Inc. Magazine’s annual “Top 30 under 30″ list has the answer. Among the honored are the creators of Wordpress and Mint.com, a 12-year old running a natural hair products business, and an online customized wine service.

Despite the recent economic slowdown, the World Economic Forum’s annual Global Competitiveness Report still ranks the United States as the number one global competitor. Right behind the U.S. are Switzerland, Denmark, Sweden and Singapore. Read the full report here.

Anil Singh-Molares is CEO of EchoMundi, an international consulting, research and product development company based in Bellevue, Washington. Prior to founding EchoMundi, he worked for twelve years at the Microsoft Corporation in Redmond, where he was Senior Director of Vendor Relations and a recipient of the Microsoft Achievement Award. He is also currently a member of the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation. We met with Mr. Singh-Molares in Bellevue.

Kaizen: You are a successful businessman—yet as an undergraduate you majored in Philosophy and English Literature. That might seem a surprising background. Has your undergraduate education been relevant to your success in business?

Singh-Molares: Yes, absolutely. Philosophy in particular. English certainly gave me the ability to express myself succinctly and technically. But philosophy taught me how to think and taught me to appreciate that there are many sides to an argument, but that you have to make some judgment about what you think is the correct judgment. It has to be well-supported, it has to be well researched, well thought-out, but it should be grounded in common sense. And that’s why I, like you, am a big fan of the Greeks, Plato in particular, and Aristotle as well. So, it’s been very helpful.

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Small Business Trends‘ Anita Campbell shares three tips about search engine optimization (SEO), when to learn it yourself and when to outsource.

Reason, a monthly magazine dedicated to “free minds and free markets,” is accepting applications for its spring 2009 Burton C. Gray Memorial Internship. The intern will spend 10 weeks at the magazine’s Washington, D.C. office and receive a $5,000 stipend. For information about how to apply, go here. Application deadline is November 7, 2008.

The Institute for Humane Studies has a variety of opportunities for students, scholars and academics interested in the ideas of liberty. In addition to the prestigious Human Studies Fellowship award (up to $12,000 for undergraduate and graduate students) and the Koch Summer Fellowship program, IHS provides internships in journalism, visual production and policy. The Institute also offers Summer and Spring Break seminars during where students can attend lectures by top faculty on lectures on philosophy, economic and political theory.

Dr. Stephen Hicks was invited to speak at three conferences over the past few months. In September, he was a special guest speaker at the Fiserv Connect Forum in Orlando, Florida, where he discussed “Innovation, Ethics, and ‘Creative Destruction.’” In July, he delivered two lectures on “Capitalism and Art in Contemporary America” at The Atlas Society’s summer seminar in Portland, Oregon. And in June he gave a talk on “The Role of Outside Donors in the College Curriculum,” at the International Association for Business and Society’s 2008 conference in Tampere, Finland.

Bizjournals ranks the top 10 wealth centers in the U.S., affluent cities with a population of 100,000 people or more. Arlington, VA is at the top with a population of 199,800 and per capita income of $53,543. Following Arlington are Thousand Oaks, CA; Naperville, IL; Alexandria, VA.; and Stamford, CT. The article concludes that:

The 10 wealth centers defy the common belief that large communities can’t be affluent. They manage to outstrip the U.S. standard of living by a substantial margin:

– The collective per capita income for the top 10 communities is $43,782. That’s 73 percent higher than the national average.

– Nearly 11 percent of all households within the designated wealth centers draw annual incomes higher than $200,000. The corresponding figure for the whole country is 3.4 percent.

– Median home values range from $416,400 to $806,700 in the 10 places atop bizjournals’ rankings. The national median is $185,200.

Check out Global Entrepreneurship Week, founded by the U.S.-based Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation and the U.K.’s Make Your Mark campaign. During that week, young people gather from around the world to generate and exchange entrepreneurial ideas. This year’s event takes place November 17 through 23. So far, 75 countries are participating by sponsoring and holding activities during that week.

Garry Kasparov, Tyler Cowen, Robert Reich, Ayaan Hirsi Ali and others weigh in on this question posed by the John Templeton Foundation as part of their “Big Questions” series.