Google does no evil to its employees.

The tech company has been named the best place to work in 2015, according to a new report from Glassdoor. The career database compiled the top 50 places to work in 2015, based on feedback from employees.

Quora raises millions (both dollars and questions). Facebook buys WhatsApp for billions. Uber gets another trillion in investment and is now “worth” a quintillion. Or a brazillion. Who knows? The news in the entrepreneurial scene, especially in tech, is usually loud and involves big numbers. It is so easy to get swept up in this frenzy that I’ve seen many a business builder spend more time at events than on making his or her own company something worthwhile. And goodness knows I’ve been there too.

It takes a special kind of person to willingly take on the stressors that come with moonlighting. Those passionate enough to launch their startup after putting in their hours at a typical nine-to-five don’t often regret it — but they do have some tales to tell. These tips from the trenches will help moonlighting entrepreneurs succeed in the long journey that is transitioning a night job into a day job.

Image: FLICKR, DAWOLF-

China has expressed its aim to build an innovation economy, and the evidence would suggest that the country has gone some considerable way towards achieving its ambition. China may have grown into a technology powerhouse by initially following the example of the West, but the country is now carving out its role as a global leader in mobile Internet: setting trends in telecommunications, mobile devices and social commerce. 

As Chicago's tech community continued to grow and thrive throughout 2014, signaling a boom in the city's innovation economy, the question emerged (excitedly and often) about whether the Windy City is the next Silicon Valley.

I hate this question.

Though the answer is irrelevant - spoiler alert: NO! - its increasing prevalence is not. But if any city is familiar with the futile and potentially damaging nature of this type of question - "Who is the Next X?" - it's Chicago, home of His Airness.

If you haven’t heard, podcasting is having a moment. As podcasts move from niche to mainstream and more hits seem likely, the medium may very well be entering its own “golden age.” Since podcasting’s initial popularity—roughly corresponding with Apple’s inclusion of podcasts in iTunes in 2005—both the range of podcasts and number of listeners have grown. Today, there are about 225,000 podcasts out there and some 15% of all US residents listen to at least one podcast per month. With the meteoric rise of the true crime podcast Serial, the launching of several new podcasting networks and, of course, the interest in supporting technologies like Stitcher, many executives and marketing managers may be stroking their chins and wondering whether they should start a podcast.

Image: Free Digital Photos

Hospitals are on the hunt for new ideas to transform health care, and some are looking to the reality TV show “Shark Tank” for inspiration.

Hospitals are on the hunt for new ideas to transform health care, and some are looking to reality television for inspiration. Several health care institutions recently have tested TV’s “Shark Tank” approach to seeking out innovation — gathering a panel of pros to hear invention ideas from startups. In October, Boston Children’s Hospital hosted an Innovation Summit, where a few finalists from a list of 40 applicants pitched their ideas to a board of experts, including physicians and “Shark Tank” cast member Daymond John.

The Securities and Exchange Commission recently released a rulemaking agenda revealing that it plans to finalize the Title III Equity Crowdfunding rules and the Title IV Regulation A+ rules from the JOBS Act by October 2015. Given that these rules will then require 60 days to be published in the federal register and become law, it appears likely that the earliest date small businesses will be able to utilize these JOBS Act provisions to raise capital will be the beginning of 2016.

In the next decade, technology will almost certainly transform the way you interact with your doctor, the way we treat patients and how we understand illness. Some of the most innovative ideas for that transformation are coming out of the startup community. Now, that community has a huge health care industry partner. Techstars, a startup accelerator program with a large Seattle office, recently announced a partnership with the Mayo Clinic to send companies that have finished the accelerator to work at the clinic and make connections.

Image: Techstars - David Cohen, founder and CEO of Techstars

The Texas Medical Center and Washington, D.C.-based Village Capital have launched VilCap USA, a national business incubator that will offer new companies mentorship, business development and potentially seed-stage cash. VilCap USA will jump between the new life sciences accelerator at the TMC and Salt Lake City. The 12 companies that are participating in the program will go through four, four-day sessions. At the end of the program, two companies will each receive $50,000 from Village Capital and the TMC.

Skim the 100 most-discussed research papers of the past year, put together by the London-based company Altmetric, and you’ll see some of the oddball stuff you might expect. One study found that dogs urinate and defecate in alignment with the earth’s magnetic field. In other pee-related news, some scientists, for some reason, measured uric-acid levels in swimming pools and gently suggested that water quality could be improved if more attention were paid to "hygiene habits on the part of swimmers."

Every young person you know is on Snapchat. Industry experts say the ephemeral social platform has around 100 million active users, most of which "are between the ages of 13 and 25," according to an August Business Insider Intelligence report. With more sex appeal than Facebook and Twitter, and a more intimate user experience than Instagram, Snapchat’s little yellow tile has become the de rigueur communication choice of mobile-obsessed teens looking to instantly share life’s minutiae with one another (which, according reports, users do as many as 400 million times a day).

Image: Bob Kelly - Photo by Ryan Kelly

Innovation should be rewarded and the U.S. government should use federal funds to foster a culture of discovery. Virtually everyone agrees with this broad premise. But, as with many things on Capitol Hill, the devil is in the details.

On that note, let’s talk about the Research and Experimentation Tax Credit. Every couple of years, Congress votes to extend the so-called R&D Credit—a significant tax break for corporations that invest in research and development. Beneficiaries of the credit include many of the usual suspects (think Boeing and Dow Chemical) but also small businesses and even tech start-ups.

Some high-tech prosthetic limbs can be controlled by their owners, using nerves, muscles, or even the brain. However, there’s no way for the wearer to tell if an object is scalding hot, or about to slip out of the appendage’s grasp.

Image: This electronics-laden glove is made up of layers of materials with stretchable gold and silicon sensors. - http://www.technologyreview.com

The sixth major issue to be tackled by our distinguished panel of innovation practitioners is the all-import issue of metrics: How do you measure innovation results and outcomes and motivate the organization to deliver across all stages of the process, and what are the best metrics for measuring innovation performance? 1. How do you measure innovation results and outcomes and motivate the organization to deliver across all stages of the process?

Image: https://www.flickr.com/photos/8011986@N02/2964298027

Cast your mind back, to pre-2008 times, when bright and bushy tailed graduates would come out of business school looking for roles in the relevant employers of choice. Generally those organizations were large businesses, providing incentives such as expensive dinners, a career advancement path and generous financial packages.

This source of strategic partnership offers a synergistic relationship that combines monetary and functional resources, capabilities, and core competencies for the purpose of technology commercialization. Entrepreneurs who are looking to accelerate the growth of their businesses often realize they can capture a greater bang for their buck when they collaborate with CVCs who offer value beyond the dollar.

In Round 1 of the 2014-2015 Y-Prize Competition, a record number of 19 cross-disciplinary teams proposed creative applications for Penn nanotechnologies. Submissions included a video pitch and slide deck that the judges evaluated on market opportunity, value proposition, team strength, and execution plan. The finalists proposed uses for graphene, fast-charging batteries, and tunable adhesion that ranged from environmentally sustainable business solutions to counterfeit protection. One team even incorporated two of the three featured technologies into their proposal.

Ralph H. Baer held the first ever patent for video games, and boy was it a doozy. Patent No. 3,728,480, granted in April 1973, laid claim to any product that included a television and circuits capable of moving images on the screen. What complicates Baer's legacy, is that according to at least one major player in the gaming industry, he never did anything with that patent, except sue. He died on Saturday in Manchester, N.H. at the age of 92.

Image: In 2006, President George W. Bush awards Ralph H. Baer the National Medal of Technology for his work with video game technology. Wikipedia