Listening to public radio news and reading media stories, you would think that taxes, money and government debt are the key determinants of America's economic health. Understandable, but wrong. Fiscal and monetary policy matter, of course. But their impact on the economy's dynamism pales in comparison to the effects of creativity, innovation and entrepreneurial risk-taking.

As a student at Harvard Business School, I wrote a paper questioning a basic idea: are debt and equity the best forms of capital for entrepreneurs? The answer, I concluded, was "not always." In doing so, I promoted an alternative: royalty capital. Over the last year, I've served in my personal capacity as a judge or a mentor to a number of business plan competitions - MIT 100-K, MassChallenge, Hult Prize, among others. To my surprise, many entrepreneurs had never heard of royalty capital. Watching them consistently offer away too much equity has me doubling back to the promise of my paper.

CHICAGO (Reuters) - Three out of four U.S. adults have a predicted "heart age" that is older than they are, putting them at increased risk for heart attacks and strokes, government researchers said on Tuesday.

"Your heart may be older than you are. For most adults in the United States, it is," said Dr. Thomas Frieden, director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which released the first study to provide population-level estimates of heart age nationwide.

Turning an idea into reality can be a daunting task for entrepreneurs. Where do you even begin with creating a prototype? Sometimes, you need only look as far as your bathroom.

For Melissa Kieling, starting PackIt was as much to cure her own frustration as it was for anyone else’s. She’d packed her umpteenth lunch for her children when she heard the repetitive complaint from her son about having refrigeration-required food in the sack that was never cold and always soggy by the time he got to lunch.

Google may be catching flak for updating its logo to something that resembles a pre-school's, but it wasn't the only one to update its logo this year.

Some companies, like Quora, only made minor changes. Others, like Oculus, dropped its name entirely.

Nullius in Verba—take nobody’s word for it—is the Royal Society’s great motto. Proof, not prestige, should be the true persuader. So when a group of academic research psychologists decided to take it seriously, the entire discipline was shaken by the results. The Reproducibility Project found it could substantively replicate the results of fewer than 40% of 100 high-profile experiments published in peer-reviewed journals.

Product development of any kind is challenging and full of unknowns, obstacles and pivots.

Medical device product development is certainly no different.

With med devices, when you throw in regulatory bodies, such as FDA and others internationally, it only complicates matters further.

Whether you have just graduated with an advanced degree or you are leaving academia for the public sphere, building a professional résumé after a life in higher eduction is a rude awakening. How do I talk about a decade of research? What if I have no experience outside academia? Here's a guide to building the perfect résumé that fits in all the right stuff from your years in the Ivory Tower.

You’ve prepared your elevator pitch; you’ve selected the perfect interview outfit, and you’ve even thought about what to say if you’re asked the dreaded salary question. But have you done your homework on the company?

This is a glaring mistake many job seekers make—forgetting to think about common, company-specific questions like, "Why do you want to work here?" or even "What do you know about the company?"

Imagine facing another day of work on your computer, full of Skype meetings, email threads and spreadsheets. But instead of rolling out of bed and trucking it to the office, you slide the curtains aside — and gaze upon the open sea and azure sky.

That's the idea of Coboat, whose founders bill it as a revolutionary way to think about and to do work. The concept is similar to coworking spaces like WeWork, NextSpace and dozens of others around the world, except here you may have dolphins sidling up beside you.

Multinational professional services network Price Waterhouse Cooper has released the results of its emerging companies survey. The survey, which forms part of a wider body of research, aimed to explore the challenges and opportunities facing emerging companies in South Africa in the current environment.

It's no surprise that bottle caps, plastic bags and other pieces of trash are washed off the streets and into our waterways every day. Some studies have shown this pollution can amount to 580,000 pieces of plastic per square kilometre in the ocean.

Plastics have a devastating impact on sea life, and according to some estimates, it's only going to get worse.

An important key to business success is managing cash flow so you have enough money on hand to pay bills when they come due. In order to do this, you need to budget for expenses, and expect to have unexpected (or not so obvious) costs. Below are some hidden costs that can drain your cash — unless you plan for them.

Image: http://smallbiztrends.com

Seen in Instagram posts the world over, latte art has become one of the most photographed subjects of the past few years.

But if you’re a fan of those simple heart shapes or letters that your local barista specializes in, then you’re sure to be amazed by a new machine making its way to coffee shops and lounges later this year.

Image: http://smallbiztrends.com

In 2001, the RAND Corporation’s Science and Technology Policy Institute created an index of science and technology capacity for the World Bank. They ranked 150 countries based on their potential to innovate and work with more scientifically advanced nations.

Have these changes had an effect on African nations’ scientific and technological capacity? My study replicated the RAND Index in 2011 to answer this question and suggest which African nations might be best poised to move forward technologically in coming decades.

Image: http://www.techcentral.co.za

Add “boredom detector” to the seemingly endless list of things your smartphone can do. A group of researchers say they’ve developed an algorithm that can suss this out by looking at your mobile activity, considering factors like the time since you last had a call or text, the time of day, and how intensely you’re using the phone.

Regarding Ken Kuang’s “Teaching Entrepreneurs to Do More Than Dream” (op-ed, Aug. 18) on the broken business schools of this country: I went to the Black School of Business at Penn State. I agree more with Mr. Kuang that the current climate caters toward corporate powerhouses, which undoubtedly funnel money to these schools rather than cultivating entrepreneurship. Worst of all, those of us who graduate from business school rarely have the funds and too much debt to start a business.

Social entrepreneurship is on the rise and has become increasingly popular in the last three decades. Social entrepreneurship is seen as a new way of doing business while creating long-lasting and widespread social change.

Social entrepreneurs are developing innovative business models that blend traditional capitalism with solutions that address the long-term needs of society and the planet, tackling chronic social problems ranging from access to power in sub-Saharan Africa to maternal and child health programs in East Asia.

It's impossible to be an entrepreneur without taking a huge amount of risk. Risk is inherent to the whole process, no matter what part of the world you're from. But people take those risks all the time because they believe their ideas are strong and because the payoffs are potentially huge.