I’m sure that every one of us who has been out in the business world for a few years can look back with perfect hindsight and name a few college courses that we should have taken. What’s more disconcerting to me is that I can name a few that aren’t usually even offered, resulting in more than a few students graduating ill-prepared for the real business world!

"It's a Rubik's Cube."

That's what New Enterprise Associates general partner Harry Weller told me about the monster venture capital firm's philosophy regarding the management of its giant funds. The firm has raised more than $13 billion across 14 funds since its inception in 1977, the last three of which have been between $2.3 billion and $2.6 billion.

What he means by the Rubik's Cube comparison: The Chevy Chase, Md., company, one of the largest venture capital firms in the world, devotes certain portions of its funds to certain sectors, certain geographic areas and companies at certain levels of maturity, as if each was along one axiom of the cube.

Image: Harry Weller likens NEA's investment allocations to a Rubik's Cube. Joanne S. Lawton

In this week's terrifying news, a woman in Australia captured an octopus slithering onto land to capture an unsuspecting crab in its clutches before plunging back into the ocean for dinnertime.

Now that we know that octopi are equal-opportunity predators, we have to consider the fact that they are almost certainly testing the waters for total land domination. It's probably a good time for the human race to figure out how we can all grow six extra arms so it's an even fight.

Electronic Frontier Foundation group claims that the US patent system undermines innovation by allowing big companies to intimidate and punish small start-up firms. WASHINGTON (Sputnik) – The US patent system undermines innovation by allowing big companies to intimidate and punish small start-up firms, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) advocacy group said in a new report.

“The patent system is in crisis. Patents — particularly software patents — have become a tool for intimidation and expensive litigation, chilling the very innovation the patent system was supposed to encourage,” the report, which was issued Monday, said.

Men benefit from their connections more than women, especially when they are young.

One of the most coveted titles for Wall Street analysts is that of the “All America Research Team” (AA), an all-star title given to those voted as top analysts by thousands of fund managers in an opinion poll organised by the Institutional Investor magazine. The result of this annual poll is prominently featured in the October edition each year and winners of the AA titles are celebrated by their employers and sought after by rival banks.

The opinion poll is largely subjective, asking institutional investors to evaluate analysts on a dozen or so dimensions. The top of the list includes industry knowledge, communication, responsiveness and written reports. Actual forecast accuracy appears near the bottom of the list.

Last November in the town of Wuzhen, China hosted its first large international summit on Internet governance and cybersecurity. Many felt the step was long overdue. After all, China has the world's largest population of Web users—more than 600 million and climbing. Internet players of this stature have a responsibility to shoulder some of the burden of leadership. Right?

Image: Eleanor Davis

Everything about China is big, including its cancer problem. In some wealthier cities, like Beijing, cancer is now believed to be the most frequent killer. Air pollution, high rates of smoking, and notorious “cancer villages” scarred by industrial pollution are increasing death rates around the country. Liver cancer in particular is four times as prevalent as it is in the West, in part because one in 14 people in China carry hepatitis B, which puts them at risk. Of all the people worldwide who die of cancer each year, some 27 percent are Chinese.

Image: http://www.technologyreview.com

Noah is a six-year-old suffering from a disorder without a name. This year, his physicians will begin sending his genetic information across the Internet to see if there’s anyone, anywhere, in the world like him.

A match could make a difference. Noah is developmentally delayed, uses a walker, speaks only a few words. And he’s getting sicker. MRIs show that his cerebellum is shrinking. His DNA was analyzed by medical geneticists at the Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario. Somewhere in the millions of As, Gs, Cs, and Ts is a misspelling, and maybe the clue to a treatment. But unless they find a second child with the same symptoms, and a similar DNA error, his doctors can’t zero in on which mistake in Noah’s genes is the crucial one.

I started advocating for women in engineering in 2006 when my dean at Duke’s Pratt School of Engineering, Kristina Johnson, made me aware of the declining numbers of women entering the field. As a former tech entrepreneur, I found the situation alarming. I had spent the last few years researching how education, immigration, and entrepreneurship drive innovation. The fact that half of our population was being left out of the fields most important to our future seemed deeply wrong to me.

Image: Vivek Wadhwa

Even as new ways for marketers to reach their audiences continue to emerge and gain popularity, email marketing remains one of the most effective online strategies for growing your business.

In fact, recent research from leading industry firms finds that:

• There are 2.5 billion email users worldwide. 
• Seventy-two percent of U.S. adults online send or receive emails via smartphone at least weekly. 
• Email is the preferred channel for receiving commercial messages for 68 percent of consumers. 
• Eighty-one percent of online shoppers in the U.S. are more likely to make both online and in-store purchases due to emails based on previous shopping preferences and behaviors. 
• Nineteen percent of consumers — about 1 in 5 — read every email newsletter they receive, just to see if there’s an offer in them.

BioHealth Innovation, Inc. (BHI), a Montgomery County innovation intermediary is seeking an energetic and motivated life science professional for the role of an Entrepreneur-in-Residence (EIR) focused in the Medical Device space. The EIR program was setup at BioHealth Innovation to:

Retain and bring entrepreneurial talent to the Maryland Ecosystem Build sustainable life science startups that will add value within the healthcare system and also build upon the existing infrastructure Connect resources including Institutions, technology assets, people and money within Maryland as well as attract it to Maryland

The angel investing horror story goes something like this: An entrepreneur publicly solicits seed capital under new securities laws, but accidentally accepts investment from an unaccredited investor. When this violation of JOBS Act rules is discovered, the entire investment round must be rolled back and the money—if there’s any left—returned. It’s the ultimate lose-lose situation.

“Everything shuts down and everyone loses money,” says Yi-Jian Ngo, managing director of the Alliance of Angels, a long-tenured angel group in Seattle.

"According to most studies, people’s No. 1 fear is public speaking. No. 2 is death. Death is No. 2. Does that sound right? This means to the average person, if you go to a funeral, you’re better off in the casket than delivering the eulogy," Jerry Seinfeld famously quipped.

All kidding aside, speaking anxiety can be a very serious problem for those of you who experience it. Some of you may experience speaking anxiety as a tickle that sparks an adrenaline rush. Some of you may experience speaking anxiety as a headwind—you feel the pressure, but you can push through. And some of you may experience speaking anxiety as a weight burdening you down, stopping you, and frustrating you.

Do you know what your employees think of you?

If you haven’t asked anyone or spent any time with your team lately, then you probably don’t.

Some leaders will say that they don’t care about being liked, but I can tell you from personal experience that making an effort to win over your employees, earn their trust, and make them happy can make a huge difference in your company.

Systems for additive manufacturing, or 3-D printing as it’s better known, represent just a fraction of the $70 billion traditional machine-tool market worldwide.1 Yet given the likelihood that this technology will start to realize its promise over the next five to ten years, many leading companies seem surprisingly unaware of its potential—and poorly organized to reap the benefits.

Mark Twain once wrote, “I have tried getting up early, and I have tried getting up late—and the latter agrees with me best.”

I’m with you, Mark. I abhor waking up. Every morning, I silence the first of my iPhone’s three alarms (set for 5:30, 5:45, and 6 a.m., thanks to the fact that I work East Coast hours from the West Coast), bend myself reluctantly out of bed, pick crud out of my eyes, and try to convince myself that today is going to be the day I become a morning person. It never works, though—in part, I suspect, because I’ve never learned the proper methods.

Most companies live between 40 and 50 years. 

So there must be something about the businesses that have persisted for 300, 500, or 1,300 years.

When we dove into the data on the world's oldest companies, a few themes became clear — like that people have wanted to eat food, get drunk, learn things, and maybe kill each other once in a while for a really long time. 

In my more than 20 years as a venture capitalist, I’ve had a lot of fun working on truly incredible companies and have thrived on being in the uniquely exciting position to help frame the future of technology and the teams that make that happen.

From the early days around the dawn of the personal computer to my more recent investments in wearables, the excitements and challenges of being in this business are as invigorating today as they were on day one.

You’ve scored an interview, and it’s time to prepare. Should you believe your colleague who says to wear a suit even though the company is a tech start-up? Should you trust your friend who tells you, “Just be yourself”? There’s so much conflicting advice out there—how do you know what tactics are best?

This assessment will test your knowledge. Consider each piece of conventional wisdom below and indicate whether or not you think it’s in line with expert opinion and research.

Can purpose-built technology cities turn regions in emerging economies into the next Silicon Valley? This is what some may be asking after plans by Russia and now Kenya to boost their startup scenes through massive hub cities have recently come under fire.

In December critics told the UK’s Guardian newspaper that Kenya’s Konza Techno City, a planned US$14-billion techno city, won’t solve financing problems facing the country’s rising tech scene.