The "Cities as a Lab: Designing the Innovation Economy" report, released during the National Leadership Speaker Series: Resiliency & Security in the 21st Century at the National Press Club explores policy trends and experimentation taking place in cities around the globe. The world is increasingly urbanizing with more than half of the world’s population living in urban areas and this is projected to grow to 70% by 2050. Cities and their wider metropolitan regions are increasingly asserting themselves as a fundamental unit of the global economy. U.S. metro regions comprise over one-third of the world’s 100 largest economies

The nation’s booming innovation economy is in danger of losing steam and moving overseas unless there is a significant increase in manufacturing in the U.S., according to a new study from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, but Massachusetts is poised to take advantage of such an increase, a state official says.

“We think there’s no task more urgent in the United States than rebuild the capabilities in the industrial ecosystem,” said Suzanne Berger, MIT professor and author of the book-length global manufacturing study released yesterday. “What we need is the kind of production that will allow us to get the great ideas ... out into the world rapidly.”

Venture capital divisions of major corporations have become an increasingly important source of capital for startups, but many investors in these units–whose total pay ranges from about $200,000 to about $450,000 on average–say they’re not appropriately compensated and that their bonuses and other incentives don’t take into account all they are doing for their corporate bosses.

Image: DLA Piper : Mark Radcliffe

John McAfee is back in the technology game.

Should he be trusted?

McAfee is living in Portland, Ore., nearly a year after fleeing Belize to avoid questioning about the murder of a neighbor. He still insists he had nothing to do with the gunshot killing. "Belize is the murder capital of the world," he said this week. "It's a very violent, very dangerous place."

With a simple blog post or news exclusive, Google can instantly glamorize any field of research, whether it’s teaching cars to drive themselves, sending robotic rovers to the Moon, blanketing Earth with wireless data from balloons, or—this week—helping people live longer. The airiest of promises from the company evokes the world’s awe and admiration, and raises our expectations enormously.

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There’s a crippling STEM talent shortage out there, stalking the streets of Silicon Valley; just ask any Valley executive in the choir crying out for immigration reform. But the IEEE, PBS, and Fortune — an odd triumvirate if ever I saw one — disagree, singing back their own united refrain: “The STEM shortage is a myth!”

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Apple’s doomed.

This is what you hear and read. Sure, it was a hell of a run—iPhone, iPad, all that—but it’s about to end, and fast. If you need any proof, just look at China: the world’s largest smartphone market, flooded with ever-cheaper handsets and tablets from domestic manufacturers that didn’t even exist when the iPhone was first announced. You think those cheap handsets and tablets will confine themselves to the Middle Kingdom? Of course not—China will be the epicenter of a global collapse in device prices. The competition will be beyond Thunderdome, fought by companies armed with little more than a free operating system from Google (GOOG) and razor-thin profit margins. The Cupertino (Calif.) maker of chamfered-edged, precision-etched baubles? Toast. Check Apple’s (AAPL) stock price, down around 33 percent since its peak about a year ago.

Photograph by Adam Amengual for Bloomberg Businessweek Behind this week's cover

Over the last 5 years, Open Innovation has been evolving quite a lot in the ways it can be defined and implemented. Rather than proposing one more definition or describe one specific way to approach it, here is a set of trends I foresee based on the numbers of projects I have been involved in and the evolution of needs from organizations, would they be major corporations, SMEs or Public Services.

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Until now, crowdfunding has come from backers who donate money with no expectation of a financial return, but that's about to change. The JOBS Act, which offers the first changes to securities law in more than 80 years, enables a new equity-crowdfunding model that allows backers to buy shares in posted ventures. Entrepreneurs who list on equity-crowdfunding platforms will have an opportunity to raise serious capital and must also manage new expectations, responsibilities and obligations to regulators and shareholders.

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Not in the U.S. according to new data from the DNA of an Entrepreneur , a survey of small business owners and their partners in the U.S. which has revealed a gender gap between male and female owned enterprises and "compelling differences between male and female small business owners."

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Ron Walker, athletic trainer at Tulsa University, held the iPhone to his chest. When it vibrated, he looked at the results measuring his balance on the Sway app, smiled, and said, “That is the future of my field.” With the Sway app, Walker would be able to assess his athletes’ concussions and other conditions objectively.

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Networking is an important part of business, and making connections with the right people is key. If you’re a business owner or startup, networking plays an even bigger role in terms of growing your client base and making connections in your industry. One of the ways to make connections, meet new people, and ultimately let the world know who you are and what you’re about is to attend conferences, seminars, parties and various other industry events to grow your network. But if you’re not a natural people person, you might need some pointers.

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The idea that technology will change medicine is as old as the electronic computer itself. Actually, even older. In 1945, Vannevar Bush, the man with the vision for the National Institutes of Health, foresaw a Memex computer program that would allow access to past books and records. A lone physician searching for a diagnosis in far-flung case histories was one of the applications Bush imagined.

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It's an age-old question: Are entrepreneurs a special breed, born into this world with a drive and need to succeed that most of humanity lacks, or can they can be created through education, experience and mentorship? We spoke to two academics who have strong opinions on the matter.

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Before starting up, it's important to arm yourself with the knowledge and skills to succeed in launching your own business. If you are considering pursuing a degree in entrepreneurship, use this interactive graphic of Princeton Review's annual ranking of the best graduate and undergraduate programs in the field to help you make your decision.

Earth could continue to host life for at least another 1.75 billion years, as long as a nuclear holocaust, an errant asteroid or some other disaster doesn't intervene, a new study calculates.

But even without such dramatic doomsday scenarios, astronomical forces will eventually render the planet uninhabitable. Somewhere between 1.75 billion and 3.25 billion years from now, Earth will travel out of the solar system's habitable zone and into the "hot zone," new research indicates.

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You’ve created a LinkedIn profile! Congratulations, that’s a great first step toward building your network and the professional side of your personal brand. That profile, though, is only the first step toward marketing yourself on LinkedIn.

And, many young professionals find themselves asking, “Now what?”

The answer, for many, is quite simple: you now use this powerful networking tool to meet like-minded professionals, recruiters and build your professional network!

Johns Hopkins University and BioHealth Innovation are partnering with Philadelphia-based DreamIt Ventures to bring a new health IT accelerator to Baltimore. The accelerator, called DreamIt Health Baltimore, is being supported by a portion of a $520,000 federal grant awarded to BioHealth Innovation and the Economic Alliance of Greater Baltimore.

Venture Investor & Creator of VC Funds, Entrepreneur, Member-Board of Directors, Mentor/Advisor in Start-up Communities Roberto Alvarez journalist to the Brazilian media company Startupi (the Tech Crunch of Brazil) interviewed me (1st 30 seconds in Portuguese, then English) in August at Singularity University (SU). Roberto is one of the 80 GSP13 fellows who learned about exponential technologies and their application to create a team project which solves one of the ten global challenges; I mentored him and many of his other GSP13 teammates this past summer on raising capital & other needs for their ventures. Naturally I am honored and humbled to be a member of the SU community.

A health IT accelerator is launching in Baltimore with the aim of pulling more technology out of Baltimore’s biggest research university and drawing more companies into the city. DreamIt Health Baltimore will host a class of 10 startup companies for a four-month accelerator program in Baltimore beginning in January. The accelerator is part of DreamIt Ventures outside Philadelphia.