I’m a big fan of helpful and motivational content, especially business-minded podcasts and videos of keynote speakers from conferences around the world. TED Talks, a collection of thousands of presentations from some of the most brilliant entrepreneurial minds, is my favorite source of video motivation.

If there's one thing I've learned from starting Hack the Entrepreneur and interviewing more than 100 entrepreneurs in the past seven months, it's that not everyone feels like they are an entrepreneur -- at least not all the time.

The era of stable lifetime jobs for business professionals within a single company are gone. Companies are rightsized quickly now as markets change rapidly, and business professionals are quick to jump to new opportunities for growth and survival, with no ties to special benefits or pension plans. Thus smart business professionals are rapidly becoming the new entrepreneurs.

Data storage and the administration of data storage systems have always been important areas for any company, because business data is the very foundation upon which most businesses are built. Any manufacturing company, for instance, must rely on its stored data to maintain orders for product, move orders through the assembly process and ship them to the appropriate customer location.

A call on the Italian policy makers. We urge you to read or re-read the essay “The crisis of the tax state” that Schumpeter published in 1918. Following the thinking of the influential Austro-American economist, “capitalist reality is first and last a process of change”. The Italian stationary capitalism is a contradiction in terms.

The interference of policy makers in the process of new venture creation is the stronger the higher the number of them embedded in the public sector or coming from bodies and businesses collateral to the public administration. Hence the prevalence of regulatory policies, which make the bureaucracy of the central and local public administrations grow.

Bad News: If you take notes in a meeting using your laptop, or if you create a to-do list using an app, you might be undermining your ability to recall the information later.

A recent study published in Psychological Science found that the pen is mightier than the keyboard when it comes to remembering what you just jotted down.

Image: http://www.fastcompany.com/

ERIE, Pa. -- Penn State Erie, The Behrend College, will lead a three-year, $1.5 million initiative to spur business innovation and support entrepreneurs across the Erie region. The effort will boost small businesses and start-ups by creating a network of educational, industry and community institutions that are committed to improving the region’s economy.

Image: http://news.psu.edu

Frankfort — Developing better cancer drugs, preventing mosquito-borne diseases and improving food safety. Those are just some of the innovative projects Kentucky companies are developing.

To help these companies turn their research into reality, Gov. Steve Beshear Monday announced that six high-tech businesses have been awarded a total of $1 million as part of a program to support and attract technology-based small businesses to Kentucky.

Back in April 2011, at a biotech conference in San Francisco, a panel convened to discuss how hard it was to build biotech companies that could push through long, costly clinical trials before a drug comes to market. One panelist hedged to say, well, at least the financial reticence had a silver lining: there was no danger of a bubble. Biotech venture veteran Camille Samuels responded, “Hey, I’ll take a bubble!”

Image: http://www.xconomy.com

Google has a small set of engineers trying to crack the tech world’s battery problem, the Wall Street Journal reports. Housed within the Google X lab, the four-member team—reportedly under the direction of former Apple battery master Ramesh Bhardwaj—has a lot riding on it. 

There is a famous nine dot problem that cannot be solved unless you break its imagined boundaries — you have to “think outside the box.” But by pinning its mission to the phrase “reform in education,” the new publication Bright is trapping itself inside the box.

While some useful ideas may come out of Bright, it is likely to miss the real revolution that is fast unfolding: That is, the end of academia and its replacement by a completely new medium attuned to the science, technology, and demands of the Knowledge Age economy.

WASHINGTON – At the Intel Developer Forum last week, the company announced plans to spend $24 million on a mass-market accelerator program in China.

Intel claims the program is designed to allow Chinese innovators and entrepreneurs to more easily access Intel technologies and find a global market for their products. In addition to their mass-market accelerator program, Intel plans to spend about $13 million on an angel foundation, which will seek to connect investors with tech startups across China.

Applications for H-1B visas allowing U.S. businesses to hire foreign workers in science, engineering and computer programming totaled a record 233,000 for fiscal 2016, according to government figures released on Monday.

A maximum of 85,000 of the work visas, including 20,000 for holders of master's degrees, are available each year under limits set by Congress, despite years of heavy lobbying by tech companies to raise the cap.

Americans have long been bewildered by the French paradox: that despite consuming a dream diet full of cheese, baguettes and red wine, people in France have generally low rates of coronary heart disease. By some estimates, the average French person eats 57 pounds of cheese each year—more than in any other country—while the average American eats a measly 34.

Come June, Redpoint Ventures will be opening a new office in the quiet little enclave of South Park in San Francisco. The firm is the latest in a long line of venture firms to make the move here, establishing an official presence in the city along with their original locations in Silicon Valley.

In the last two years, a big chunk of investors have ended up within a one block radius of each other in South Park, with eight firms now staking out territory in the tiny historic neighborhood.

Image: Carmel DeAmicis

Investing in startup companies is a very risky business, but can be very rewarding if and when the investments do pay off. The rise of mobile technology and innovations, such as cloud computing, the sharing economy, and bitcoin, has helped to spur this latest round of tech entrepreneurship. The majority of new companies or products simply do not make it, so the risk of losing one's entire investment is a real possibility. The ones that do make it, however, can produce very high returns on investment. (See also: What Exactly is a Startup?)

National Coordinator for Health Information Technology Karen B. DeSalvo, M.D., M.P.H., M.Sc., announced today the availability of $1 million in grant funds to support community projects for the Community Interoperability Health Information Exchange (HIE) Program. The funding will help support and enable the flow of health information at the community level, leading to better care and better health.

While business relocations garner the most media attention, much of Oakland’s tech sector is homegrown, with nearly 500 companies employing 7000 people.

The City’s creativity and cross-sector innovation coupled with affordable workspaces are fertile ground for startups.  An important component of Oakland’s tech economy is the local accelerators that provide tech companies with support around financing, business design and growth strategies among other things. These mission-driven accelerators reflect Oakland’s diverse economy and bring cutting-edge approaches to supporting local businesses and growing their industries.

Image: http://vator.tv

The African Innovation Foundation has just named the continent’s top 10 entrepreneurs through its annual Innovation Prize for Africa (IPA). After receiving 925 applications from over 41 countries, the organisation has decided on inspiring initiatives that focus on diverse industries from agriculture, to education and e-health. Four of the finalists hail from South Africa while Kenya follows with two of its own representatives. The awards ceremony will be held on 12 and 13 May in Skhirat, Morocco where the finalists will stand a chance of winning their share of US$150 000.

While your parents may tell you “wait until you graduate,” or your friends might claim you’re “working too hard,” don’t let others dissuade you from pursuing your dreams and launching a startup while still in college. Plenty of successful businesses have shown that it’s not only possible, but also incredibly exciting.