Recently BNET colleague Donna Fenn listed 10 reasons a college grad’s first job should be with a startup. Great article, sound reasoning… but I disagree, if only because my first post-college job was with a Fortune 500 company. Starting and running a business would have been much harder without the skill and experience I gained in a corporate environment.

Would I want to work there today? No. But am I glad I once worked there? Absolutely.

If you hope to someday start your own business, here are great reasons to work for a big company first:

1. Entrepreneurs are sometimes crazy — and not in a good way. For every passionate and visionary entrepreneur who identifies an unmet need and taps the latent skills and expertise of otherwise-underutilized employees to create a thriving business that values people as much as profits… there are hundreds of small businesses run by people who are, well, nuts. Sure, many startups are run by solid businesspeople, but I’ve met way more entrepreneurs who use their business to serve their self-indulgent, narcissistic, “me first” needs. Work for one and you may never realize there’s a better way.

With an ever-growing mountain of health-related data and a federal mandate to make more of it digital and shareable, information technology is in high demand among hospitals, physicians, insurers, government administrators and other players.

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And that’s encouraging the formation of new health IT-focused accelerator programs designed to seed young start-ups. In the past couple of months, two such programs have started up — one in Chicago called Healthbox, the other in San Francisco called Rock Health.

Healthbox is operated by Chicago-based incubator and venture firm Sandbox Industries, which raised an $18 million fund in 2009 and also operates as fund manager for BlueCross BlueShield Venture Partners, the investment wing of the health-insurance giant.

Vivek Kundra’s resignation last week from his post as the nation’s Chief Information Officer is an ominous event.

Kundra’s goal was to set government data free via an expansive Internet effort called Data.gov, and encourage innovation with government-collected data through the Open Government Initiative. He had hoped to slash tens of billions of dollars from the government information technology (I.T.) budget by democratizing who and which types of companies can deliver I.T. solutions to the government. The most radical part of his program was to make public data available to entrepreneurs, allowing them to build new applications that solved problems for the government and their communities.

Did you happen to catch "America's Next Great Restaurant," which aired on NBC a few months back? In it, people who thought they had a great restaurant concept competed in front of a panel of investors - including celebrity chef Bobby Flay and Steve Ells, founder of Chipotle - for money to open their doors.

From the beginning, it was obvious some contestants had what it takes to be an entrepreneur - the ability to innovate, an innate sense of adventure - while others clearly did not.

It got my wheels turning: Are these qualities inborn? Or can they be learned?

So when a recent Cogswell College survey found that two out of three Americans don't think colleges are focused enough on teaching entrepreneurial skills - and only one in 20 think that college is where students become entrepreneurs - I asked Douglas Mellinger, a trustee at the Silicon Valley college and a seasoned entrepreneur, his opinion. His response was split: Clearly, certain qualities can't be taught. Among them are passion, a willingness to take risks and curiosity.

For many decades, Japan’s high-technology companies, nourished by innovative products and prominent consumer electronics brands, were the envy of the global sector. But that is rapidly changing. More recently, these companies have been losing ground around the world, undermined by a reluctance to make the aggressive moves and hard choices necessary to compete in new markets and against emboldened attackers.

Recent McKinsey research shows that Japanese high-tech companies lost a decade between 2000 and 2010 (Exhibit 1) and on current trajectory could see their global market share drop by 20 percent from 2008 to 2013. That represents a cumulative loss of more than $30 billion in potential revenue. Japanese companies have a global presence and reputation, but most remain surprisingly dependent on Japan’s domestic market for revenue, while struggling to capture a reasonable share of dynamically growing emerging markets. Our analysis shows that Japanese high-tech companies, as a group, still generate more than 50 percent of their sales in the home market, growing by a mere 1 percent annually, compared with growth of 5 to 10 percent in the developing world and 2 to 3 percent in other developed markets...

Today we publish our latest Spotlight on Overcoming gender barriers in science.

Despite gradual progress in gender balance in academia and in the workforce, women remain under-represented in the sciences in developing countries.

How wide is the gender gap in science? What are the main barriers to women's advancement? And what can be done to overcome them? Our Spotlight explores these questions through opinions, features and the latest facts and figures, alongside key documents and useful links. Scientists, science educators and South Africa's Minister of Science and Technology offer their expert views on the problem.

Russia’s startup scene is still growing but with a potential market size of 170 million users in the next 18 months, it’s white hot. There remain hurdles – like payment mechanisms and door-to-door delivery in a market known for corruption in the postal servce. But these are gradually being eroded by entrepreneurs.

Yesterday I had lunch with a VC who hits Moscow once a month now, such is the potential for even ‘normal’ business models like old fashioned e-commerce. Meanwhile, there are lots of categories in Russia waiting to be filled and one of them is travel.

LinkedIn has taken another deep dive on its user data, comparing women and men’s networking skills on the 100 million-plus member professional network.

The verdict: LinkedIn says that that men are overall more savvy networkers than women, but men and women behave differently in online professional networking. To evaluate LinkedIn “networking savviness” index, the Analytics Team diced data of current industry, current company, and professional connections for members in the US. While users don’t have to designate whether they are a male or female on their LinkedIn profile, the networked had to guess a person’s gender using their first name and matching this against a database of baby names.

LinkedIn measures networking “savviness” based on the the ratio of one-way connections that men have to connections that women have, and the ratio of male members on LinkedIn to female members. For example, LinkedIn will label an industry as “female savvy” when 45% of the industry is female and where women have 70% of the connections.

It’s no secret that working with a headhunter or recruiter can be an effective way to advance your career.

Headhunters often have access to jobs that are not advertised elsewhere and can speed up the hiring process between an employer and potential candidate.

The trick, however, is understanding how a headhunter operates. “As a career management coach, it is always surprising to me that even senior level job seekers often don't know that ‘headhunters’ work for the companies, not the candidates,” says Bettina Seidman of SEIDBET Associates.

It’s one thing to rank cities or countries on their economies or employment prospects, but most people don’t crave financial opportunity to the exclusion of all else. Most of us want to be happy, and in the past few years, a slew of studies, surveys, and research projects have been launched to figure out whose citizens are the most content.

The difficulty, of course, is that what makes one person happy may make another person miserable. Now, the Better Life Initiative, from the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), aims to fix that with a nifty, new tool that ranks 34 countries on 11 indicators. (The tool allows you to tweak criteria to fit your own stage of life.)

With graduation season just behind us, millions of members of the class of 2011 are just beginning their lives as employed, fully financially independent adults. Sure, many have worked part-time through college and have a basic grasp of the fundamentals of budgeting, but with their entry into the workforce young people enter a whole new financial era in which student loans come due, paychecks must last the full month and future expenses like mortgages begin to loom increasingly large.

How can they get on a firm financial footing? Entry-Level Rebel asked Jesse Ryan, Managing Director of Accounting Principals for some tips. In addition to reminding grads of the basics like cutting back on small, unnecessary expenses (no really, you don’t need a Starbucks mocha latte every day), avoiding high interest credit cards and saving for an emergency fund, Ryan offered these four tips:

Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Skolkovo Foundation on Saturday signed a preliminary agreement to establish Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology (SIST), Skolkovo President Viktor Vekselberg said.

The agreement, which was signed at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, plans a three-year collaboration between MIT and the Skolkovo Foundation. It is a preliminary statement of shared intention: MIT and Skolkovo Foundation will next prepare a definitive agreement that they anticipate signing in early fall.

Treasure hunting is both a time-honored game for all ages and a life-long profession for some.  The appeal of finding something not currently used by others is alluring.  It can feel nearly like having a joyous secret. And for some, building around such treasures is a passion.  Many entrepreneurs have found gems in the treasure trove of federal technology, its software and inventions.  Some of these gems have been the basis for creation of new companies, and over time, the foundation from which new industries arise.

Others have bolstered or added competitive advantages in technology and manufacturing, increasing the benefits of existing technology or reducing the cost of manufacture.  Those who know where to search for these treasures often return for more and for different gems.  But the maps to these troves can be difficult to find and sometimes hard to read.

The National Library of Medicine, the world’s largest medical library and a component of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), has formally launched MedlinePlus Connect. This free service allows health organizations and health information technology (HIT) providers to link patient portals and electronic health record (EHR) systems to MedlinePlus.gov, a trusted source of authoritative, up-to-date health information for patients, families and health care providers. MedlinePlus brings together information from NIH, other federal agencies, and reputable health information providers. MedlinePlus covers a wide range of health conditions and wellness issues, and includes key resources to inform patients about their health.

Patients using portals or EHRs that have implemented MedlinePlus Connect can access easy-to-understand health information on MedlinePlus that is directly related to their diagnoses, medications, and lab tests. “MedlinePlus Connect is the latest result of NLM’s long standing commitment to using technology and standards to bring high quality information to patients and clinicians when and where they need it,” noted NLM Director Donald A.B. Lindberg, M.D.

Intrapreneurship is a topic that has become increasing more popular as large companies struggle to find ways to maintain their competitive edge in this difficult economy. Intrapreneurship is similar to entrepreneurship, except that it focuses on ways corporations can act “entrepreneurially” from within established organizations.

According to a survey by Ernst & Young, internal company entrepreneurs or “intrapreneurs” need specific characteristics in order to lead a rapidly growing organization because “large and well-established companies often comprise rigid structures that can stifle the entrepreneurial spirit.”

With seniors now often living apart from their extended families, many young people have very little interaction with people outside of their own age group. Until they get to work, of course, where new entrants to the workforce brush shoulders with many generations in close quarters.

Conflicts naturally arise with young people being labeled lazy or self-involved, and baby faced-staff complaining about the stodgy ways of senior team members. But despite the usual sniping and complaining, multi-generational teams are actually best, according to a recent post on blog CAREEREALISM.

No action under current federal consideration would be more detrimental to American innovation, venture formation and economic development than the current Patent-Reforming and so-called “America Invents Act” (S. 23) and corresponding H. R. 1249. This situation is particularly ironic given that both the current Administration and Congress seem to “get it”, supporting by a variety of initiatives the reality that most new jobs in our struggling economy are generated by the new venture start-up sector. The current “Patent Reform” proposal seeks to remedy the government’s admitted problems with efficiently carrying out its chartered administrative functions by “killing the goose that lays the golden egg” rather than by reforming its backlog-causing current procedures, and simply ought not to pass!

Specifically, these bills as written put unnecessarily more power (such may be their intention) into the hands of the big business sector, at the expense of the independent inventors and entrepreneurs who have been critical to the American economy since its beginning and remain ever more so today. The proposal to change the fundamental basis of patent eligibility from First-To-Invent to First-To-File, the additional but unspecified further expenses likely to result from broader administrative fee-setting authority, the enhanced opportunities and decreased burden of proof for challenge to patents during consideration or even after award, will all markedly lessen the ability, and thus the motivation, for independent inventors and entrepreneurs to file for and benefit from patent protection, and will therefore critically decrease their ability to obtain needed financing for these fledgling enterprises. Big business, on the other hand, will be further competitively advantaged in these regards, when it needs no such additional protection or support either domestically or internationally due to its already substantial resources.

I remember the first “Sex and the City” movie (sorry, guys—it won’t take long) where Jennifer Hudson, who played Carrie Bradshaw’s assistant, said, “Love is the thing you know.” It stuck with me. When it comes to business, I would add that joy is too.

We spend too many hours a day on the job—whether for someone else or for ourselves—to hate it. (Don’t we?) We need to take joy in what we do if we intend to make it for the long term.

How do you feel about doing your own thing? Some 77 percent of small business owners in the Small Business Happiness Index by Vistaprint are either “very” or “extremely” happy about running a business and working for themselves. (The survey focused on 900 U.S. microbusinesses with one to 10 employees and less than $100,000 in annual revenues–primarily home-based businesses.)

Job interviews are often a nerve-wracking ordeal. But at some places, your suffering is guaranteed.

Glassdoor identified the hardest interview processes out there based on user reviews.

Google, a company known for their interesting interview questions, was just shy of the top twenty. eBay and Amazon interview questions are actually harder.

The hardest interview of all is at consulting company McKinsey -- not surprising when you consider that its business is based on answering hard questions.

The magazine Computerworld has come out with its top 100 places to work for IT staff in 2011. Financial companies like USAA and Securian Financial Group, and global conglomerates like General Mills, grabbed the top three rankings. Five universities also made the list. (The top 100 were whittled down from 500 nominees, based on a survey of institutional features like benefits and employee turnover, as well as surveys of employee satisfaction at each place.)

The University of Pennsylvania snagged the sixth spot, lauded for its benefits and workforce diversity. Also valued by employees: Teams of IT staffers compete in universitywide employee recognition programs for work on particular projects, with small cash prizes and a lunch with Pennsylvania’s top leaders as rewards.