I'm tired of it. It's overused, and it wasn't great in the first place. Send me suggestions.

Friend of Business Insider Zachary David already got started: 

The landmarks of Silicon Valley aren't necessarily the most grandiose. They tend to be garages where startups were born, famous research labs or campuses of tech heavyweights.

One local resident, Hafid Alfonso, thinks the Valley deserves an icon or landmark with a "certain 'cool' factor" to match its history, and that landmark should be a Silicon Valley sign á la Hollywood.

Image: Hafid Alfonso - A draft rendering close-up of one man's idea for a new Silicon Valley landmark Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/silicon-valley-hollywood-style-sign-proposed-2015-4#ixzz3YoTaNDE6

It seems like everyone wants to be an entrepreneur and get rich these days. As a business mentor, I sometimes feel besieged by people begging for my view and support of their latest idea. In reality, I like most ideas, but I have to tell them that the real challenge is taking the inspiration from a dream to a business. All the evidence says that over 99% fail to make that leap.

Smallholder farmers in developing nations such as Uganda have it rough. Many struggle to eke out a living using equipment and techniques similar to those of past generations, even as the effects of climate change are altering once-familiar rhythms of agricultural life. Though small-scale farming provides most of sub-Saharan Africa’s food and employment, and is critical to the economies of many countries in Asia and Latin America, farmers in these areas face a substantial yield gap. In addition, unsustainable land management practices are contributing to a soil degradation problem that costs, for example, Uganda’s economy 225 billion shillings (US$75 million) annually. Meanwhile, a search for “Uganda agriculture” on Google Scholar yields a vast 216,000 results.

1776 has made its second acquisition.

Just weeks after the surprise announcement of its Disruption Corp. purchase, the Washington, D.C., accelerator has acquired San Francisco-based Hattery, a co-working space that will give the company a foothold on the West Coast.

As I previously reported, it's become clear that 1776 has its eyes on more than just the District. The Disruption Corp. announcement — which included partnerships with real estate giant Vornado and Arlington County — was only a first step in expanding the accelerator's influence.

Tristan Walker, founder and CEO of Walker and Company Brands, recalls advice that filmmaker Tyler Perry once shared: that the challenges people encounter are actually “blessings.” In conversation with Stanford Professor of the Practice Tina Seelig, Walker said realizing that lesson can be liberating for entrepreneurs and calming in the face of adversity.

Sean George, president and COO of Invitae, explains how a team can weather the ups and downs of entrepreneurship when everyone involved is passionate about the mission. The ability to set aside selfish concerns and questions in the face of adversity, and stay committed, can turn failures into triumphs, George says.

Ron Gutman, founder and CEO of HealthTap, describes how entrepreneurs will always find inspiration in a mission that revolves around improving people's lives. A serial technology entrepreneur and inventor, Gutman also explains the importance of working with individuals who aren't just up for the journey, but will actually enjoy it.

Tim Draper is undaunted in his fixation with fixing California, even after his failed 2014 quest to carve California into six separate states.

“I am open to the idea that maybe there’s even something better,” said Draper.

Now, the Silicon Valley venture capitalist and tinkerer is going at things a different way, launching a website for government innovators to lay out their own ideas and entice a wealthy donor (or donors) to bankroll them.

Both salaried workers and entrepreneurs need to know what tools to use to become more productive at work. This is especially important for new startups, where the margin for error is not generous. 

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, during the fourth quarter of 2014 nonfarm business output increased by 3.2 percent and hours worked increased by 5.1 percent but productivity decreased by 1.8 percent. This is a disturbing trend for any business to deal with. The following business practices can help turn that decline around for your company:

Oscar Berg has further developed his digital collaboration canvas that describes nine capabilities required for collaborative knowledge work. He includes a handy CC-licensed worksheet to go with it. Oscar’s original work on this subject was part of my inspiration while working on a way to describe the required facets on an enterprise social network (ESN). I described how I developed the framework, based on the work of Oscar and others, in a presentation at the Learning Technologies conference in 2014. A recording of my presentation is available as well.

Image: 9 Digital Collaboration Capabilities: Oscar Berg - http://jarche.com

As Jason Freidenfelds considered his next career move in 2007, somewhere in the back of his mind, he had already begun to think about parenthood. Though he and his wife, Sabrina, didn’t have their first child, Amelia, until four years later, Jason wanted to find an employer that would help him through that difficult life stage.

Venture capital financing rounds in the U.S. dropped 24 percent between 3Q 2014 and 1Q 2015, falling from 1,651 investments to 1,262 last quarter-the largest consecutive decline since the financial crisis and the fewest number of rounds since 4Q 2010. While this represents the first significant decline in VC activity in the last four years, the amount of capital invested remains stable. This supports the notion that VCs are becoming increasingly selective and are investing more capital across fewer rounds. The increased time and money being poured into late-stage companies and the dwindling number of first financings of startups is driving this trend. In 1Q 2015, first financings were the lowest since 3Q 2009, totaling 278 first financings in 1Q 2015-a 62 percent decrease from 1Q 2012.

It’s no secret: innovation is difficult for well-established companies. By and large, they are better executors than innovators, and most succeed less through game-changing creativity than by optimizing their existing businesses.

Yet hard as it is for such organizations to innovate, large ones as diverse as Alcoa, the Discovery Group, and NASA’s Ames Research Center are actually doing so. What can other companies learn from their approaches and attributes?

The most recent jobless rates, housing permits averaged over three years to 2015, 2013 gross domestic product and the number of incoming residents in 2014 provide a glimpse of which U.S. metropolitan areas are thriving and which ones lag as the country recovers from the Great Recession. The indicators show the top 10 metro areas for economic vitality are in Texas, South Dakota, Colorado, Iowa, North Dakota and North Carolina. Hover over each metro area to see how it is faring.

Across industries, data and advanced analytics are being used to personalize products and services, generate more impact at lower cost, and improve the user experience. Education is another field that stands to benefit from this trend: there is much evidence that data-fueled learning tools can dramatically improve student outcomes. The effective use of student data in K–12 schools—in fact, in most of the education system—is nascent, however. Schools, and in particular public schools, have limited budgets and may find it difficult to prioritize investment in data-driven tools and technologies. School systems are enormously complex, which can make it challenging to implement new programs. And the use of student data raises questions about issues such as privacy, the possibility that personal information could be accessed by or sold to unauthorized third parties, and, more broadly, the ways in which data will be collected and used both inside and outside the school system.

Venture-capital firms continued to pour money into China in the first three months of 2015, putting the industry on course for another massive year. They were particularly fond of the consumer-services sector, which spawned eight of the top 10 deals and made up 67% of the overall investment.

Investors injected a combined $6.53 billion into venture-backed Chinese companies in the first quarter, which was down marginally from the record-breaking $6.86 billion committed in the fourth quarter of 2014 but well above the historical trend, data published by VentureSource show. Just three months into the year, the industry has already invested 40% of the record $16.21 billion that it committed to Chinese startups in 2014.

A recent national report found Washington state's biotech venture capital funding faltering in early 2015. But that report doesn't tell the full story. Factoring in the life sciences industry overall, the first quarter of this year fared much better. In Washington state there were about $22.8 million of life science venture capital funding transactions in the first quarter of the year, according to the Washington Biotechnology & Biomedical Association. That's compared to just $500,000 in biotech VC funding recorded in a report by MoneyTree compiled by PricewaterhouseCoopers and the National Venture Capital Association.

Venture capital investments as a whole are not in a bubble, said Ben Horowitz, co-founder and partner at Andreessen Horowitz, in a one-on-one conversation with Kara Swisher, co-CEO at Revere Digital and co-executive editor at Re/code, at the Milken Institute Global Conference on Tuesday.

Mr. Horowitz said opportunities are larger than ever today. He cited Slack as an example of one of his investments, which he believes could replace e-mail for organizations. “People really want to believe (VC) is a bubble.” If people think it's a bubble, it's probably not, he added.

Image: "Ben Horowitz at TechCrunch Disrupt" by TechCrunch - http://www.flickr.com/photos/tcdisrupt/4640172908/. Licensed under CC BY 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons - http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ben_Horowitz_at_TechCrunch_Disrupt.jpg#/media/File:Ben_Horowitz_at_TechCrunch_Disrupt.jpg

Paul Martino has a theory about venture capital: groupthink is killing it.

A few years back, Martino was fresh off selling his media analytics company when he noticed an odd gap in the investment marketplace. There were tons of investors vying to be first to discover hot new technology startups. There was also stiff competition among established venture firms for a spot in the late-stage mega-rounds to finance companies that had already made it big. But few investors operated in the middle.