Right now Australia is in the middle of a much-needed debate about the role of innovation in the national economy. Australia always has been innovative: the first Aboriginal people learnt more than 50,000 years ago how to survive in what can be a very hostile climate, including developing the use of fire as a form of farming. The earliest European settlers had to adapt and innovate to survive in a very different country to what they left behind.

Rural and small towns suffer from a loss of faith in their place, and seem desperate to be recognized in our new, standardized world. Plenty of our developed land remains specific and even unique, but the highway does not go to it. Outside the cities, unpretty feed stores, the availability of tractor parts, and the presence of cattle hardly contribute to scientifically measured success. The refuge of the individual, the ability of a person to see his or her life as meaningful while it is separate and apart from a larger mass, is crippled. You’re only as good as your income; you’re only as witty as your social media posts, and you’re only red or blue.

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We all like to think we’re smart. But are you as smart as you could be? There’s a debate among some experts about how much general intelligence can be improved, but a growing body of research is finding that some things do help us increase how smart we are.

And that matters, says science writer Dan Hurley, author of Smarter: The New Science of Building Brain Power. Hurley road-tested a number of "get-smart" theories himself to see if they made a difference.

Most of us have had that coworker that seemed to be a perfect fit for the company or team. She always had the right answers. He seemed to know what needed to be done before the company leaders even did. And that "sixth sense" and insight was rewarded with responsibility, autonomy, accolades, and advancement.

"When employees bring those qualities, they’re perceived as leaders in the company, no matter what position they hold," says Katharine Halpin, CEO and founding principal of The Halpin Companies, Inc., a leadership consultancy in Phoenix, Arizona. "They take ownership for problem solving and dissolving conflict. They naturally have this sort of alignment with the company."

Strategic planning is different from innovation. When developing a strategy, you decide what your activities will be in the future, and you have to stay true to your predetermined course to see results. Furthermore, your plan includes a set of activities that you know how to do. But with innovation, your course of action is inherently unpredictable, and you know in advance that you’ll have to learn to do things that you don’t yet know how to do. Only after your innovation succeeds will you know what those things are.

It’s the age of the startup. Technology is enabling us to solve more problems at a greater speed than ever before. Solutions to big enough problems often have commercial value — leading to new enterprises being founded. New companies are formed and funded faster than ever before.

The unicorns are multiplying, but if Andreessen Horowitz is right, the highflying venture capital community will have cause for concern when the inevitable thinning of the herd takes place.

The unicorns, of course, are the 60-odd technology start-ups that have taken investments valuing them at more than $1 billion each. The $50 billion valuation of Uber, the car-hailing service, has been held up as an illustration that Silicon Valley is in the middle of another bubble.

Venture Capital Investment Climbs To $34bn In Q2 2015 by Preqin

The amount of capital invested in entrepreneurial companies globally by the venture capital industry hit a record $34bn in Q2, up from $29bn in the first quarter of 2015.

The venture capital industry has had a very strong start to 2015. Not only is the fundraising market buoyant, but venture capital fund managers have invested a record $63.0bn over the first six months of the year.

Image: http://www.valuewalk.com

Most entrepreneurs avoid setting up a board of directors for their new business unless or until they sign up an investor who demands a seat on the board. That implies that a board of directors has no value to the founder, and is just another burden that to be assumed for the privilege of attracting outside investors or going public. In my view, nothing could be further from the truth.

Realizing the American dream through entrepreneurship isn’t easy, as a recent study shows.

Online lender OnDeck surveyed more than 800 small business owners across the country and those responses provide a snapshot of what entrepreneurs face right now.  

Entrepreneurs are a tough breed. It's a necessity of the start-up life, in which:

We enjoy fewer safeguards and guideposts than exist in the traditional world of work. We take big risks without a guarantee of reward. We learn to become experts (or at least competent) in virtually every aspect of business management.

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In the classic story of David and Goliath, David wins the battle through the use of clever tactics; he uses a sling to knock Goliath to the ground and then slays him. Likewise, today's small and nimble companies are the Davids of the world and should keep his strategy in mind. It's not about company size or budget. It's about what you do, and how you do it.

Doing your best work requires focus and energy. But it’s hard to stay focused for an 8-hour stretch. So how can you find the necessary energy to get your work done? How do you choose those precious moments when you think you’ll be feeling your best to do the most challenging work? And what’s the best way to ride out any lulls?

Americans are starting the turn toward a presidential election. Candidates are announcing their bids and pundits are practicing their rhetoric. But despite my faith in the electorate, I’m worried. It’s not any specific candidate or issue or political ideology that’s the source of my concern. It’s the way we value certain leadership qualities – like experience – over traits like motivation, competence, and potential when we go to the voting booth.

Maybe you meant to book a tropical vacation this summer and just kept putting it off. But does it even matter? It's not like you were going to catch a piggyback ride on a turtle's shell, relaxing like you've never relaxed before.

This turtle doesn't even know that the UNESCO World Heritage Committee is deciding whether or not his super cool hometown, the Great Barrier Reef, will be considered endangered. He's just casually gliding through the ocean with a GoPro on his back, checking out some fish.

Game developers, what is getting into the gaming industry really like? I ask this because this is one of the fields (computer science) I'm seriously thinking about. Is it really as cutthroat as I've heard? How is the pay? What is the indie scene like, and how is it different from the AAA scene? Is going to a CC for a game development degree a good thing? How are the hours, etc.?

In an omni-channel marketing universe, brands trying to be all things to all customers will get lost in the shuffle.

Before the digital revolution, branded customer experiences had a beginning, middle, and end. The marketer’s goal was relatively simple: to guide consumers smoothly down the linear path to a purchase. What happened once the customer left the store wasn’t all that important.

The smile on Austen Heinz's face was unguarded and brief. It was the involuntary, small upturn of the corners the mouth that escapes when something genuinely makes you happy.

For Heinz, it was seeing the surfers at Del Mar. He raised his phone to snap a photo for a friend.

Flying is so overrated.

A brave crow has been photographed catching a free ride on the back of a bald eagle 25-feet in the air. The unusual moment lasted only a few seconds and was captured by amateur bird photographer Phoo Chan.

“At first I thought the crow was going to chase away the eagle," Chan says. "I was completely awed to see the crow actually land on the back of the eagle. They both flew in different directions and it looked like they became friends."

If competition ends up as being a fight to the finish, then we need a new way of thinking about economic success.

Economic co-operation has always been part of the story, but not one told so often in the conventional narratives of heroic entrepreneurs and far-seeing investors. In 1917, for example, US Congress forced the formation of the Manufacturers Aircraft Association. The Wright brothers and Glenn Curtis were willing to see the airplane industry grounded than to see the other win out in terms of setting standards for airplanes to succeed.