The United States doesn't come close to having the deepest penetration of high-speed Internet. That title belongs to South Korea, where 45% of people have access to Internet at speeds of 10+ megabits per second.

Japan and Switzerland follow South Korea's lead, where more than one-third of each country's populations have access to high-speed Internet.

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TiE Silicon Valley announced today that it is taking applications for its new accelerator program TiE LaunchPad: a "mentor-funded" seed fund and accelerator for enterprise startups. TiE, a global network of entrepreneurs and business professionals, which has been mentoring entrepreneurs for over 20 years, will provide startups with a unique combination of mind, money and market access through its unique accelerator program. TiE LaunchPad is for entrepreneurs with strong technology backgrounds who are solving critical enterprise problems in cloud, infrastructure, mobility and other enterprise technology spaces. The goal of the program is to help startups validate their markets and begin early customer development using a multi-pronged approach:

It was supposed to take 270 days. Instead, it has taken about twice that long.

On Wednesday, though, federal regulators will come one step closer to allowing people to purchase equity in start-ups through new online “crowdfunding” marketplaces.

Image: Nikki Kahn/The Washington Post

You have an amazing startup idea and work is underway. Positive response from early adopters; you’re building a great team; things are looking good…

But don’t overlook one key part to your startup strategy: protecting your intellectual property. Here are seven pointers to doing IP right, from the start:

1.       Get creative to strengthen your trademark:

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As a student at the University of San Diego, I have been learning about the fundamentals of business in class. While useful, it wasn't until I started going door-to-door selling mobile apps for my real estate tech startup Rivolix that I learned the real meaning of the word entrepreneurship. Synonyms for the word should be schlep, bottom feeder and hustler, because that is exactly what you are until you make it.

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In the consumer electronics industry, Apple set the standard for the buzz-generating gadget unveiling. For years, crowds or journalists, employees, and industry insiders have gathered several times a year at invite-only events in the San Francisco Bay Area, waiting with nervous anticipation for Steve Jobs–or, since his death in 2010, his successor Tim Cook–to reveal the company’s latest creation.

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In January 2012, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved Kalydeco, the first drug to treat the underlying cause of cystic fibrosis, after just three months of review. It was one of the fastest approvals of a new medicine in the agency’s history. Vertex Pharmaceuticals, which discovered and developed the drug, priced Kalydeco at $294,000 a year, which made it one of the world’s most expensive medicines. The company also pledged to provide it free to any patient in the United States who is uninsured or whose insurance won’t cover it. Doctors and patients enthusiastically welcomed the drug because it offers life-saving health benefits and there is no other treatment. Insurers and governments readily paid the cost.

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Successful open innovation relies on intermediaries and platforms connecting an organization with outside solution providers, so called open innovation accelerators (OIAs). With more than 180 players, the market for OIAs however is getting complex and difficult to navigate. A recent study by RWTH Aachen compared these OIA market. In this report, we summarize some of the main findings.

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When people think of Silicon Valley, they imagine a place where people are well-educated, well-to-do technologists.  Palo Alto has some of the most expensive real estate in the world — and innovation thrives there. But if you go on the other side of town to East Palo Alto you see poverty and despair. High school dropout rates are 65 percent and only 10 percent of its children go to college. Most don’t have access to basic computer technology.

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Angel investors can now get a piece of all the startups in a batch at prominent accelerators TechStars Austin, AngelPad and Rock Health with the click of a few buttons online—a new wrinkle in the rapidly changing world of early-stage investing.

Crowdfunding sites like FundersClub and WeFunder have allowed individual, accredited investors to back a startup or a select group of startups in an accelerator class before, but a little-known feature on the crowdfunding platform AngelList called “Classes”  is the first to enable investors to back an entire class at once, said AngelList Chief Executive Naval Ravikant.

Image: AngelPad

When Ben Bernanke completes his second term as Federal Reserve Board chairman in January, Janet Yellen should be more than ready to take the helm of the U.S. central bank, according to Wharton faculty and other experts. Current Federal Reserve Board vice chairwoman Yellen, appointed on October 9 by President Obama to succeed Bernanke, is widely respected as a first-rate academic economist with decades of real-world experience in monetary policy.

Crowdfunding moved closer to becoming a reality for small businesses Wednesday morning when the Securities and Exchange Commission proposed rules that will govern how shares in small companies are sold through Internet intermediaries. The SEC took only 50 minutes to unanimously approve the proposed rules, which were issued more than 560 days after the JOBS Act, the law that legalized the use of crowdfunding for equity investments, was signed by President Barack Obama.

First things first: Innovation isn't dead at Apple.

From a thousand yards away, the full product line looks terrific. The MacBook Airs are thinner and cheaper, the MacBook Pros have new Intel processors that greatly improve performance and battery life. The iPads are thinner and sharper, and iOS 7 future proofs Apple’s mobile product line with its 1,500 new APIs and 64-bit architecture. Apple is still the king of industrial design and trendsetting in the computer industry.

The National Institutes of Health aims to boost healthcare technology and science through 15 Institutional Clinical and Translational Science Awards. Total amount of the awards is $79 million in 2013.

The awards will be used to help translate basic discoveries into new treatments that tangibly improve human health requires innovative collaborations and resources, as well as a diverse, highly-trained workforce,” NIH officials said in announcing the awards on Oct. 22.

Within the startup realm, there is a big difference between having an innovative product versus an innovative business. Some startups have a new technology, but stick to a tried-and-true business model. Others take an existing product, and give it new life with a creative business model. The most competitive startups do both, all the time and every time.

In today’s competitive world, with its accelerating rate of change, no competitive advantage lasts long. According to Josh Linkner, in his book “Disciplined Dreaming,” we have entered the Age of Creativity, in which each incremental gain is zeroed out as global competitors quickly copy and adapt. The only sustainable competitive advantage is creativity.

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People who tend to remember their dreams also respond more strongly than others to hearing their name when they're awake, new research suggests.

Everyone dreams during sleep, but not everyone recalls the mental escapade the next day, and scientists aren't sure why some people remember more than others.

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Last month, the Lotus Esprit submarine car featured in the 1977 film “The Spy Who Loved Me” sold in an auction for $866,000 to a secretive and unknown buyer.

Gawker Media’s Jalopnik weblog yesterday reported it has uncovered the buyer — none other than entrepreneur Elon Musk, founder/co-founder of several companies including Space X, Tesla Motors, SolarCity and PayPal.

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When my business partner and I founded our company ‘ZinePak in 2011, there was no immediate need for an office. We design and create custom entertainment packages for celebrities. In the beginning, we needed no equipment, no staff, and no permanent location. Working from home seemed like the logical (not to mention fiscally responsible!) thing to do. We took turns working from each others’ living rooms, making a quick trip on the 6-Train between our Manhattan apartments.

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QUESTION: WHAT’S YOUR MOST UNORTHODOX/FUNNY/STRANGE-BUT-GOOD ADVICE TO OTHER STARTUP FOUNDERS?

1. GET A VACUUMING ROBOT

“When you’re in startup mode, you’re not thinking about cleaning. The downside is that your environment really affects your productivity, so having a clean home office is crucial. Consider hiring a cleaning service or getting a vacuuming robot to make sure that you’re working in the best conditions so you can produce your best work!”

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Yearly R&D spending among the world's 1,000 largest public corporate R&D spenders has hit a record high of US$638 billion, according to global management consulting firm Booz & Company in its ninth annual Global Innovation 1000 study. However, despite the sustained overall increase in R&D budgets over the last decade, this year's findings show once again that higher spending doesn't guarantee bigger payoffs. Indeed, the 10 most innovative companies our study identified this year financially outperformed the world's top 10 spenders, despite actually spending significantly less on R&D. Additionally, the study shows that companies are spending 8.1 percent of their R&D budgets on digital tools to enable their innovation process either to boost productivity or to improve their ability to gain better insight into customer needs.