Increased economic growth doesn’t necessarily lead to more fulfillment. So why do we consider GDP to be the most important factor? In an excerpt from The End of Growth: Adapting to Our New Economic Reality, Richard Heinberg argues it’s time to start paying more attention to national happiness instead.

One factor that is increasingly being cited as an important economic indicator is happiness. After all, what good is increased production and consumption if the result isn’t increased human satisfaction? Until fairly recently, the subject of happiness was mostly avoided by economists for lack of good ways to measure it; however, in recent years, “happiness economists” have found ways to combine subjective surveys with objective data (on lifespan, income, and education) to yield data with consistent patterns, making a national happiness index a practical reality.

How is the venture capital industry doing?  The short answer is not as well as it did 15 to 20 ago.  One measure of industry performance – exits as a share of investments made five years earlier – still have not returned to 1990s levels.

Venture capitalists would like all of the companies they invest in to have a positive exit because they usually don’t make money unless the businesses they finance go public or get acquired.  Therefore, exits of venture capital-backed companies tell us something about the health of the industry.

While a lot of people look at the raw number of initial public offerings (IPOs) and acquisitions to gauge the industry’s health, the number of exits is deceptive.  Because venture capitalists don’t finance the same number of companies every year, the number of IPOs and acquisitions of venture capital-backed companies could simply reflect changes in the number of investments made.

Penn’s Center for Technology Transfer is spreading innovation one technology transfer at a time.

According to a survey by the Association of University Technology Managers, which Penn is part of, the University has made numerous gains over the past years in multiple areas of technology transfers.

Technology transfer measures the spread of technical knowledge, patents, start-ups, licenses and research disclosure between Penn and other research organizations.

Working words like “S Corp” and “Jason Fried” into conversations doesn’t make you a good entrepreneur, a tech whiz or even a pretty smart guy. But failing to recognize a common tech term at the right moment can make you look like a nube.

Smart-flashcard startup Brainscape launched a new deck of flashcards called Tech Startup Genius on Wednesday that promises to protect you from this situation. The free iPhone app, personally authored by Brainscape founder Andrew Cohen, includes three sets of flashcards: people you should know, orgs you should know, company formation basics and fundraising basics.

McKinsey has a briefing on the state of innovation in China:

Chinese companies. . . benefit from their government’s emphasis on indigenous innovation, underlined in the latest five-year plan. Chinese authorities view innovation as critical both to the domestic economy’s long-term health and to the global competiveness of Chinese companies. China has already created the seeds of 22 Silicon Valley–like innovation hubs within the life sciences and biotech industries. In semiconductors, the government has been consolidating innovation clusters to create centers of manufacturing excellence.

The piece goes on to describe how the government allows a partnership of sorts between domestic and multinatonal firms in fostering innovation.  An interesting case study in the rise of so-called “state capitalism.”

In a typical year, research at the University of Washington will spawn about a dozen promising young companies. In the next three years, the school’s new president wants to see that output double—and ground zero for a lot of those startups will likely be a new incubator space unveiled this week.

When renovations are complete, the UW’s New Ventures Facility will have space for about 25 startups, with some 23,000 square feet of space split roughly evenly between laboratories and offices.

A group of Silicon Valley entrepreneurs is trying to make it easier for its foreign counterparts to make and maintain business connections through an innovative end-run around U.S. immigration law: Putting them up for months at a time in a floating "Googleplex" that anchors in international waters -- but is close enough for them to make frequent visits to Silicon Valley.

Co-founder of the Blueseed project, Max Marty, and his partners want to build a floating "startup incubator" strategically positioned in the Pacific Ocean about 12 miles off San Francisco's coast. Offering an array of rich work and living spaces designed to foster creativity, the "Googleplex of the sea," would provide innovators with a space where they could operate far enough away from the U.S. mainland to sidestep its immigration laws, but close enough to cultivate business relationships with Silicon Valley insiders.

After the idea, it’s all about execution. I often hear from investors that a great idea is necessary, but not sufficient. The most important thing is a proven team, meaning one who has built a startup before, and has experience with the execution process in this domain.

I’ve talked before about the best personality traits for a good entrepreneur, but I’ve never talked about the importance of process. Yes, even entrepreneurs need to follow a disciplined execution process if they want to maximize their probability for success.

Even though John Spence in Awesomely Simple, was talking about larger organizations, I think his concepts adapt equally well to a startup.

Imagine looking for a house in San Francisco or one of the nicer parts of Silicon Valley, which are already among the most expensive parts of the country. Now imagine having to bid against a legion of newly minted Facebook millionaires.

“I’m kind of worried — a thousand millionaires are going to be buying houses!” Connie Cao said as she and her family toured a home in a good school district here.

Her husband, Jared Oberhaus, was more optimistic. “Maybe sellers are sitting on their houses now, waiting for Facebook, and they’ll all come on the market at the same time,” he said.

One of the secrets to getting the most from your employees is understanding the challenges they face, not only in the workplace but in the rest of their lives. A comprehensive new report, Women & the Workplace, by Inforum and Sphere Trending has some insights on a key group of employees: women.

The recent recession had been dubbed a “mancession” as men lost jobs in record numbers. By comparison, the study found, women fared better at keeping jobs (however, men are faring better in the current recovery). Not only that, but “Single, childless women in their 20s are more likely than their male counterparts to graduate from college,” says Sphere Trending CEO Maxine Lauer. “That demographic segment is going to be where a lot of the new young talent will come from in years ahead.”

There’s a natural lifecycle for any freelancer’s business. When you’re just starting out, you indiscriminately look to attract as many clients as you can to build your business. But inevitably, some clients won’t be the right fit.

Whether it’s an overly-demanding client who’s prone to instant message you any time of day (or night), an indecisive client who’s sole feedback usually entails “that’s not quite it,” or the client who’s perennially slow to pay, some clients just aren’t worth the business. An extension of the Pareto Principle says that 20% of your customers probably account for the majority of your time and trouble.

Let’s face it: Too many of us spend a lot of time actively ignoring LinkedIn. We don’t intend to, it’s just not as flashy as some of the other social networks. But if you haven’t checked out the business social networking site lately, it’s time to stop ignoring LinkedIn and go back. Because the site has added a host of new features in recent months that have helped transform it from a static resume site to a full-blown business networking site that SMBs will want to take advantage of.

One feature small business owners want to specifically be aware of is the ability to create company profiles on the site. By claiming and building out your profile, SMBs will be able to increase your company’s prominence on the site, help prospective employees find you, and use it as your own personal recruiting network. If you’ve ever had to hire locally, you know important this is.

Here are some quotes about entrepreneurshp. I hope you like them…

Entrepreneurship Quotes

* Dame Anita Roddick – English woman entrepreneur, founder of The Body Shop

Nobody talks about entrepreneurship as survival, but that’s exactly what it is and what nurtures creative thinking. Running that first shop taught me business is not financial science, it’s about trading – buying and selling.

* Peter Drucker – American writer, publisher and entrepreneur. Also known as the father of modern entrepreneurship.

The entrepreneur always searches for change, responds to it, and exploits it as an opportunity.

* Charles Robert Darwin – British naturalist, explorer and scientist.

It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.

Eric Giler points a remote control at a small black pad leaned up against a wall, and three lamps instantly light up and a tablet computer starts charging. The funny thing is, the devices all sit several feet away from the black pad, which provides power, and aren't plugged in.

Giler is the CEO of Witricity, a startup that hopes to revolutionize electronics by replacing wireless charging systems with ones that send power safely through the air. The nearly five-year-old company uses technology developed at MIT that extends the range of inductive wireless charging.

Ever wondered what makes one startup succeed while another fails? Well a team of brains from Harvard Business School has put together a fascinating working paper called Performance Persistence in Entrepreneurship which answers questions related to just this.

We scoured the 35 page document and found the following pearls of wisdom.

Question: Are serial entrepreneurs more likely to succeed than first time entrepreneurs?

Answer: Yes.

All things being equal, the paper states that a VC backed entrepreneur who succeeds in a venture (by the paper’s definition, starts a company that goes public) has a 30% chance of succeeding in a follow up venture. By contrast, first-time entrepreneurs have only an 18% chance of succeeding and entrepreneurs who previously failed have a 20% chance of succeeding.

That thing everyone's been waiting for, a vigorous start-up economy in West Virginia? It may be on the verge of happening.

The establishment last year of the West Virginia Angel Investor Network gives reason to renew hope.

"Things are coming together," said WVAIN President Ron Basini. "No — they are together."

WVAIN seeks investment opportunities with companies needing seed capital — those that do not yet have sales or perhaps even quite a completed or tested product or service — and early-stage capital — companies with sales up to around $500,000 per year.

In 2008, federal agencies obligated $28.4 billion to 1,316 academic institutions for science and engineering activities, according to data from the National Science Foundation. Although this represents a 0.9% increase in current dollars over 2007 levels, it represents a 1.4% decrease in inflation-adjusted 2005 dollars. The Johns Hopkins University (including its Applied Physics Laboratory) continued to be the leading academic recipient of federal S&E obligations, followed by the University of Washington and the campuses of the University of Michigan. Together, the top 20 institutions received 34.4 percent of all federal S&E obligations in 2008.

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Today, President Obama will host the second White House Science Fair celebrating the student winners of a broad range of science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) competitions from across the country. The President will also announce key additional steps that the Administration and its partners are taking to prepare 100,000 effective math and science teachers and to meet the urgent need to train one million additional STEM graduates over the next decade.

“When students excel in math and science, they help America compete for the jobs and industries of the future,” said President Obama. “That’s why I’m proud to celebrate outstanding students at the White House Science Fair, and to announce new steps my Administration and its partners are taking to help more young people succeed in these critical subjects."

After decreasing in 2010 for the first time in a decade, California's share of U.S. venture capital investment increased from 50.3 percent to 51 percent in 2011, according to the PricewaterhouseCoopers/National Venture Capital Association Moneytree Survey. The state's share of total U.S. venture deals also increased from 39.3 percent to 40.2 percent. Massachusetts, the second most active venture capital state, received 10.5 percent of venture dollars and 10.4 percent of deals in 2011. Together, the top five states (California, Massachusetts, New York, Texas and Illinois) received 77.1 percent of all 2011 U.S. venture capital dollars.

The U.S. Commerce Department's Economic Development Administration (EDA) today announced its FY 2012 University Center Economic Development Program competition to promote bottom-up regional strategies that help foster business expansion and job creation in EDA's Atlanta and Seattle regions. Accredited institutions of higher education, including community colleges, or a consortium of accredited institutions of higher education are encouraged to apply by the March 30, 2012 deadline.

For prospective applicants, teleconferences will be held to provide general program information and information regarding the preparation of applications for funding under this competitive solicitation. The Atlanta Regional Office will hold its informational teleconference on February 23, 2012 at 2:00 p.m. ET. The Seattle Regional Office will hold its informational teleconference on March 1, 2012 at 1:30 p.m PT.

A group of education leaders gathered last week to discuss the most important technology innovations of the last decade, and their findings suggest the classroom of the future will be open, mobile, and flexible enough to reach individual students—while free online tools will challenge the authority of traditional institutions.

The retreat celebrated the 10th anniversary of the New Media Consortium’s Horizon Project, whose annual report provides a road map of the education-technology landscape. One hundred experts from higher education, K-12, and museum education identified 28 “metatrends” that will influence education in the future. The 10 most important, according to a New Media Consortium announcement about the retreat, include global adoption of mobile devices, the rise of cloud computing, and transparency movements that call into question traditional notions of content ownership concerning digital materials.