Kansas University is partnering with a regional entrepreneur development program to translate more KU technologies into new products and startup companies, the university recently announced.

Pipeline describes itself as "an elite organization of the Midwest’s most successful, high-performance entrepreneurs." Ten to 12 new entrepreneurs a year are invited to join Pipeline as fellows, who participate in a yearlong business leadership development program.

ADA, MI — For the past five years, Amway has been gathering data on entrepreneurs and what makes them different from other worker bees.

In the recently released 2014 Amway Global Entrepreneurship Report, the Michigan company surveyed more than 40,000 people to gain insight about the state of self-employment around the world. This year's survey questions explored the connection between education and entrepreneurship.

Image: Amway co-CEOs Steve Van Andel, left, and Doug DeVos talk inside Amway's headquarters in Ada Monday, Feb. 3, 2014. (Cory Morse Mlive.com)

Startup founders should avoid participating in startup accelerator programs if they want to be successful. That's according to Chris Lynch, partner at Cambridge-based venture firm Atlas Venture, who spoke to a crowd of investors and entrepreneurs at MIT's 17th annual Venture Capital and Innovation Conference at the Royale Boston Nightclub on Dec. 12.

San Mateo, CA -- (ReleaseWire) -- 12/15/2014 -- Silicon Valley Innovation Center recently organized a three-week startup camp for the Kazakhs winners of the KazINNO competition held by the National Agency for Technological Development for innovative projects in the sphere of IT, biotech, energy and agriculture. They took part in the program of accelerated development and incubation of innovative projects over the period from October 26 through November 15, 2014.

People in Gaza are getting impatient with the slow pace of rebuilding. International donors pledged $5.4 billion to help, but little of the money has made it to Gaza yet.

A Gaza tech startup incubator has gone a different route — international crowdfunding.

After one month of an Indigogo campaign, the tech hub Gaza Sky Geeks passed its minimum goal of raising $70,000 to keep the shared workspace in a Gaza City high-rise open. The group extended the campaign for a month to try to raise $25,000 — enough money to keep staff through next year and run an international hackathon.

Image: http://www.scpr.org

In order to get a true feel of what comprises a leader, it’s crucial to analyze those who came before us. Both their cultivated and natural leadership qualities led them to success in various situations. The concrete examples by proven leaders below act as guideposts for our ambitions toward becoming great leaders that attract remarkable people to join our journeys.

Image: http://smallbiztrends.com

Starting a company takes money — something you might not have much of when you’re just starting up. But there are both pros and cons to seeking outside capital before you’ve demonstrated traction or the potential for real success. So we asked nine entrepreneurs the following:

A machine that administers sedatives recently began treating patients at a Seattle hospital. At a Silicon Valley hotel, a bellhop robot delivers items to people’s rooms. Last spring, a software algorithm wrote a breaking news article about an earthquake that The Los Angeles Times published.

Although fears that technology will displace jobs are at least as old as the Luddites, there are signs that this time may really be different. The technological breakthroughs of recent years — allowing machines to mimic the human mind — are enabling machines to do knowledge jobs and service jobs, in addition to factory and clerical work.

The ability to be happy.

I think this is grossly overlooked and underrated by most people.

I've met brilliant people, impressive people,rich people, poor people, talented people, angry people, sad people, straightforward people, manipulative people, people that love women, people that hate women, people that hate men, and people that love men, great talkers, bad communicators..........every type of person there is........

The revolving door to many Fortune 100 executive suites has been turning 360 degrees in recent years as employees who leave to broaden their experience, increasingly find themselves returning to the fold.

 The “boomerang employee”, someone who leaves a workplace only to return later in their career, is a growing phenomenon that can be explained in part by the number of former Fortune 100 companies actively running alumni programmes. There is no general rule as to why executives check out and then check back in to a familiar workplace but in the following two part series, we attempt to analyse some of the trends and challenges involved, via the story of six very different executives around the world.

Even in drought-stricken California, San Diego stands out. It gets less rain than parched Los Angeles or Fresno. The region has less groundwater than many other parts of the state. And more than 80 percent of water for homes and businesses is imported from sources that are increasingly stressed. The Colorado River is so overtaxed that it rarely reaches the sea; water originating in the Sacramento River delta, more than 400 miles north, was rationed by state officials this year, cutting off some farmers in California’s Central Valley from their main source of irrigation. San Diego County, hot, dry, and increasingly populous, offers a preview of where much of the world is headed. So too does a recent decision by the county government: it is building the largest seawater desalination plant in the Western Hemisphere, at a cost of $1 billion.

Image: http://www.technologyreview.com

In a step toward sophisticated artificial cells, scientists have engineered a silicon chip that can produce proteins from DNA, the most basic function of life.

The system, though relatively simple, suggests a path to mimicking life with partly manufactured components, says Roy Bar-Ziv, a materials scientist at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel,  who is leading the work.

Image: A simple artificial cell has circular chambers etched into silicon. These contain DNA, and are connected by microfluidic channels to a bath of cellular enzymes.   - http://www.technologyreview.com

All marriages come with all different types of challenges and experiences. I have realized that while many of these marriage/partner experiences are similar to other couples', there is a whole new dimension in marriages involving an entrepreneur.

The breed of the entrepreneur personality has many unique traits that don’t always fit into the same box that some may consider the "norm" in a relationship. As someone who is married to an entrepreneur, I often find myself shaking my head and enjoying some of the funny things that my husband does. Some of these things I absolutely love about him, some I learn to live with, and luckily, we often both laugh about the entrepreneurial personality!

India’s patents stood 24,442, China’s at 5,41,045 in 2012 The Chinese companies are far ahead of their Indian counterparts when it comes to receiving patents for their innovations as various tax and fiscal incentives provided by the Chinese government is prompting a larger number of individuals and entities to file for patent applications.

image: http://www.freedigitalphotos.net 

– BHI Entrepreneurs-in-Resident Help Drive Client Progress –

ROCKVILLE AND BALTIMORE, MARYLAND, December 16, 2014 – BioHealth Innovation, Inc. (BHI), a regional private-public partnership focusing on commercializing market-relevant biohealth innovations and increasing access to early-stage funding in Central Maryland, today announced recent highlights of funding achievements for clients, BeneVir Biopharm, Inc., and Perception Navigation, LLC. The significant progress poises both companies for clinical and/or commercial advancement in 2015.

BeneVir Biopharm, recently announced that it closed a Series A investment round with Pansend, LLC, an indirect wholly owned subsidiary of HC2 Holdings, Inc. (OTCQB: HCHC). BeneVir is a Maryland-based company founded in 2011. Based on technology developed by New York University, BeneVir is developing an advanced immunotherapeutic platform for the treatment of solid tumors that can both directly kill tumor cells and also activate the human immune system to target tumor metastases and prevent recurrence of tumors. Currently, the company is focused on advancing its lead program into human trials for ovarian, breast, and bladder cancer. BHI’s Entrepreneur-in-Residence Ram Aiyar, Ph.D., worked as a member of the BeneVir team to enhance the commercial potential of the company by building novel intellectual property, expanding the therapeutic pipeline and identifying potential development partners.

WASHINGTON – U.S. Senator Barbara A. Mikulski (D-Md.), Chairwoman of the Senate Appropriations Committee and the Commerce, Justice, Science (CJS) Appropriations Subcommittee, today announced the Consolidated and Further Continuing Appropriations Act of 2015 provides increased funding to support American jobs and innovation, including funds for trade and economic development programs, and investment in scientific research and exploration.

The legislation has passed both the House of Representatives and the Senate and now heads to the White House to be signed into law by the President.

“U.S. businesses and workers need our support at home and abroad,” said Chairwoman Mikulski. “It is imperative that we make smart investments in American jobs and in our innovation economy. This bill does just that by focusing on investing in technology and exploration, selling more products in more countries, and protecting American patents and profits.”

The stated goal of the Joint Center for Energy Storage Research (JCESR), one of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Innovation Hubs, comprising 14 partner institutions led by Argonne National Laboratory (ANL), is to develop the battery of the future. Like Daniel Burnham, they are making no little plans.

The need for better batteries is obvious:  To modernize the electrical grid so that more renewable energy can be sourced and delivered, thereby reducing our dependency on fossil fuels; and to accelerate the electrification of vehicles, thereby reducing greenhouse gas emissions as well as the consumption of fossil fuels. And if a significant fraction of vehicles were electrified, the grid would need to be upgraded anyway just to handle the load. The need for better batteries is not just about technical superiority, however. It’s also about economic security.

We have heard over and over again that America is still the world’s fountain of innovation, the home of fracking and Facebook. The two “F’s” of American innovation are about to become one: The collapse of oil prices portends a collapse of the shale boom. High-yield energy bond yields have soared from 5% to 12% in the past few months, and investors are fighting to get to the door. Most unconventional oil and gas projects are unprofitable at $60 a barrel, and that’s where oil will trade for the next year or two.

Facebook is a clever gimmick, but it doesn’t do much for productivity.

Albert Einstein once said that if he was given an hour to solve a problem, he'd spend the first 55 minutes thinking about it and five minutes coming up with solutions. But in government, there is a tendency to reach immediately for the first available solution, without spending any time thinking about different ways to approach the problem. It's understandable, because there is enormous public pressure do something -- anything -- quickly.

Image: Michael Bloomberg, left, with Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, one of the first five recipients of a Bloomberg Philanthropies grant. - Photo: Andrew Harper/Bloomberg

A rich new Credit Suisse report, “Global Biotechnology – An Outlook for 2015,” was flush with cool data about trends in the biotech industry. The analysis lists out 10 key themes for 2015. Here’s the highlight reel:

For the past four years, biotech outperformed the S&P500 – indeed, it has been the leading sector and notably, it doesn’t think the IPO and financing window’s going to close anytime soon.  CS projects that biotech can still outperform the general market, even if it doesn’t retain the number one position – in part because of  the “fundamental shift in large cap biotech’s business model” that’s going on right now.

Image: http://medcitynews.com