"By 1970, the governments of the wealthy countries began to take it for granted that they had truly discovered the secret of cornucopia. Politicians of left and right alike believed that modern economic policy was able to keep economies expanding very fast -- and endlessly. That left only the congenial question of dividing up the new wealth that was being steadily generated."

Those words, from a Washington Post editorial more than twenty-five years ago, echoed the beliefs not only of politicians and the press, but of mainstream economics professionals resistant to the idea that growth in a market economy would ever stagnate over a protracted period.

Startup accelerator DreamIt Ventures is introducing its Fall 2011 Philadelphia class today, which includes five minority-owned companies selected in collaboration with Comcast Ventures. In May, DreamIt and Comcast teamed up to provided seed funding, training and mentoring to minority-led startups, starting with DreamIt’s fall program.

The current class includes students and alumni from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, Princeton, Duke, Stanford, Harvard, Yale, Columbia and MIT. Startup founders have past work experience at Google, Yahoo, Intel, Goldman Sachs and J.P. Morgan.

It takes real energy to negotiate, crunch numbers and exercise willpower.

What you eat impacts your ability to do all these things. In fact, complex brain processes are "literally fed by glucose that circulates from gut to brain," according to Psychology Today.

"Willpower is more than a metaphor," Florida State University psychologist Roy Baumeister told the magazine. "The human body is undeniably an energy system. Evolution gave us this new and more complicated way of acting, but it's expensive in terms of fuel burned. Being our better selves is biologically costly."

Twitter just landed the largest single venture capital investment deal in history: $800 mn, according to reports, although the company would only call the amount ‘significant’. Half the money goes to Twitter directly and the other $400 mn will buy shares of existing holders. That means an $8.4 bn valuation.

And who’s leading the round? DST Global, the fund run by Russian billionaire Yuri Milner. This isn’t the first time DST has written a big check to a social media start-up: two years ago, it made a big splash by investing $400 mn in Facebook, with a similar split of half the money to the company, the other half to provide liquidity to insiders.

The Twitter investment shows a change to the traditional troika of Silicon Valley start-up, American venture capital firm, and eventual IPO. Instead, companies get funding to build strength – working their way toward profitability before filing their S-1 with the SEC – and cash out early shareholders who don’t want to hold for years. Oversea investors help make that possible.

Only 40 years ago it was widely believed that if you lived long enough, you would eventually experience serious cognitive decline, particularly with respect to memory. The implication was that achieving an advanced age was effectively equivalent to becoming senile—a word that implies mental defects or illness. As a graduate student back then, I was curious why such conclusions were being drawn about the elderly. I had only to look as far as my own great-grandmother and great-aunt to begin questioning the generalization. They lived to 102 and 93, respectively, and were exceptionally active and quick-witted enough to keep us twentysomethings on our toes. A closer look at the literature didn’t give me any confidence that either the biological basis of memory or how it might change with age was well understood. Many discoveries made in the years since have given us better tools to study memory storage, resulting in a major shift away from the view of “aging as a disease” and towards the view of “aging as a risk factor” for neurological diseases. So why do some people age gracefully, exhibiting relatively minor—and at worst annoying—cognitive changes, while others manifest significant and disabling memory decline? Answers to these questions are fundamental for understanding both how to prevent disease and how to promote quality of life.

A while back, when a startup founder mentioned to me that he wasn’t sure he had the personality to be an entrepreneur, I realized how important that insight was. My first thought is that if you are more annoyed than energized by expert advice, team suggestions, and customer input, then you should probably avoid this line of work.

Actually, it’s more complicated than that, but that’s a good start. After working with entrepreneurs for almost a decade now, I have developed a good “radar” to quickly recognize mentalities that will likely pass the test of investors, employees, and customers.

All good managers understand the importance of making sure that every member of a team feels personally motivated and necessary throughout the workday, lest their work should stagnate and suffer. But what's the key to igniting creativity, joy, trust, and productivity among your employees? According to recent research, the single most important factor is simply a sense of making progress on meaningful work. But creating an environment that fosters progress takes some careful effort.

In their new book, The Progress Principle: Using Small Wins to Ignite Joy, Engagement, and Creativity at Work, authors Teresa M. Amabile and Steven J. Kramer discuss how even seemingly humdrum events can make huge differences in employees' emotional and intellectual well-being.

BEN Dalton has found the perfect way to combine his pleasures of surfing and painting - he paints his surfboards.

The Mooloolaba artist was enjoying a surf a couple of years ago when he looked at his surfboard and discovered "the perfect canvas".

He began painting various beach scenes, first for himself, then for a friend who was getting married.

"It was of Alexandra Headland," Mr Dalton said.

"I paint beach locations, waves and beach scenes."

Technology that would allow cars to talk to each other—to help prevent accidents and improve traffic flow—is about to get a real-world road test following new funding from the U.S. Department of Transportation.

Many high-end cars already come with sensors capable of spotting a vehicle in a driver's blind spot, or warning that the car is drifting out of lane. However, these technologies, which use radar, laser, or video sensors, have a limited view. Car-to-car communications could provide even more sophisticated earlier warnings—for example, when a car several vehicles ahead brakes suddenly.

Most college students studying for degrees in science, technology, engineering or math make the decision to do so in high school or before -- but only 20 percent say they feel that their education before college prepared them “extremely well” for those fields, according to a survey released today by Microsoft and polling company Harris Interactive.

The survey, which asked college students pursing STEM degrees and the parents of K-12 students about attitudes toward STEM education, also found that male and female students enter the fields for different reasons: females are more likely to want to make a difference, while males are more likely to say they’ve always enjoyed games, toys or clubs focused on the hard sciences.

Ready to sell your business, but not sure how to go about doing it? Naples News has a few tips that will help you get your exit strategy mapped out.

There are several methods to consider. You can slowly downsize, liquidate inventory and withdraw as much cash as possible over a period of several years. This method usually entails letting good people go and that can be a tough decision in this economy.

In the “if you can’t laugh at yourself, who can you laugh at” category, I present the video I’m A VC. The formal press release, Foundry Group Premiers Documentary Film About Secret Lives of Venture Capitalists, explains things more fully.

My partner Jason Mendelson created, composed, wrote, sang, and produced the whole thing and explains the back story of I’m a VC on his blog. It’s awesome working with incredibly talented people who have a sense of humor and a willingness to make fun of themselves while letting me make fun of myself. And no – I can’t dance for shit, nor can I sing.

Many great breakthroughs have come in dreams.

Rene Descartes got the concept for the Scientific Method in a dream. Elias Howe came up with the final design for the lock stitch sewing machine in a dream. August Kekule arrived at the formulation of the Benzene molecule in a dream.

In the dream state, the subconscious mind arrives at solutions that the conscious mind is unlikely to discover during the daily grind -- no matter much it obsesses, gathers data, or blames the "organization."

I was recently asked by an entrepreneur what my advice would be on how to handle a contract negotiation between his company and a large, Wall Street financial services firm.  He was a bit concerned by the rather one sided terms being proposed by in the initial draft of the contract.  He was also getting annoyed that every time he tried to push back, he inevitably found himself arguing with their lawyers instead of the principals themselves.  And for the past week, they had stopped returning his emails and phone calls altogether.  Needless to say, the entrepreneur was concerned that his push back had soured the deal.

I told him to take a deep breath and relax, while I acquainted him with the realities of a Wall Street Negotiation.

Some individuals feel that in order to become an entrepreneur, the proper course of study to choose in graduate school is a master of business administration (MBA). This credential can give students the skills and knowledge they need to become entrepreneurs, especially with many programs now offering concentrations in entrepreneurship. For example, the University of Louisville and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology offer similar concentrations within their MBA degree tracks, according to their websites.

The Small Business Administration today presented the White House with suggestions on how to reduce barriers to entrepreneurship, gathered from eight roundtables it held around the country as part of the Startup America initiative.

About 1,000 entrepreneurs and investors participated in these roundtables. The SBA forwarded around 200 distinct ideas, including ways to reduce regulatory burdens, to the appropriate federal agencies. An interagency committee will work with President Barack Obama’s Jobs and Competitiveness Council to develop a short list of high-impact proposals.

Ever since Tim Ferriss wrote The Four Hour Workweek, the small business owner market has been aware of outsourcing and its benefits.  Find a virtual assistant or contractor of just about any flavor and your work life will be easier.

That’s the promise. The reality is a little different. Sometimes it takes a while to find the right person (as in regular employment), and it often takes more management than you expect, especially when the person is working from a remote location.  However, I have used several of these services as a business owner and can attest to their value.

From renewable energy sources to the latest in entertainment technology, Utah’s universities have a plethora of interesting research spinning out of their laboratories. The potential for profit has attracted entrepreneurs who are interested in turning that technology into marketable products. Here are nine notable companies in various stages, from those developing product prototypes to those with a firm market presence, all based on technology from Utah’s research institutions: the University of Utah, Brigham Young University and Utah State University.

San Diego’s life sciences and biomedical communities showed their support today for California Gov. Jerry Brown’s tax plan, which he has offered as a way to promote statewide job growth by closing a “toxic tax loophole” and offering other incentives for companies to add jobs.

“The majority of Biocom’s members are smaller companies within Southern California, and those companies will realize benefits from each of the three components of the package,” Biocom CEO Joe Panetta (and a San Diego Xconomist) told the governor during a news conference today at Gen-Probe (NASDAQ: GPRO), the San Diego-based medical diagnostics company.

State and local governments may be winners under the jobs plan President Obama is set to announce before a joint session of Congress on Thursday (September 7), according to media reports.

The plan, which is now reported to come with a price tag of $300 billion, will focus significantly on tax cuts, an extension of government benefits for the unemployed, and economic development initiatives — including, as Stateline reported last week, a version of a popular Georgia program that places job seekers into training positions with employers who are hiring. But the plan also is expected to include direct aid to state and local governments, which have contributed to the nation's 9.1-percent unemployment rate by laying off thousands of public workers of their own.