College enrollment dropped by 463,000 students from 2012 to 2013, according to a U.S. Census Bureau report released on Wednesday. It is the second year in a row that college enrollment dropped nationally. According to the statistics, a 10-percent enrollment drop at two-year colleges fueled the overall decline. Enrollment at four-year colleges grew by 1 percent.

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Today, the world seems to be filled with bright, creative people who want to make a name for themselves. If you are ready to branch out as an entrepreneur to bring your great idea to light, start on the right foot by learning from those who have gone before you. Below are common entrepreneurial mistakes, and you can avoid them with a little education before you begin.

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Some of America’s most distinguished leaders in academia, science, and technology gathered at Harvard September 19 and 20 to celebrate the 75th birthday of renowned Harvard scientist Venkatesh "Venky" Narayanamurti—and to discuss the future of innovation in America. Venky is the Benjamin Peirce Professor of Technology and Public Policy at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS), Professor of Physics, and director of the Science, Technology, and Public Policy Program at Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. He was also the founding dean of Harvard SEAS.

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Mayor Kevin Faulconer and other city leaders often tout San Diego’s so-called innovation economy — but just what that encompasses isn’t always so clear.

Tech and innovation jobs get referenced interchangeably, just like startups and small businesses often are.

Sometimes they’re the same thing. Sometimes they’re not.

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Here’s evidence that entrepreneurs have regained some confidence since the Great Recession: More business establishments opened in 2012 than in any year since 2007, according to data published last week by the U.S. Census Bureau. And for the first time since 2008, more businesses entered the economy than exited. The good news was consistent across the country, with all 50 states showing a higher startup rate in 2012.

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During the course of my conversation with veteran entrepreneur Steve Blank, he described himself as the "busiest retired man you've ever seen." That's a fair assessment. Blank is a prolific blogger and a teacher and lecturer at universities like Berkeley and Columbia. He also works with organizations like the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation to, in his words, "commercialize science" and innovation across the country. Sounds like a busy schedule, but Blank is used to this lifestyle.

Ever since Bill Reichert founded Garage Technology Ventures in Silicon Valley 15 years ago, his firm has reviewed close to 100,000 business plans from hopeful entrepreneurs. Unfortunately, some of those pitches are so bad Reichert found himself moaning when a friend asked him to judge a startup-pitch day. Afterward, Reichert began searching for ways to help entrepreneurs craft better stories. "It is not good enough to tell a good enough story," he says. "You have to get beyond good enough and get to wow." 

CIC@4240 is open for business. Massachusetts’ renowned Cambridge Innovation Center today opens the doors to its new facility, the first of its kind outside of its home state. Housed inside Wexford Science + Technology’s @4240, the CIC’s new space is now a part of the world-class Cortex Innovation Community, creating and managing next-generation flexible work environments for start-ups and small and mid-sized companies. Starting with about 20 founding clients, CIC expects to eventually house as many as 75 companies in its @4240 location, from entrepreneurs and growth businesses to strategic service firms and investor groups. @4240 is a LEED Platinum certified lab and research facility.

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Henry Ford kept lowering the price of cars, and more people kept buying them. The San Diego–based gene sequencing company Illumina has been doing something similar with the tools needed to interpret the human genetic code.

A record 228,000 human genomes will be completely sequenced this year by researchers around the globe, said Francis de Souza, president of Illumina, the maker of machines for DNA sequencing, during MIT Technology Review’s EmTech conference in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Image: Francis de Souza, president of Illumina 

While the Apple of the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus is undoubtedly Tim Cook’s, it’s pretty likely that millions of people wouldn’t be queuing up for its devices today if it weren’t for the persuasive power of one Steve Jobs. The Apple co-founder wasn’t just able to convince members of the public either. Those who worked under him coined the term “reality distortion field” to describe his ability to convince himself and others to believe almost anything. But how did he do it? The answer, it turns out is by borrowing from the rhetoric techniques of some of history’s greatest philosophers.

One lament I often hear when I advise large company executives on the need to “Think Big” is that their biggest innovation challenge is not thinking big—it is thinking too much.

Purportedly great ideas come from the front lines where the organization interacts with products and customers. They come from technology or marketing wizards keeping a sharp eye on disruptive market trends. They come from executives and board members grappling with questions at the organization’s strategic horizon.

Do you ever fantasize about ditching the corporate career and becoming an entrepreneur? Are you already an entrepreneur, fighting to survive and struggling with the question; what is it all for?  The answers may be waiting for you in entrepreneur heaven.

A few years back, Mitch Albom wrote a touching and wildly successful book called The Five People You Meet in Heaven. The book follows an old man into heaven where he encounters five people from his life who each have a lesson to share, helping him finally understand the meaning of his life.

If the states are “laboratories of democracy,” as Justice Louis Brandeis famously said, then cities can be the petri dishes for technological innovation. With fewer bureaucratic hurdles than both the federal or state governments, and the opportunity for charismatic mayors to drive local change, cities around the United States and the world are experimenting with new ways to use technology to create business opportunities and improve citizens’ lives. They have also been pioneers in data-driven innovation and especially in the use of public or “open” data, to reshape the urban environment. Major cities are hiring Chief Data Officers – Los Angeles was the latest to do so – and they’re working with tech entrepreneurs to find new solutions in transportation, health care, education, and many other areas of civic life.

The conventional wisdom is that an aging population is a net drag on a nation’s economic competitiveness. America, these naysayers point out, is almost ready to fall off a demographic cliff once the aging Baby Boomers start retiring. But in a paper published by the journal PLOS ONE, a group of international researchers at the IIASA, the Max Planck Institute and the University of Washington proposed exactly the opposite: In a Western, industrialized democracy, having an aging population might actually turn out to be a competitive advantage.

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DEERFIELD, Ill. --Baxter International Inc. (NYSE:BAX) today announced plans to form a new global innovation and research and development (R&D) center in Cambridge, Mass., for Baxter's biopharmaceuticals business, which is expected to become a separate, independent global company known as Baxalta Incorporated in mid-2015.

The business selected the Cambridge biotech community as the primary location for its global innovation and R&D operations after a global search. The new location will position the company to enhance patient care by advancing and building its robust innovation pipeline, which is centered on core areas of expertise in hematology, immunology, and through technology platforms like gene therapy and biosimilars.

Bill Reichert, of Garage Technology Ventures, says entrepreneurs use phrases that VCs perceive as white lies, while VCs use euphemisms for what they really intend when they talk to entrepreneurs. Recorded: Jan. 31, 2007

Over the last five years, email management and delivery service SendGrid has grown from a Techstars startup to a company of over 230 employees with steadily increasing revenue. During that time, their community team has transformed from one MBA grad running the show to 14 specialized developer evangelists and community managers, accounting for 6% of the overall SendGrid team.

Limited partners are actively returning to venture capital and many are looking beyond the industry’s giants. “I think this is the first year that LPs have realized that you can make a lot of money in small venture funds as well,” said Hans Swildens, founder and CEO of Industry Ventures.

The firm has closed on $170 million, more than twice the size of its previous fund, for a fund of funds targeting venture capital funds of less than $250 million. That’s another sign of rising investor interest in these smaller pools, Russ Garland reports for Dow Jones VentureWire.

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Google Capital, in partnership with Lightspeed China Partners, has backed a $38 million Series C funding round for Chinese high-speed optical transceiver supplier InnoLight Technology Corporation.

The backing marks the first investment foray into China for Google's venture capital business, and its second in the greater Asian market.

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This chart offers a pretty compelling argument for why CEOs are making way too much money compared to what their employees earn.

Pulled from a Harvard Business School survey, it shows how people in 16 countries feel about the disparity between the amount of money CEOs make and what the average worker pulls in.

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