Buckle up fellow design and innovation junkies we are the proverbial kids in a candy store stocked with a growing inventory of brain-exploding emerging technologies. The shelves of our candy story are overflowing with exciting new technologies including genomics, robotics, Internet of things, big data, artificial intelligence, drones, and 3D printing to name just a few. Any one of these emerging technologies alone could change the world. Resist the temptation to gorge on any one of them before sampling the full cross section of possibility. Perhaps a better metaphor after appreciating the full breadth of possibility is to feel like a kid in a sandbox. A sandbox filled with both existing and nascent technologies beckoning design and innovation junkies like us to come play together to unleash the adjacent possible. To combine and recombine technologies in new ways to unleash a steady stream of transformational business models and to change the way we solve the important social challenges of our time. You know, little system challenges like education, healthcare and government!

Many types of wearable devices attempt to enhance a human sense that for one reason or another has been impaired. Eyeglasses and contact lenses are a classical example, dating back to even before “wearable device” became the next big thing. Cochlear implants and hearing aids have helped the deaf to hear for decades,

Q. What is the difference between a business accelerator and a business incubator? --Lincoln

A. Terms such as business accelerator and business incubator are used in different contexts depending on the business, industry and even geographical area. In general, both are focused on assisting startup businesses, but in slightly different ways.

Generally speaking, a business incubator provides a support community for a startup business to be successful. This may entail providing physical space, consulting support, and resources in the form of education, training or strategy.

Over the years I’ve written extensively about the downsides of convertible notes for startups such as here, here and here. The truth is that I’ve been warning about convertible notes since 2010 it was first declared that “convertible notes have won.”

Today I want to talk about how a VC thinks about equity pricing on your round and particularly if you’re coming off of a convertible note.

What a difference a century makes. No, not in technological innovation, but in technological pessimism. As David McCullough writes in his new history of the Wright brothers, their discovery was met with near universal excitement and optimism, even in the face of setbacks, some of them fatal. Today, a century later, innovation and innovators are more often met with skepticism, approbation, and opposition.

A car-sharing network for people who can't afford a car sounds like a smart idea, but one such program in Buffalo, N.Y., -- despite successfully attracting and maintaining members -- has encountered an unexpected obstacle that now threatens to shut it down entirely.

In 2008, Michael Galligano, a community organizer in western New York, was looking at ride service companies opening networks in cities across the country. Cities like these networks, of course, because they help reduce traffic congestion and exhaust pollution.

Riding a bull and running a Tough Mudder don’t seem like résumé boosters, but for the global communications firm Golin, these unusual real-world experiences are the makings of an innovative employee.

"The young generation coming out of college have student loans and pressure from their parents to get a job, but what they don’t have is life experiences," says CEO Fred Cook. "They’re under the impression that if they follow a strict path one step at a time, they’ll get the perfect job on the day that they graduate. But when you follow the straight and narrow, you miss out on opportunities you’d have if you took a more interesting route."

Startup founders are resource-constrained at every stage of their company, but nothing stings more than the inability to add amazing talent to your team at critical points. The difference between a successful startup and a sad failure is often a VP of engineering who can help raw, young talent scale. Or a genius designer who can transform the way your product looks and feels. Or an advisor with deep relationships in your market.

Some people may have had a treehouse during their childhood. A place that they could hang out with their buddies.

The same concept was unveiled Wednesday afternoon only this isn't a treehouse for children, but rather for new business owners.

The Treehouse Business Incubator is a central location where new business owners can collaborate with each other as they begin their new venture. The goal is the promote new business in Nebraska City.

If you have an awesome idea for a new startup, stop. Write down your solution, put it away and start by identifying the problem that you’re trying to solve. Contrary to popular wisdom to “Always focus on the solution not the problem” building a startup is not about knowing what you want to build up front. It’s about knowing what problem you want to solve and constantly evolving the solution to better fit that problem.

Taxi services think inside a box. So did Blockbuster. So does Microsoft.

But here’s the thing. Uber, Netflix, and Apple also think inside boxes. So do you. So do I.

A box is a frame, a paradigm, a habit, a perspective, a silo, a self-imposed set of limits; a box is context and interpretation. We cannot think outside boxes. We can, though, choose our boxes. We can even switch from one box to another to another.

“A master in the art of living draws no sharp distinction between his work and his play; his labor and his leisure; his mind and his body; his education and his recreation. He hardly knows which is which. He simply pursues his vision of excellence through whatever he is doing, and leaves others to determine whether he is working or playing. To himself, he always appears to be doing both.”

It is easy to see the attraction of being an entrepreneur for Will Drevno, co-founder and chief operating officer at 3D printing business Twindom. The company’s office space, in a back street of Emeryville, close to Pixar’s animation studio and across the bay from San Francisco, looks part student dorm, part laboratory. Dotted amid the sofas, laptops and games consoles are miniature, strikingly realistic models of people that are the core product of the business. Across the room a team of coders tap away at their laptops, and beyond them is a makeshift booth built by Mr Drevno and his team that can make a full body scan of Twindom’s customers for production on a custom-built set of 3D printers.

Image: 3D printed figures produced by Twindom

TaskUs, a startup that provides outsourcing services to other startups like Uber, Tinder, and HotelTonight, has raised venture funding from Navegar, a Phillipines-based private equity fund. The $15 million deal shows that the even the peripheral companies serving the startup world are investable opportunities.

BENGALURU: After massive fund inflows in the first four months of 2015 that saw four Indian startups reaching a billion-dollar valuation, the early-stage venture capital (VC) funding slowed down in May. Amid the debate of a startup bubble, May saw $47 million committed in 13 investments - the lowest for any month in this calendar year, according to VC funding data tracking firm Venture Intelligence.

The first four months saw investments of $58 million, $95 million, $80 million and $108 million, in that order. This data is for early-stage investments or less than $20 million; late-stage investments tend to show a distorted picture swayed by a couple of big-ticket investments. The number of deals was higher at 16, 30, 19 and 24 in the first four months.

Consistency is key, and a strong leader stands firm in what they practice. Each day, great people wake up and follow a specific personal routine that pushes them to be the best entrepreneur possible. Not only do these habits establish regularity in a world that can be tumultuous and ever-changing, but they work wonders in placing leaders in a great frame of mind.

Researchers at Japan’s Atomic Energy Agency have come up with a new method of processing seawater to extract lithium—an element that plays a key role in advanced batteries for electric vehicles and one that, if current predictions for the EV market prove accurate, could be in short supply before the end of the decade.

Image: http://www.technologyreview.com

Harnessing the power of the sea to create a sustainable power source might seem a great idea, particularly for an island nation. But it’s not that simple, and engineers around the world have long grappled with how best to do it. “In the context of wave energy, there is not as yet a truly successful technology anywhere in the world, and by ‘successful’, we mean the reliable production of electricity at reasonable capital and current costs,” says Joss Fitzsimons, chief technical officer and co-founder of wave energy technology company Jospa.

Image: Joss Fitzsimons: ‘The market for Veppi is niche, and our potential customers are universities, test and research facilities and WEC developers worldwide’ 

As one drone photographer put it, "Everything looks better from the air."

Novice photographers now have an easy way to capture stunning scenes from a bird's-eye-view. The recent surge in consumer drones has brought the Instagram community to a new level.

SEE ALSO: Finally, an X-Wing drone is added to the fleet of DIY 'Star Wars' airships

Following in the footsteps of popular hashtags #FromWhereIStand and #FromWhereIRun, drone pilots with a desire to share their shots have taken to the hashtag #FromWhereIDrone.

Many entrepreneurs still don’t understand that building a business culture today of doing good, like helping people (society) and planet (sustainability), is also a key to maximizing profit. Employees and customers alike are looking for meaning, not simply employment and commodity prices. Every company needs this focus to attract the best minds and loyalty in both categories.