With recent jobs reports showing a glimmer of hope, professionals from all generations are gearing up to seize the next big career opportunity after years of stagnation.  But, over the last half decade, the path to career success has been fundamentally redefined, and more and more, professionals of all ages and from diverse industries are finding that an entrepreneurial mindset is a prerequisite to advance.

So how did we get to this point? And what can you do to stay ahead of the curve?

Over the past few years, there has been a fundamental shift in the economic paradigm. Previous generations generally built “lifelong” careers at one company or at least in one particular field. In many cases, that career demanded that they simply meet the expectations of their bosses in order to advance. The result: Even relatively passive employees could find significant career success.

Most e-health initiatives have yet to deliver on the benefits so often claimed for them. That's because e-health isn't just about putting in place the necessary technology infrastructure. Rather, it needs to be seen as an ecosystem that incorporates not just technology but also all stakeholders, the services involved, an adequate financing model, and the necessary governance policies and regulations. And it must be customized to reflect local condition.

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In the comments to last week's Burn Rate post, I was asked to share some burn rates from our portfolio. I can't do that. But an alternative suggestion was to write a post suggesting some reasonable burn rates at different stages. I can do that and so that's the topic of today's post.

The following applies to software based businesses, and most particularly web and mobile software businesses. It does not apply to hardware, life sciences, and energy startups. It is also focused on startups in the US. It costs less to employ teams in many other parts of the world.

Working from home isn't the magical experience many office-goers think it is. Distractions are abound, and sometimes it's hard to get any work done at all.

So what can you do to your working space that will help you be more comfortable and productive?

We've put together eight tips that will help you improve your home office. Take a look:

Released recently by the Council of Ministers of Education, Canada (http://www.cmec.ca) the Pan-Canadian Assessment of Mathematics, Reading and Science (PCAP) showed some interesting shifts in performance. During 2010, 32,000 Grade 8 students (secondary II in Quebec) in 11 jurisdictions completed the assessment, which primarily focused on math with minor assessments in science and reading. Results are encouraging and concerning at the same time, and warrant discussion.

Overall, the news is very good with 91% of Canadian students performing at expected levels in math and almost half performing above their expected level. Ontario students did very well and were top performers in all three categories. While there was no gender difference in math performance, girls significantly outperformed boys in both reading and science.

The mobile landscape of 2012 is ripe with possibility. Globally, it’s estimated that 5.3-billion people have mobile phones. This means that there are more people picking up a mobile phone every morning than lifting a newspaper. Increasingly, it’s not only to make calls and send texts either — mobile data traffic is trebling every year.

Mobile devices such as tablets and smartphones became the highest-selling consumer electronic device category in 2011, amounting to 115-million units in Q3 alone — according to one report, beating out PC, laptop, and netbook figures combined. With the growing popularity of smartphones and the increasing dependence on mobile devices, it’s only natural that everyone will want to take their mobile strategies for next year to a whole new level.

Since its introduction into the business language by Henry Chesbrough in 2003, ‘Open Innovation’ has become a phrase synonymous with independent group interaction and the outsourcing of creative ideas. Open innovation covers a wide range of business activities, so it would be prudent to define the various different practices, their advantages and their shortcomings;

Open Source Innovation or Crowdsourcing This involves the release of information for the general public or a member forum to comment on, solve, or provide further information. Released information can take the form of specific calls for innovative solutions, experimental data or general areas of interest. The incentive to innovative often comes from a cash prize or a development contract. The advantage of this method is the outreach to a wide audience of potential solvers, however, this can lead to large amounts of information which require filtering and analysis to pick any promising leads. Intellectual property can also be a sticking point using crowdsourcing and many schemes have blanket agreements to ensure that all relevant IP is signed over.

The fuzzy front end of innovation confronts you with a lot of questions. For the new edition of my book ‘Creating innovative Products and Services’ I have posted a question on front-end innovation struggles to innovation practioners in more than 20 linkedin groups. The response was massive. I made a list of forty reasons why people struggle starting innovation in their companies in daily practice.

New York State will invest some $50 million in the biosciences through the Regional Economic Development Council Initiative with projects in nearly every region, according to an analysis by the New York Biotechnology Association (NYBA). The awards were announced on Thursday in Albany. The funds will include support for projects as diverse as a bioscience incubator in Westchester County to a biomass electric plant in the Mohawk Valley. Together, the projects total over $49.7 million in new investment.

"We are very excited that New York, recognizing the value of a robust bioscience industry, is investing in the biosciences, one of the state's leading growth areas. These investments will enable further growth in a field that supports some 250,000 direct, indirect and induced jobs, and contributes over $32 billion a year to the state's economic output," said Nathan Tinker, Executive Director of NYBA.

Entrepreneurs often speak of their startups as if they were beloved children. The infant business must be protected, nurtured and loved. Its owner must be willing to feed it late at night, to fend off hurtful strangers, to sacrifice in multiple, unexpected ways. And often, those business owners must find a way to let go.

As businesses grow, they do not exactly move out, go to college and get married. However, digital startup entrepreneurs have similar goals for their businesses. “Exit strategies” don’t mean entrepreneurs plan to get up and walk away from their businesses without looking back. Rather, entrepreneurs want to raise their startups, prepare them for bigger and better things and let them go, either through acquisitions, public offerings or organic growth. Our businesses can’t stay babies forever.

Board members who oversee the Oklahoma Center for the Advancement of Science and Technology (OCAST) awarded nearly $ 2.2 million to 12 research applicants November 15. The awards are the first in the Oklahoma Applied Research program for FY 2012. All research projects will be completed within three years.

The latest OCAST research projects range from a special heat exchanger to a sensor designed to detect peroxide-based explosives. Applied research funds are used for accelerated and proof-of-concept technology. Successful proposals have significant potential for producing a commercially successful product, process or service likely to benefit the state’s economy.

The University of New South Wales (UNSW) and the iBridge NetworkSM, an initiative of the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, have announced a new collaboration to promote the university’s intellectual property to entrepreneurs around the world free of charge. UNSW’s IP is now accessible through a global one-stop shop on the iBridge Network called Easy IP Access that connects leading researchers and industry partners, creating new opportunities to use research generated on campus to solve real-world problems.

Easy Access IP is a first-of-its-kind tool that makes university technologies available to businesses at no cost, using quick and simple licensing agreements. The iBridge Network brings university researchers, entrepreneurs and industry together to promote and identify research opportunities, collaborate with other experts in the same or complimentary fields and license their innovations for practical benefit. By making Easy Access IP available on the iBridge Network, universities now have an established channel for using this new approach to bring their IP to companies.

Life science in the Sunshine State. None of its cities made our list of top 10 medical cities, but BIOtechNOW insists Florida is going strong in biotech innovation. Initiatives during former Gov. Jeb Bush’s tenure pushed the state into Ernst & Young’s top 10 ranking in 2006, and recent news from Palm Beach hints that the life sciences are still a priority in the Sunshine State. A November ranking from Jones Lang LaSalle mentioned the state as one with strong life science representation but also “fragmented framework, most notably lackluster funding from NIH and VC sources.” Maybe next year, Florida?

In many ways, individual U.S. states are like 50 laboratories where differing public policy, industry focus, and economic development strategies are tried and tested. Different approaches yield different results and some states become more competitive – gaining a larger share of total job creation — while others struggle and lose share. This phenomenon has been evident over the past few years as our nation struggles to recover. Some states have been doing quite well while others are still limping along.

In this post we have produced a side-by-side analysis of every state to show how they stack up against each other. The goal is to see which states are becoming more competitive (that is, gaining a larger share of the total job creation), and which are losing their share of the jobs being created. The table and graphic each rank the states based on the overall competitive effect and what percentage of jobs (from 2007-2011) are based on competitive effects.

Harvard Business School is taking on the challenge of finding a comprehensive solution to strengthening the nation’s ability to compete.

The U.S. Competitiveness Project, announced Tuesday by Harvard Business School Dean Nitin Nohria, is a research effort to “understand and improve the competitiveness of the United States,” according to the project’s Web site.

“Our ambition at HBS is to engage deeply with the most important questions facing society, and one of those questions concerns the future competitiveness of the United States as a business location and its influence on the rest of the world,” said Nohria via a news release. “As we continue to move from an American century in business to a global century in business, people are wondering what this country’s role will be. There is no more appropriate time than now for us to explore this question deeply and develop answers that will allow America to remain a competitive place to conduct business in the international economy.”

Americans are a mobile people. Instead of making a life where we were raised, we often pick up and move far from our families, hoping to make our fortunes elsewhere. But because we left our hometowns with no shame or malice, when the holidays come around we all--as consistently as birds heading south--brave the crowds at various transportation hubs and slowly shuffle back home. A new map created from check-ins on Foursquare paints a picture of this holiday travel and how Americans get from one place to another in different parts of the country.

The map shows plane flights (in blue, based on two consecutive check-ins in different airports), train rides (in red, based on same-day check-ins in different train stations), and car trips (in white, based on check-ins on roads). Together, they form an outline of how America travels and even how America’s population has spread across the country.

A claim by Wikileaks that documents it released last week provide evidence of a "secret new industry" of mass surveillance was as breathless as previous pronouncements from Julian Assange's organization. But the material does provide a stark reminder that our online activities are easily snooped upon, and suggests that governments or police around the world can easily go shopping for tools to capture whatever information they want from us.

The take-home for ordinary computer users is that the privacy and security safeguards they use—including passwords and even encryption tools—present only minor obstacles to what one researcher calls the "cyber security industrial complex."

Fail to innovate and you will simply be left behind. As I previously noted, this is especially the case for the African continent. Africa has, for the longest time, been relegated to the back of the classroom, the backward, war-torn, black sheep of the world.

But today it is emerging, and African nations are betting big on technology and innovation as the stepping-stones to rebuilding themselves. But what will it take? What are some of the components that are necessary for African states to innovate into the future?

Billionaire investor Warren Buffett is well-known for his brilliant and colorful quotes on investing.

But one his best quotes ever may have been about parenting.

In a 1986 Fortune magazine article titled Should You Leave It All to the Children?, the Oracle of Omaha shared some parenting wisdom.

Says he: ''My kids are going, to carve out their own place in this world, and they know I'm for them whatever they want to do.'' But he believes that setting up his heirs with ''a lifetime supply of food stamps just because they came out of the right womb'' can be ''harmful'' for them and is ''an antisocial act.'' To him the perfect amount to leave children is ''enough money so that they would feel they could do anything, but not so much that they could do nothing.''

What is the best community college in America? Ask a similar question about universities and you'll prompt a vigorous debate. Caltech and MIT would duke it out for engineering supremacy while Harvard and Princeton compete for maximum selectivity and prestige. Amherst is near the top of everyone's liberal-arts-college list, with Swarthmore close behind.

There will never be unanimous agreement about who's No. 1. But the fact that the question makes sense at all shows something important: In the four-year higher-education sector, we embrace the idea of excellence.