Visionary, team builder, mentor, he shows us some timeless leadership lessons but also some glaring failures.

Although the ‘Great Man’ theory of leadership belongs to the scrapheap of history, its allure continues to mystify. Underlying this theory is the assumption that if the right man (yes, it is often assumed to be a man) for the job emerges, he will almost magically take control of a situation and lead a group of people into safety or success. While such leaders are rare, there are times when a singular individual steps out from the crowd and serves as a paragon of leadership.

Image: Free Digital Photos

Two scientific teams this year patched together some well-known technologies to directly exchange information between human brains.

The projects, in the U.S. and Europe, appear to represent the first occasions in history that any two people have transmitted information without either of them speaking or moving any muscle. For now, however, the “telepathy” technology remains so crude that it’s unlikely to have any practical impact.

Image: http://www.technologyreview.com

Nestled in a quiet industrial park in Redmond, Washington, not too far from the Microsoft headquarters, is a small biotech start-up with both an interesting technology they are bringing to market, as well as a capital partner that suggests some ways in which global biotech research, venture capital and commercialization are going to change.

By Joe Horowitz, managing general partner, Jafco Ventures

As a 30-year veteran of the venture capital business in Silicon Valley, the cycle of our world has become all too familiar. During times of recession the economy is stimulated with low interest rates and once they get low enough, the yield on bonds and other fixed investments becomes so unattractive that money starts to flow into equities. Stocks begin to be described as bargains as CEOs of public companies scramble to trim costs and improve profitability.

Image: VC Joe Horowitz says investors should dial back their excitement a few pegs. (Credit: Jafco Ventures)

Formerly prosperous cities across the United States, struggling to keep up with an increasingly global economy and the continued decline of post-war industries like manufacturing, face the issue of how to adapt to today's knowledge economy. In Invention and Reinvention, authors Mary Walshok and Abraham Shragge chronicle San Diego's transformation from a small West Coast settlement to a booming military metropolis and then to a successful innovation hub. This instructive story of a second-tier city that transformed its core economic identity can serve as a rich case and a model for similar regions.

Helpers do what you say, while good help does what you need, without you saying anything. People who can help you the most are actually smarter than you, at least in their domain. Top entrepreneurs spend more time putting the right team in place to accomplish their objectives than they spend on any other components of their job.

Where is San Diego’s innovation economy headed? And how will that impact you and your career?

In the words of Steve Jobs, “Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower.”

In business, innovation generally refers to the process of improving what’s been done before, creating a business model that’s more cost-effective and results in increased productivity, growth, and profitability.

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I can’t tell you how relieved I was to reorganise my priorities at the end of 2013 and simply say ‘no’. No more entrepreneurship events, no speaking or writing engagement unless I’m paid for it and very, very little time spent on the entrepreneurship scene. In short, I’ve cut down on so many unnecessary things in just one part of my life, that there is now ample time to pursue those interests I’ve always had and never had the time to enjoy.

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When Extreme Startups and GrowLab merged in August 2014, it served notice to the Canadian accelerator landscape that things were being taken a little more seriously.

With more programs popping up every year, those two reputable institutions did the opposite of flooding the market. They consolidated their energies into one offering, the HIGHLINE program.

It wasn’t hard to decipher what the move pointed at: there’s too many accelerators in Canada, many of which are poor-quality.

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By 2050, the world's population is predicted to reach nine billion, with over two thirds of people living in cities. While urban centers occupy less than two percent of the planet's surface, they nonetheless provide homes to half the global population and generate 70 percent of GDP worldwide. According to the World Bank, roughly 80 percent of growth forecast in newly industrialized and developing countries will be produced in cities. In the future, the number of "megacities" (cities with a population over 10 million) will also dramatically increase. 

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As we approach Thanksgiving Day in the United States, I’m coming off an experience this past weekend that reminded me of what I’m most grateful for. It’s the people and the experiences I’ve been blessed with in my life.

In the middle of doing a bunch of chores on Saturday, I got an email from Holmes Morrison saying he was in town and wondering if I could break away for a visit. Holmes is on the very short list of the most influential people in my life.  I would have stopped doing almost anything to spend some time with him. He was just five minutes away from where I live, so I walked over and spent the next hour talking with him and his son John.

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What if you were in the military, shot, and the bullet hit an artery? Blood loss from a wound like that could kill you in just minutes. What medics would generally have in that situation (in addition to the application of pressure) wouldn’t be able to stop the bleeding in time.

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Just because business travelers are out of office, doesn't mean they're not at work.

According to Expedia, 39% of business travelers say they spend more time working on the road than they do in the office. That statistic was likely much smaller a decade ago, when Wi-Fi was less prevalent and smartphones were in their infancy.

Image: Travel Hub - FLICKR, KLYUEN

Washington, DC, November 24, 2014 --(PR.com)-- The Federal Laboratory Consortium for Technology Transfer (FLC), a nationwide network of federal laboratories that cultivates best-practice strategies for advancing technology transfer (T2) from the laboratory to the marketplace, today announced the launch of FLCBusiness, an interactive business resource tool.

One of my good friends is a published author of young adult fiction. Being an author has to be one of the braver acts of entrepreneurship; it’s hard, it’s lonely, and the payoff is particularly uncertain.

He recently shared with me a conversation he had with a relative while at a family reunion. His aunt asked him what he was up to these days and he proudly told her that he just released his third book. She looked at him curiously and inquired with tinge of maternal advice, “Well, have you ever considered writing a bestseller?”

California is once again No. 3 in a state-by-state biennial ranking of technology-based economic development in the U.S., trailing only Massachusetts and Maryland.

The Milken Institute’s State Technology and Science Index assigns numerical scores, based on 78 indicators, among five composite categories: research and development inputs, risk capital and entrepreneurial infrastructure, human capital investment, technology and science work force, and technology concentration and dynamism.

Startup investment is crucial to the innovation ecosystem, often bridging the funding gap and allowing promising ideas to reach the market. The February 2014 issue of the Index compared Chicago’s venture capital funding with other leading U.S. metropolitan regions by total investment, concentration of funding by industry, and funding sources. This issue uses a broader set of data1 from CB Insights Venture Capital Database to highlight startup investment trends—most notably, that financing and deals in Illinois and Chicago increased throughout each quarter of 2014. The data also reveals an increasing share of total startup investment being directed at early-stage startups, indicating an ecosystem better suited to support high-risk activities such as technology development and company formation.

Image: http://www.illinoisinnovation.com

“There will be haters. There will be doubters. And then there will be you proving them wrong.”

This is how Robert Falcone thinks about product demos because he's lived it firsthand. As a co-founder of his own startup, and now working closely with customers at marketing software maker Monetate, he's given hundreds of product demos. For a while, many were not successful, but he’s used that experience to his advantage.

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You can picture it now, can’t you? The familiar sounds of a parade or football game playing on the TV while little ones chase each other through the house. More friends and family members than you can ever remember in one place at the same time. And the aroma … those delightful smells that let you know it’s a holiday.

You see the table surrounded by mismatched chairs, dinnerware and cutlery. And on that table, neatly decorated with the rich colors of the season, sit bowls filled with traditional fare and in the center of it all, the pièce de résistance – the golden brown bird around which the entire meal is built. Turkey. The year’s most prestigious meal!

Now that I’ve finished the book proposal for my second book (which is getting strong initial interest from publishers), I thought it might be interesting to peek in on the Nielsen Bookscan sales numbers on Amazon and look back at the last couple of years of sales by geography in the United States for Stoking Your Innovation Bonfire. This is what you’ll see in the map above (darker color indicating more dense sales). Unfortunately they don’t collect international data an so I can’t show you a world map, despite the book’s global popularity.

Image: http://bradenkelley.com