Measuring IQ is an inexact science, which is why the Guinness Book of World Records eliminated the Highest IQ category in 1990.

Even with a test result in hand, the number can vary from exam to exam. Third party scoring or estimates based upon intellectual achievements are a popular way of getting a ballpark figure.

In other words, the following list is based on rumors and hearsay, but that's the only way to measure the world's smartest people.

Deferred compensation plans can help businesses recruit and keep key talent—and that’s a big deal for those that want to survive and grow.

In these “golden handcuffs” arrangements, employers and employees agree to withhold part of an employee’s ongoing salary, bonuses or other pay until a future date—usually around retirement.

Deferred compensation lets the most important employees stash away more retirement money than they’re allowed to with rank-and-file retirement plans. Like 401(k)’s and similar plans, deferred compensation funds are shielded from income tax. The money can grow tax-free until it’s cashed out at retirement—and by then, recipients are likely to be in lower tax brackets. No wonder deferred compensation is popular with executives!

A European Commission effort to use government procurement powers to spur innovation faces a series of key political tests this spring, according to top EU officials.

“It’s crunch time,” said Robert Madelin, Director-General for Information Society and Media at the European Commission. A series of Commission proposals on the topic are being debated this Spring, in the Parliament and among the EU member-states.“If we get a clearer mandate [from member states] on pre-commercial procurement this year, it will become much easier going forward,” Madelin said at a Science|Business seminar on 16 March.

Innovative procurement and pre-commercial procurement are ideas that have moved much higher up the European agenda in the last year. The EU’s Innovation Union strategy and the European Council’s conclusions from its Feb. 4 summit both highlight public procurement as an important tool for driving innovation and reviving growth, with the European Commission setting a target that at least €10 billion be spent in procuring innovation across the EU. Normally, EU programmes encourage innovation by funding research and development through grants, project contracts or other means short of outright purchase.

Orin Herskowitz, executive director of Columbia Technology Ventures, is sipping gourmet coffee at a bistro across the street from the Manhattan Mall, but he hardly needs the caffeine to amplify his excitement about the innovation scene at his college. Columbia Technology Ventures—the Ivy League university’s main technology-transfer initiative—has chalked up an impressive list of accomplishments ever since Herskowitz joined the office in 2006. “We get 300 faculty-submitted inventions a year,” he says, about 60 percent in life sciences and the rest in other technologies. “I like to say we have everything from iPhone apps to cancer drugs,” Herskowitz says.

Herskowitz has good reason to boast. The former management consultant has spent the last few years whipping Columbia’s tech transfer efforts into shape, instituting a host of new processes designed to speed good ideas to market. It’s working: In 2009 (the most recent year for which data is available), Columbia pulled in $154 million in licensing revenues—more than any other university—according to the Association of University Technology Managers (AUTM). Columbia’s tech-transfer arm now spawns about a dozen startups a year. “Over the last two years, the whole university has come together around entrepreneurship in a way that feels new and energized,” Herskowitz says.

For many would-be entrepreneurs there are two basic routes open to achieve their goals. The first is to bootstrap, to figuratively pull yourself up by your own shoelaces and slug it out in a decade (or longer) march to achievement. Possibly, along the way, funding can be obtained through business Angels or other forms of participation.

The second is to hook up with one of several start-up incubators.

The differences between these two ways of running your business are significant and it would help to be aware of those differences before making a decision. It seems as though many people view the ‘bootstrap’ route as an alternative or last resort but in my opinion both alternatives have significant pros and significant cons.

Future Business, the organisation which used to be know as City Life, has been granted planning permission for the creation of a new business incubation centre for social and environmental enterprises on King’s Hedges Road.

The Future Business Centre will offer 3,200 sq m of affordable workspace and on-site advice to support the growth of businesses that exist to make a difference on social or environmental issues. If the fundraising campaign is successful, construction could start this summer with the building completed mid 2012.

The Centre will be part of The Hive development – a visionary new Education and Enterprise Park planned for North Cambridge.

Research by McGill Sociology Professor Eran Shor, working in collaboration with researchers from Stony Brook University, has revealed that unemployment increases the risk of premature mortality by 63 per cent. Shor reached these conclusions by surveying existing research covering 20 million people in 15 (mainly western) countries, over the last 40 years.

One surprising finding was that, in spite of expectations that a better health-care system might contribute to lower mortality rates, the correlation between unemployment and a higher risk of death was the same in all the countries covered by the study.

This is my final MBA Mondays post on M&A Issues. I've been posting about M&A since last December. It feels like a semester long effort. And frankly I'm a bit tired of talking about M&A every monday. But selling your company is an important topic and I think we've done it justice now on MBA Mondays.

Price is certainly the most important issue in a sale transaction. You need to consider all of the issues we talked about when deciding whether or not to accept an offer to buy your company. But at the end of the day, price is the big issue.

After working with dozens of startup founders, I’m still amazed that some seem to be able to do the job easily and effectively, always in control, while others always seem to be struggling, out-of-control, and fighting the latest crisis. I am more and more convinced that it is the right founder behavior that leads to success, rather than some exceptional intelligence or training.

In that context, startup founders should carefully review the points made by Denny F. Strigl, former CEO of Verizon Wireless, in his recent book, aptly named “Managers, Can You Hear Me Now?” He outlines the behavioral habits he has seen in managers who are successful, versus the bad habits of ones who struggle. These habits apply even more directly to entrepreneur startup leadership:

1.  Failure to build trust and integrity. Poor executives often fail to build trust initially, or they erode trust during daily interactions and operations. Without trust, there can be little cooperation between team members. This results in little risk taking, diminished confidence among employees, and a loss of communication throughout the company.

How can a college that isn’t a brand-name research powerhouse take part in the rapidly expanding global higher education marketplace? An administrator put that question to me the other day when I spoke at Pittsburg State University in rural southern Kansas. Pitt State (home of the Gorillas) is a regional institution with about 7,000 students. Most of them are from small towns in Kansas, with students from nearby Oklahoma and Missouri thrown into the mix. The university, a little more than two hours’ drive from Kansas City, prides itself on the attention it gives to its undergraduates, many of whom are first-generation college students. Its mission is extremely important, but it isn’t one that is usually associated with educational cosmopolitanism.

Citibank conducted a survey of 1,002 small business owners and learned that they are crazy.

Specifically, 73% said if they knew then what they know now about entrepreneurship, they'd still start a company, hardships and all.

Most (64%) also said they'd recommend entrepreneurship to their children.

These answers make it sound like Citibank only interviewed successful business owners. But the researcher says the same applies for failed founders.

The idea: Instead of choosing between a desk or a chair, you can have both!

All you have to do is flip the backrest and the Double Side transforms from a chair into a work surface.

It even comes with a shelf for books and magazines.

Whose idea: Matali Crasset

Why it's brilliant: Double Side is a great design for people who live in tiny apartments or have a limited budget.

This clever chair could also be a hit in classrooms, libraries, offices and waiting rooms.

So, you’ve done your research and decided to form an LLC or incorporate your business. Maybe you want to protect your personal savings and other assets, maybe your financial advisor mentioned you could save in taxes, or maybe you simply need a legal structure to win a large client contract. Whatever the reasoning, it’s time to take the next step for your business.

The only question is how?

For the small business owner, this process raises many questions. Where do I start? How much does it cost to incorporate or to form an LLC? How long does the process take? Can I form my own corporation or LLC or is an attorney required? In this post, I’ll break down the steps required to incorporate a business or form an LLC, as well as explain the three different methods: do-it-yourself, legal filing service, or an attorney.

We're told these days that we must all be innovators. But Oded Shenkar, a professor of management at Ohio State University's Fisher College of Business, says this is actually the Age Of Imitation. The business environment is littered with first movers who have underperformed their peers - think of White Castle, the first fast-food purveyor; and Diners Club, the first issuer of credit cards - while many imitators do so well they push the innovators out of business. On Ivey Business Journal, Prof. Shenkar outlines the methods imitators use to succeed:

Open innovation is the process by which organizations use both internal and external knowledge to drive and accelerate their internal innovation strategy in order to fulfil existing market needs or to access new market opportunities.

The concept of open innovation implies that an organization has the willingness and desire to source and utilize external knowledge, ideas, intellectual assets and technologies, in addition to its internal capabilities, to identify solutions to problems, capitalize on opportunities, develop new technologies, create new products and services, improve processes, or design new organizational systems and business models. However, in practice it is still difficult for organisations to understand how to embark on an open innovation journey and begin implementing the concepts of open innovation. It takes significant cultural change for an organization to embrace open innovation thinking.

Starting an innovative business in France looks pretty easy, thanks to pro-innovation policies. The network of public structures supporting innovation is very dense. It is comparable to that of countries that are recognized as the most innovative in the world. Moreover, the quality of academic research and elite levels of education are high.

So why is France hardly seen as a benchmark for innovation in the international rankings? For example, INSEAD Global Innovation Index for 2008-2009 ranks France only 22nd out of 132 countries. We wanted to know how such a paradox could happen. First, we have analyzed briefly how most innovation indexes were designed and tried to understand their scope. Behind this analysis, our goal has been to identify if these indexes are covering comprehensively what innovation means and what can nurture it at a country level.

It’s going to break many hearts around Europe where innovation clusters have been strongly advocated at all levels of policy making but a recent Norwegian study found that a firms international connections were far more important than local clusters. That means the future for many regions and companies lies in building those international pipelines (partnerships, ideas, possibilities) rather than relying on local cluster subsidies.

Of course clusters remain relevant to support an industry – it would be interesting to know how often clusters are effective when a sector is in decline as opposed to the growth potential of clustering.

As I picked up on this story at Canada’s Globe and Mail – via my LinkedIn page – I will let them tell it. Suffice it to say in conclusion though that I think firms should be seeking to extend their connectivity, build more international connections and live more in the Cloud.

Last week, in a converted garage in Somerville, Massachusetts, a group of about 30 eager experimentalists and curious insomniacs gathered to share the results of their latest investigations. Several members of the group had spent the month of March using a consumer device known as the Zeo to track their sleep patterns and observe how the patterns change with different factors, including weather, color of ambient light, and location. While the individual results aren't going to change our notions of sleep, the overall trend of self-experimentation just might.

The Boston-based group is part of a nationwide movement known as Quantified Self, a collection of people who employ the growing numbers of sensors, trackers, and data analysis tools to monitor intimate details of their lives. While more-traditional scientists may argue about the objective value of an experiment with an N of 1, quantified selfers, as they call themselves, say that is beside the point. They are investigating how various physical variables affect the quality of their lives in the most rigorous way possible.

Entrepreneurship is always a family affair, whether intended or not, but there are ways to prepare to take the plunge that will make all members ready, willing and able to deal with the changes to come.

Laura Drewry wishes she had known that when she bought a small independent bookstore, The Bookshelf, in her hometown of Squamish, B.C., after the previous owner retired in November, 2008.

Online marketing means many things to many people: A website, Google AdWords, search engine optimisation, creating content ‘assets’ and getting involved in social media sites.

It can sound overwhelming. But there’s no need to get scared off by the jargon. The old rules still apply.

Here are five ‘old school’ terms that are still vital to ‘new school’ marketing.

1. Research

Who are your customers and what do they want? What did they want and how has that changed? The internet provides research opportunities that are easy, cost effective and sometimes free.