Our patent system is a public resource. Over two hundred years ago, America crafted a bargain offering inventors a limited exclusive right in exchange for disclosure of a meritorious invention. The objective was, and is today, to simultaneously encourage innovation and increase the public store of knowledge. Both public and private interest is served by robust reliance on that system. Thus, we must carefully restrict ourselves to changes to that system that are consistent with that bargain, and that encourage inventors to take advantage of its benefits.

Tesla Motors has received more than 325,000 preorders for its hot new Model 3 electric car even though it will not be available for at least another year. That almost equals the 340,000 electric cars and plug-in hybrids now on American roads. Tesla has advertised its vehicles as having zero emissions, helping fuel the mania for the fun-driving sedan, but that's not necessarily true. Although the battery-powered car itself doesn’t produce any emissions, the power plant that generates the electricity used to charge those batteries probably does. Low emissions, much less zero emissions, are only true in certain places where most of the electricity comes from a mix of low-carbon sources such as the sun, wind or nuclear reactors.

Image: http://www.scientificamerican.com

Eller Mallchok has spent the past several months shepherding dozens of applications through an intense vetting process and negotiating terms with more than a dozen startups on behalf of seed-stage investment fund Jumpstart Foundry.

That job description on its own may not sound unusual, but Mallchok’s age — she’s 23 — and gender make her a minority in a sector often dominated by middle-aged men.

Image: Eller Mallchok is program lead at Jumpstart Foundry.

Stemming from the 2012 Jumpstart our Business Startups (JOBS) Act, SEC regulations take effect today. However, it appears work still needs to be done. At the Angel Capital Association Summit in Philadelphia last week, I talked to investors about a bill moving swiftly through Congress to remove an unintended consequence of today’s new rules.

The “unintended consequence” came from SEC Regulation D 506(c), which allows private issuers to use general solicitation when raising capital as long as they take reasonable steps to verify that the investors who purchase their securities are “accredited investors” – a category of individuals deemed sophisticated enough under securities laws to need less protection in the marketplace.

Researchers at the University of Maryland were able pull away color and chemicals from a block of wood to leave it impressively see-through. The result is a material that is both stronger and more insulating than glass, with better biodegradability than plastic. "We were very surprised by how transparent it could go," said Liangbing Hu, who wrote about the project in Advanced Materials.

Managers and employees don’t always see eye to eye. Fast Company uncovered a wide gap in the way each group thinks about business culture and their radically different ideas about work-life balance.

But there’s another disconnect brewing, and this one is between managers and the newest members of the workforce: college graduates. A new report from PayScale, a provider of on-demand compensation data and software, in partnership with Future Workplace, an executive development firm, reveals that while 87% of recent graduates feel well prepared to hit the ground running after earning their diplomas, only half of hiring managers agree with them.

A grant must sound too good to be true for small business owners—it’s free money, plain and simple. No repayments or interest rates, no credit scores, no haggle, no hassle… Right?

Unfortunately, funding your small business with grants isn’t that easy. Otherwise, every small business owner on the block would cash out on them—and nobody would need to look for a loan, search out crowdfunding or investing, or ask their relatives for favors. There are two main obstacles to landing those grants:

Serra Ventures, a central Illinois-based venture capital firm that focuses on investing in Midwestern startups, is launching a third fund worth $50 million, roughly triple the size of its last fund.

Led by Managing Partners Tim Hoerr and Rob Schultz, the investment fund is based at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign’s Research Park. The new fund will invest in approximately 50 startups. Already, about $13 million has been raised, Serra said.

Understanding where we may be in an investment cycle is difficult but worth the effort. Trying to time an investment cycle, however, is nearly impossible. For early stage investing, in particular, there are some important points to consider when thinking about the investment cycle.

Timing a moving target

While markets move up and down, each cycle is different. In particular, people are usually responding to what happened in the previous cycle. This includes both market participants, who tend to overweight recent events, and the regulators, who make rules to deal with the problems of the previous cycle.

It has been a little more than two years since the publication of "What Is a Corporate Incubator, and Why Is It a Bad Idea?" in Huffington Post Canada, but with the latest changes in the startup economy, it is a relevant topic to revisit.

With the startup economy reorienting itself to the next greatest trend, a re-examination of what makes a workable corporate incubator is appropriate, particularly considering where the next trends are emerging from.

Satellite campuses are increasingly popular for public institutions hoping to expand their reach and increase access to students throughout the state, but the Post reports Maryland’s configuration of combining nine satellite programs onto one campus is unique.

At the Universities at Shady Grove, students must get accepted into their school of choice, but once they are granted acceptance, they can take classes taught by their institution’s professors on the collaborative satellite campus. The schools save on facilities and operations costs by converging onto one campus, and students save on a myriad of fees associated with attending the main campuses.

Image: http://www.educationdive.com

Chances are that your business has a logo, or at least an awesome name for which you are working to gain recognition every chance you get. You may already be promoting your business in obvious places like store signage, business cards or print ads, but there are numerous other fun and unique ways you can help build credibility, recognition and a connection with your desired customers:

In a massive effort to reboot the country’s tech economy, Thailand is waving income tax and dividend taxes on VC firms for the next ten years, it was reported recently. The Ministry of Science and Technology will simultaneously launch a 500 million baht ($14.2 million) fund of funds for Thai startups.

“The government will be establishing a dedicated asset management firm to manage the fund, which will be directed mainly at technology businesses within the 10 core industries,” said Minister of Science and Technology Pichet Durongkaveroj. The fund of funds (FoF) will apply to some very specific verticals: smart cars, robotics, medical tourism, digital health, agritech, biotech, aviation, biofuels and food.

Most new entrepreneurs have great ideas, and many are highly skilled in building their solutions. Unfortunately, far fewer have the focus and experience of building and maintaining a highly engaged team. They don’t realize that strong team engagement leads to even stronger customer engagement, which can more than double your startup revenue and growth, according to experts.

Image: http://blog.startupprofessionals.com

Investing in startups is no longer limited to the wealthy in the U.S. The New York Times reports, “Starting Monday, new rules will permit anyone, not just the moneyed, to risk $2,000 a year or more investing in small companies in exchange for a stake in the business. Companies can raise up to $1 million a year this way.”

Intellectual property (IP) regimes suffer a classic paradox. While they attempt to encourage innovation and creativity, they have themselves been shielded from innovation experimentation. For some years now, India has been attempting to break this mould and craft a regime to suit its own distinctive set of concerns. Section 3(d) of the Patents Act, 1970, was a bold attempt in this direction, aimed at eradicating “evergreen” drug patents.

Image: — Photo: Wikimedia Commons/ CC BY-SA 4.0/cucms - Poor record: “When compared with pioneering innovations from the likes of Sushruta, India hardly has any noticeable technological marvels in its recent history.” A painting of Sushruta, the father of modern surgery.

The average person has 70,000 thoughts each day, and if you don’t learn to organize them, they have the potential to wreak havoc on your productivity.

When you succumb to the flurry of thoughts running through your head, your mind becomes disorganized, and the more you ruminate on intrusive thoughts, the more power you give them.

Most of our thoughts are just that—thoughts, not facts. When you find yourself believing the negative, distracting, and pessimistic things your inner voice says, it’s very hard to slow down the momentum of your thoughts.

All the founding successful fathers of Silicon Valley passed through various transitions of life; abrupt fall and outstandingly successful overnight! While most of the founders of startups were labelled “tourists” by Alfred Lin who lived in Sequoia.

In fact, all the abrupt rise and fall of wealth was terribly popular among all the founders of the Silicon Valley, check out this entrepreneurship defined video of Steve Jobs posted in 1995.

When you think of refreshing your website, what’s the first thing that comes to mind? The overall look and feel, right? Have you ever considered sprucing up the copy? Probably not. That’s a mistake.

Copy ages the same as design. While it’s often overlooked, your website’s wording is crucial in shaping the way your brand is perceived by current and potential consumers.

A website revamp needs to cover all bases, not just those that make your site look good. It’s imperative that it reads well too. Copy is not something you write once and then forget about. It should be refreshed at least once a year.

It’s abundantly clear that microörganisms play an essential role in maintaining the health of humans, animals, and plants. But how exactly they pull this off is still mostly a mystery—one that the White House hopes to help solve by way of a new microbiome research initiative.

Specifically, the White House is proposing a federal investment of $121 million toward microbiome research, to be divided among the Department of Energy, NASA, the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, and the Department of Agriculture.