Governments pursue a range of policies to prop up the small businesses that serve as key components to growing local economies.

Several interest groups issue grades for “business friendliness” -- often tied to metrics associated with one political ideology or another. Thumback.com, a consumer service website, has taken a different approach by asking small business owners themselves how they perceive the business environment in states and metro areas. The website surveyed more than 12,000 small businesses in its network over a two-month period ending in late January.

Image: Downtown Harrisonburg in Virginia, one of the states that got an A+ for business-friendliness. FlickrCC/thanh.ha.dang. 

As city governments look to attract more business, they are coming up with novel ways to entice new firms. One method people affiliated with municipal governments, universities and companies use to spur economic growth is to promote neighborhoods that foster development in business and technology -- “innovation districts,” as a Brookings report by Bruce Katz and Julie Wagner terms the idea.

Katz and Wagner said that isolated corporate campuses like those found in Silicon Valley, traditionally the places where technology is developed, are being replaced by more integrated innovation districts.

Image: A girl on her phone in the Mission District in San Francisco. FlickrCC/torbakhopper 

The tenure and seniority system that has long protected California public school teachers, even ineffective ones, was struck down Tuesday in a court decision that could change hiring and firing policies nationwide.

Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Rolf M. Treu said that the laws governing job security were unconstitutional because they harmed predominantly low-income, minority students by allowing incompetent instructors to remain in the classroom.

MOUNTAIN VIEW, California, May 29, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- The heightened private equity and venture capital (PEVC) deal activity in the global healthcare industry during the recession years, 2008-2010, witnessed a decline post-2010. However, the fall in deals was not uniform among the constituent sectors, with the pharmaceutical, biotechnology and healthcare equipment sectors experiencing a much sharper decline in investor interest than the healthcare technology and provider segments. Investors started to bet on providers based with the conviction they can provide quicker and safer returns than the pharmaceutical and biotechnology space, which is ridden with regulatory challenges and patent expiries.

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Although it seems raising as much venture capital as humanly possible is Silicon Valley’s mantra, there are reasons to be cautious when signing termsheets. Startups raising a couple of million dollars had a median exit price of more than $10 million, while the outcome for those raising double that was actually worse, a recent study shows.

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A new report from Rock Health looking at the future of the biosensor wearables market shows a market in transition. The next generation of wearables is more targeted towards patient populations, particularly chronic conditions. In a Google hangout about the report, Malay Gandhi, a co-author of the report, talked about some of the qualities that are making these wearables more appealing to consumers and the b2b market and features that will give them staying power.

Image: http://medcitynews.com/ 

Twitter, Facebook, Dropbox, and nearly everything that Google produces — all blocked in China. But that’s not discouraging some US startups from entering the notorious tricky and divergent Chinese market.

Let’s take a look at the fate of seven American ventures in China — including Evernote, LinkedIn, Uber — and see if their progress holds any lessons for other overseas apps and services looking for a slice of the Chinese web.

I was speaking at an international conference on angel capital last year and the panelists listed off the number of companies they or their angel groups were in.

It was a fantastic number: 300-plus.

This showed me that the angel movement is really picking up steam. What was truly impressive, though, was that three of the panelists were from what would politely be referred to as “non-startup hotbeds." I remember a time in the late 90’s when said panelists had done maybe 30 deals. And the mandatory “Valley guy” in the group did three-quarters of those deals.

To say that getting a business off the ground is hard work would be an understatement. Whether you’re still drafting your first business plan or recently opened your store, starting and running a business can be an exhilarating – and terrifying – experience. Six years ago, I launched my Internet marketing startup WordStream. Today, WordStream is a +$10 million company, but back then, this major milestone felt a long way off.

Image: http://www.freedigitalphotos.net

If I ask you what constitutes “bad” eating, the kind that leads to obesity and a variety of connected diseases, you’re likely to answer, “Salt, fat and sugar.” This trilogy of evil has been drilled into us for decades, yet that’s not an adequate answer.

We don’t know everything about the dietary links to chronic disease, but the best-qualified people argue that real food is more likely to promote health and less likely to cause disease than hyperprocessed food.

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A new report highlights the dominance of London and Cambridge in leading the UK’s entrepreneurial ‘ecosystem’. Authored by Cambridge startup Social i Media, the report investigates how entrepreneurs in the UK are supported and the barriers that hinder them, as well as wider trends that are shaping the UK innovation ecosystem. ‘Start me up: Creating Britain’s entrepreneurial ecosystem’ is due to be published today.

Image: http://www.businessweekly.co.uk/ 

Shedding your 9-to-5 job to begin a freelance career can be one of the most liberating and fruitful decisions you make in your career. Freelancers enjoy tremendous flexibility and autonomy, as well as the ability to create their own brand. However, freelancers must hustle to find their own work — it's not a guaranteed paycheck. Though freelancing can be immensely beneficial career decision, it's not something you want to jump into without careful preparation.

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From the beginning, I have maintained that crowdfunding will become an investment standard, the go-to system to raise funds and one of the best methods for sound return of investments.

Long before the JOBS Act came into play, however, crowdfunding (or its methodology) was already used in the US as a means to fund projects. One of the most prominent examples is the construction of the Statue of Liberty in 1884.

Last year a paper by the Kauffman Foundation, the leading entrepreneurship think-tank in the US, showed that research universities and other postsecondary institutions are important for metropolitan entrepreneurship, but are not the key catalyst in spurring such activity. Instead, the most fertile source of entrepreneurial spawning is "the population of existing companies, which has implications for economic policymaking and economic development strategies." Meanwhile, the received wisdom on clusters, that physical proximity within city-regions is key for innovation, is also under attack.

Image: http://www.finfacts.ie/ 

The online-education boom has made technology vendors powerful. So powerful, in fact, that some university officials say it’s getting harder and harder to update their technology without placing themselves under the sway of outside companies.

Now four major research universities are trying to promote strength in numbers. They are creating a consortium, called Unizin, that they hope will help member institutions innovate on their own terms.

Image: http://www.freedigitalphotos.net

When it comes to following the FIFA World Cup, it stands to reason that the number one device around the globe would be television. After all, the 2010 World Cup had an estimated TV audience of around 3.2-billion. That’s only expected to grow larger this year and few other forms of technology have the reach or appeal of TV when it comes to sporting events. What’s interesting though is that you’re probably carrying the second most popular device for following the tournament in your pocket right now.

Image Courtesy of vectorolie / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

By MIT TR Editors on June 10, 2014

How to Build Livable Megacities The key to smarter cities might not be technology, but the existence of dense central zones made for walking.

Microsoft’s Quantum Search for the “Next Transistor” Microsoft is investing in quantum physics research that could lead to a whole new kind of computer.

Image: http://www.technologyreview.com/ 

Google on Tuesday agreed to buy satellite startup Skybox Imaging for $500 million in cash, report the WSJ’s Douglas MacMillan, Rolfe Winkler and Alistair Barr. Founded in 2009, Skybox raised $94 million from investors including Khosla Ventures, Bessemer Venture Partners and Norwest Venture Partners, according to Dow Jones VentureSource. The startup may have data-analysis applications that go far beyond Google Maps, the WSJ’s Elizabeth Dwoskin reports.

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Today, we announced that we’ve led an $11 million round for about.me and that I’ve joined the board.

I’ve been living online since the mid 1990′s. I’ve tried every service I could find to create an online identity for myself, even Geocities. Today, my identity is spread out over many things, including my blog, Twitter, Google+, Foursquare, our Foundry Group site, the Startup Revolution site, my relatively inactive Tumblr, Facebook, and a hundred other services I’ve dabbled with.

1. “Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do.” – Steve Jobs

You guys know I had to start with the most obvious successful 21st century icon in Entrepreneurship. What was so great about Steve Jobs was his relentlessness to succeed in everything he does, each and every single day. There will be great days and thee will be hard days – through pure enjoyment and striving towards your goals, you will be truly satisfied.