In Massachusetts, innovation isn’t limited to the usual suspects. Here are some of BetaBoston’s favorite college entrepreneurship programs.

While most high school students still plan to go the traditional route of attending four-year colleges and universities when they consider educational options after graduation, a significant number say they are open to the idea of attending community colleges and technical schools.

Last week during a quick trip to New York City, SEC Chair Mary Jo White addressed the Sandler O’Neill & Partners, L.P. Global Exchange and Brokerage Conference. The title of her speech was “Enhancing Our Equity Market Structure” – a noble subject to be certain. But what of crowdfunding?

If the United States is going to achieve President Obama’s new climate change goals, an X factor is how Silicon Valley will respond. Success will depend, many analysts think, on whether the policy will spur entrepreneurs to come up with new technologies and create a clean energy economy.

The garage is so… 1980s. The geography of innovation has shifted from the office park to downtown. Smart CEOs, leaders and policymakers would be wise to get with the program. Cities and metropolitan areas, in the United States and abroad, are the driving engines of national economies and innovation. Yet the geography of their innovation is shifting dramatically.

With a convergence of tech companies large and small, Seattle is attracting money and talent, eager to grow in the cloud and become a hub akin to Silicon Valley.

Silicon Valley, where toddler-aged companies regularly sell for billions, may be the most vibrant sector of the U.S. economy, fueling a boom in markets from housing to high-end toast (how many $4-a-slice artisanal bread bars does a place really need?). But as recent innovations — apps that summon cabs, say, or algorithms that make people click on ads — have been less than world-changing, there is a fear that the idea machine is slowing down.

Ohio Gov. John Kasich dashed the hopes of environmentalists, leading manufacturers and renewable-energy businesses Friday and signed a bill shelving requirements for utilities to ramp up the use of renewable energy and energy efficiency. Ohio has been a battleground over whether to roll back 2008 legislation requiring the state to acquire 12.5 percent of its energy portfolio from renewables and to reduce energy consumption by 22 percent by 2025.

President Barack Obama Saturday tore into those in Congress and the media who deny climate change, calling them a radical fringe that threatens the future by shutting down debate even among those who might agree with the warnings.

It started at a Las Vegas casino in 2006. Third Rock didn’t just fund companies. It helped launch them from scratch and routinely led the businesses in their early stages. Last year, three companies built with Third Rock’s ground-up approach went public and raised a combined $328 million.

It’s been 10 years since a Harvard dropout founded a little website for college students. But Mark Zuckerberg’s most lasting achievement probably won’t be Facebook. It makes sense that Greater Boston would be at the center of it all, with more than 250,000 college students and a burgeoning tech scene.

Most MOOC participants already have a college degree, even those outside the United States. But there was a lot we didn’t know, especially about who took different types of MOOCs and how much of the course content they viewed. This information may be valuable to those looking to design and lead successful MOOCs. Here’s what we’ve learned from this first data release covering more than half a million students.

A new mini-accelerator has joined the growing list of resources for entrepreneurs in Madison. Madworks Coworking at UW Campus, a pilot seed accelerator, launches next week with a $90,000 grant from the Wisconsin Economic Development Corp.

A new tech company wants to make it easier for politicians and political candidates to accept bitcoins for their campaigns. CoinVox has already had discussions with about a half-dozen lawmakers and groups, according to chief executive Chris David, and is looking to steadily ramp up ahead of the midterm elections in November.

Greater Cincinnati companies invested more than $1 billion in local minority-owned businesses last year – marking a new threshold for a jobs-creating program hailed as a national model.

California's economy grew by 2 percent in 2013 after adjusting for inflation, a comedown from the growth rate of 2.7 percent in 2012, according to advance estimates from the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis released today.

A Superior Court judge in Los Angeles last week struck down state laws in California governing teacher tenure, ruling against teachers unions in a sweeping decision that's expected to upend how teachers are hired and fired in the state -- and possibly far beyond it.

Santiago is today buzzing with entrepreneurial activity; university students often look to join start-ups rather than big companies; Start-Up Chile has gained brand recognition in innovation circles worldwide; and local entrepreneurs are becoming more ambitious and looking for opportunities abroad.

As with any fledgling industry moving towards maturity, more and more data has started to appear that makes answering these questions a bit easier. One recent mountain of data on the crowdfunding world that just arrived contains a plethora of information

The term “crowdfunding” is being bantered around as the latest savior of those seeking independent film financing (referred to as film companies in this article). There are several different types of crowdfunding, and it is helpful to be clear on which type is being discussed, so here is a course 101 summary of the different types:

St. Louis’ dozens of young technology firms remain long on promise but short on tangible measures of success. Brian Matthews thinks, St. Louis’ technology sector can hope to be like Indianapolis when it grows up.

Kickstarter, the crowdfunding platform that has become synonymous with the term crowdfunding, is fast approaching another milestone in their ongoing march to fund creative projects. While the portal just surpassed the billion dollar mark in total pledges this past March – the service is just a few million shy of a billion dollars in funding actually delivered to projects.

Pflugerville-based high-tech weapons startup TrackingPoint has closed a $29 million venture funding round to expand its products beyond military weapons and hunting rifles. he company said the new funding will allow it to expand marketing and product development, including breaking into new markets including commercial drones and other applications.

She calls herself "a tinkerer at heart." And ever since Catherine Mohr walked into a Boston-area bike shop looking for a high school job repairing drive trains and spokes, the New Zealand-born surgeon and inventor has taken tinkering to a mind-boggling high art in Silicon Valley.

M87 has raised $3 million from two major telecom players to build out and launch its software product. Investors in the deal were 21Vianet, a leading Internet data center services provider in China, and Qualcomm Ventures, the venture capital arm of Qualcomm Inc.

South Dakota's economy continued to grow last year, a broad boom led by agriculture, health care and finance. The 6.8 percent growth in South Dakota's GDP was fourth highest in the nation and almost twice the national rate.

It sounds like a cliche but it’s true. Conservatives and liberals don’t just differ in their political views. They like to live in different places, associate with like-minded people and have opposing views on the value of ethnic and religious diversity in their neighborhoods, according to a major new study by the Pew Research Center.

Everyone's heard the call to "buy local." Now a growing movement is urging people to take grass-roots support even further—and invest local. The idea: Instead of putting their investment dollars in big, distant companies, people should bet on the shop around the corner, by giving it a loan or buying a stake in it through a special stock offering. Small businesses, for their part, should lobby their neighbors and customers for support if banks don't come through with financing.

Despite the positive buzz generated by programs like Arch Grants and the Cortex district, Missouri hasn't made any progress on the Information Technology & Innovation Foundation's New Economy Index. The Show-Me State ranks 33rd, the same as it did when the index was updated in 2012 and 2010. Illinois climbed four places to 20th.

The verbal attack by angel investor Ron Conway on a former Facebook executive-turned venture capitalist this week may signal the start of a new political fight in San Francisco -- one with the tech industry at its center. That means young idealists with social media cash likely will be running into politically-savvy elders with even older software money in or near the city more often.

Nebraska Enterprise Fund, an Oakland-based community development financial institution, or CDFI, stepped in as a partner of Martin’s bank and earlier this week approved an additional $150,000 loan to help Martin’s company grow from 26 employees to 44 employees over the next 18 months.