On Oct. 17, the Weiss Tech House and the Technology Entrepreneurship Club hosted the first annual Penn Innovation Conference. The conference, held at Huntsman Hall, was designed as a consolidation of networking programs and opportunities within Penn, ranging from the legal clinics to various networking opportunities within the Wharton School. For those who didn’t apply for the conference, there were four preconference seminars.

Image: Dr. Mike Zisman (left) and Dr. Vijay Kumar (right) lead the second keynote event discussing the state of innovation at the Penn Innovation Conference this past Saturday | Courtesy of Ishmam Ahmed 

Unicorns are supposed to be rare. They're also supposed to be young.

A "unicorn," in the tech patois of Silicon Valley, is a private company that has reached a $1 billion valuation. They're usually young, hot startups that has amassed hundreds of millions of dollars in funding from eager investors and breathless coverage in the press. Think Uber, Xiaomi, Snapchat, Evernote.

There are 29 unicorns left from the original 43 in 2014 — and, as Goldman Sachs analysts say, they're getting a little musty.

Image: http://mashable.com 

At some conferences, you have a clear networking agenda. There’s a list of people you’d like to meet, and it’s frustrating when someone attaches themselves to you and won’t let you move on. Other times, though, you may be the one who’s unsure of yourself. Perhaps you don’t know anyone there, or you’re in a new company or industry and don’t know whom you’d like to connect with.

Venture capitalists spread $16.3 billion over more than 1,000 technology, media, healthcare and other companies in the U.S. from July through September, driving a seventh straight huge quarter for start-up investment.

Barring a collapse in investing this fall, 2015 would mark the biggest year nationally and in Southern California for venture capital investment other than 2000 — when the dot-com boom reached a peak, according to the MoneyTree Report released last week by consulting giant PwC, the National Venture Capital Assn. and Thomson Reuters.

California is one of the dominant U.S. producers of fruits, nuts, vegetables—and tech startups. In the Silicon Valley, the startups sprouting up each season are nurtured by a host of accelerators and incubators as well as VCs and angel investors providing seed funding. That still leaves some startups hungry for cash, but California is not one of the states that have opened up a much-touted alternative route to startup fundraising—a controversial method called equity crowdfunding.

Maintaining a healthy work-life balance is a challenge, even when you have a job you love and an understanding boss.

According to its most recent survey of employee feedback from about 60,000 company reviews, Glassdoor found that work-life balance has actually been creeping downward in recent years, as employees reported an average work-life balance satisfaction rating of 3.5 in 2009, 3.4 in 2012, and holding at 3.2 since 2013, based on a five-point scale with 1.0=very dissatisfied, 3.0=okay, 5.0=very satisfied.

I presented the McLuhan media tetrad last week in South Africa. (see ‘a world of pervasive networks’ for background on these laws of media). Societies change their basic organizing structures when the primary mode of communication changes (T+I+M+N): from oral, to writing, to print, and now to electric (digital). As we shift our dominant communications medium from print to electric, our organizing methods must change as well. We no longer organize as tribes in ‘developed’ countries, but we still have strong cultural and familial bonds. Our institutions have not disappeared but they are inadequate for many of the modern challenges facing us. Faith in markets is declining, as they are found to be inadequate to share wealth in any equitable fashion. We are seeing an increase in cooperation among many agents in the networked society as they try to create new ways living together and exchanging value.

Image: http://jarche.com 

Under the leadership of Mayor Richard J Berry the City of Albuquerque recently took the unprecedented approach to educate city employees with the Ice House Entrepreneurial Mindset curriculum. Partnering with Central New Mexico Community College, they are helping city employees apply new and innovative thinking to their jobs, thereby better serving the citizens of their communities. More about their efforts can be found in this video.

Around the time the millennial generation started flooding the workforce, alarms were sounded. Managers were told to be wary of these 20-something new hires, who were likely to jump ship at the first whiff of something better. More recently, however, studies have started to dispel the myth of the itinerant millennial. Using data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, for example, the website FiveThirtyEight.com has shown that millennials change jobs less frequently than gen Xers did at the same age.

Image: Illustration by Karolin Schnook - http://www.strategy-business.com

Almost every company will face disruption in 2015: The dynamics of reaching customers are changing, technology shifts are speeding up demand for new products and innovation, and efforts to maintain margins have become a high-wire act. But when you look hard enough, these hurdles represent opportunities. Pulling from Strategy&’s recent analysis of industry trends, we’ve unearthed the hidden strategic gem for the most threatened sectors.

The incoming Prime Minister is promising significant changes in taxation, spending, marijuana policy and even the voting system

Canada’s general elections have concluded with a landslide win for the Liberal Party and their leader, Justin Trudeau, ending the almost 10-year-rule of the Conservative Party of Canada (CPC) and Prime Minister Stephen Harper. A win was never a sure thing for the party, which oscillated between third, second and first place throughout the campaign. On the day itself, many voters complained about issues at polling booths, saying that some of the elections staff didn’t show up on time, or had scrupulous and difficult demands for voter identification. Others claimed to have received premarked or spoiled ballots. Despite all of that, the Liberal Party has usurped the Conservative majority, with Harper stepping down as the leader of the CPC and conceding defeat. Trudeau and his party will now begin the long process of making their mark on the Canadian political landscape and proving to voters that they made the right call.

The biggest question for businesses is whether its business plan is doing all it can to handle unforeseen problems. Some businesses may be bold enough to argue that there is no such thing as a plan for handling unexpected events.

However, there will be some who go by the book by planning ahead and picking a right business plan template, create a holistic step by step strategy and then hire a team that can execute the plan. During the whole planning process, a lot of things can go wrong, this publication seeks to rectify such thoughts by providing you with ten unexpected things every business plan needs.

Success in any industry goes hand-in-hand with innovation -- the ability to produce new ideas; provide better solutions; and pioneer new products. The most successful people are not simply the hardest working, they're the most innovative.

You can hustle and put in endless hours each week, but if you're not stretching your innovative muscles, you'll never achieve breakthroughs and success. From Edison, to Branson, and Cuban, here are 10 habits from the most innovative people:

BELMONT, Calif.--(Business Wire)--SITRI, the innovation center for accelerating the development and commercialization of “More than Moore” (MtM) solutions to power the Internet of Things (IoT), today announced the opening of SITRI Innovations in Belmont, California. This new kind of hardware accelerator was launched into the Bay Area’s rich technology ecosystem during a recent event attended by many of Silicon Valley’s leading investors, technologists, entrepreneurs, and incubators.

Image: http://www.digitaljournal.com 

Many in Singapore will be familiar with the terms kiasu, which means the fear of losing; kiasi, the fear of dying; and kiabo, the fear of having nothing.

Roll them into a mega phobia-ball and you'll understand why few have ventured into the local startup scene, and why the country still sorely lacks the much-needed entrepreneurial spirit.

For all the talk of scaling and hiring and growing, some small businesses will always be one man or one woman shows. And the solopreneurs who run them – like it that way. But running a solo business can be a lot different than running a business with a team behind you. To make it successfully, take a look at these solopreneur tips below.

If you have a great idea for a business and your second thought is to immediately seek small business financing, hold your horses for a moment and ask yourself — why? You need to get three different answers to some small business financing questions before moving forward. If you think that funding is the best option rather than bootstrapping it with your personal resources, be careful!

“Market-oriented” firms are better able to innovate consistently, but getting there requires complex and demanding organisational change.

Seeing a self-contained innovation project through to completion is difficult enough for companies. Thriving in a disruption-defined business climate can be even more complicated. To meet the challenge, firms need to put in place internal innovation processes that will function over the long term. Because no competitive advantage lasts forever, sustained growth and continued high performance require a constant effort to innovate.

Most technologists have little interest in the mechanics of starting and building a business. That’s why I recommend that they find a co-founder who loves business challenges, including marketing and finance. I usually envision a 50-50 ownership split for their efforts, but every engineer believes the technology side deserves the majority share.

Crowdfunding is opening up large amounts of early stage capital for entrepreneurs. As regulators struggle to write new rules for this exploding phenomenon, they might do well to crowdsource their own questions and experiences.

Experimenting with regulatory changes in pursuit of enabling economies to fully leverage promising new ventures is relatively new to most governments around the world. As has been discussed often in this blog, startup-focused policymaking overall is new to even the most entrepreneurial economies--including the United States.