As anyone in Silicon Valley knows, engineering jobs are in high demand, but we’re going through a serious skills shortage.

K-12 classroom technology education hasn’t kept up with the demand for qualified engineers, programmers and designers. Code.org, a consortium of big tech firms including Google, Facebook and Microsoft, last month made its case for reform when it wrote a letter to various Senate and House committees calling for computer science to be added to the list of “core academic subjects.”

WASHINGTON — Silicon Valley has an unwritten rule for lobbying consumers: Only do it in an emergency.

That sensibility, driven by sensitivity to users, explains why tech titans are straggling again in Washington’s influence game. At a time when everyone else is using tech tools to organize and mobilize political campaigns, Silicon Valley companies are reluctant to weaponize their own platforms to win policy fights.

The past two weeks were big ones for innovation on the Gulf Coast.

Last Monday, Gulf Coast Community Foundation announced the winner of our inaugural Gulf Coast Innovation Challenge. Healthy Earth–Gulf Coast, as the top team dubbed itself, is creating a sustainable seafood system that stands to transform an industry segment within our region’s Blue Economy.

Northeast Ohio residents know their community is home to some great health care centers, but many of them may not realize the extent to which Cleveland is a recognized as a powerful brand in live-saving biotechnology.

Biohealth is a global economic game-changer, representing a growing industry with good salaries for talented, creative people who are dedicated to making a difference.

Image: Copernicus Therapeutics is hoping a government program aimed at speeding up drug development for rare diseases will help it get into the business of treating cystic fibrosis and boost the area's growing biotech industry. The company is one of only a handful from the region that has been accepted into the program. (Roadell Hickman/The Plain Dealer)

Thank you for writing about why start-ups matter to our local economy ("Why start-ups matter," Nov. 15 editorial). As one who has worked since the mid-1980s to help foster an "entrepreneurial ecosystem" in our region, I've seen many positive developments occur to improve our ecosystem, as you point out in the editorial. The redevelopment of the Gill building in downtown Roanoke into a business accelerator will be another important addition to the ecosystem puzzle, as it will have the potential for housing and nurturing spin-offs from the Virginia Tech Carilion Medical School and Research Center as well as the next Interactive Achievement.

We all know innovation is difficult. Simply agreeing ambitions, timelines, and resources can be challenging. Pipeline protocols can present added complexity. Your teams and partners, to say nothing of management, need your focused time and attention to navigate the process. And then, just when you’ve got everything running smoothly, of course, the business dynamic changes in response to the consumer, your competition, or the direction of your own company. Successful innovation means managing a host of people and moving parts through an elaborate and dynamic process, with no guarantees whatsoever…

Image: http://www.innovationexcellence.com

One the final sessions at SB ’15 London saw Mandar Apte - engineer, Social Innovation Expert and GameChanger at Shell - facilitate a workshop about social innovation inside large organisations and how this empowers the employees and the community at large.

Apte started by demonstrating the power of the relationship economy. He drove home the idea that in this world of instigating innovation, it is important to build relationships.

“An idea can come from anywhere, and whether you recognize that as a brilliant innovation depends on your state of mind. If a person senses you are ignoring or criticizing them, they will not speak to you again. Engage with everyone - you never know how you can help each other,” he said.

Image: Shell  - http://www.sustainablebrands.com

Aspiring entrepreneurs often ask me what to do first when starting a business. Let me assure you, there is no absolute right or wrong, but there is real value in doing things in a sequence that minimizes the risks, optimizes your efforts and generates the best “first impression” on potential investors. Just don’t try to sell your business to investors before it is well established.

KANSAS CITY—When people discuss the "secrets to entrepreneurship," a common theme is finding that one big idea.

"It's my experience that often is a stumbling block. It prevents people from going forward because they think they have to have a big idea," said David Brain, co-founder and former CEO of EPR Properties.

Brain shared his thoughts on entrepreneurship and detailed his next venture Tuesday evening as part of Global Entrepreneurship Week and the Enterprise Center of Johnson County's Venture Lounge.

Image: http://upstart.bizjournals.com - David Brain

Today’s particle accelerators are massive machines, but physicists have been working on shrinking them down to tabletop scales for years. Now the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation has awarded a $US13.5 million grant to Stanford University to develop a working “accelerator on a chip” the size of a shoebox over the next five years.

The international collaboration will build on prior experiments by physicists at SLAC/Stanford and Germany’s Friedrich-Alexander University in Erlangen-Nuremberg. If successful, the prototype could usher in a new generation of compact particle accelerators that could fit on a laboratory bench, with potential applications in medical therapies, x-ray imaging, and even security scanner technologies.

Image: http://www.gizmodo.com.au

They started late one night, the tremors that shook Michael Harding’s whole body when he lay down to sleep. “A bit weird,” thought Harding, then a 23-year-old Australian soldier stationed in Afghanistan. Just days before, he’d been in an hours-long siege in which his second-in-command was shot and killed.

Harding soon started shaking so much that he had to ask a friend to light his cigarettes. He couldn’t drink water from a bottle without pouring it down his shirt, and in the mess hall, his twitches got so spastic that he’d sometimes flip his tray.

There are many conflicting narratives about what drives entrepreneurship, what is important about it, how to measure it, or even what it actually means.

In part, that is why talking about entrepreneurship in a way that uses data and discusses concrete local activity is so important.  2016 will be an inflection point for the Louisville entrepreneurial community: the Velocity Business Accelerator is closing and important local players are attempting to re-invent themselves to respond to a new reality.

Slow wireless information transfer may be a thing of the past, if the thesis of Taneli Riihonen's award-winning doctoral work holds water. Engineering organisations predict that the Finnish innovation could be worth billions of euros if incorporated into new 5G networks.

The doctoral thesis of researcher Taneli Riihonen was awarded the 7,500-euro prize for best engineering thesis of the year on Thursday. The award was given out by the Academic Engineers and Architects in Finland (TEK) and its Swedish counterpart (TFiF). The jury declared that Riihonen's idea may revolutionise global telecommunication and net hundreds of billions of euros.

Image: Dr Taneli Riihonen Image: Mariia Riihonen

It pays to have a college diploma — and preferably more than one.

The linkage of education and income couldn't be clearer in new data collected by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). The typical worker with a master's degree earns 20 percent more than a colleague who holds a bachelor's degree and 98 percent more than somebody who never went beyond high school.

Ever since Regulation A+ became the law in June, I have been inundated with calls from companies excited about the prospect of raising up to $50 million in new capital online through a Mini IPO (initial public offering).

Potential clients I speak to understand that Regulation A+ offerings need approval from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and require an investment of legal, compliance and accounting fees. But when I explain to them that committing to a full-blown marketing plan is likely required to raising significant capital, I usually get blank stares. Once the silence subsides, I generally hear something like this:

Increasing employee engagement, creating a healthier culture and building a world-class organization that sees exceptional growth every year is what all leaders in any industry wants for their organization. If that is the goal for most leaders, then why do so few organizations succeed at the above three?

There are a ton of reasons that may be hindering an organizations success, but one key area that majority of companies completely neglect or refuse to pay any attention to is their employees’ personal dreams and desires.

MIT has announced plans to launch a pilot program in Mongolia that will include initiatives in faculty development, urban planning, and entrepreneurship. Institute President L. Rafael Reif and Gantumur Luvsannyam, the Mongolian minister for education, culture, and science, signed the agreement Wednesday morning at MIT. President Reif expressed his gratitude to Minister Luvsannyam for supporting the program and added: “We are delighted to work with Mongolia on a range of bottom-up activities which will set the basis for larger collaborative projects.”

Image: MIT President L. Rafael Reif (left) and Gantumur Luvsannyam, the Mongolian minister for education, culture, and science, signed an agreement for a new pilot program between MIT and Mongolia. The partnership includes multiple activities planned for the upcoming year, for faculty and professionals as well as students and youth. Photo: Allegra Boverman

KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — All six of Missouri's living governors gathered Friday to tout their administrations' economic development accomplishments and discuss the importance of building trade relationships with foreign countries.

Gov. Jay Nixon said it was the first time he had and past Govs. Kit Bond, John Ashcroft, Roger Wilson, Bob Holden and Matt Blunt had appeared together. Nixon said the largest previous gathering was when five of the governors attended the 2009 funeral of former Gov. Warren Hearnes, who served from 1965 to 1973.

In a world's first, a group of cardiologists has successfully used the eye-wearable device Google Glass to guide the opening up of a chronically blocked right coronary artery in the cardiac cath lab.

Cardiologists from the Institute of Cardiology, Warsaw, Poland's capital city, successfully restored blood flow in the occluded right coronary artery of a 49-year-old male patient assisted by Google Glass with an optical head-mounted display.

Image: http://www.gizbot.com

In May, at a San Francisco talk to mark the 50th anniversary of Moore’s Law, Intel co-founder Gordon Moore said he was surprised chipmakers have kept it going for so long. Two months later, Intel Chief Executive Officer Brian Krzanich said on an earnings call that the pace is indeed slowing—doubling chip density now takes closer to two and a half years, rather than two.