College acceptances are out and all anyone can seem to talk about is how low the admissions rates are this year (5.2 percent at Harvard, 4.7 percent at Stanford — you get the idea). But if you think about it, the success rate of most startups is about the same as your chances of getting into a top school.

While it’s easy to lament the increasingly competitive academic landscape, as any entrepreneur will tell you, anything worthwhile is difficult. As the co-founder of an educational consulting company, I often speak with students about their goals for college and beyond. Recently, an international student expressed her desire to study in the U.S. so that she might “become an entrepreneur.”

Image: http://www.huffingtonpost.com

NJPRO is proud to share with you our latest report highlighting New Jersey’s successful innovation ecosystem. The Road to an Innovation Ecosystem: Highlights from the Past Five Years commemorates advances in the state’s culture of collaboration.

For New Jersey to preserve its competitive edge in research and development, it has leveraged its higher education assets for business development and fostered statewide communication between partners. Other initiatives include building an entrepreneurial and startup infrastructure and refining STEM pathways to better share resources and learning opportunities.

Image: http://njprofoundation.org

It's hard to talk about financial struggles in the digital age without talking about crowdfunding.

Whether it’s raising money to support your new invention or for more personal needs, like hospital bills and college debt, crowdfunding gives almost anyone the opportunity to overcome financial burdens through the generosity of others.

Being an entrepreneur is a lifestyle that requires staying power, because starting a new business is a long-term process with many tough challenges. As an angel investor, I look diligently for signs that an aspiring startup founder has what it takes to thrive and prosper for the long haul ahead. Passion and vision are necessary, but not sufficient, to really change the world.

It’s quite fascinating.

This question has been studied by a lot of people.

Most of these people have focused on individual traits such as hard work, deliberate practice, etc.. But when we look in the real world, we see that individual traits aren’t the whole story. There are so many people who work extremely hard, have great ideas, plan out big things and so forth, yet they are not nearly as successful as these four legends.

Image: Steve Jobs from the wilderness years (Photo: AP)

By now if you follow me on Twitter you probably know that I do near daily “Snapstorms” or a collection of short videos (usually < 5 mins in total) with entrepreneur advice on Snapchat. Here’s a recent one I did on Fund Raising in tough markets. You can follow me on Snapchat at msuster.

Valuations in the venture capital (VC) market are either in decline or flattening out, primarily due to inflated expectations, says Michael David, Managing Director for the Equity Fund Resources team at Bridge Bank.

“Startup companies always have nonlinear rates of progress,” David says. “Companies haven’t performed as well as they had been forecasted and the stable of investors has pulled back. Many are looking at this correction cycle as an opportunity to invest in good companies, but they are not going to pay the valuations they did a year ago.”

Just as death and taxes are certain, so is the truth that entrepreneurs are always looking for capital. You may read this column for advice on different instruments and the accessibility of different types of capital.

If you’re a data wonk, or just really curious, Pepperdine University recently did an extremely comprehensive study of private capital trends. If you’re interested enough to want to read a 125 document on capital, you can do so here. Just know that in addition to sharing their research they do want to educate you at Pepperdine and you’ll be opting in to receiving information on their programs.

An Interview with Chris Laping, author of People Before Things

Recently I had an opportunity to interview Chris Laping, the former Chief Information Officer (CIO) for the Red Robin restaurant chain about some of the challenges in achieving successful organizational change. Chris’ is a voice that emerged from the darkness as I was creating the Change Planning Toolkit™ and conducting the research for my latest book Charting Change (focused on helping people beat the 70% change failure rate).

Chris Laping is a kindred soul sitting at the intersection between people, process and technology and working to clear the resulting cloud of confusion that results. Unable to convince Chris to join the chorus of hand-picked guest expert voices in my book, I’m super happy to have the privilege of sharing this conversation with Chris Laping about his new book People Before Things to give you a glimpse of the inner workings of an experienced, talented, and insightful change leader mind.

My call to action is to rethink innovation. I’m presenting on this topic in a free webinar on May 12 — and I’ve included a presentation (below) where I share messages such as:

“We need to rethink the term “innovation” and we should drop the term “innovation culture” entirely.”

“Four global megatrends drive business today: Everything moves faster, everything will be connected, knowledge is transparent and disruption hits harder and faster.”

Did you know the first business incubator opened in the U.S. in 1959? Now flash forward to today and there are more than 7,000 incubators worldwide (including Paul Graham’s Y Combinator). For decades, they have been helping startups with everything from technology training, crafting pitches, gaining knowledge from advisors, networking, office space and obtaining seed money.

Stories of invention and genius are part of the American fabric, stretching from Thomas Edison to the Wright Brothers to Steve Jobs. So where have American inventors, from garage tinkerers to millionaire software engineers, turned out the most innovation? To find out, we analyzed 2.2 million patents issued by the U.S. government from 1976 to 2016, which give makers (and the companies which employ them) exclusive rights over their inventions.

Image: http://time.com

The truth is you are different and outnumbered in the world. That’s right.  The deck is stacked against you and you didn’t even know it. You probably find politics to be insincere and manipulative. If you are like me, you probably value principals of truth and authenticity ahead of climbing the corporate ladder—you want to maintain your authenticity. (Yes, there are great managers and leaders out there that have the interests of their teams front and center. This is about those challenging cultures that don’t.)

The competition for leadership in the global economy has shifted away from manufacturing and services. Now wealthy nations and corporations are competing for leadership in knowledge, whereby this is understood to be the source of innovation and economic value. The more radical the innovations, the greater the value created.

As public debate in Korea seeks solutions for building a leading knowledge economy, the debate often mistakenly sidelines the importance of culture.

A recent conference focused on the world of Wi-Fi highlighted the immense opportunity created by the blossoming of the Internet of Things (IoT) space, as long as the wireless industry can keep pace with IoT’s rapid growth.

RCR Wireless News reported that IoT was the hot topic at the Wi-Fi Now 2016 conference held recently near Washington, D.C. And it’s no wonder, considering the 8 billion Wi-Fi-enabled devices currently in use and the additional 3 billion expected to ship in 2016.

Image: http://readwrite.com 

Purdue University, which prides itself on teaching innovation, is joining with a financial technology startup in an unusual partnership that may pave the way for lower-cost tuition payment options for students at other higher education institutions some day.

Starting May 2, juniors and seniors at West Lafayette, IN-based Purdue can apply for a novel source of education financing that may help them avoid taking out high-interest private loans.

That job might come with a great salary, cool perks, and strong benefits, but if you stop there when evaluating whether or not to accept the offer, you literally could be selling yourself short.

"Labor is selling skills and energy for money, and it’s one of the biggest assets anyone has," says Douglas McCormick, author of Family Inc.: Using Business Principles to Maximize Your Family’s Wealth. "Everyone should calculate their expected lifetime labor value and increase that value by selecting the right types of jobs. That involves evaluating compensation more broadly than just looking at the paycheck."

We are in the thick of earnings season and that means heavy scrutiny of companies’ financial performance. Apple has investors in a flap as it must recover from a 13% decrease in revenue from lackluster iPhone sales, while Alphabet’s big bets may finally be paying off. Yahoo’s financial performance has also been exhaustively combed, especially now in light of a potential sale.

Image: Flickr user WOCinTech Chat

Creative ideas come from "putting new things in old combinations and old things in new combinations," according to organizational theorist Karl Weick. The concept of job crafting comes from that exact definition: If you take parts of your work and reconfigure it, you’ll end up with a more meaningful job to better suit your talent and interests.

The term ‘internet of things’ (IoT) now seems to be used widely in all kinds of industries and scenarios – whether in manufacturing, cities, healthcare, housing, or even business processes and the enterprise. I recently saw the term ‘internet of social housing’ – where 300 multifunctional IoT devices are being used in social housing in Scotland to help reduce costs and improve the lives of tenants. It’s also being used to make connected lighting the hub of a smart home gateway.

Image: http://www.thenextsiliconvalley.com