Our system of higher education is out of whack with the future, and with innovation; and it is at direct odds with what we say we believe. Not only are our universities not teaching innovation or delivering an innovation experience, they seem to be doing their best to destroy innovative thinking in young people.  This is not intentional, but it may be all the more insidious for being unplanned, unnoticed and unseen.

Another battle for bandwidth was joined this week, once again pitting cable companies and their allies against advocates for the next generation of automobiles.

It came as Sens. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and Cory Booker (D-N.J.) revived a bill that got little traction last year. The senators want to speed up a federal decision on whether an unused bit of bandwidth should be used for things like cable WiFi hotspots.

The American International Toy Fair is the stuff of dreams—both childhood and adult. All the newest toys, including magnetic sand, remote-controlled pterodactyls, stuffed-animal Grumpy Cats and endless construction sets, are not only on display throughout three massive floors—they’re unboxed. With wide eyes, Scientific American scoured the aisles in New York City’s Javits Convention Center this February for the standout science and technology toys of 2015. Here are our favorite six:

Image: WowWee 

Why do a few entrepreneurs, like Steve Jobs and Elon Musk, seem to come up with all the real innovations, while the majority of business leaders seem stuck in the rut of linear thinking? I have always wondered if innovation required some rare gene mutation, or whether I might be missing a simple formula for unlocking the ability in any intelligent business person to innovate.

WILMINGTON, Ohio (AP) – Ohio needs to move beyond its Rust Belt roots, liberate its small businesses through tax cuts and energize the next generation of schoolchildren through educational innovation if it wants to continue to flourish, Gov. John Kasich said during Tuesday’s State of the State address.

The second-term Republican called upon state lawmakers gathered at the Roberts Centre in Wilmington, southwest of Columbus, to support his budget’s proposed tax cuts and education formula changes and to resist pressure from special interests.

The reality how “Shark Tank” has become one of the most popular programs on television and has helped the wider public hear the term “angel investor” and what they do.  And likely the Sharks have invested in and coached many entrepreneurs, helping those companies become successful.

But I really liked a news article last week - “Dallas Health Startup Investors Are Angels, Not Sharks” - because it distinguished many angel investors from the maneuvering and other drama that happens on the TV show.  In my opinion, the article nailed it:

Image: Marianne Hudson, ACA Executive Director 

In Canada, growth is moving west, but not all the way. The big growth now is in the Prairies between central Canada and British Columbia, the Canadian part of the Great Plains.

Yet you can’t talk about metropolitan Canada without first mentioning the Toronto region.

Image: http://www.newgeography.com 

The week Nazi tanks began their march through the Low Countries en route to Paris, hosiery counters across America were preparing for an invasion of a different sort. On May 15, 1940, on what would be termed N-Day or Nylon Day, millions of American women from coast to coast queued up in lines for an unveiling that even Apple could only dream of today. Why the frenzy? For the chance to buy a pair of $1.25 nylon stockings — the miracle synthetic fabric developed in a DuPont lab 80 years ago this month and the brainchild of an ex-Harvard chemist who never lived to see the riots, or the revenues, generated by his wondrous invention.

Image: http://www.ozy.com 

A duo that helped develop numerous New York startups at Betaworks Studio LLC have closed their first-time fund with almost $8 million to back budding companies in the city. Nicholas Chirls and Alex Lines are running their new investment firm, Notation Capital, from a renovated space above a brewery in Brooklyn's Gowanus neighborhood. Close by are the offices of another early-stage fund Brooklyn Bridge Ventures . Both firms call themselves "pre-seed."...

Margaret Thatcher famously claimed to need only four hours of sleep a night. Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer reportedly gets four to six, and fashion executive Tom Ford boasts of a mere three. But the rest of us need more sleep and, increasingly, we aren’t getting it. Globalization, flex hours and the work-at-home smartphone ever aglow are robbing many workers of sleep, and the consequences go beyond coming into the office with dark circles under the eyes. Several recent studies find that productivity, creativity and workplace morale are all taking a hit as a quickening capitalist society and the human need for getting to REM jostle for attention.

Growing up in Cuba, Jose Pimienta didn’t see the Internet until 2006. He and his friends taught themselves computer programming with a Russian textbook on the Pascal programming language that had been translated into Spanish. Even in university, when he finally had access to the Internet, Pimienta, now 27, was limited to 20 megabytes per month of data — a small fraction of what fits on a thumb drive today. Yet, in 2013 when PayPal hosted its first-ever global hackathon competition in San Jose, Calif., with a $100,000 purse, Pimienta and two partners placed third for developing a peer-to-peer lending app called LoanPal.

"Tell me about your greatest weakness."

It’s an interview bomb that’s capable of throwing off even the most prepared candidates—and 90% of the time, it does.

At least, that’s according to Melissa Llarena, a career coach who’s spent the past 10 years helping professionals successfully navigate job transitions, craft compelling résumés—and expertly handle the "weakness" ask with grace.

You won’t see interns at any of these 25 companies fetching coffee, doing data entry, or providing mind-numbing support work. The top internship programs in America in 2015 instead provide eager students and recent graduates real-world experience alongside talented coworkers and superiors.

Image: http://www.fastcompany.com 

When we talk about mentorship in the workplace, we often focus on finding one person who can help to guide us through the challenges we will face at work. It might be better to think about the set of people you need to have around you to help you succeed.

With that in mind, here are a few people who should be part of your mentoring team.

Are you having a tough time finding financing for your small business or just don’t know where to turn? Today there are more financing opportunities out there than ever before — if you know where to look. We tapped into the expertise of Linda Jenkins (pictured), CEO of the Gold Alliance Group, for some advice. She is the author of “Creative Financing: How to Get a Small Business Loan Without a Banker” and provides consulting for business owners seeking creative financing ideas.

I've been through a couple of cycles in tech now, and in the good times, everything sounds like a good idea, and in the bad times, everything sounds like a bad idea. Everyone thought Yo was the top, but even the Yo app is useful. There are worse venture capital-backed ideas out there. I have seen them.

Startups have seemingly never been more popular, particularly in the U.S. Perhaps there’s something in the American spirit that appeals to striking out on your own, or perhaps it’s that Internet connectivity and cloud computing have theoretically made it possible to create and grow scalable businesses from most anywhere. Investors like Steve Case and Brad Feld are betting on companies outside Silicon Valley, predicting that “the rise of the rest” will geographically level the entrepreneurial playing field and make startup communities more prevalent throughout the country.

A popular sport evolving over dinner tables across the United States is the discussion of whether tech is going to kill or create jobs. Behind the boom in tech is the discussion of “The Internet of Things.” The Internet of Things (IoT) is an all – encompassing term depicting the changing landscape of how data is leveraged by big industry. 

image: http://www.freedigitalphotos.net 

Despite a thriving national innovation economy - VC funding hit its highest total since 2001 in 2014 - the country's productivity growth has slowed tremendously, averaging less than half its historical rate since 2011. So, the innovation economy is good. But the economy? Not so much.

To tackle this dichotomy, Capital Ideas - Chicago Booth School of Business’ monthly video series - invited a panel of experts to discuss how the U.S. economy is impacted by innovation and if the latter can save the former.

There is little consensus as to whether firms that find themselves spun off from other companies – either as new, standalone companies, or under the stewardship of new parent companies – perform better or worse than they did before. An oft-cited 1992 study found that, on average, the performance of divested units after the spin-off does not improve—and is just as likely to decline—compared with the three years before divestment. But a study from 1999 found that long-run performance of both the former parent company and the divested unit is strongly positive, provided that the spin-off increases the company’s focus. A 2010 meta-analysis detailed many of the different issues that make divestiture so hard to evaluate consistently.