As more women move into the C-suite, they are shaking up the order of things. New research shows that startups with female executives are more likely to succeed.

But according to Dow Jones, the median proportion of female executives at successful companies is still only 7.1 percent.

This is likely to change in the coming years — Marissa Mayer, Sheryl Sandberg and Meg Whitman are all examples of powerful women who currently lead significant consumer and enterprise companies. The advantages of female leadership at tech companies are numerous — among them, relationship-building and networking.

I believe relationships are the lifeblood of business success — relationships with customers, partners, team members, family members and more. In my experience, women tend to build and maintain more relationships than men and are more likely to integrate their personal relationships with professional relationships.

Eight-time entrepreneur Steve Blank is out of the startup game, and therefore, is in a fortunate position to be able to speak his mind.

So I called on the serial entrepreneur and father of the “Lean startup” movement for a dose of perspective in the wake of Obama’s tech-centric State of the Union (SOTU) address. Arguably, the theme of the President’s speech was innovation, which is also core to Blank’s teachings about the business of entrepreneurship.

During SOTU, Silicon Valley’s agenda was brought to national attention with references to 3D printing, immigration reform, and teaching the next generation of kids to code. It appeared to millions of viewers that the tech agenda has truly gone mainstream.

I spent the first 25 years of my career in large multi-billion dollar, multi-national corporations. I managed thousands of people in dozens of countries with budgets in the hundreds of millions.  Although I thought of myself as entrepreneurial, I didn’t have much prior startup experience when I struck out on my own to found ShopAdvisor, a shopping experience that deepens reader engagement in tablet magazines.

I had some hesitation about how applicable my experience would be in the land of incubators, hyper-speed pivots, and capital preservation. I received both encouragement and cautionary advice from some of the most successful local VCs, who were willing to help with seemingly no vested interest.

In his 1942 book, Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy, economist Joseph Schumpeter introduced the notion of an innovation economy. He argued that evolving institutions, entrepreneurs, and technological changes were at the heart of economic growth. But it is only in recent years that “innovation economy,” grounded in Schumpeter’s ideas, has become a mainstream concept.

And since 2009, Aspen Institute’s Economic Innovation roundtables validate that innovation, to be effective, requires a real leadership impact that stems from collaboration, vision, and above all the will to direct progress for long-term growth. It is about how to harness any organization’s full potential through leadership mandates and actions for a sustainable future.

We work, we live: the two snuggle together tighter than the pixels you're viewing as you read this post--and that fact has opened up the Great Work/Life Balance Debate, with calls for integration, fit, and a feeling that the whole thing might be a big myth.

Over at HBR, personality profiling expert Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic has another take: that we should have work-life "fusion," allowing for the workaholic hours he says bring success--with an argument that turns on one key claim: you need to have a career, not just a job.

Companies become increasingly restrictive in their consulting spending, especially during times of economic crisis, where the return on the investments on consulting services is questioned and carefully considered. Consulting in the area of innovation management is even more under pressure as it is usually much lower on the CEOs’ agenda than e.g. restructuring or general cost-cutting. Therefore, innovation management consultants face the challenge to develop their client base, be effective by providing the right recommendations and be efficient by developing these recommendations in as short a period of time as possible. Mastering such a challenge seems like searching for Columbus’ Egg in innovation management consulting.

Let’s face it. There are tens of thousands of super smart, tech-savvy, funded teams out there chasing the next Massively Viral consumer Internet phenomenon. Think of it like an incredibly parallel search algorithm where every conceivable customer acquisition twist and hook is being explored with effectively infinite resources of fine young minds backed by the greatest and most dependable crowd-funding source ever invented: Mom and Dad.

And the inevitable conclusion? If there’s any low hanging fruit left in terms of quick mashup tech hacks that can be thrown together in a jiffy, then it’s probably about to be plucked. And then what next?

For matching technology with critical transplant needs. In the U.S. alone, 10,000 people a year require a bone-marrow transplant, but less 5,600 are performed worldwide. NMDP’s tech upgrade has cut the time to transplant by 15% and incorporated new algorithms to find the best donor matches. And social media campaigns have increased annual donations by up to 60 percent and given NMDP access to 18.5 million candidates. The program’s donor registry, says Greg Bourdeau in donor services at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, is "the fundamental go-to tool for any transplant-center search department.

In a buzzing exhibition hall at the Moscone Center in San Francisco, California, cell biologist Cecilia Seixas steps in front of a video camera and prepares to sell her science in two minutes or less.

“Hi, my name is Cecilia,” says Seixas, a postdoc at the New University of Lisbon's Chronic Diseases Research Center in Portugal. “I am studying how cells assemble an organelle, the cilium, that is like an antenna sticking out of the surface ...”

Entrepreneurship plays a key role in every economy on earth, whether they are sanctioned or not (even in North Korea!) By innovating, providing jobs and creating wealth, the businesses that these entrepreneurs build play a huge role in the development of the economy.

But what makes some places more successful than others in encouraging start-up and risk-takers? Well, it has everything to do with the “entrepreneurship ecosystem.”

Every startup lucky enough to get some traction gets to the point where they decide to hire some “regular employees” for sales, marketing, and administrative tasks. Then they are surprised to see productivity and creativity take a big dip. What they should be doing is hiring only “entrepreneurs,” meaning people who think and act as if this is their own business.

This commitment to hire people who think like entrepreneurs, or instill an “owner’s mindset” in every employee, should be a high priority in every business. It’s what every customer looks for in every transaction. Most people will tell you this is impossible, but I found a recent book, “Army of Entrepreneurs,” by Jennifer Prosek, where she seems to have actually accomplished this.

Given that we live, work and play in two worlds, in-person and online, finding your best mix of media, marketing and mingling can influence meeting the right people, joining the best communities, getting involved with them and communicating to them.

We know the benefits and value of networking with people in person, but some compelling trends and statistics emerged in 2012 that were shared in an infographic titled, “100 Social Networking Statistics and Facts for 2012” created by Creotivo:

Did you know that in February, America celebrates the birthday of one of the country's earliest business innovators and large-scale entrepreneurs?

During a time period of America's existence as British colony and then a young nation—when communication and transportation faced challenges, to put it mildly—this businessman built an enterprise with international reach. 

He built a mill that ground 278,000 pounds of branded flour annually that was shipped throughout America and, unusually during colonial times, exported to Europe. And in the 1790s, late in his life, he built one of the new nation’s largest whiskey distilleries.

Last year was a great year for content marketing, one that saw it established as a key discipline as brands looked to create a genuine rapport with their target audience. And there were big names leading the charge; the likes of Coca-Cola and Red Bull both embed content strategy as an integral part of their overall marketing strategy.

Of course, with this new-found celebrity status comes a greater spotlight, and there are a number of key recurring themes and trends that marketers and brand owners need to get to grips with, if they are to really push forward with their content marketing strategies for 2013.

Researchers have reduced blood alcohol levels in intoxicated mice by injecting them with nanocapsules containing enzymes that are instrumental in alcohol metabolism. The treatment demonstrates a novel drug delivery technology that could have broad medical applications.

Enzymes are proteins that catalyze a wide range of biological processes in the body, making them attractive candidates as therapeutics. Many important biological functions require precisely arranged groups of different enzymes working in concert, often inside a cellular subcomponent called an organelle. Though researchers have tried for years to develop such complexes in the lab, it has proved extremely difficult to maintain stable proteins and precisely control their size and arrangement.

Social enterprises and nonprofits increasingly recognize the need to adopt management disciplines used successfully in the for-profit world. And a great potential source of talent with the right skills are professionals who change career lanes — people with experience and training in accounting, finance, human resources and strategy who leave corporate jobs to follow their passion to have a social impact. The Social Business Trust, The Gates Foundation, Endeavor, Technoserve, Absolute Return for Kids, and others already draw heavily on talent from for-profit firms as a source of these skills.

But what many social enterprises often fail to recognize is that private-sector recruits often come to them looking to build new skills, not just provide the ones they already have. For ambitious young professionals, the abilities they develop fairly quickly at a social enterprise are the sorts of listening, communications, problem-solving, and relationship skills that take years to acquire by climbing the corporate ladder.

When I told people I planned to climb Kilimanjaro, their reactions were similar to when I started a business – a mix of indifference, awe, envy, and subtle questioning of my sanity. I know that many serious climbers don’t consider Kilimanjaro a real climb, but for me reaching 19,340 ft. was an eye-opening experience and proof that I could push my limits.

While I was preparing for the climb, the parallels between mountaineering and founding a company became very interesting. While I am not sure if being an entrepreneur made me a better climber, or vice versa, there is tremendous overlap between the personalities of people who want to be entrepreneurs and people who want to climb Kilimanjaro. What separates those who dream of success and those who actually succeed? It really comes down to how you find the motivation to get up and get going, and how you make critical decisions along the way.

As an asteroid roughly half as large as a football field –– and with energy equal to a large hydrogen bomb –– readies for a fly-by of Earth on Friday, two California scientists are unveiling their proposal for a system that could eliminate a threat of this size in an hour.

The same system could destroy asteroids 10 times larger than the one known as 2012 DA14 in about a year, with evaporation starting at a distance as far away as the Sun. UC Santa Barbara physicist and professor Philip M. Lubin, and Gary B. Hughes, a researcher and professor from California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, conceived DE-STAR, or Directed Energy Solar Targeting of Asteroids an exploRation, as a realistic means of mitigating potential threats posed to the Earth by asteroids and comets.

Every few decades, America experiences a wave of pessimism.The population begins fearing economic stagnation and rising global competition, and starts leaning towards protectionism. Then, out of the blue, the country reinvents itself.

Today, we fear China, earlier we feared Japan. But America is in the midst of its next great rebound. In this decade, it will reach new heights. That is because its scientists and engineers are developing an assortment of technologies that will solve the problems of health and security, bring knowledge and education to the masses, and create an abundance of energy, food and clean water.

AUSTIN – The University of Texas System Board of Regents approved an additional $12.5 million for the UT Horizon Fund – a reserve used to invest in ideas and scientific breakthroughs developed at UT institutions.

Originally approved in 2011 as part of UT System Chancellor Francisco G. Cigarroa's action plan for advancing excellence across UT System institutions, this strategic venture fund keeps both the financial investment and returns in Texas and encourages greater commitment by UT institutions to help facilitate collaborations among the System's nine academic universities and six health institutions.