According to the American Enterprise Institute, 89% of the companies listed on the Fortune 500 in 1955 are no longer on the list. Many no longer exist. Of those 500 companies, only 61 still remain. Those companies – names like Boeing, Kellogg, Procter and Gamble, IBM, and Whirlpool – have remained because of one thing – a willingness to do whatever it takes to remain relevant and resilient, including constant change and adaptation. In their unceasing quest for market leadership, these firms have embraced the constant and relentless hunt for “what’s next”… for the next innovation that will advance their markets to the next stage. When new customer needs and demands have arisen out of either changing fashion or technological evolution, these companies were right there to embrace new technologies, adopt new business models, and respond however appropriately to meet these needs and deliver new value and experiences. They have not been afraid to experiment and innovate in order to remain the leaders they are today.

For obvious reasons, hospitals are a hotspot for germ exposure, which can increase the risk of infection for those making a visit by up to 10 percent, according to a recent study. What might be surprising though, is that researchers found more bacteria colonization on the hospital elevator buttons than even on the facility’s toilets.

Image: http://medcitynews.com

Imagine, a quick pinprick on the sidelines of a football game that could tell athletes whether they’ve concussed. Arizona startup BioDirection is developing a point-of-care device that diagnoses minor brain injury quickly – in 60 to 90 seconds – with just a single drop of blood. The five-year-old company just raised $1.6 million, according to a regulatory filing. Before that, BioDirection brought in a $3.95 million Series A round last year.

Over the summer, the University of California (UC) System, with President Janet Napolitano at the helm, shifted a fundamental policy common with many university systems. She rescinded the “Guidelines on University-Industry Relations Policy,” in place since 1989, which prohibited the university from investing directly in companies emerging from UC research. Shortly thereafter, during the week of Sept. 15, 2014, the UC Office of the president proposed, and the UC Board of Regents approved, to create a $250 million venture capital fund, which will be funded by both the UC Pension fund and general endowment fund (not state funds or tuition). While certainly positioned to operate as a traditional fund developed to benefit from its investments, UC Ventures is also dedicated to capturing “…the economic value the University of California is creating through its pioneering research.” 

The cash was flowing in 2014 to privately-held companies, but it was a case of the “rich getting richer.”

While global venture capital dollars increased a whopping 40 percent last year to $88 billion, the number of deals actually dropped significantly, according to a report out from PitchBook.

2014 proved to be a transformational year for content-driven digital media and investment (a new “golden age” of content I predicted for TechCrunch at the beginning of this year).

For the first time, that investment (much of it SoCal-based) finally took its rightful place in the sun –even in the eyes of ever-skeptical NorCal venture capitalists.

Image: http://techcrunch.com

This past week when we were between the old and the new years, I couldn’t help reflecting on the accomplishments of the last 12 months and anticipating all of the possibilities of the new year ahead. If there’s one word that characterizes Oklahoma’s innovation economy for 2014, it’s leverage. Leverage was the goal 26 years ago when the state Legislature created the OCAST (Oklahoma Center for the Advancement of Science and Technology) to foster innovation and new-business creation — a vision that is borne out by results. For every dollar invested by OCAST, $22.40 in additional investment, revenue and job creation has been generated.

Most aspiring entrepreneurs understand that you can’t build a business if you won’t commit to delivering a product or service, but many are hesitant or refuse to commit to any financial forecasts. Yet every business requires revenue and volumes, as certainly as it requires a product to sell. Thus, financial projections for up to five years are a necessary element in every business plan.

It's 8 a.m. on a Tuesday. You're balancing a hot coffee on a crowded train, when it hits you — a smell so putrid, you consider burying your head in a stranger's puffy coat to escape the smell. But you can't — you're stuck underground in a poorly ventilated aluminum tube.

The doors finally open and you tumble out, a brave survivor of The Underground Fart Cloud. Yes, that mass of air funk has a name.

By just about any measure, the International Consumer Electronics Show is big. The event, held in Las Vegas, attracts more than 150,000 visitors. It occupies two million square feet, the equivalent of about 35 football fields, of exhibition space. More than 3,500 companies come to show their wares.

But something has been lacking in recent years: big excitement. Companies have promoted largely unwelcome new versions of existing products, like 3-D television, or new devices with little consumer appeal, like clunky virtual-reality headsets.

Image: Preparations at the International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas on Sunday. Credit Isaac Brekken for The New York Times

Many cars already include plenty of sensors—cameras for spotting objects in your blind spot, for instance—but they’re usually keeping an eye on the outside world, not on what’s going on behind the wheel.

An Australian company called Seeing Machines is turning sensing inward with technology that focuses on drivers themselves in hopes of reducing distracted and drowsy driving. The company is using cameras and software to detect eye and facial movements so it can alert drivers who have become inattentive, either due to drowsiness or distraction. This kind of technology is set to become more common, especially as cars become more capable of driving themselves on some stretches of road.

About the research: I study how enterprise social media affects various types of work outcomes. There has been an uptick in (enterprise social media adoption) in recent years. In 2009, a McKinsey Report showed that only 28% of firms used some type of social networking tool. But by 2012, that had gone up to 53%.

Image: http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu 

You’ve been offered a job but the salary wasn’t the number you were hoping to hear. Or you’ve received a bid on a project and it’s under what you think it’s worth. Instead of accepting the deal in disappointment or firing back with another amount, sports agent Molly Fletcher says it’s time to start a conversation.

image: http://www.freedigitalphotos.net 

The annual International Consumer Electronics Show is ramping up for January, but it's possible that we won't be seeing many mobile announcements this year in Las Vegas. Taking a tip from Apple's dramatic "iVents," major tech companies now save the mobile goods for their own individual launch spectaculars, leaving us all a little weepy for cellphones and the way things used to be. 

Alas, even when phones were dumb, we loved them anyway. 

Image: http://readwrite.com/ 

Two-thirds of a wide variety of cancer kinds are largely rooted in undesirable genetic luck and not simply the benefits of traits passed down from parents or risk components like smoking or diet program, according to a new study. Random mutations in DNA are largely accountable for the majority of cancers in humans, according to researchers at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.

image: http://www.freedigitalphotos.net 

When Hubert Joly joined Best Buy as CEO in 2012, he wanted the struggling consumer electronics retailer to solely focus on increasing in-store and online sales. “All hands on deck” was Joly’s unofficial motto. That meant ditching everything Joly deemed irrelevant to fixing the company’s immediate problems. So one of the first businesses Best Buy dumped was its venture capital unit, which had invested about $70 million in tech startups, according to Crunchbase.

Private technology companies reached enormous valuations last year, leading many to believe a bubble is looming. Private giants now include Uber and Chinese mobile company Xiaomi, whose valuations have eclipsed $40 billion.

Look for more tech companies to accumulate huge rounds of private funding while holding off on public offerings, said Glenn Solomon, managing partner of venture capital firm GGV Capital.

image: http://www.freedigitalphotos.net 

When it comes to startups, there are a lot of ways they can go wrong and Paul Buchheit knows all of them. Buchheit explains how at Y Combinator, and through his own experiences as a start-up founder, he found good ideas are usually bad ones: if they were good, someone would be trying it already, he contends.

image: http://www.freedigitalphotos.net 

You’ve probably got a long to-do list for 2015. One idea: cut it down to three things. Or at least pick three things you’re going to do today (see slide 7).

But you don’t have to take our word for it. Every entrepreneur has their own system for getting things done. Here are 15 entrepreneur-endorsed tips, tricks and daily practices to either add to your list this year, or at least help you get through it.

Image: http://upstart.bizjournals.com/ 

New Year? It might have been memorable for Ryan Seacrest and Taylor Swift, but for technology, the clocks don't really change until this weekend, when the annual International CES gets underway in Las Vegas.

In recent years, CES has been a showcase for some of the biggest trends in tech. The show accurately reflected the rise of 4K television (2014), the emergence of Ultrabooks (2012) and the coronation of the smartphone as the centerpiece of our digital lives (2011).

Image: Pete Pachal Pete Pachal