The Internet has created a global bazaar that has become a part of our lives. We shop online, stay connected with the brands we love, and have access to innovative products from all over the world. We’re also more connected than ever before and the digital age we live in is giving us the opportunity to be part of something bigger than us.

When looking to hire a new CEO, corporate boards of directors are increasingly bypassing C-level executives and appointing less seasoned leaders.

They are still looking for chiefs with the traditional attributes of intelligence, integrity, and stamina—traits that have defined great executives for decades. But boards are now also seeking CEOs who understand signals in today’s unpredictable environment and are comfortable acting on them—abilities that directors hope will more than offset candidates’ relative inexperience.

image: http://www.freedigitalphotos.net 

Ann Winblad is an old timer in the Valley  venture capital ecosystem. She has witnessed and also participated in some of the most interesting transformations in the world of entrepreneurship. She is a partner at the Hummer Winblad Venture Partners, which she co-founded in 1989. YourStory met her at her office at The Embarcadero in San Francisco overlooking the sea.

Image: http://yourstory.com/ 

Nat Cartwright and Jake Tyler have a problem. The pair co-founded a new peer-to-peer mobile payments business last year while completing their MBAs at Madrid’s IE Business School, one of the continent’s finest according to international media. There the pair won a spot at a post-graduation business accelerator and were even offered one-year “Entrepreneur’s Visas” from the Spanish government.

Image: Nat Cartwright co-founded a new peer-to-peer mobile payments business last year with Australian Jake Tyler while completing their MBAs in Madrid, and hoped to grow the business in Vancouver. But Tyler can't come to Canada permanently and Startup Visa hasn't been able to help.  - Don MacKinnon for National Post

BALTIMORE — In the beginning, when they knew just where to find everyone, they pulled the children out of their classrooms.

They sat in any quiet corner of the schools they could claim: the sociologists from Johns Hopkins and, one at a time, the excitable first-graders. Monica Jaundoo, whose parents never made it past the eighth grade. Danté Washington, a boy with a temper and a dad who drank too much. Ed Klein, who came from a poor white part of town where his mother sold cocaine.

Image: Dante Washington is employed, has a degree and his own home in Baltimore. He defied the statistics of a 25-year-long research project that was turned into a book "The Long Shadow" which centers on children growing up in poverty -stricken areas of Baltimore. (Photo by Linda Davidson/The Washington Post 

Venture capitalists (VCs) have long been seen as the top of the pyramid for startup funding sources, but in fact angel investors now fund over 60 times as many companies, according the Center for Venture Research. A major chunk of this activity is provided by the new class of Super Angels, who may look more like micro-VCs, except that they are investing their own money.

Examples of some leaders in this space include Ron Conway in Silicon Valley and Brian Cohen, chairman of the New York Angels, who each may have over 500 startups in their portfolio. What characterizes them is the number of companies they invest in, as well as the size of their investments (less than $250,000), and the seed or startup stage where they specialize.

HOW close are you willing to get?

That’s the question posed by the most potent photographs of 2014: How close?

We founder in the shallows amid the constant nano-buzz of a modern culture. But with just one powerful still photograph — emphasis on still — you need to stop, stare, then drown in the image, tumble into its pure moment.

Here are my 10 crucial pieces of advice for students who aspire to a career in pharmaceutical labs:

1. You need a solid foundation in science. Master the basics, and learn how to apply that knowledge.

2. But, try to also take classes and build skills in complementary areas like business, legal topics (especially intellectual property), regulatory affairs, quality assurance (QA) and quality control (QC).

The way Y Combinator cofounder Paul Graham sees it, the U.S. has something to lose — a leadership position in the technology industry. Talent is a big part of that position, and Graham believes the U.S. can and should do more to allow the best technical talent to immigrate to the U.S.

“We have the potential to ensure that the U.S. remains a technology superpower just by letting in a few thousand great programmers a year,” Graham declared in a post on his personal blog today.

Image: Paul Graham. Image Credit: Y Combinator 

It is really, really difficult to create a company and grow it to the point where investors believe it is worth $1 billion or more. That milestone is so difficult to achieve, in fact, that investors call companies that do this “unicorns.”

Out of the hundreds of startups launched every year, just 17 made the grade in 2014.

image: http://www.freedigitalphotos.net 

If wearable tech wasn't a burning innovation all by itself, there's new technology emerging on nearly every front. From battery life to screen tech and the operating systems our wearables run on, innovation is happening at an unprecedented rate.

That's why we at Wareable have sat down to decide on their top wearable innovations that have the power to turn the next generation of devices into true gamechangers.

Image: http://www.wareable.com/ 

While there is much talk of how to manage the financial stressors of running a startup, the time rarely is taken to address the toll it specifically takes on one’s personal finances. Even the most experienced entrepreneurs are at risk of dedicating so much of their time and resources to the immediate needs of their business, that individual expenses become out of control.

Early-stage investors poured around $4 billion into startups in India in 2014, nearly three times the previous year, according to PrivCo, a provider of financial data. While dominant investors such as Sequoia Capital and Accel deepened their commitment to Indian startups, behemoths such as Japan's SoftBank — with over $800 million invested in Indian enterprises — made their presence felt too. Venture capital companies (VCs) chased the big bets frantically — Flipkart's valuation rose from $1.6 billion to $5 billion to $10 billion in little over a year. The e-retailer today has 50 investors.

Image: http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/ 

DAVIS, Calif. — Hundreds of students fill the seats, but the lecture hall stays quiet enough for everyone to hear each cough and crumpling piece of paper. The instructor speaks from a podium for nearly the entire 80 minutes. Most students take notes. Some scan the Internet. A few doze.

In a nearby hall, an instructor, Catherine Uvarov, peppers students with questions and presses them to explain and expand on their answers. Every few minutes, she has them solve problems in small groups. Running up and down the aisles, she sticks a microphone in front of a startled face, looking for an answer. Students dare not nod off or show up without doing the reading.

Image: Catherine Uvarov, a chemistry instructor at the University of California, Davis, has adopted an experimental approach to teaching an introductory course. Credit Max Whittaker for The New York Times 

Wearables come in lots of shapes and sizes for limbs, fingers and faces now. All the choices and options speak to the same thing: Very soon, mainstream consumers will use and relate to their technologies in whole new ways. 

Numerous wearable device categories emerged this year. Here are the five or so that impressed us the most. 

Perhaps the biggest trend in enterprise computing is driven by a host of very small things. That is, Big Data, a terrible term used to describe the exploding volumes, variety and velocity of data, is largely the result of small devices, whether Internet of Things-style sensors or mobile devices. 

If 2014 was the year that enterprises desperately tried to take off the Big Data training wheels, 2015 will be the year they succeed. Ironically, this won't be because they master the intricacies of Hadoop and Spark. Instead, it will be because 2015 will be the year we stop trying to make every data problem into a Hadoop problem and instead use the right tool for the job.

image: http://www.freedigitalphotos.net 

Trying to be a business leader by instilling fear in your employees and partners is never a good approach, but it is particularly devastating in a startup. Yet I see this approach used all too often by new entrepreneurs, most of whom are not natural tyrants, but who are fighting to mask their own internal fears and insecurities about starting a business.

A book I read a while back, “Leading Without Fear,” by Laurie K. Cure, PhD, convinced me that fear is a natural reaction to the risks associated with a new venture, and different people handle this fear in different ways. Some are able to read the danger signals, and catapult themselves and everyone around them into action without fear, resulting in progress and success.

The early admissions deadlines for universities across the country have come and gone, and acceptance letters are on their way. But with the cost of a four-year college education rising an average of 5% a year, many students and parents are likely wondering whether the cost of a degree is worth it.

The simple answer is yes because people with degrees continue to earn far more than those without them. Last year, Americans with four-year college degrees earned on average 98% more per hour than people without them, according to the Economic Policy Institute. In the early 1980s, they earned 64% more.

The “Silicon Valley” in the US is a fascinating place! It is a melting pot of a highly competent talent pool dedicated to developing innovative business models and solutions. The sheer number of people who have serious ambitions of starting a technology-centric start-up is simply mind-boggling. It is a matter of pride for entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley to talk about how many times they have attempted to start a company or even how often they have failed!

However, beneath this super energetic plane, is also a stark reality which is equally critical to note. Only less than 1% of all start-ups launched survive for more than 5 years. Most either die, or are acquired within an average life span of 3-5 years. - See more at: http://www.businessworld.in/news/business/it/making-innovation-work/1677831/page-1.html#sthash.nKBSGW01.dpuf

New UCLA research indicates that lost memories can be restored, offering hope for patients in the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease.

For decades, most neuroscientists have believed that memories are stored at the synapses — the connections between brain cells, or neurons — which are destroyed by Alzheimer’s disease. The new study provides evidence contradicting the idea that long-term memory is stored at synapses.

Image: Synapse (credit: Curtis Neveu/Wikimedia Commons)