining several SE Michigan (SE-MI) law firms in agreeing to provide free business formation services to downsized Pfizer ex-employees looking to form new companies and commit to the Ann Arbor and southeast Michigan economy.To qualify, an applicant has to be [...]

Interesting article from MarketingProfs.com. It’s of course essential to have an elevator pitch: every startup and guerilla marketing professional knows that. Doug Stern points out that the essence of networking is people and people skills, and that most people want to connect on a social level first — after they know whether or [...]