Don’t let the good times roll just yet, Silicon Valley: Analysts at Dow Jones are saying the effects of the 2008 economic crash still haven’t worn off for venture capitalists.

While U.S. VC funds finished the year with a strong fourth quarter of fundraising, funds raised by VCs during 2011 came in at barely more than half of the 2008 total.

“The industry has not yet bounced back from the recession,” said a Dow Jones VentureWire spokesperson in an email.

The numbers for 2011 were slightly higher than those from 2010 (by 5 percent, to be exact), though that was largely driven by activity in

Most small businesses never reach $1 million in annual sales. Instead, they struggle just to survive. Of businesses started in 2004, barely more than half -- 56 percent -- were still around in 2009, a study from the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation found.

In fact, cracking the $1 million barrier at any point in a company's lifetime is a major achievement. U.S. Census data from 2007 shows that more than three-quarters of the country's 6 million firms with employees made less than $1 million in revenue. And most solopreneur businesses don't earn anywhere near that much: According to IRS data for 2008, the average solo business brought in less than $60,000.

Will digital health apps and devices for smartphones become so indispensable that we wonder how we functioned without them? Or do they risk becoming part of an enormous data avalanche? Those questions were raised in a recent article examining digital health by Fast Company that maps smartphone apps and devices across a human body.

AliveCor has developed an app that can read heart rhythms when users press their iPhones to their chests. The company expects to file for approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration this year. California-based CellScope‘s device can transform a smartphone into a mini microscope. Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania-based BodyMedia‘s Armbands keeps track of how the body uses energy through skin temperature, heartbeat, heat dissipation and time spent at rest.

One of the worst situations for presentations is being mentally and logistically prepared for a large crowd in a room to match only to find a small audience in a too big room the day of the event. It’s easy as a presenter to get deflated in these settings and allow the conference room’s empty vibe to effectively swallow the audience, the presentation, and your energy as a presenter.

There have been a number of these mismatched presentations at the PCMA / VES conference this week in San Diego. Witnessing how multiple speakers have done – some better and some worse – with these presentations suggests nine success tips for better presentations with a small audience and a big room.

Richard A. Skinner, PhD

Other fabulous beasts are clearly inventions existing only in a mythical landscape of our own collective creation. But the Unicorn strikes us as more than imaginary. It seems possible, even probable – a creature so likely that it ought to exist.

Nancy Hathaway

It is all but an axiom: innovation is the process that provides an edge, even and perhaps most of all in turbulent times. As one participant noted in a 2007 McKinsey online discussion, “Quality and customer service are no longer differentiators, but rather prerequisites. Innovation is the best strategic decision for sustainable competitive advantage.”

A February 2009 study by the Economist Intelligence Unit carried out with the support of the government of Ontario, Canada, revealed “that innovation is the single most important predictor of future growth, and that access to talented staff is critical for innovation.”

Corporate executives embrace the notion and establish C-level “chief innovation officers” with mandates to foster a culture in which new or at least different ideas for products and services are coin of the realm.

Reformers mourn the drill-and-practice rote learning that often typifies much of education and point to the contrast between the unrestrained curiosity and inventiveness of pre-schoolers, on the one hand, and the solemnity and obvious control that characterizes Grades 1-n, on the other hand.

When Mark Zuckerberg first started Facebook, he knew he didn't have the experience necessary to run a major company, Ekaterina Walter says in her forthcoming book "Think Like Zuck." Here's how he triumphed anyway.

In the first several years of Facebook’s existence, multiple journalists portrayed Mark Zuckerberg and his friends as party lovers who would code all day and stay up all night. Mark liked to have fun just as much as any other college freshman, but he was also very focused. He knew that he needed to keep the company moving forward, and he didn’t hesitate to put the rest of his colleagues on the lockdown until something got done. Early on, he showed qualities of a natural leader, according to his friends. Sean Parker, former president of Facebook, remembers: “The leader of a company needs to have a decision tree in his head--if this happens, we go this way, but if it winds up like that, then we go this other way. Mark does that instinctively.” Zuckerberg also made sure every angle was covered. Parker continues: “He liked the idea of Thefacebook, and he was willing to pursue it doggedly, tenaciously, to the end. But like the best empire builders, he was both very determined and very skeptical. It’s like (former Intel CEO) Andy Grove says, ‘Only the paranoid survive.’”

Burning a hole at the top of a long list of needs for a startup entrepreneur is good old Benjamin Franklins.

Yes — stacks of capital needed to fund dreams of a vast and bright future.

And what entrepreneur among you couldn’t use a few more dollars for your startup?

Yes — just what I thought.

Disengaged workers cost the U.S. economy $350 billion a year in lost productivity. Here's how the happiest companies boost morale and the bottom line.

“Being able to be truly happy at work is one of the keys to being happy in life,” says Heidi Golledge, CEO and cofounder of CareerBliss, an online career database. And what company couldn’t use a little more joy among its ranks?

A few weeks ago, the BBC asked me to come in for a radio interview. They told me they wanted to talk about effective leadership — China had just elevated Xi Jinping to the role of Communist Party leader; General David Petraeus had stepped down from his post at the CIA a few days earlier; the BBC itself was wading through a leadership scandal of its own — but the conversation quickly veered, as these things often do, into a discussion about how individuals can keep large, complex, unwieldy organizations operating reliably and efficiently.

That's not leadership, I explained. That's management — and the two are radically different.

When I first thought about putting together an entrepreneur manifesto a couple of years ago, I wanted to keep it as simple as possible.  Here, I will stick with the same 10 key points, but I’d like to hang a little “meat” on the manifesto, based on a couple more years of learning and reflection on what is important for success as an entrepreneur.   Here are the ten key “commitments” of the entrepreneur:

1.   I will be Persistent.  I know that nothing great is ever achieved without persistence.  I also know that the road to success is littered with those who gave up, while I continued to fight.

2.   I will set Goals.  I know that setting and monitoring progress toward goals increases my probability of success.  I also know that even if I don’t achieve every goal exactly as planned, by having goals I give myself targets toward which I can strive.

A high-fiber diet may have the clinical potential to control the progression of prostate cancer in patients diagnosed in early stages of the disease.

The rate of prostate cancer occurrence in Asian cultures is similar to the rate in Western cultures, but in the West, prostate cancer tends to progress, whereas in Asian cultures it does not. Why? A University of Colorado Cancer Center study published in the January 2013 issue of the journal Cancer Prevention Research shows that the answer may be a high-fiber diet.

Passwords control your life. From accessing work email and stock prices on the go to checking a grocery store shopping list, passwords have become the primary source of identifying who you are. They are arguably more important than your driver’s license.

But with that ubiquity comes risk – this tiny, yet powerful device contains enough information to expose your financial or health records and other personal details. From an enterprise perspective, the risks are just as great, if not greater.

I was recently asked what I consider to be the most misunderstood aspect of great leadership; in other words, what makes great leadership great? What immediately came to mind is not only misunderstood, but it also happens to be the most often overlooked element of leadership, and the one which also affords leaders the greatest opportunity for personal, professional, and enterprise growth. If you want to become a better leader in 2013, I suggest you become comfortable with a leadership practice few are – surrender.

Surrender – not for the faint of heart You’ll rarely encounter the words leadership and surrender used together in complementary fashion. Society has labeled surrender as a sign of leadership weakness, when in fact, it can be among the greatest of leadership strengths. Let me be clear, I’m not encouraging giving in or giving up – I am suggesting you learn the ever so subtle art of letting go.

You are an aspiring entrepreneur, eager to dump the corporate grind, and work to the beat of your own drummer, but you can’t come up with that killer idea to save the world. What are the alternatives that will give you the independence you crave, and challenge your business acumen?

Technically, I believe an entrepreneur is anyone who manages his own profit and loss, and doesn’t meet the government tax definition of an employee. Beyond the traditional new product or service model, you can always buy an existing business, purchase a franchise, join a multi-level marketing (MLM) company, or simply go out on your own as a consultant.

Colombia today is considered to be one of the world’s great emerging economies. Its growing political stability, decrease in violence, young working population and overall positive economic trend make it a country with interesting prospects. Robert Ward, a global forecasting director for the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU), categorizes upcoming developing nations into a group called CIVETS. All the countries included in this group -- Colombia, Indonesia, Vietnam, Egypt, Turkey and South Africa -- share several very important characteristics, including positive trends in political, social and economic aspects.

In 2011, a financially troubled year for the world, Colombia achieved a Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth rate of 5.9%, becoming the 33rd largest economy in the world, according to the International Monetary Fund (IMF). For 2012, the Colombian government forecasts public debt to reach 25% of GDP, an enviable mark compared with many other indebted nations. In addition, the country is experiencing an investment rate of 28% of GDP, the highest level seen in the country in the last decade. In a world where some of the most powerful nations are facing grave challenges, this is a very good position for a country such as Colombia to be in.

This winter, fourth-graders at New Hampton Elementary School are tying their math, science and literacy lessons to a common theme: motion. A day at school may catch them calculating velocity, reducing friction, modeling automobile safety and writing technical reports that bring it all together.

That is STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) in the classroom as experts define it — integrated, active, real-world problem-solving. Learners in this style of education, according to the Center for Education at the National Research Council, are more creative, collaborative, intelligent and interested in STEM-based careers.

When we teach our introductory entrepreneurship class at MIT, we take it for granted that each of our 75 students will be able to start an American company upon graduating. But many of them lack one thing they need to be able to do so—permission from the United States government to continue working in our country.

In this academic year, three in 10 MIT students, including four in 10 graduate students, are not U.S. citizens or permanent residents. So for them our entrepreneurship class is likely to remain just an academic exercise. Their student visas expire when they graduate, leaving them with two options, to leave the country or find an existing company to sponsor them for a chance at an H-1B visa.

The Entrepreneurship Action Plan is a blueprint for decisive action to unleash Europe's entrepreneurial potential, to remove existing obstacles and to revolutionise the culture of entrepreneurship in Europe. Investments in changing the public perception of entrepreneurs, in entrepreneurship education and to support groups that are underrepresented among entrepreneurs are indispensable if we want to create enduring change. Only if a large number of Europeans recognise an entrepreneurial career as a rewarding and attractive option will entrepreneurial activity in Europe thrive in the long term.

Entrepreneurial education and training = growth and business creation Investing in entrepreneurship education is one of the highest return investments Europe can make. Surveys suggest that between 15% and 20% of students who participate in a mini-company programme in secondary school will later start their own company, a figure that is about three to five times that for the general population. In the same vein, the role of higher education in entrepreneurship goes far beyond the delivery of knowledge to participating in business ecosystems, partnerships and industrial alliances. With high-tech and high-growth enterprises increasingly becoming a focus of entrepreneurship-related public policies, higher education institutions are an active component of Member States' and EU's innovation policies (European Commission's 'Rethinking Education' strategy and entrepreneurship: IP/12/1233).

Here you get my top 5 list of companies with strong open innovation efforts. Your comments and suggestions for other companies are appreciated!

1. GE – for continuously developing the Ecomagination Challenge

GE have turned the Ecoimagination Challenge into a very interesting innovation vehicle – which also doubles as a good PR tool – and they seem to get not only high external engagement, but also high business value out of their efforts. Great work!

2. LEGO – for making different kinds of external sources work together

LEGO is building a strong open innovation program as you can read about in this blog post, which also includes a recent presentation on their efforts.

Michael Kowalzik never thought he’d be running a successful German technology company when he graduated from INSEAD in 2000. Then again, the products and services he is providing for global companies didn’t exist twelve years ago. He had to invent a whole new business model.

Like most of his colleagues on the INSEAD MBA programme in 2000, Michael Kowalzik wanted to be an entrepreneur. He concentrated on traditional core course modules like finance, marketing and strategy and paid less attention to organisational development.  Now, as the CEO of a successful German technology company, he wishes he’d concentrated a bit more on the softer people skills and leadership courses.