Byron Clayton has accepted an offer from the Research Park Corp. board of directors to become president and CEO and will start the job Jan. 19.

The RPC board voted Thursday to offer the CEO post to Clayton, 57, an economic development expert from Cleveland. Since 2010, Clayton has been vice president of cluster acceleration for NorTech, a technology-based economic development organization working to revitalize northeast Ohio. He directed the organization’s cluster strategy for flexible electronics, advanced energy, water technologies and 3-D printing to accelerate commercial activity in Ohio. His work there has resulted in 934 new jobs, $59 million in new payroll and $144 million in new capital.

The Small Business & Entrepreneurship Council’s Small Business Policy Index 2014: Ranking the States on Policy Measures and Costs Impacting Small Business and Entrepreneurship has been released, and it tells the tale of a love-hate relationship that elected officials across the country have with entrepreneurship and small business.

Of course, nearly all politicians proclaim love for small business. However, their policy actions reveal their true views, and these vary widely from state to state. That is very clear from the “Small Business Policy Index 2014,” which ranks the 50 states according to 42 different policy measures, including a wide array of tax, regulatory and government spending measurements.

Image: http://www.sbecouncil.org/ 

Most new entrepreneurs don’t anticipate the burdens of being the leader, including the sense of loneliness and isolation at the top. People outside the team can’t relate to the pressures of “the buck stops here,” and everyone on the team assumes that they are the primary ones under pressure to deliver. Even in a single entrepreneur startup, the leader carries a heavy weight.

Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) in Rwanda accelerates its capacity to educate and empower students with the establishment of the Innovators Forward Fellowship Fund. In 2012, Carnegie Mellon became the first American research institution to offer graduate engineering degree programs in Africa. CMU in Rwanda’s audacious goal to transform graduate education throughout the African continent reached a milestone with the celebration of its inaugural graduation this past July 2014 (http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=KXM_KoYQycc).

Image: Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) in Rwanda 

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.

W hen venture capitalist Chelsea Stoner first met entrepreneur Heidi Jannenga, she was excited — "really, really excited," she said.

Stoner attributes most of it to the fact that Jannenga co-founded an intriguing, investment-worthy business: WebPT, which offers sophisticated physical therapy software that's used by nearly 6,000 clinics.

Image: When venture capitalist Chelsea Stoner first met entrepreneur Heidi Jannenga, she was excited — "really, really excited," she said, in an interview with Bizwomen. "She was the first female founder I've worked with." Courtesy of Battery Ventures 

The Orlando chapter of the Young Presidents' Organization — a nonprofit, global network of young chief executives — is planning a new seed capital competition event called Slingshot that will take place in February at Church Street Station in downtown Orlando.

Looks like 2014 was the year of the data scientist, judging by LinkedIn’s "25 Hottest Professional Skills of 2014" report. 

The social network people use to impress their peers and future bosses, LinkedIn knows very well what skills recruiters search for on its site and which particular talents get people hired. So it analyzed the data in more than 330 million member profiles to figure out which skill was the most in-demand.

Image: http://www.flickr.com/photos/91156503@N00/4613342990 

Even though it's now old news that sitting is killing us all, people still sit a whole lot, especially at office jobs. Standing desks are one solution, but office workers often have to take the initiative to request one from their employers. What if, instead, an office's very design simply ruled out the option of sitting all day?

Image: http://www.fastcodesign.com/ 

RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK, N.C. — Bob Geolas has a new response to the naysayers that call Research Triangle Park old-fashioned and dead, those who doubt his high hopes to attract creatives and entrepreneurs to work in the park.

That response: Free work and meeting space and a cafe inside the largest open innovation center in the nation. It's called The Frontier and it opens January 15, 2015. Here's a sneak peek inside the building.

Image: http://wraltechwire.com/ 

Gov. Terry Branstad announced the release of the findings from the Iowa’s Re-envisioned Economic Development Roadmap  – a year-long effort to set a future strategic direction for economic development in Iowa. During the year-long study, the authors from Battelle examined the current position of Iowa’s economy as compared to the nation and benchmarked states. The authors concluded that Iowa has made substantial economic progress over the last decade, resulting in positive trends in Iowa’s top-line measures including increased productivity, job growth, wages, and per capita income.

image: http://www.freedigitalphotos.net 

Much like the American Dream, entrepreneurship is a national ideal of the United States representing a belief that prosperity and success can be achieved through hard, tireless work. Developing a technological innovation that will change the world for the better is what it's all about these days, especially for young people trying to make a name for themselves on college campuses. Students arrive on school grounds driven by two thoughts – fear of failure and desire for success – both of which naturally lead down the road to entrepreneurship.

Image: http://inthecapital.streetwise.co/ 

Tesla Motors CEO and SpaceX founder Elon Musk's idea for the Hyperloop is one that sounded a bit like fantasy to some.

But it appears that there's progress being made on the potentially game-changing transit system: The developers estimate an up-and-running Hyperloop in just 10 years.

A number of interesting facts emerged as in the course of writing this week's cover story for the Silicon Valley Business Journal about StartX, the startup accelerator program created for and by Stanford University students and alumni.

We’re all aware of the amazing research and technologies that universities are doing to improve people’s lives. What makes many angels excited is that these new innovations can lead to great companies – if universities can connect with the right startup entrepreneurs.

Changes in technology are happening at a scale which was unimaginable before and will cause disruption in industry after industry. This has really begun to worry me, because we are not ready for this change and most of our leading companies won’t exist 15–20 years from now. Here are five sectors to keep an eye on:

Image: The sun is setting on 2014, but we’re about to watch a new wave of technologies rise and remake the world. (Katherine Frey/The Washington Post) 

Engine, an industry group for startup businesses, sent an open letter to the Securities and Exchange Commission earlier this week requesting action on the crowdfunding provision within 2012's JOBS Act passed by Congress.

A portion of the law intended to loosen access to crowdfunding capital for businesses has yet to be fully implemented due to a slower than anticipated rollout by the SEC. Essentially the law amended the Securities Act to allow crowdfunding transactions of $1 million or less involving the issuance of a security be exempt from registration requirements and obstacles within interstate commerce.

How should you spend your time?

It’s a question you likely ask yourself every time you sit down at your desk. Whatever you choose, you could have chosen something else. This means the question comes down to values and priorities, and other things that make this a fraught matter to contemplate.

So what deserves your time?

Philadelphia's startup scene has been evolving since the 70s. The 70s saw the founding of TDH by the Buck family as the first Philadelphia venture fund; The 80s saw the joint City of Philadelphia/Wharton task force to form the first national venture capital firm based in Philadelphia as well as the founding of the "Delaware Valley Venture Group" (now PACT) and Ben Franklin Partners of SE Pennsylvania; the 90s saw Safeguard's dominance and the formation of institutional angel groups in the 2000s. How has the Philadelphia startup scene evolved?

Image: Karen Griffith Gryga, managing partner at DreamIt Ventures 

Roche topped industry spending on R&D in 2013 as pharma's overall research investments rose by $723m, according to a new report.

The Swiss firm, which this week filed a melanoma combination drug for US approval, spent $10bn on research into new products, ahead of rivals such as Novartis, which spent $9.8bn and the $8.2bn spent by Johnson & Johnson (J&J).

GlobalData's PharmaLeaders: Global pharmaceutical benchmark report shows the world's leading 30 pharma companies spent $112bn on research and development in 2013, up $723m over the previous year.

Image: http://www.pmlive.com/