(Bloomberg) -- The Bloomberg Advantage with Carol Massar and Cory Johnson.

Robert Bell Founder Intelligent Community Forum Discussing how much of the chaos we are seeing in our cities, in our country and the world is “future shock", the explosive pace of technology advances that may be interconnecting us more than we can handle.

To what degree does culture shape commerce? Does our national identity define us in the marketplace? Many people think so, to the degree that the typical Canadian entrepreneur is often typecast as being more timid and less prone to take risks than his or her counterpart in the United States. Although there are many elements of truth, this generalization begins to fall apart when we consider the depth, breadth and diversity of what it means to be Canadian. In other words, when it comes to business, a one-size-fits-all “Canadian approach” simply doesn’t exist.

Sometime this fall, a former Blackberry manufacturing plant turned light-infused office building will open its doors to companies in a Waterloo, Ontario area branded as the Idea Quarter, a mixed-use technology cluster near the University of Waterloo and the region’s light rail transit system.

When Spear Street Capital set out to revitalize that area, it set its sights on redeveloping the 215,000-square-foot building at 451 Phillip Street, a space that RIM had acquired in the late 1990s. There was an opportunity to rebirth a community and free up space for companies who could not previously find room in the neighbourhood.

The small American rural city of Ashland appeared on our Smart21 list for the first time in 2007. Located in the mountains of southern Oregon, Ashland (population 22,000) has a seasonal economy built on forestry and, as home to the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, on tourism.

Both are seasonal businesses, so Ashland set out in 1997 to diversify its economy by building a metropolitan fiber network. The deployment went well: from 1997 to 2006, it helped add 517 businesses to a town of just over 10,000 postal addresses. New companies sprang up in e-commerce and audio books as well as such esoteric technologies as the handling of unexploded ordinance.

Access Ventures' David Taliaferro saw how Kiva loan programs had helped grow Louisville's small businesses from the ground-up. So, the company went shopping to add another city to its repertoire.

Taliaferro, a Kiva Fellow and director of microfinance with Access Ventures, said the firm wanted to implement and support a Kiva program in a city with a growing business environment, something comparable to Louisville. About a year later, the firm will expand its Kiva footprint to Columbus, Ohio.

Fredericton Mayor Mike O’Brien is encouraging residents to draw on the walls on the new ‘Imagination Station’ located downtown- with chalk.

The new information hub officially launched Thursday, and allows residents a chance to share their feedback, ideas and concerns about the city. The initiative is part of the Imagine Fredericton community engagement process that will lead to the development of a new Growth Management Strategy and Municipal Plan.

DIAMOND BAR, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--SolarMax LED, through its wholly owned subsidiary ActOne Communications, Inc., has landed a multi-million dollar California Department of Transportation contract to replace more than 29,000 aging street lights with the Southern California company’s leading-edge, high-efficiency LED luminaires. Initial work will focus on public roadways and arterials across Sacramento County.

Being called “one of the most important council decisions of this term,” Waterloo City Council is working to bring a Communitech Data Hub to the old Police Station on Erb Street in Uptown Waterloo.

Waterloo Mayor Dave Jaworsky tells 570 News that the Hub will help organize the terabytes of data that is being gathered on consumer spending and information.

I trekked more than 1,000 miles across Mississippi with Mic's video team to talk to people about the digital divide in the state.

During the trip, I visited the Stone Elementary School in Wiggins, Mississippi, where Dr. Roberto Gallardo, a grassroots organizer and scholar from Mississippi State University, helped implement a robotics program. Gallardo is working to ensure that the most marginalized communities in the state can access and adopt fixed, high-speed internet. He crisscrosses the state educating elected officials and the broader public about technology with the intent of bridging the digital divide.

Through concerted collaboration executed in a spirit of co-opetition, over the last three years 11 Canadian cities have executed seven joint Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) missions with the Federal government to 12 countries. These missions have resulted in 1,706 B2B meetings, 855 leads and 59 company visits. At an event last month hosted by the Toronto Region Board of Trade and attended by representatives of Chambers of Commerce and municipal economic development leaders from Canada's largest cities, attendees learned more about how to improve these numbers and accelerate leads to investment success.