Massachusetts has the dubious distinction of spending the most money on healthcare per person of anywhere in the world. At the Mass Technology Leadership Council healthcare community meeting on Tuesday, April 24, "The Need for Technology Solutions for Providers Under Payment Reform", held at WilmerHale in Waltham, MA, keynote speaker Sarah Iselin, President of the Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts Foundation, reviewed some of the startling facts and figures related to healthcare coverage and costs, such as this one.

At Involution, as a part of our commitment to learning and growing as a company, we conduct semi-regular studio critiques. This kind of critique is important to our ongoing evolution as an organization and helps everyone, from leadership to staff, understand the broad vision and values of the studio. As a part of that ongoing discussion, we're drafting a set of principles that we believe apply to great companies, especially great design companies. Some of these principles are inspired by "Achieving Excellence in Your Design Practice" by Stuart Rose. While the book was first written in 1987 for architectural firms, the principles within it apply to modern design practices in the digital and software realms, as well. Here, then, are nine principles we believe are characteristic of great companies.

On Thursday, the US Senate passed the Jumpstart Our Business Startups (JOBS) Act (73-26), which allows start-up companies for the first time to solicit early stage investments from the general public. The Senate version added some protections and requirements to the original bill previously passed by the House on March 8. For instance, in the Senate version, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) will now have the authority to review and register Web sites that wish to act as start-up investment platforms. Start-ups can raise up to $1 million via this crowdfunding method, with individual investments limited to a range of $2,000 - $100,000, depending on annual income.

One of my all time favorite books on innovation and the ecosystems that support it is Richard Florida's "The Rise of the Creative Class". Using census and economic data, Florida examines the factors that make Creative Class jobs — in science, engineering, technology, architecture, and the arts — primary drivers for economic growth. He also identifies a number of Creative Class cities that have the right kind of assets — like a strong university system, technological infrastructure, and a tolerant culture — to attract talent and support this kind of economic activity. Boston, of course rates high in Florida's evaluation. And even though Florida published this book in 2002, I think the analysis holds true today: There's no question that Boston is a top-notch Creative Class city. What's most interesting, however, is how Boston, over the past few years, has gained recognition as a world class city for innovation.

A recent study published by The Economist ranked Boston as the 10th most competitive city in the world, out of 120 major cities examined. For the study, the Economist defined competitiveness as "the demonstrated ability to attract capital, businesses, talent and visitors." And last year, Boston ranked number one on the Innovation Cities Index.

A few hours ago GigaOm published an article declaring "Marketing is the next big money sector in technology". In the first paragraph, the author, Ajay Agarwal of Bain Capital Ventures, sets up the future of the industry this way: "For the first time in history, businesses can leverage big data for the benefit of driving marketing insights. We are at the very beginning of this wave, but this fundamental shift will create several multi-billion dollar winners. And a set of technology companies will emerge as the marketing equivalents of Salesforce and SAP."

Yesterday, the Mass Technology Leadership Council — which represents a wide range of Massachusetts industries, including energy, robotics, software, life sciences and healthcare — held its annual meeting at the Hyatt Regency in Cambridge. The event featured a keynote on the Council's vision for 2012, a comparative research report from the Mass Technology Collaborative, a state of the US economy from The Parthenon Group's Chief Economist Roger Brinner, and a fireside chat, featuring a colorful and candid interview with Intuit Chairman Bill Campbell by Fast Company founder Bill Taylor.

One of the themes to come out of the MassTLC annual meeting was the idea that, in order to drive innovation in the Boston area, we should encourage risk taking in the funding of new companies. While not all new companies will survive infancy, the odds are in our favor that one of the wild business ideas of today will not only survive, but thrive in a spectacular fashion. After all, it's no secret that Facebook began here, but was unable to put down roots. Today, Facebook is a dominating worldwide presence, but at the beginning, it needed nurturing and support. Making seed funding available to early stage companies is paramount to the Boston region accelerating as a hub of innovation.

Today Apple revealed the third generation iPad with its Retina screen, bringing the most powerful mobile visual display to market with a whopping 326 ppi in its 9.7 inch space. Print resolutions typically range from 300 - 1800 dpi, which means that Apple has effectively brought mobile computing into that same realm, a significant step to say the least. There's no doubt that the e-reader experience on the iPad will be greatly enhanced, be it for books, magazines, or even PDF documents. And with a starting price point of $499 for its bare bones model, it's conceivable that the other tablet competition and dedicated e-reading devices like the Kindle and Nook could soon be in for a bumpy ride.

I don't think there's any question that the creative class jobs that drive our innovation economy — designers, engineers, scientists, architects, entrepreneurs, writers, etc. — are all positions that require constant learning and evolution. In a larger sense, our economy, the companies that survive and thrive, the types of jobs in demand, and the skill sets required to successfully compete for these positions, are changing at a rate faster than we ever could imagine.

The Fast Company article, "This Is Generation Flux: Meet The Pioneers of the New (and Chaotic) Frontier of Business", has an interesting take on this phenomenon, framing the current economic environment as a system caught in the throes of creative destruction, brought on by rapid technological innovation and radical business model changes. A related article, "The Four Year Career", examines the imminent demise of the long duration job and the well defined career path.

In the new digital world, we are the sum of our trackable behavior. The web sites we read, the items we share, the products we buy, are all elements that contribute to our digital personas. Online marketers desperately want to collect our behavioral data so they can analyze our history, better target their offers, and maybe even predict our next moves. But the question remains, do we want them to have access? Do we trust their intentions? And, more importantly, if we don't, can we stop them from peering over our shoulders as we navigate our digital lives?

Here’s what we’re reading online, this week at Involution, on design, tech, and the digital life, in our links round up.

The Internet of Things Will Rise in Boston
With the advent of the mobile revolution, we're now living connected lives, where our day-to-day activities are closely tied to the digital products and services that we carry with us everywhere on our smart phones. The future vision of smart devices networked via an Internet of Things takes this connectedness one step further, to a place where not only our phones, but our cars, our homes, the appliances within them, and any number of other objects can communicate with each other and us. This connected vision may be closer to reality than we realize.