Chatting with venture capitalists on Sand Hill Road, or sipping cocktails with entrepreneurs in The Battery, San Francisco's fanciest watering hole for geeks, it is easy to believe that Silicon Valley will be on top of the world forever. But it ain't necessarily so.

SAN DIEGO — Don Pellmann had been at the San Diego Mesa College track for less than an hour Sunday morning and had already moved his lawn chair twice to remain in the shade, which was receding fast. By the time Pellmann set his fifth age-group world record, in the early afternoon, the temperature on the track was creeping toward 100, which also happens to be the birthday Pellmann recently celebrated.

Image: http://www.nytimes.com

For years, the Department of Health and Human Services has been taking cues from the private sector's startup culture, encouraging employees to work on independent technology ideas.  

On Thursday, HHS held a demo day for a few teams that joined its summer accelerator program, meant to build out technology ideas that could eventually be implemented in HHS. Here were a few ideas presented at the event:

As a startup advisor, when I suggest cooperating with competitors, most entrepreneurs initially think I'm crazy or suggesting something illegal. But trust me, I’m not talking about anything sinister here, just a concept known in smart business circles as "coopetition," recognized as one of the best and fastest ways to grow a company. And growth is the lifeblood of every startup.

Image: http://blog.startupprofessionals.com

It’s easy to deceive yourself that your ability to be courageous isn’t an issue for you. In your rational mind, you may avoid stepping into conflict, decisions and speaking truth with (what you believe to be) logic. When self-deception happens, you can miss opportunities to make a difference in your organizations and those you lead.

(3BL Media/Justmeans) – Incentivizing businesses for their sustainable innovations begins with their intellectual property. The intangible nature of intellectual property makes it well-suited for sharing. By adopting sustainable patent strategies, companies can not only better address their own needs, but also address some of the most pressing needs of the planet. This is a new way businesses can lead by example.

Innovation-led growth is no longer the prerogative of high-income countries alone. Middle-income countries are catching up fast, but they still need some crucial ingredients to compete.

There is a common misconception about the success of Silicon Valley; that its success is largely down to the disruptive and rebellious innovators who have made it their playground. A hive of innovative activity it may be, but the truth is that the young and ambitious have congregated around the valley because it is home to universities, research labs, venture capital firms and armies of risk-taking talent, which came because of smart government policies.

Despite being an exemplar of strategic agility, the fearful emotional climate prevailing at Nokia during the rise of the iPhone froze coordination between top and middle managers terrified of losing status and resources from management. The company was wounded before the battle began.

Nokia’s fall from the top of the smartphone pyramid is typically put down to three factors by executives who attempt to explain it: 1) that Nokia was technically inferior to Apple, 2) that the company was complacent and 3) that its leaders didn’t see the disruptive iPhone coming.

As a proud Baby Boomer, I know all too well that lumping people into categories based on their age and the year they were born is a very simplistic way to look at things.

Right now some generalizations are swirling around about the younger generations. We’ve heard lots about Millennials, but what about the next generation – Generation Z?

When the investors first meet Brian Lim in this episode of “Shark Tank,” he is wearing a giant cartoon headpiece and looks like a DJ ready to play to a bunch of ravers.

But once the mask comes off, the investors see that Lim has built two electronic music lifestyle companies with more than $7 million in annual revenue from the ground up.

Investor Robert Herjavec tells Lim that his focus, passion, and vision are exceptional. “Look, Brian, you’re the real deal, man,” Herjavec says. “You are probably one of the, if not the best entrepreneur we’ve had here.”

The roughly 1,800-square-mile area commonly known as Silicon Valley, southeast of San Francisco Bay, is home to just three million people—slightly less than 1 percent of the US population. Yet the Valley, seat of several world-class universities and numerous cutting-edge enterprises, has become an economic and innovation powerhouse whose importance is hugely disproportionate to its small physical size. If it were a country, it would rank among the world’s 50 largest economies, larger than those of Hungary, Vietnam, and New Zealand, among others. In 2013, Silicon Valley generated over 12 percent of US patent registrations and produced about 11 percent of new US-company IPOs, and the greater Bay Area attracted almost 40 percent of US venture-capital (VC) investment.1 More than a few ideas hatched in the Bay Area have paid off handsomely. Thirty-two of the 50 private start-ups with valuations at or exceeding $1 billion are based there. This is not a new phenomenon, of course. Bay Area enterprises have been creating new markets and disrupting a wide swath of industries for decades.

The U.S. Small Business Administration has awarded a handful of entrepreneur-focused organizations in five Southeastern states a total of more than $1 million in grants to help low-income entrepreneurs launch and build companies.

The SBA’s PRIME Grants initiative — PRIME stands for Program for Investment in Micro-Entrepreneurs — provides training for aspiring low-income and disadvantaged businesspeople with the aim preparing them for lenders that are part of the SBA’s core loan programs. This year, the agency is distributing $5 million worth of grants to 39 organizations in 16 states, Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia.

It's hard to argue that the current system for refugees is working. Around $27 million is spent on the refugee crisis each day, but most of that goes to temporary aid—food, tents, emergency medical care—rather than any long-term solutions. Most refugees are stuck for years in camps, or end up moving to developing countries where they struggle to survive. Half are children.

There are 4 myths about startups and entrepreneurship. Those bedtime stories continue to influence would be entrepreneurs. Setting expectations at the wrong level. It s time to debunk this. Let me explain.

1- "Anyone can create a company"

True. Anyone. Manage and grow a company is another story. It takes careful planning, passion, long hours of hard work, ability to handle rejection, again and again. No work/life balance. Are you ready? Is your family ready? 

Negotiations — you either love them or hate them. In either case, you will have to do it when you’re in the business world. For those who would rather not deal with them, it’s a necessary evil. The good news is that once you learn how to negotiate effectively, you won’t dislike it as much anymore. You may find it to be the most fun part of your work.

Like many young boys growing up at a time when Michael J Fox skated about Hill Valley in the Back to the Future series, Simon Morris dreamed of one day having a hoverboard like the device that appeared in the sequels.

Working in display design years later, the idea stuck with the New Yorker as he worked with magnets in order to make shoes and skateboards levitate above a surface for exhibitions and shows. By using the repelling poles of magnets – one embedded in the shoe and the other on a stand – the item would seemingly float in mid air. Then came his lightbulb moment.

Image: Flyte’s levitating lightbulb. Photograph: Flyte

Driven by the explosion of residential solar power, the market for home energy storage—which attracted little interest until earlier this year, when Tesla announced its Powerwall battery—is suddenly looking crowded.

This week at the Solar Power International show, in Anaheim, a company called SimpliPhi Power is unveiling a lightweight battery system for homes and small businesses that offers a longer life span than other lithium-ion batteries and doesn’t require expensive cooling and ventilation systems.

Image: SimpliPhi’s installations, like this one for the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, can help reduce loads on the grid and integrate more power from renewable sources.  

Perhaps out of jealousy, perhaps out of awe, many city leaders and politicians find themselves wondering: What is it about Seattle that yields so much invention, innovation and creative activity? Maybe it’s the still-futuristic Space Needle, a legacy of the 1962 World’s Fair, which remains the city’s most recognizable landmark. Or maybe, as the birthplace of Starbucks, it's all that caffeine.

Life is full of turning points—times when you have to start over, whether by choice or circumstance.

For Ben Huh, that time is now. The founder of the network of websites that includes I Can Haz Cheezburger, Memebase, and The Daily What stepped down as CEO in July to recharge his creative energy.

"I’m at a crossroads," Huh says. "I feel ready for a transition, but I don’t know what that is yet."

We've been told countless times how important it is to find a mentor to help guide you early in your career. But searching for mentors doesn’t stop after becoming established: There’s immense value in learning from others throughout your career, even if those mentors are younger than you.

Here’s what to look for in a mentor throughout your career.