Not all that long ago, company IT wasn’t all that complicated. As long as everyone had a working computer, with a working internet connection and working software then everything was more or less fine. A whole host of factors have changed that. For one, people are no longer bringing dumb phones into the office with them, they’re bringing in a huge range of smartphones and tablets and they want to be able to access their work from them.

Take more steps! Work out more! Get more sleep!

That's the cascade of haranguing advice you get when you start tackling your health. There are plenty of trackers and apps that will measure your activity and give you reports. None of them seem to acknowledge the hard limits of the clock.

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Most of us would accept that failure is just an inevitable part of success. For instance, when you learn how to ski, you have to fall a number of times before you’re able to make it down the mountain skillfully. There are times, however, when failure is not a good thing, such as when you need to meet a customer deadline or achieve a competitive level of quality. Unfortunately, many managers don’t distinguish between when failure can be a valuable catalyst for learning and when it can be truly harmful, leaving employees unsure about when to take risks and experiment, and when to play it safe. For managers and employees, the key to getting this right is understanding whether the organization is in execution mode or innovation mode.

President Barack Obama is being declared the first ever "Coder-in-Chief" on Monday after writing his first line of computer code. 

Using Code.org's Hour Of Code program and alongside 20 middle school students from Newark's South Seventeenth Street School, the President successfully completed one line of JavaScript. This event kicks off Computer Science Education Week 2014. 

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Objectivity is one of those traits we all like to think we have. After all, the best course of action in any given situation is to consider the facts and circumstances, and then arrive at the best possible decision. That’s easy, right?

Not so much. The reality is we all have biases. If they’re not managed, we then may pay in lost opportunities, money, relationships, and other ways, says Elizabeth R. Thornton, professor of management practice at Babson College in Boston.

Automation Alley said today it is launching a new entrepreneurship program aimed at spurring growth of small businesses and start-ups across Southeast Michigan with investments that could top $125,000 per company.

The Automation Alley 7Cs program links aspiring entrepreneurs with experts from Automation Alley who will guide them through a seven-step process from concept to commercialization.

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This year will likely be the hottest on record for the planet, with global temperatures 1.03 degrees Fahrenheit higher than the 1961-to-1990 average, according to a new report from the World Meteorological Organization.

This would make 2014 the 38th consecutive year with an anomalously high annual global temperature.

The estimate comes from the WMO's annual compendium on the "Status of the Global Climate." This year's report was released during the U.N. climate talks in Lima, Peru, where diplomats are negotiating a new global climate deal to be signed in Paris next year.

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Since earning an M.B.A. at Yale in 1995, Seth Goldman has been on the prowl for socially useful and novel business opportunities. He was a vice president at the Calvert Group, the do-gooder mutual fund family, before founding Bethesda, Md. based Honest Tea in 1998 with his former Yale professor Barry Nalebuff.

Left-handed people probably shouldn’t compare their pay checks to their right-handed colleagues – unless they want to be disappointed…according to a recent study.

The study published in the Journal of Economic Perspectives shows that lefties make about 10 to 12 percent less annually than righties. The paper was written by Joshua Goodman, who is an economist at Harvard’s Kennedy School.

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Lots of ink has been spilled about how to motivate your employees—from financial incentives to recognition among peers. But new research suggests it’s not just the message that motivates, but the source that matters.

It’s called construal level theory—or the study of how people react to psychological distances. According to Nir Halevy, assistant professor of organizational behavior at Stanford University, it factors into helping motivate employees at work.

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The University of Maryland is now integrating the Lean LaunchPad® into standard innovation and entrepreneurship courses across all 12 colleges within the University. Over 44 classes have embedded the business model canvas and/or Customer Discovery including a year-long course taken by every single one of its bioengineering majors.

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Frugal innovation is more than a strategy. It denotes a new frame of mind: one that sees resource constraints not as a liability but as an opportunity — and one that favors agility over efficiency. Frugal organizations don’t seek to wow customers with technically sophisticated products, but instead strive to create good-quality solutions that deliver the greatest value to customers at the lowest cost.

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Eric Rosenfeld received a curious email this year explaining that he had been chosen to join a group called Future Founders. “The email came out of the blue,” said Mr. Rosenfeld, who is vice president for engineering in the San Francisco office of Spongecell. “I did some research to make sure it was legitimate.”

Image: Eric Rosenfeld, left, a start-up executive, with Roy Bahat, the head of Bloomberg Beta.Credit James Cham 

The Office of Entrepreneurial Affairs and Technology Commercialization at the University of Cincinnati (UC) has been replaced by a “Commercialization Accelerator Model” after receiving a US$ 1 Million funding renewal boost from Ohio’s Third Frontier Commission earlier this month. It is twice the amount the accelerator received from the Third Frontier at the time of its inception in 2012.

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Crowdfunding is all the rage today. By mid-2012, more than 50,000 projects had been listed on Kickstarter alone, of which something like half had reached their (typically very modest) fundraising goals. By early 2013, Kickstarter passed the $1 billion milestone in amounts pledged. And these numbers are growing fast. Crowdfunding takes many forms, of course, but the form I worry about is equity-based crowdfunding that is intended to start an ongoing entrepreneurial business.

Are you ready for one of the best-kept secrets of the job search process? Unless the person doing the hiring has previously worked in the exact role he's trying to fill, a fair amount of the job description is guesswork.

Think about it: Hiring managers have to write a description that will simultaneously entice people to apply and ward off those who wouldn’t qualify for an interview. Also, haven’t you heard stories of a person who “met all of the qualifications” being passed over in the final stages for someone who “seemed like a better fit?”

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When creating a fashion company that spans multiple countries, we knew there would be challenges. Many of these would be geographic.

Not only would we need to be in many places at once, but they would be in some of the most expensive cities in the world. You can't expect to court clients in London, Paris and Milan if you don't have offices there. You're competing with the big guys in big ponds, and there's no time for training-wheels.

Image: FLICKR, JOHN TORNOW 

Competition is healthy but winning can come at a hefty price. Sometimes the swiftest way forward is to replace conflict with collaboration.

According to Hindu mythology, Garuda was a giant bird, whose mother had been tricked into slavery by her evil sister, the mother of a hundred serpents.

One day, tired of the constant humiliation, Garuda asked the serpents what they wanted in return for freeing her from the curse of slavery.

Ignite Erie™: A Day of Innovation for Entrepreneurs was envisioned to galvanize our region's private sector. Co-hosted by ECGRA and Adreamz Institute and presented in collaboration with 26 agencies, Ignite Erie brought together more than 350 policy makers, leaders in economic development and education, funders, and entrepreneurs for training and networking. Speakers included Richard Bendis, innovation and technology-based economic development leader, and Ray Leach, entrepreneur motivator and small business ecosystem expert. Ignite Erie presentations are downloadable from ECGRA.org.