As venture capital firms step out, the state of Ohio could step in.

The Ohio Third Frontier Commission is thinking about funneling more money to young technology companies that normally would rely on venture capital, which is becoming harder to find.

In Ohio and across the country, venture capital firms are finding it hard to raise cash. Thus, they're making fewer investments — a trend that many industry watchers expect to continue.

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There have never been more types of office accommodations for startups. However, the variety of choices makes it difficult to determine which type of commercial space is ideal, since the definition of “ideal” changes as your venture matures.

AS THE race for the next mayor of Boston enters the home stretch, we are witnessing a substantive debate on the future of the city, spanning education, public safety, the environment, and economic development. One critical element of our future is how we support and grow our innovation economy, including life sciences and high-tech businesses.

Over the past two decades, Boston has developed a unique innovation ecosystem in which large and small companies are fueled by the region’s tremendous scientific, academic, entrepreneurial, and venture capital strengths. While this ecosystem has created thousands of jobs and dozens of new medicines and technologies that have changed peoples’ lives, its future is not guaranteed as other regions attempt to capture a piece of our success.

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Happiness is so interesting, because we all have different ideas about what it is and how to get it. It’s also no surprise that it’s the Nr.1 value for Buffer’s culture, if you see our slidedeck about it. So naturally we are obsessed with it.

I would love to be happier, as I’m sure most people would, so I thought it would be interesting to find some ways to become a happier person that are actually backed up by science. Here are ten of the best ones I found.

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The Technopolicy Network is proud to announce the 11th Best Practices in Science Based Incubation Conference in Coimbra, Portugal!

On 25, 26, and 27 November 2013 over 30 experts will discuss the best practices in science based incubation. This event will be a great opportunity to make new connections and explore strategies in the incubation business. The Technopolicy Network successfully hosted Incubation Conferences for ten years. This results in an international event that ranks as the most important in its kind.

This year The Technopolicy Network will organise the Best Practices Science Based Incubation Conference in collaboration with IPN Incubadora. It is one of the leading science based incubators of Europe and has been awarded the price for The Best Science Based Incubator at the 2010 Science Based Incubation Conference held in Liverpool, UK. The Technopolicy Network is therefore proud to announce this leading incubator as its hosting partner for this year’s conference.

French President François Hollande hopes to create 470,000 jobs by injecting €3.5 billion in 34 key industrial sectors, but he will need Europe’s help. EurActiv.fr reports.

President François Hollande and his firebrand Industry Minister Arnaud Montebourg presented a new investment strategy for 34 industrial sectors on Thursday (12 September).

The French President was following on the footsteps of Charles De Gaulle, who instigated French industrial policy in mid-late 20th century.

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According to a new EvaluateMedtech report, despite the gloomy 2013 the medtech industry has had so far, by 2018, the industry can expect to rake in $455 billion. In vitro diagnostics are forecasted to stay on top as the highest earning sector, with global sales over $58 billion, with cardiology and diagnostic imaging following closely behind.

In many Arab countries, economic integration, the need for economic diversification, occupational preferences for public sector employment, and high youth unemployment rates have prompted the adoption of economic reforms to improve the enabling environment for entrepreneurship. According to new research by Tahseen Consulting, understanding the determinants of self-employment and how they might differ across the region is critical if entrepreneurship is to be a solution for the region’s youth unemployment challenge and can ultimately lead to desired economic outcomes.

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A buddy of mine is a big-deal business professor at an even bigger deal university.  And for reasons I still don’t understand, he asked me to come in and explain to his graduate students what I have learned from spending 30 years talking to, researching and writing about entrepreneurs.

Here’s what I said.

1. The best way to predict the future is to create it.

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Over the past several months, I’ve been asking entrepreneurs through Under30CEO’s interview series and interviews for the Collegiate Entrepreneurs’ Organization (CEO), “If you could pick one entrepreneur in the world to join your team at (company), who would it be and why?”  The results included a variety of interesting entrepreneurs and achievers including a Shark from ABC’s Shark Tank, a dead industrial genius, multi-billionaires, a fictional movie character, young entrepreneurial go-getters, and even a couple of retired professional athletes.

In 2009, the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) was in a state of crisis. The backlog of pending patent applications was enormous and growing. The process for reviewing patents had not changed in decades and was out-of-date. Employee job satisfaction was low and the longstanding distrust between management and the patent examiners union was ever-present.

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Let’s imagine, for a second, you are someone in your 20s or 30s, getting started in the biotech industry. You want to work somewhere you can acquire a well-rounded set of experiences over the next five to 10 years so that you will have what it takes to be qualified for a senior management role in a startup. You can even imagine yourself someday building something from scratch as a startup CEO.

Where should you go today to get those skills? Put another way, what are the best training grounds for the biotech entrepreneurs and leaders of tomorrow?

Any CEO can tell you that finding ideas is not the always the problem. The real issue is selecting and spreading the best ideas, testing quickly, and executing flawlessly. An “innovation engine” is an organization’s capability to think and invest in long-term opportunities along with the competence to drive continuous innovations for top-line growth each year.

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"Is taking the high road truly a sustainable strategy, or does it merely delay the inevitable?" asks writer Sam Grobart of Apple, who interviews CEO Tim Cook, chief designer Jonathan Ive, and head of software Craig Federighi to gauge how the trio is thinking about innovation in a market that has Android licking its lips. But Cook and his team have no interest in a race to the bottom. "We've never had an objective to sell a low-cost phone," Cook says, emphasizing that they're "not in the junk business." And while there's ample competition from Android – the top operating system in the U.S. has been the Google-based system for three years – 55% of all mobile activity actually comes from iOS. "Does a unit of market share matter if it's not being used?" Cook asks.

Next up in our series of notes from the Alpha Hedge West Conference is the panel on venture capitalists and where they're investing now and why.  It featured Chris Schultz (Operating Venture Capital), David Girouard (Upstart), Ari Levy (Bloomberg), Ron Suber (Prosper Marketplace), Pat Grady (Sequoia Capital).

Venture Capital Panel: Where Are They Investing Now & Why?

PG> Like industries with high rate of change.  Tech now creeping everywhere.

??> Moving from computing creating stage to computing development state.  Less focus geographically.

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All employees have ideas, credible or otherwise, on how to improve their job environment. Very few, however, get an allowance and an opportunity to act on their thoughts.

At most highly structured and hierarchical enterprises, the prospect of such an initiative seems far off. At IBM, however, several departments have already tested a program that puts employees in the middle of the ideation process.

In late July, news broke that Flud, the social news reader for iOS, Android and Windows Phone, was headed to the deadpool. Startup failure is an all-too familiar, even cliche, story in Silicon Valley. But when San Diegoan co-founders Bobby Ghoshal and Matthew Ausonio officially shuttered the Flud app and website in August, after three years of development, it was a disappointing final chapter for a product that had attracted more buzz in a year than the average startup sees in its entire lifecycle.

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Apple has just issued a press release revealing it sold 9M iPhones during the launch weekend of its iPhone 5c and iPhone 5s. As is typical for the company with new hardware, it hasn’t broken out individual model sales, but other signals point to a stronger debut weekend for the higher-end iPhone 5s than for the 5c. Apple blew away its previous record for first weekend iPhone sales, which was 5 million for the iPhone 5 last year.

More than 100 small airports will be developed across the country, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said Saturday, noting that cities are the engines of the country's economic development.

"Initially, big cities were connected by air. Now the focus is on connecting smaller cities," he said after laying the foundation stone of the Kishangarh airport in Ajmer district, 120 km from here. He later launched Phase-i of the Jaipur Metro and dedicated to the nation a solar power plant.

Bring on the fundraising billboards.

Getty Images New rules around startup fundraising and investing take hold today that allow companies and firms to actively appeal to the public for funds. The rules, part of the JOBS Act, lift the ban on general solicitation, or general advertising for certain private securities offerings.

One Silicon Valley startup, TechShop — a workshop and fabrication studio popular among hardware makers and industrial designers — took immediate advantage of the change, issuing a press release this morning soliciting $60 million from investors to fuel expansion of its facilities to cities across the U.S.

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