The past five years has seen exponential growth in interest in innovation.  Corporations have increasingly hired Chief Innovation Officers and built capabilities to drive innovation internally.  Entrepreneurial careers have increasingly gained legitimacy in the eyes of Educational Institutions and aspirational Asian parents.  Governments are increasingly seeking to create competitive advantage through the ecosystems they build to support innovation.  We've reached an age where change is accepted as good.  And are fast approaching an age where rapid change is simply …. normal.

Australia’s prosperity depends on being a high performing innovation economy, according to CSIRO chief executive Larry Marshall.  

“In an interconnected world of accelerating technology-driven change, our future prosperity, health and sustainability is closely bound to our capacity for innovation,” he says in a CSIRO strategy paper released this week.

Bioscience companies up to 7 years old can now apply for state funding that was formerly available only to younger companies.

BioInnovation Connecticut, managed by Connecticut Innovations, a state financing entity, invests in bioscience companies to speed the path to commercialization through its CT Bioscience Innovation Fund. Until July 1, only companies 3 years old and younger were eligible to apply, said Margaret Cartiera, vice president and fund manager for BioInnovation CT.

Ray Leach is CEO of JumpStart, a Cleveland-based organization that wants to see a boom in entrepreneurship in the Midwest. He works with startups on finding them cash, human capital and resources.

Leach has big goals for the once industrial and neglected city: he wants 10,000 new jobs in Cleveland in the next 10 years and more than a couple billion investment dollars in the next few years.

1. Reason is highly over-rated.

2. If you need more data to prove your point, you'll never have enough data to prove your point.

Any new entrepreneur knows that investors can provide more than just capital to their business — they can become resources for organizing, marketing, and realizing ideas. Mentoring and nurturing people with their ideas can be as important as the first seed capital funding that they receive. Sometimes an angel investor is akin to a good friend to someone as well as their business advisor. Being a multiple investor myself I wanted to share some tips on how to attract the best kind of investors for your start-up.

I get asked a lot what books I’m reading or what books I recommend for entrepreneurs. I love to read, so I’ve always got my nose in a book. Even on my podcast The Top 3 for Entrepreneurs, I ask my guests what books they are reading so that I can add to my list.

In all of the podcasts and all of the books I’ve read, these are the five that you must absolutely read if you are an entrepreneur or thinking about it.

Lately, I've been getting a lot of questions from bloggers and journalists about what I do to stay "balanced." How do I unplug and unwind? What do I do to handle stress? How do I stay grounded? What non-work activities help keep me creative and productive at work?

I’ve written several times in the past about the importance of getting a retirement estimate from your agency well in advance of your planned retirement date.

The only problem is that sometimes these estimates don’t accurately predict what you can expect in retirement. Here are eight of the most common causes of an inaccurate retirement estimate.

The Hong Kong Science and Technology Parks Corporation ("HKSTP") has been given the prestigious accolade of "Most Innovative Technology Hub" by The New Economy magazine for its world-class position in fostering innovation and technology development amongst all places in the Asia-Pacific region. 

If you visit Softbank’s flagship store in downtown Tokyo, you may be greeted by a charming, slightly manic new member of the staff: a gleaming white humanoid robot that gestures dramatically, cracks odd jokes, and occasionally breaks out dancing to music emanating from its own body. If you laugh at these antics, and the robot can see your face, it will quite likely giggle along with you.

Back in May 2015 we launched our ground-breaking partnership with ARM on the premise of accelerating the development of new technologies to overcome the barriers that prevent millions of families from accessing basic health, education and support services. A key part of this partnership over the last couple of months has been the Wearables for Good challenge, coordinated by Unicef, ARM and frog, which aims to generate ideas for new and innovative designs to make wearables and sensor technology a game-changer for women and children across the world.

With the increased access to world markets via technology, entrepreneurship is perceived to be the desired future job. Looking at the success of companies such as Facebook and Uber, more and more university graduates have chosen the startup life than a “stable” life on Wall Street.

The rising unicorns – companies that have soared to a $1 billion valuation or higher based on fundraising, is a particular allure to people who just left university with student loads looming above their heads. Eager to rid the burden and embrace fame, the risks of entrepreneurship have been shrouded with the apparent rejuvenation of the American Dream, where:

If you think that the best thing you can on weekends is absolutely nothing, you are completely wrong. Sure, you need to time to relax and rest but this doesn’t mean that you should sit down on a coach and do nothing but watch TV for all day long. You should take control of your weekends and do the things you enjoy the most. If you do things that make you happy on weekends, you can start your workweek happier. As a result, you can be more productive and in the end much more successful.

Just 30 years ago, the idea of having a computer at your desk was laughable. Ten years ago the term "mobile applications" wasn’t in our vocabulary. And merely five years ago, the notion of "cloud computing" was reserved for high-tech research facilities.

But today's digital landscape has made these tools not only available to individuals and businesses of all sizes, but critical to our day-to-day lives.

There have been rumblings recently that the traditional VC model could be in danger of extinction, threatened by more contemporary investment sources such as crowdfunding and super angels.

While it’s true that the early-stage landscape is changing, VCs are hardly on the demise, nor are professional VCs losing ground to crowdfunding and angels. In fact, the amount of VC funding increased last year to $33.1 billion in the U.S. Roughly one-third of those dollars were aimed at seed and early-stage funding with $10.7 billion invested — up 37 percent over 2008 investment, when the industry was at its peak.

A new report from KPMG International and CB Insights finds venture capital investment robust around the world.

VC-backed companies raised some $32 billion in the second quarter across 1,819 deals, bringing the first-half total raised globally to $59.8 billion, a 49% increase over the same period in 2014.

Even exciting jobs have boring days. And when you’ve been doing the same tasks, going to the same office, and working with the same people day in and day out, you’re bound to fall into a rut on occasion. When that happens, how do you recognize what’s happening and counteract it? What can you do to revive your interest in your work? And how do you know the difference between being in a temporary slump and needing to leave your job?

For years, there has been a push within the pharmaceutical industry to move “beyond the pill” —  in other words, to build and deploy complementary services and solutions to diversify revenue sources. The rationale is simple and elegant: A company with experience selling pharmaceutical products should be able to successfully and profitably sell its large customers (health plans, delivery systems, and governments) other health care offerings.

So you’ve landed your dream summer internship. Congratulations! You’ve been granted an amazing opportunity to gain industry knowledge, boost your résumé, develop new skills—and network.

Think about it: Every morning, you walk into the same office as a group of people who work some awesome full-time jobs and seem to really know what they’re doing. Why not take advantage of that? Before your internship comes to a close at the end of the summer, be sure to schedule some quality time with these five important coworkers: