Big data is one of the greatest economic opportunities of our time.

It’s also incredibly vague. You’ve probably been in conversations where the different participants were using “big data” to refer to (a) large amounts of data; (b) data sets that exceed the capabilities of traditional databases; or (c) the software tools employed to analyze the data sets in the first two definitions.

Joan Soskin got her start in tech in Cleveland.

The Minnesota native and Duke grad went to Ohio for an industrial supply company’s management program but ended up cofounding a startup instead, under the mentorship of the cofounders of Cleveland accelerator Flashstarts. Her five-person company, Lufthouse, developed a proximity-based technology for museums and tradeshows using iBeacon and Bluetooth.

“We were both infected by the spirit of entrepreneurship here in Cleveland,” said Soskin and her cofounder Lauren Wyeth in an interview last year.

The title for "world's longest flight" changes airlines relatively frequently, as travellers demand changes and aircraft provide opportunities for longer service.

Beginning Feb. 1, 2016, there will be a new longest flight: Emirates will begin flying from Dubai to Panama City — the flight will take 17 hours and 35 minutes and cover 8,590 miles.

You've probably heard that sitting is the new smoking. And American workers spend a lot of time sitting. But in addition to the health issues associated with a sedentary lifestyle, our bad posture can affect our health, mood, productivity, and even success.

According to data collected by Lumo Bodytech, maker of the Lumo Lift Posture Coach (a device that attaches to your shirt or bra strap about 1 inch from your collarbone and alerts you when you’re slouching, prompting you to correct your posture), the majority of American workers spend an average of only 36% of their workday in good posture. "Workers are spending as much as 38 minutes per hour slouching," says Monisha Perkash, CEO of Lumo Bodytech. Women’s postures are 20% worse than men.

When it comes to raising money in the U.S., corporate venture capital is seemingly synonymous with “Plan C.” If you can’t raise money from top-tier firms, you move on to Plan B, second-tier firms. Failing that, Plan C is corporate.

There are exceptions, but corporate does tend to be the last resort: The place you go when your company has been shopped, or your valuation is so high that the only investors insane enough to write you a check have hoards of “dumb money” to spend.

If you're an Irish tech startup looking for funding of under €5m, look out: there's a crunch coming. Or so says one of Ireland's most visible venture capitalists, Brian Caulfield. As the newly appointed head of the Irish Venture Capital Association, he spoke to our technology editor about unicorns, the state of third level education and a growing funding gap that could see startups seek financial backing overseas

Image: Brian Caulfield, head of Irish Venture Capital Association.

How do you handle giving unfavorable feedback to someone who will surely take it badly – and I mean really badly? Think: shouting, tears, defensiveness, accusations, personal attacks, revising history, twisting words — pick your nightmare.

Consider the case of Melissa, who was the team leader on a recently concluded project that had not been a stellar experience for anyone involved. For most of the team, the project was a disappointment from the start: team members were assigned, not self-selected; it was known not to be a high profile project; and the deliverables were really important only for Melissa’s mentor’s research.

Over the past few weeks I’ve been exploring five innovation models that organizations can implement. However all of these are part of one innovation ecosystem that organizations must create if they want to be able to stay relevant and compete in this rapidly changing world we are seeing. The best ideas and the smartest people can be anywhere which means opening up the doors to innovation from anyone. Many of you might be familiar with the concept of open innovation but for innovation to truly be open it must allow for all five innovation models below which are:

Google’s decision to separate its profitable businesses from its money-losing “moonshot” ventures has offered a window into why American productivity is struggling despite so much exciting technological innovation.

The things at which Google and its peers excel, from Internet search to mobile software, are changing how we work, play and communicate, yet have had little discernible macroeconomic impact. Productivity—the goods and services a worker produces in an hour—grew just 0.4% per year over the past five years, one of the slowest stretches in the period since World War II. This is troubling, because over the long run productivity determines our standard of living.

Image: Google’s high-profile project to create self-driving cars is the sort of money-losing venture the company is looking to ring-fence from its profitable tech core. The move illustrates both the potential and limits of innovation. PHOTO: TONY AVELAR/ASSOCIATED PRESS

Leading organizations in every walk of life have already had to cope with more change in this millennium than was seen in the entire second half of the previous century. Most global companies have undergone more than one technological and workforce reorganization in the past decade. Launching one change program after another, they have had to embrace automation and digitization, shared services, lean operations, and other transformative innovations. The prognosis for business planners: more transformative change. On the horizon, for example, is the full digitization of economies on a national scale, with big data, advanced analytics, and the “Internet of things”—where connectivity goes beyond company and consumer, to interactive smart products and services.

Entrepreneurs take major financial risks, work long hours and practically torture themselves trying to stay afloat and build a business from the ground up. If you think about it, it’s a downright harrowing ordeal. Why would anybody want to go through with it?

It’s because, despite the hardships of the experience, there are nuggets of joy and satisfaction that can be derived from it and, at the end of the tunnel, if you’re committed enough, is a substantial reward.

That there is enthusiasm about entrepreneurship across India is clearly visible. A number of our young citizens are now thinking about starting businesses rather than taking up jobs. And that’s a good thing; we need more job creators.

However, in India, innovation is often not the starting point in our thought processes,on our entrepreneurial journeys. Most of our innovators and entrepreneurs are not thinking of how we can solve a problem usinga radically different solution or approach. Most of our aspiring entrepreneurs do not think of creating or inventing new products and solutions.

Whose job is it in the organization to assure employees creativity? In short–everyone’s! In my research of creativity in startup and mature companies (“From startup to Maturity: a case study of employee creativity antecedents in high tech companies”, see article) and in research done before that, three levels in the organization were found to have impact on employee creativity. Creativity is one of those “soft skills” that you cannot “order.” You cannot force an employee to be creative. Employees have to be motivated to be such. But the motivation comes at three levels: the organizational level, the team level, and the individual level. Yes, employees are responsible for their own creativity as well!

This summer, it’s raining unicorns — tech startups valued at more than $1 billion — and as a result the Israeli tech scene is going absolutely crazy.

Business Insider just spent a week in Israel meeting with over a dozen tech companies and VCs. They all told us:

Image: Business Insider/Julie Bort

In a small house in State College, a group of college students and recent graduates sip Bolivian black coffee around a dining room table in silence — their eyes fixed on graphs displayed on multiple tablets and smartphones in front of them. After each one takes a sip, they record the flavors they taste on a circular graph via a mobile application they built from scratch.

Image: Yuqi Zhou, a data scientist at Analytical Flavor Systems and a recent graduate of Penn State, uses the Gastrograph mobile app during a coffee tasting. Image: Rachel Garman

Every day, Chris Holmberg tries to put himself out of business. As an executive coach for nearly two decades, he’s worked with leaders of tiny startups and multinational corporations alike. But the core of his practice remains pretty counterintuitive: There’s no solution. No secret sauce. He doesn’t claim to have magic formulas for building teams or running meetings or tripling ROI. Instead, he’s in the business of building mindsets that can handle anything.

With their ability to generate new business value and respond to rising competitive threats, Intrapreneurs are generating more buzz than ever before. So is it all hype? Or is intrapreneurship here to stay?

Join us at The Corporate Intrapreneur Summit, October 8th in New York City as we bring together the largest group of experienced corporate intrapreneurs to help debunk some common myths and share their wisdom on how to effectively drive value through formalized intrapreneurship programs.

Just like Ford’s Model T, which debuted in 1908, today’s automobiles have four tires, a steering wheel, and seats. Henry Ford would have little trouble behind the wheel, but he would be completely baffled by the technology under the hood. Cars today are, in many ways, high-performance computers that can race at 70-plus miles per hour. Automotive digitization has led to important transformations, but the networked era has only just begun to tap its ultimate potential: the driverless car. Thanks to the advent of ubiquitous computing, various forms of semiautonomous technology, such as adaptive cruise control, automatic parallel parking, and collision warnings, are already widespread.

Natalia Oberti Noguera, founder and CEO of Pipeline Fellowship, an angel investing bootcamp for women, often gets asked why she started her company. She had grown a network of women social entrepreneurs in New York City in 2008 from a six-woman network to 1,200 within two years. And throughout, she kept hearing from them how hard it was to secure funding for their ventures.

Red Rocket was recently asked to judge a startup competition.  As I was filling in the questionnaire which evaluated the startups, I noticed that the questions being asked were really revolving around 4 topics all starting with the letter M: market, model, management and momentum.  I thought that was an elegant way for all of us to think about evaluating startups, and I will share my thoughts on each of these topics below.