In the United Kingdom, educators and politicians are engaged in a debate on the purpose of higher education: Should it focus on pure academics or emphasize preparing for work?

Lord David Young of Graffham, the British prime minister’s enterprise adviser, recently voiced support for one major facet of “real-world” education: teaching entrepreneurship.

Every year, large corporations spend billions of dollars on supporting, investing in, marketing to, and donating to small businesses, startups, and the organizations that support them. These numbers are rising dramatically as interest in the entrepreneurship ecosystem rises.

Startups who understand this new landscape stand to save money via discounted products and services, receive money via loans, investments, licensing, procurement, and acquisition, build brand & customer base via partnerships, and access startup support.

To encourage communities to strengthen their industrial ecosystems, the U.S. Department of Commerce has announced it will make awards to up to 25 communities to launch implementation strategies. The solicitation for the awards will be released in May, and awards of up to $200,000 each will be issued by the end of September. The awards are one part of a four–phase plan announced by Deputy Secretary of Commerce Rebecca Blank last week that also includes listening sessions and a proposal to award five to six communities $25 million each.

Details for the cross-agency initiative, the Investing in Manufacturing Communities Partnership (IMCP) that will provide coordinated assistance to manufacturing communities, were outlined by the deputy secretary. The first of four phases will be listening sessions coordinated by federal agencies throughout 2013 to seek input on a 2014 competition. In the partnership's second phase, the grants of up to $200,000 will be awarded to 25 communities to create strategic plans that strengthen their industrial economies.

U.S. innovation policy, which in the latter half of the twentieth century became focused on massive federal investment in basic research, is no longer tenable, according to a new report from the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF). In the post-World War II era, the federal government funded a wide variety of costly basic research projects at U.S. universities and federal laboratories without a guiding economic strategy for these investments. This approach has ceased to yield the kind of economic growth it once did, due to the globalization of the economy and knowledge diffusion. ITIF proposes 25 recommendations that could be adopted by the federal government along with the reauthorization of the America COMPETES Act in order to modernize the country's innovation policy and improve U.S. competitiveness.

While New Mexico continues to lead the country in R&D intensity, California remains at the top in R&D expenditures, according to new National Science Foundation (NSF) data from 2009 and 2010. The new report provides updated, detailed statistical tables on current and historical patterns (1953 to 2010) of U.S. research and development (R&D) expenditures by performing sector, source of funds, character of work and state. NSF's National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics (NCSES) released the data to provide a statistical supplement to their January 2013 InfoBrief on the National Patterns findings for 2010–11. The report provides updated, yearly data from 1953 to 2010 due to new NSF methodologies for obtaining and compiling R&D statistics and includes 2011 estimated data.

Maryland often has been at the forefront of innovation with a longstanding reputation for investing in science and technology to capture new opportunities for economic growth. This year's legislative session was no different. Lawmakers backed Gov. Martin O'Malley's proposals to support the state's bioscience sector, expand the R&D tax credit, enhance workforce training, and promote measures to establish the state as a leader in cybersecurity.

Creators, motivators and innovators now have a chance to show off, via video, their ideas to make cities of the future better in the 2013 Better Cities competition and be in with a chance to win great prizes.

Intel Labs Europe, Dublin City Council, Trinity College Dublin and the European Commission Open Innovation and Strategy Policy Group, as part of Open Innovation 2.0: Sustainable Economy & Society collaboration, have revealed the 2013 Better Cities competition is now open.

We hear a lot of talk in the greater Open Innovation “space” that is often quite esoteric in nature. Rhetoric that talks of the wonders of the wisdom of the crowd, yet fails to offer a sincere level of granularity as to what really makes an Open Innovation community “tick” or how to manage an Open Innovation process so that you can achieve scale. After all, if you are entering Open Innovation to only “run” one competition, well that isn’t going to transform how you approach innovation and growth. Conversely, if your goals are to achieve a continuous innovation cycle via Open Innovation contests and challenges, then you will require that level of granularity that will help you master Open Innovation management. Let’s take some time to look at 4 things you should never do when managing an Open Innovation process.

As Google plans to expand its ultrafast Internet service from a fledging effort in Kansas City to Austin, Texas, and Provo, Utah, evidence is emerging that the company has forced broadband competitors into offering dramatically better service.

New data from Akamai, which delivers a hefty portion of all Web traffic, reveals a remarkable turn of events in Kansas. In the fourth quarter of 2012, Kansas saw the largest jump in average Internet connection speeds of all U.S. states compared to the fourth quarter of 2011, with an 86 percent surge (see “When Will the Rest of Us Get Google Fiber?”). The next-highest increase was in Wyoming, at 51 percent.

President Obama today celebrated the remarkable achievements of student science fair winners and extraordinary kid innovators from across the nation in the third White House Science Fair. The Fair brought 100 students from more than 40 states to an all-day, hands-on celebration of the power and potential of science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) education.

As the President said in 2009, when he announced the first-ever White House Science Fair, “If you win the NCAA championship, you come to the White House. Well, if you're a young person and you've produced the best experiment or design, the best hardware or software, you ought to be recognized for that achievement, too.”

Whether you are a seasoned entrepreneur, or part of a budding start-up, you will need to deal with clients. The hard part is making sure that they are happy and you are profitable. Even though there are six billion people on the planet, when it comes to spending money and doing business most people will fall into a few categories.

Now I’ve been a part of fitness, retail, e-commerce, consulting, and non-profit businesses. To say that I have dealt with a lot of different types people is a mild understatement. However, most of these people have fallen into one of the categories I’m outlining below. The list is not exhaustive, but it will cover most people you meet.

QUESTION: HOW DO YOU STAY FOCUSED WHEN WORKING ON THE GO — IN AIRPORTS, CO-WORKING SPACES, STARBUCKS?

TIME YOUR WORK SESSIONS

“Set a timer for thirty minutes and commit to not doing anything else during that time. No phone, no email, no Facebook. Setting a timer frees your mind to focus on the single task at hand without distractions.”

Let’s start the week off right with some awesome motivation! We love picture quotes so here are a bunch we have recently found. If you want more don’t forget to follow us on the Under30CEO Pinterest.

Despite remarkable growth, solar and wind power aren’t making a dent in carbon emissions, says a new report from the International Energy Agency. Coal consumption is growing too fast to offset any gains from renewables.

According to the report, solar power capacity increased by 42 percent, and wind increased 19 percent during 2012. In comparison, coal only grew by 6 percent over the last two years. But because the total installed capacity of coal power was already huge, the amount of coal capacity added was much larger than that of solar and wind power. Even the increase in natural gas consumption hasn’t decreased the use of coal worldwide (see “Coal Demand Falls in the U.S., Rises Everywhere Else”).

For the past few years, a number of prominent U.S. venture capitalists have been trying to convince Congress to modify the U.S. UB-5 visa program. Currently, the program allows foreigners who invest $1 million in a U.S. business and create 10 or more jobs to get a visa; the investors want Washington to include those entrepreneurs who attract funds from venture capitalists or business angels. While the bill’s advocates have gotten it introduced into the House and Senate, the effort has stalled.

A black-and-white view inside a sprawling physics lab that's buried nearly a mile under an Italian mountain won the people's pick for 1st prize in a photo contest that brought together images of atom-smashing instruments typically only seen by scientists.

From R2-D2 in "Star Wars" to Furby, robots can generate surprisingly humanlike feelings. Watching a robot being abused or cuddled has a similar effect on people to seeing those things done to a human, new research shows.

Humans are increasingly exposed to robots in their daily lives, but little is known about how these lifelike machines influence human emotions.

The Internet industry in Pakistan is at an extremely exciting point, and the outlook for local entrepreneurs and venture capitalists is strong in the mid to long run.

As the sixth largest country in the world in terms of population, Pakistan has an ever-expanding web base which currently stands at 22 million users, with 8 million now on Facebook.

When you deliver nearly a third of global Web traffic, you get to see a lot of crazy stuff happen.

Akamai Technologies (NASDAQ: AKAM), the global Internet traffic provider, is giving us a glimpse at some of those wild scenarios today in its latest “State of the Internet” report.

The company, based in Cambridge, MA, tracks a wide variety of statistics in its quarterly reports, including domestic and global Internet speeds, mobile connectivity, unique IP addresses, and attacks by hackers.