There’s a growing awareness among R&D managers that tapping the expertise of people in distant, analogous fields can yield highly novel solutions to innovation problems. But finding these experts poses a significant challenge of its own. Who and where might they be? The prospect of searching for them can seem overwhelming.

Image: hbr.org 

Amid the frenzy of holiday parties and the nostalgia of year-in-review roundups, let’s also take a moment to pause, reflect, and dream big about what’s to come.

In our latest series on LinkedIn, we’re predicting the top trends of 2015. From the wonders of wearable tech to a job market where workers finally have the upper hand, 70+ Influencers (including Richard Branson and Ban Ki-moon) shared their bold vision of what’s on the horizon.

Someday your smartphone might be able to help you in a new way when you’re traveling: by telling you whether the water is safe to drink.

Although a water app isn’t close yet, researchers at Corning and elsewhere recently discovered that they could use Gorilla Glass, the toughened glass made by Corning that’s commonly used on smartphone screens, to make extremely sensitive chemical and biological sensors. It could detect, say, traces of sarin gas in the air or specific pathogens in water.

Image: A Slinky-like object made of Gorilla Glass using new laser manufacturing technology. - http://www.technologyreview.com/

SEATTLE — Inside the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence, known as AI2, everything is a gleaming architectural white. The walls are white, the furniture is white, the counters are white. It might as well have been a set for the space station in “2001: A Space Odyssey.”

“The brilliant white was a conscious choice meant to evoke experimental science — think ‘white lab coat,’ ” said Oren Etzioni, a computer scientist and director of the new institute, which the Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen launched this year as a sibling of the Allen Institute for Brain Science, his effort to map the human brain.

Image: Oren Etzioni, director of the new Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence, was already known for innovative web projects, including an early search engine. Credit Stuart Isett for The New York Times 

Everybody wants to know what college students are thinking, especially educators and marketers. What do they like? What are they like?

The surveyors at Student Monitor, a market-research firm, are among those trying to peel back the layers on the minds that so many people invest so much in courting. The firm’s latest research, based on interviews with 1,200 full-time students at four-year institutions, confirms some stereotypes while defying others.

Whether you want to build a lean startup by bootstrapping or a fat startup with millions of dollars from VCs or institutional funding, you need some level of funding.

While there are numerous arguments for why you should and shouldn’t raise capital for your business—that's a topic for a different time—irrespective of the path, every entrepreneur should know some fundamental realities of funding structure before accepting any funding whatsoever.

Careers used to move themselves. Now, we are responsible for moving our careers in the direction we want them to go. But there are some fundamental tools that can help with the pace of your business career. People want things to happen quickly — immediate gratification — and it just doesn’t work that way. We all have to meander towards fulfillment, learning and advancement.

Image: http://smallbiztrends.com/ 

Cheat Sheet explores the elaborate audition systems top companies use to fill desirable positions. This week, a Deloitte hiring manager offers a detailed manual for talented MBAs looking to become senior consultants. Previously: how to become an account manager at Microsoft (MSFT).

Image: http://www.businessweek.com/ 

Maryland is not waiting for the new year or a new governor to start taking applications for a program intended to boost business development around colleges and universities. The state is now taking applications for its new Regional Institution Strategic Enterprise Zone program(called the "Rise Zone" program for short). It requires two application stages. The first stage, which is now open, requires higher education institutions, regional higher educational centers or nonprofit organizations that are associated with federal agencies to apply to the state Department of Business and Economic Development. The state will then qualify those groups.

Image: Jaclyn Borowski A new state program aims to build business zones around universities like the University of Maryland in College Park.

Cathal Garvey used to work in cancer research. Now he is the scientific director of IndieBio, a biotech accelerator based in Cork, Ireland which is about to open a branch in San Francisco. Garvey originally studied genetics. "I got into genetics after seeing a documentary about it when it was quite young." he says."I had already decided that I was going to be a biologist at an even younger age. And then I thought ‘Oh my God, living things operate on a code.’"

Steve Blank's biggest failure as a startup CEO was at Rocket Science Games. The team lost $35 million because the business model and the founding team didn't match. When he looked around at the executive staff, there wasn’t a single founder who was a gamer. Worse, there wasn’t a single person who had come from a game company. Nor was there anyone with this experience on the board. In the end, it made beautiful looking products that weren’t much fun to play.  

“Our world looks in vain for strong leadership,” lamented the commentary for a new report by the World Economic Forum about the global outlook for 2015. The Geneva-based foundation, best known for its gatherings of world leaders, surveyed 1,767 experts about the major trends likely to keep troubling us in the year ahead.

It’s not easy being a kid today. They face shifting curricula requirements, a strong focus on standardized test results, piles of homework, and a seemingly never-ending quest for achievement in everything from academics to sports. A recent documentary, Race to Nowhere delves into the rigors and risks of growing up in the 2010s.

Some people may think it’s ludicrous to try to break into an industry where you have no specific expertise. But lack of experience doesn’t necessarily mean failure, as long as you work smart and align with the right resources—and people.

At the recent TCI global conference in Monterrey, Mexico, I shared some on my experiences on the practicalities of cluster development.

Red Lights shine on clustering initiatives that are artificially confined, the wanna-be clusters and paralysis-by-analysis.

I’ve always wondered who started the urban myth that the best way to start a company is to come up with a great idea, and then find some professional investors to give you a pot of money to build a company. In my experience, that’s actually the worst way to start, for reasons I will outline here, and also the least common way, according to an authoritative survey of new startups.

In the shadows of Bay Street, Canada’s established financial district, and communities across Canada, Canada’s newest entrepreneurs are feeling the impact of new funding. Partnering with innovators since early 2000 and looking for tomorrow’s next billion-dollar company, Angel Networks in Canada and members of Accredited Investors have invested personal funds and created further financing opportunities for these promising young founders. These accredited investors are usually people who are looking to give back to the community and help budding entrepreneurs achieve their goals, with an expectation for a positive return on investment.

If I was to try to sell you a piece of wood about 3 feet long, how much would you pay? Not much, I assume. Maybe a dollar.

What if that piece of wood was nearly a hundred years old? Probably even less.

What if I was to turn that piece of wood into a baseball bat? How much would it be worth then? My labors have turned the raw material into something useable. The piece of wood’s value has increased because it is no longer just a raw material. Now, it is a raw material plus my labor.

American higher education today looks nothing like it did a few generations ago, let alone at the founding of the country. A new book, The History of American Higher Education: Learning and Culture From the Founding to World War II (Princeton University Press), explores how colleges evolved. The author is Roger L. Geiger, who is distinguished professor of higher education at Pennsylvania State University. His previous books include Tapping the Riches of Science: Universities and the Promise of Economic Growth and Knowledge and Money: Research Universities and the Paradox of the Marketplace.