President Obama today announced a new class of recipients of the National Medal of Science and National Medal of Technology and Innovation—our Nation’s highest honors for achievement and leadership in advancing the fields of science and technology. The new awardees will receive their medals at a White House ceremony later this year.

Walter Isaacson’s last book was the best-selling biography of Steve Jobs —the charismatic business genius of Apple Computer and one of the beatified icons of modern technology and entrepreneurship. Mr. Isaacson’s fine new book, “The Innovators,” is a serial biography of the large number of ingenious scientists and engineers who, you might say, led up to Jobs and his Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak —“forerunners” who, over the past century or so, produced the transistor, the microchip and microprocessor, the programmable computer and its software, the personal computer, and the graphic interface. These in turn were among the technological conditions for the videogame, the Internet and Web, the search engine, the online crowd-sourced encyclopedia and the ability to use a touchscreen to hurl spherical birds into buildings and make them explode.

Image: Apple Computer founders Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak in Jobs’s parents’ garage in 1976. © DB APPLE/DPA/CORBIS

Twice so far at the Upshot, we’ve published maps showing where fan support for one team begins and another ends — once for baseball and once for basketball. Now we’re pleased to offer another one: the United States according to college football fans.

Unlike professional sports, the college game is much more provincial, with scrappy regional programs dominating their corners of the country. Texas and Oregon are two of the most popular teams, but together they account for only 25 percent of territory in the lower 48 states. There is no team with a level of national support that approaches that of, say, the Yankees, the Boston Red Sox or the Los Angeles Lakers.

Image: http://www.nytimes.com/

The Clemson University Research Foundation (CURF) announced Thursday that it has awarded funding to five Clemson researchers to further develop their Clemson technologies through a newly established program, the CURF Technology Maturation Fund. "The CURF Technology Maturation Fund is unlike any other source of funding available to Clemson faculty," said Casey Porto, executive director of CURF. "This funding supports the last critical step that will significantly increase the likelihood of commercialization of Clemson intellectual property."

Image: Free Digital Photos

As a startup advisor, I see many aspiring entrepreneurs whose primary motivation seems to be to work part time, or get rich quick, or avoid anyone else telling them what to do. Let me assure you, from personal experience, and from helping many successful as well as struggling entrepreneurs, that starting a business is hard work, and doesn't come with any of the benefits mentioned.

The three-story brick building at the corner of Main and Osborn streets in Cambridge, on the edge of Kendall Square and the MIT campus, captures three distinct eras in the city’s innovation history. In the early 1800s, it was the site of Kimball & Davenport, the first builder of passenger railroad cars in America.

After World War II, it was the epicenter of the Massachusetts tech boom, home to the office and private lab of Edwin Land, Polaroid’s founder. In between, Thomas A. Watson strung a wire from Boston to Cambridge, and set up the equipment to receive the first “long distance” phone call, in 1876.

2014 has already seen massive tech M&A with WhatsApp, Nest and Oculus alone being acquired for more than $24B in aggregate exit value.  Using CB Insights data, we ranked the most active tech acquirers by year to see who’s snatching up the most private tech companies and how the active acquirer landscape has shifted over time.

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20 companies have raised financing at a billion dollar plus valuation in 2014 while only 7 have gone public for more than $1 billion. With money abundant in the private markets, why go public?

Based on CB Insights data, in 2014, there have been nearly 3 times as many startups garnering new $1B+ valuations in private financings as there have been VC-backed billion-dollar tech IPOs.

Your company name will get used more and last longer than any other investment you make in your business. It’s important that you get it right the first time.

Here are some of the biggest naming mistakes I’ve seen entrepreneurs make and why you should avoid them.

DUBLIN – Forbion Capital Partners raised €92 million (US$116 million) in a first close of a new fund, FCF III, further evidence that Europe's biotechnology sector is exiting the funding freeze of recent years.

Forbion, of Naarden, the Netherlands, aims to achieve a final closing of €150 million to €200 million. It follows two other Dutch venture capital firms that have raised new cash in recent weeks.

From sports equipment to predicting ice formations, University of Michigan researchers had a record year coming up with inventions and ways to commercialize them.

Michigan researchers will announce Monday the highest number of new inventions and signed agreements to commercialize technologies within the Office of Technology Transfer during the 2014 fiscal year.

New Jersey is joining the coterie of companies, and now state governments, utilizing online crowdfunding for capital raising. Traditionally, crowdfunding was characterized by a large number of investors making small online contributions, receiving modest gifts of appreciation in turn. Now, certain pioneering states are allowing companies to give out shares of equity instead.

The Monday-through-Friday, nine-to-five is a pipe dream.

For employees in "traditional" jobs — office jobs with set, weekday hours — today's status quo of ever-connectedness means that work often creeps into personal life (and vice versa): We often find ourselves taking personal calls at work, or sneaking peeks at an oh-so-urgent Excel file on our phones in the middle of family movie night. And for employees without a set schedule — surgeons, entrepreneurs, entertainers and countless other dedicated professionals — the delicate balance of personal and work life is even more precarious.

Image: FLICKR, COD NEWSROOM

A couple of discussions related to our portfolio companies last week led to me write this blog post. The timing could not have been better, since there have recently been some great posts related to this topic from Jamie McGurk and Stephen McDermid at Andreessen Horowitz, and from Fred Wilson at Union Square.

I’m writing this from my recent experiences both as a serial entrepreneur and as an investor at a seed-stage fund, which is typically a sub-$100 million fund.

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From the minute he formed Youtech & Associates, Inc. in his parent’s basement, Wilbur You started cold calling 100 companies per day. “That was my goal, and I made sure that it was done every single day,” says Wilbur. It was hard in the beginning, and the rejection rate was high. After two weeks he had two projects to develop websites at $500 each. After three weeks he had to stop making calls to do client work. Referrals started rolling in from there, and he hasn’t looked back since.

Knowledge@Wharton: Christian, perhaps you could start us off by describing the main findings or takeaways from your research?

Terwiesch: Let me preface what we’re going to discuss about business schools by saying that Karl and I have been in the business school world for many, many years. We love this institution, and we really want to make sure that we find a sustainable path forward for business schools.

Image: http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu 

A while back, we told you about the Africa Prize for Engineering Innovation. The prize, sponsored by the Royal Academy of Engineering (RAEng), covers a variety of engineering disciplines, including agriculture, nanotechnology, sanitation, security and mobile applications. The mandate behind the contest is to celebrate early stage innovations that will have a marked impact on the lives of people across the continent.

That doesn't necessarily mean they were raised in India though (some were raised in the US and Canada). Working with ClearTax showed us that startups in emerging markets face many of the same challenges as startups in the US. We helped them focus and scale up in the same way that we've helped our US-based startups. ClearTax generated a lot of interest from investors and it's become obvious that there's a growing appetite for investing in emerging markets.

DAVID COHEN: There is a great deal of innovation going on within the accelerator world, but just as interesting is what’s going on in the pre- and post-accelerator worlds.

Accelerator programs can be a strong fit for early-stage companies looking to fast track their business. But what if you’re interested in entrepreneurship and don’t know where to start? You have a great idea but don’t know how to bring it to life.