People say that Washington, D.C. is where the sausage gets made because incentives, interests, and compromises worm their way into bills as they go through Congress.

A bill that is submitted to the U.S. House by one or more representatives must gain the support of a committee before it moves to the full house for a vote. On average, less than 1% of all bills that are submitted for consideration actually reach the President’s desk for signature. Amazingly, equity and debt crowdfunding was one of those bills. Even though what was signed into law was not perfect, it is a workable solution and Congress should be congratulated for seeing the opportunity in crowdfunding for American entrepreneurship.

For graduating seniors, spring marks the season of advice as predictable as the flip-flops under their caps and gowns. Throughout the May and June rituals of Class Day celebrations and graduation ceremonies, successful members of older generations will urge this year’s crop of Millennials to pursue their dreams and, by extension, travel the same path they did. But most of their young audience already knows better. They know they face an uphill climb on their path to economic independence and the markers of full adulthood.

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The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has released the Department of Commerce's (DOC) 2013 Technology Transfer Report. The annual report summarizes the technology transfer activities of its three federal laboratories: NIST, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA),and the Institute for Telecommunication Sciences (ITS) of the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA).

Image: A new test developed by NIST in 2013 can help reduce the incidence of potentially lethal failures of faceplate lenses in firefighting equipment. Credit: NIST 

Open up just about any news site (even this one) these days and you'll probably see an article that trumpets the existence of a stock market bubble, driven by overhyped technology investment and investor desire for outsized gains. And while the stock market surely is frothy, it's not time to restock the bomb shelter.

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The Golden State Warriors fired coach Mark Jackson, who clashed with management during a 51-win National Basketball Association season.

Jackson, 49, had spent three seasons with the Warriors, who were eliminated in seven games by the Los Angeles Clippers in the first round of the NBA playoffs.

Many startup companies want to change the world with their great new ideas – but, in an effort to raise funds, some jeopardize their ability to protect those great new ideas with patents. This doesn’t have to happen. With a little foresight, startups seeking funding can avoid the patent pitfalls.

A typical startup story may go like this: A few entrepreneurs form a startup company because they have developed a great new idea for the next “must-have” product. To raise funds, the entrepreneurs ask relatives, take out a small loan or turn to a crowd-source funding program like Kickstarter. These crowd-source funding sites allow the startup to disclose its new ideas to the public and raise funds by allowing anybody to give money to the startup in return for some small benefit. Such small benefits can be anything the startup chooses, ranging from promotional items, to a beta product the startup is still developing, and even to pre-sale orders of the finished products whose development is being funded and that will eventually be mass marketed.

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The number of people age 65 and older in the United States is expected to almost double by 2050, a shift that is expected to drastically alter the nation's racial makeup and pressure its economy, two government reports released on Tuesday said.

Those older U.S. residents are expected grow from 43 million in 2012 to nearly 84 million over the next four decades as the baby boomer generation ages, the Census Bureau said in its latest estimate.

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Vladyslav Dombrovskyi graduated in Banking and had been teaching Micro- and Macroeconomics for many years, till he made a decision to change his career path and transform his lifelong hobby and passion for computers and computer networks into his profession. In 2010, Vladyslav switched to applied computer science and became an associate professor at the Department of Economic Cybernetics (Ukrainian Academy of Banking). The next three years were life changing for him. He tried a new capacity of a team-mentor in Microsoft Imagine Cup competition and also led several software development projects. At the moment, Vladyslav is a managing editor of the Information Technology and Economics journal, a new international journal established in 2014, which focuses on the intersection of IT, Business and Economics.

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In a February 2014 presentation, Herman Wories of the DSM Innovation Center made a compelling statement about the role of innovation in any organization: “Innovation is no longer a competitive advantage: it’s a competitive necessity. In order to keep up, you need to continuously innovate.”

The pace of business moves at a rapid velocity in a continuous, 24-hour cycle – a global network of workers and micro-taskers are changing the face of products, markets, and organizations every day, but in the world of open innovation we know that problem solving within an organization is not limited to a single set of people. Perhaps this sentiment is best encapsulated by Yochai Benkler in The Wealth of Networks, “…the world is becoming too fast, too complex and too networked for any organization to have all the answers inside.”

Image: http://www.innovationmanagement.se 

Brad, who is a big backer of projects on Kickstarter (73 at last count), was interviewed and rattled off a bunch of the companies he’s supported on Kickstarter, including two that we are investors in: Occipital Structure Sensor and Modular Robotics MOSS.

And – if you are a fan of Harmonix (of Dance Central, Rock Band, and Guitar Hero fame), one of their original projects, Amplitude, is being recreated via a Kickstarter campaign. Take a look at it and go support it!

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It is well established that brain games and puzzles act as calisthenics for our brains, expanding their capacity and improving their overall health. More surprising are the findings of a study led by researchers at the University of Michigan. It shows that just as effective in building cognitive strength are social interactions.

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Development in Africa has had a long history of Western influence and subsequent failure. The deployment of Western strategies has been especially problematic in the health sector. In the later part of the 90s, health initiatives were implemented throughout the continent to combat the spread of HIV. Unfortunately, many of the approaches used were based on programmes that had garnered success in North American cities with vastly different populations and infrastructure from the African countries they were doled out in. Even more problematic was the universality with which the programmes were unleashed, illuminating the flawed conceptualisation of Africa as a country instead of a multifaceted continent.

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Keep in mind that more start up businesses fail than succeed, but those who follow this advice are more prepared to ward off unnecessary blunders than wind up in bankruptcy. Mistakes are inevitable, but the best defense is learning from other’s failed efforts and when wrong, promptly fix the problem and trudge forward. Check out these seven common small business mistakes and how to deal with them:

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Many colleges and universities across the country offer courses and programs in "entrepreneurship." Are they worthwhile? Entrepreneurship is apparently an occupational category now, yet when it comes to judging the value of what they teach, its practitioners are flying blind. They and their students could learn a lot from how the medical field evolved.

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Tristan Walker, founder and CEO of Walker and Company Brands, discusses the value of entrepreneurs bringing authenticity to their venture. Walker, a Stanford alumnus, recalls realizing that his true calling as an entrepreneur came when he discovered that "I wanted to fundamentally feel like I was the best person in the world to solve that problem."

Image: http://ecorner.stanford.edu 

Cisco Chief Technology and Strategy Officer Padmasree Warrior encourages students and aspiring entrepreneurs to become authentic leaders. As opposed to leading purely through analytics and command and control, Warrior explains why the leaders of tomorrow need to skilled in persuasion and community building.

Image: http://ecorner.stanford.edu 

Khan Academy Founder and Executive Director Sal Khan discusses how his organization’s nonprofit status and mission differentiates Khan Academy from other ventures in Silicon Valley. Whereas many entrepreneurs are focused on customer growth, a lucrative exit and launching the next venture, Khan says the challenge for Khan Academy is staying true to its mission.

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This e mail is a follow-up to the recently completed FLC National Meeting. One Mission of the FLC is to promote and facilitate the rapid movement of federal laboratory research results and technologies into the mainstream of the U.S. economy. The purpose of this e mail is to provide you with information about the FLC Technology Locator service, and how the FLC Technology Locator can assist you in identifying technologies of interest at the Federal Laboratories.

For industry, academia, state business and economic development organizations (BEDOs), and other technology seekers, the FLC Technology Locator (FLC TL) provides a point of entry to technologies and expertise available at federal laboratories. Using the FLC network, the FLC TL puts a potential private sector partner in contact with a federal laboratory representative with expertise and capability in the technology seekers’ specific area of interest. There is no charge for the services provided by the FLC TL.

There’s been a giant sucking sound the last few years.  You’ve probably heard it.  It’s the sound of social media startups vacuuming up the world’s venture capital and media mindshare.  But what about all the other startups?  You know, the “uncool” ones?

Startups that make tangible things seem to have fallen out of favor in recent years.  Think about new companies tackling big challenges like life-saving therapies, food security, or sustainable energy.  They seem to have disappeared in the popular media.  Steve Blank describes this as Facebook killing Silicon Valley.  Fortunately, popular buzz is not the same as startup reality.  You might not hear much about the uncool companies, but they are out there, like ants diligently building their colonies.  Even during these heady social media years, many thousands of uncool startups have continued to hack away at uncool problems and make progress.  That’s fortunate for the world.

COLLEGE PARK, Md., May 6, 2014 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ Two University of Maryland graduates have designed The Micro, a consumer-friendly, sub-$300 3D printer, and are quickly staging one of the most successful Kickstarter campaigns of all-time to produce it, hauling in $3.3 million with more than 10,000 backers.

The Micro raced past its $50,000 goal in just 11 minutes and hit the $1 million mark in 25 hours, faster than the Pebble watch, which took 28 hours.