Listening is often touted as one of the most important skills a good leader can have. Then why do so many of us feel like we’re not being heard?

"I think the main reasons people don’t listen is often because they are already overwhelmed inside their mind—meaning, they don’t have bandwidth available to take in new information or data," says psychiatrist and University of California, Los Angeles professor Mark Goulston, author of Just Listen: Discover the Secret of Getting Through to Absolutely Anyone.

WASHINGTON – The Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) today highlighted that many of its innovative projects are making significant technical and commercial progress towards ensuring America’s economic and energy security. At the start of the sixth annual ARPA-E Energy Innovation Summit, the Agency emphasized that their projects are continuing to form new companies, strategic partnerships, and secure private sector funding to help move ARPA-E technologies closer to the market and provide options to transform the U.S. and global energy landscape. 

When you spend decades working with executives and business leaders, you really can’t help but observe what works and doesn’t work over the long haul. One thing I’ve noticed, it’s not intrinsic characteristics or personal habits that determine whether you’re successful or not. It’s your behavior.

What do I mean by “behavior?” How you react under long-term stress. Whether you meet your commitments or not. How you interact with others. Your attitude toward customers. How hard you’re willing to work to do the job right. Whether you’re focused and disciplined or scattered and distracted. That sort of thing.

Marketers should be thinking about crowdfunding similarly to how they thought about social media 12-14 years ago.

"It's going to be the next big pillar in digital marketing," Jerry Needel, senior vice president of sales and marketing at Indiegogo, says. "Very similar to social media where independent social media consultants popped up, we'll see the same with crowdfunding. Fast forward 12-24 months and most major marketing agencies will have crowdfunding experts or arms within them. most major marketing agencies will have crowdfunding experts or arms within them."

The University of Pittsburgh and UPMC hope research technologies will make it to market much faster by way of a new commercialization agreement between the two institutions.

The key to the Pitt-UPMC partnership, announced Friday morning, is a pre-drafted commercialization agreement template that could eliminate weeks or even months of negotiation between researchers and the hospital system. It stipulates terms for licensing, royalty arrangements and equity in new companies, among other potential considerations.

Venture capitalists structure and market their funds based on a ten-year fund life. In actuality, only about 7 percent of funds liquidate within a decade, and recent data on fund duration indicate that the median fund takes slightly longer than 14 years to end.

The problem for limited partners is that we bear the costs of longer than expected VC fund lives — the stranded capital, greater illiquidity and additional management fees — but are seldom compensated for doing so.

Angels seem to be everywhere these days.

A whopping 95% of the startups in the U.S. in 2012 were funded by angel investors. And the numbers continue to rise.

Angel investors, a.k.a. business angels, are affluent accredited investors, typically successful entrepreneurs or retired business people, who invest their own money informally in startup companies. To lessen the high risk involved, many angel investors join angel networks in which they share their knowledge and expertise, and pool their investment capital. The most sophisticated angels become known as “super angels,” insightful and well-connected players in the startup business space.

Give your shoes a rest.

You shouldn't just slip on the same trusty pair of dress shoes day after day.

Why? Because if you let them rest they'll stay alive that much longer.

"The best way to extend the life of your shoes is to rotate your shoes and use quality shoe trees after each wear," said Jim Kass, vice president of operations for Allen Edmonds shoe company. "If you wear the same pair everyday, your shoes don't have ample time to dry and they won't maintain their shape."

For the past 15 years or so, ever since the tech industry began its recovery from the dot-com bust, observers have rushed to declare a new "bubble."

With each successive increase in the valuations of companies like Google, Facebook, Twitter, Uber, Pinterest, Snapchat, skeptics have dismissed the growth as a "fad" and the extraordinary and real value created as a delusion. 

Image: http://www.businessinsider.com

So you might never have given birth to a baby or a business, and if that’s the case then you’re going to find yourself either terrified or saying “easy peasy, what’s the big deal?” If you have given birth to either, then you will definitely understand the pain and pleasures associated with being an entrepreneur and/or being a parent.

Image: http://ventureburn.com

Irish firms with international trade links are more likely to invest in innovation; have a higher probability of adopting new technologies; and are, in general, more productive than firms serving only the domestic market, according to new research. A study carried out by the Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI) found foreign-owned firms had significantly higher innovation expenditure per employee compared to firms that served only the home market.

Image: Research was based on data from Community Innovation Survey data over the period between 2004 and 2008. Photograph: Danny Lawson/PA Wire

MOSCOW, Feb. 20 (Xinhua) -- In the western outskirts of Moscow, a complex of colorful buildings stand out in the snow-clad wilderness. Inside the buildings, people are engrossed in what they called innovation.

It is the Skolkovo Innovation Center, a high-tech park of 23,000 square meters created on the initiative of then Russian President Dmitry Medvedev in 2010. It is also known as Russia's "Silicon Valley".

Russia has long been successful in science and technology development, with a long list of Nobel Prize winners in the field. Facing the tide of dazzling technological innovations in the digital era, the country sees no reason for it to be left behind.

Organizations such as edX, Coursera, Udacity, Saylor, OLI and a range of others like the United Kingdom’s long-established Open University will continue to create and refine an ever-larger catalogue of college courses that anyone in the world with an Internet connection can take, for free. Over time, those courses will be organized into sequences that approximate the scope of learning we associate with college majors.

Image: (Illustration by Doug Chayka)

Alvin Kowalik has purchased many General Motors Co. pickup trucks over the years. But last year, the cattle rancher in Selma, Texas, tried something new, and purchased a pickup through GM’s Shop-Click-Drive website. “I found the truck, listed my trade-in and was given the sales price. A nice lady from the dealership calls me, we made a deal, they drove it out and I signed the papers,” Mr. Kowalik said.

If checking your email is the first thing you do when you get to work, you may want to reconsider your priorities. Strategy expert Dr. Ron Friedman suggests a better way to be the most productive throughout the whole work day.

For more strategy and workplace tips, check out his book: "The Best Place To Work: The Art And Science Of Creating An Extraordinary Workplace."  

Virtually all of the young executives I work with want to be good managers and mentors. They just don’t have the time — or so they believe. “I could either bring in a new deal, or I could take one of my people out for lunch to talk about their career,” a financial services leader told me recently. “In this industry and in this market, which one do you think I’m going to pick?”

Are your scouts so busy looking outside for new knowledge they’re not understanding what your company really needs?

To maintain a competitive advantage in a global economy it is increasingly important that multinational corporations (MNCs) have the ability to tap into new ideas and technologies beyond their boundaries.

Several years ago, Alex Iskold wrote a great overview of What It Is Like To Sell Your First Company. I thought it was a great description and encourage every entrepreneur who has never been through the sale of a company to read it. Rereading Alex’s post inspired me to write my first person account of selling my first company. I’m sure I’ll get stuff wrong since it was over 21 years ago (I was 27.)

There has been a steady drumbeat of reports in the press and elsewhere that the heyday of globalization is over.1 Since the financial crisis, growth in global trade volumes has slowed. Global financial flows are hanging at levels almost 70 percent below their peak.2 Meanwhile, rising wages in China and shifting energy dynamics have challenged lengthy global supply chains.3

image: http://www.freedigitalphotos.net