In a windowless office on a tiny San Francisco side street, Noah Kraft is making me hear things in a way I’ve never heard them before.

I’m wearing a wireless earbud in each ear. The devices, which are white and look kind of like big Altoids mints, are the latest prototype built by Doppler Labs, a wearable-technology startup of which Kraft is cofounder and CEO. Kraft is sitting diagonally across from me, chatting, and using an iPhone app to manipulate the sound of his voice and the relatively quiet background noise of the office in ways that only I can hear.

Image: http://www.technologyreview.com/ 

Lurking in the dark depths of the sea, a new species that looks more like an alien than a fish has been discovered, a creature with needlelike teeth and a glowing fishing pole of sorts atop its head.

Scientists spotted three females of the new species of anglerfish between 3,280 feet and nearly 5,000 feet (1,000 and 1,500 meters) beneath the Gulf of Mexico. The little fish, whose bodies ranged in length from 1.2 to 3.7 inches (30 to 95 millimeters), live under extreme conditions: No sunlight penetrates their deep habitats where they endure immense pressures of more than 2,200 pounds (1 ton) per square inch.

Image: THEODORE PIETSCH, PH.D./UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON

With more than 206 million predicted shoppers spending money online this year, there’s never been a better time to start an eCommerce business. If you’re thinking about starting an eCommerce business and selling products online, use this checklist to do it the right way.

Vanderbilt University mathematicians have come up with a new theory of “cosmological viscosity” (how sticky the universe is) that challenges current theories.

For decades, cosmologists have had trouble reconciling the classic notion of viscosity based on the laws of thermodynamics with Einstein’s general theory of relativity, according the the team, which has now come up with a fundamentally new mathematical formulation of the problem that appears to bridge this long-standing gap.

Image: http://www.kurzweilai.net

Not long ago, I was sitting in on an innovation roundtable. There were about 20 of us, all equally excited about the role of innovation in moving business forward. But after a short while, it became obvious that most of the talk was about technology. Now, let’s be clear. I am a huge proponent of technology – developing, investing in and adopting technology to improve the processes in our companies (and lives).

The above quote is from an Under Armour executive talking about why those inside Under Armour (NYSE:UA) have so much faith in founder Kevin Plank. Under Armour eclipsed the $3 billion annual sales mark for the first time last year and overtook Adidas asthe No. 2 athletic apparel brand in the U.S. behind Nike. Thecompany has posted 23 quarters in a row of more than 20% year-over-year sales growth. Here's how founder and CEO Kevin Plank made Under Armour so successful.

Image: THE ENTREPRENEUR UNDER THE ARMOUR. SOURCE: UA.COM. 

Planning to give up that cushy paid job and get jump into the exciting life of an entrepreneur? Here are some guiding points that you might like to think about before even taking the plunge.

Business areas Ensure you have done sufficient marketing to understand the pain point of the market you are trying to resolve. It has to be a big pain point that is worth solving. I often get people presenting me an idea they thought about but it doesn’t address the market problem, or even if there is an issue, it is very small to be feasible.

Image: https://www.techinasia.com 

Back in 2013, I was one of nine entrepreneurs who contributed to the European Startup Manifesto. With Dutch politician Neelie Kroes at the helm, Niklas Zennström (Skype, Kazaa), Daniel Ek (Spotify), myself, and six others tried to boil down the solution to Europe’s startup problems into a simple, 22-point action plan for managing and powering growth across the continent. Our action plan includes directives to help startups stretch across borders, make it easier for them to hire and fire, increase venture capital investments, and keep our best entrepreneurial brains from being lured overseas.

It turns out that bacteria could hold a key to transforming how doctors treat disease -- at least that's what Editas, a privately held company that just raised $120 million from investors including Bill Gates, seems to think.

First, a bit of background Editas was founded in 2013 through $43 million in venture funding from the likes of Flagship Ventures and Polaris Partners and the company is researching a fascinating gene-editing technique based on the immune system of bacteria.

Image: EDITAS 

About two years ago a core group of the newly founded International Association of Innovation Professionals (IAOIP) met to take the first effort at the daunting task of describing what subjects and knowledge constitutes the “science of innovation”. They took a graphic approach in an effort to see the subject as a whole, to better understand how individual, sometimes seemingly separate bodies of knowledge may contribute to the larger innovation discipline. The result is the diagram you can find on the IAOIP website describing the building blocks of the science of innovation..

Image: http://farm3.staticflickr.com/2248/2253657555_9306374c9f.jpg 

Becoming wildly successful is the result of a combination of factors — pure chance, hard work, and taking risks.

Pure chance isn’t something you can will into being. Working hard takes sheer grit and a long time. What you’re left with is the power of risk.

Every entrepreneur or aspiring entrepreneur faces risk. You can take the business risk and succeed. On the other hand you can avoid the risk, but never entertain the possibility of wild success.

Armed with $100, a group of newly minted MBA students are tackling their first entrepreneurial test: to create real products and make real revenue. It’s the first of what N.C. State University Entrepreneurship Clinic director Lewis Sheats hopes is an annual contest among his students, dubbed the Jenkins MBA Marketplace, which is happening Friday at HQ Raleigh.

Batteries are one of the biggest limitations in the advancement of wearable technology. While they continue to improve slowly, they're still a significant constraint as we try to make them last longer or make them smaller. 

Energy efficiency and improved energy sources are the highest priorities in maintaining the growth of the wearables market.

Image: http://readwrite.com 

Thomas Edison once said, “There’s a way to do it better. Find it.”

A thriving economy is based on the ability to develop creative innovations that find a way to do things better. A number of today’s successful startups were born out of that notion — to solve mundane pain points in our everyday lives. The concept also can be applied to higher education: Where innovation is key to a thriving economy, why is it so difficult for us to create an environment where innovation flourishes?

Image: Nick is the former executive vice president of innovation and technology at IBM and now serves as the chairman of the state of Connecticut’s Board of Regents for Higher Education, and is on the advisory board for Knod. 

Most entrepreneurs assume that success is dependent on their product expertise, coupled with some knowledge of how to run a business. In fact, I have found from personal experience and mentoring that both of these are necessary, but not sufficient, for building a business. Successful entrepreneurs today must practice human-centered leadership to compete and win.

1. key questions to ask about the Internet of Things

2. Copyright © 2015 Deloitte Development LLC. All rights reserved.2 Deloitte University Press | 5 key questions to ask about the Internet of Things | @DU_Press #DeloitteReview The Internet of Things (IoT) has been simmering for a while, but now seems ready to boil over as widespread transformation seems likely. Will your organization be ready? Deloitte University Press | 5 key questions about the Internet of Things | @DU_Press #DeloitteReview Copyright © 2015 Deloitte Development LLC. All rights reserved.

A number of big companies have recently announced that they are getting rid of the dreaded annual performance reviews and revamped their review processes. The newest announcements are from Accenture and Deloitte, but they join Microsoft, Adobe, Gap, Medtronic and others in realizing that the old way of conducting performance reviews is deeply flawed and ineffective.

Too many entrepreneurs tackle starting a business as a random walk into a business minefield, and they count on their street smarts, thick skin and pure determination to get them to their destinations alive. That does work once in a while, usually with some serious collateral damage, but a less painful approach is to prepare and plan for each step along the way.

There’s a reason startups are driving so much innovation today. In many cases, it's a simple matter of size. Smaller teams of smart, qualified, motivated people are often able to collaborate and communicate better than bigger ones. That's hardly a new idea in the business world, but how bigger organizations can go about creating small-team dynamics is still an open question. So here's a look at what we know about small teams' effectiveness in the tech sector and how to put them to good use.

The destination board for the eurozone growth train is still marked “Hope,” but the passengers are stuck at a station called “Disappointment.”

Friday’s reading of 0.3% growth in eurozone gross domestic product in the second quarter from the first, or 1.3% annualized, was lower than economists had forecast. Freshly released data for Germany, France and Italy—representing two-thirds of the currency bloc’s output—all came in on the soft side, with France recording zero growth in the second quarter after 0.7% in the first. Spain remains alone among the big four eurozone economies in showing real acceleration, growing 1% in the second quarter.

Image: People relax on the beach in Benidorm, Spain. Spain remains alone among the big four eurozone economies in showing real acceleration, growing 1% in the second quarter. PHOTO: REUTERS