President Obama's summit last week with African leaders in Washington, D.C., when not distracted by the Ebola outbreak, focused as expected on investment opportunities for American businesses in the energy sector. And yet, it was clear the nature of our interface is changing forever on the continent where a new generation of African job creators and their startups are the driving phenomenon in Africa’s growth trajectory.

Image: http://entrepreneurship.org 

The long-awaited list has been prepared, and the cream of the crop have been chosen to take place in this year’s Techstars class. These future powerhouse companies do everything from make a tool to help salespeople get more information on leads, help small boutiques enter the e-commerce world and create a service to aggregate safe videos for kids on all devices. After a rigorous selection process, 10 startups were selected out of 600 applicants to take part in the three-month accelerator program, which is run by angel investor Andy Sack.

Image: BUSINESS JOURNAL PHOTO | Marcus Andy Sack (center), Managing Director of Techstars, a Seattle startup accelerator, talks with Zack Simmons (right), Founder of Answertap at a weekly coffee networking event Sack attends at a local coffee shop. Startup accelerator Techstars announced its 2014 class today, and had an increased number of applicants from California. 

Michael Lewis, a former business executive and financial blogger, does not sugar coat things when he says, “owners who cannot efficiently manage their cash flow are almost certain to fail.”

Every day new entrants throw their hat into the ring of entrepreneurship. And every day several die off. Many of these entrepreneurs, after spending considerable time fine-tuning their business plan, find themselves scratching their head, wondering why their company, with its innovative product or service, suffered such a fate.

The future revolves around a world without boundaries that will ultimately lead to a "Made in the World" brand. The world business champions are seizing excellence wherever it is available, and weaving networks of international talent. They’re become globally integrated business communities. As the number of customers, especially among the new wealthy classes - from China to India, from Turkey to Brazil, increases the "Made in the World" gives birth to many centres "in" Excellence (from design to logistics). Entrepreneurs must act to ensure they can secure a strong foothold in this new business environment.

I now find myself in a university campus laboratory just outside Dublin. I call it a ‘garden of entrepreneurship’ in which start-ups with high expectations of growth are cultivated: plants from seeds that are different from those sown by the entrepreneurs who manage companies that remain small due to isolation and the inability to grow through networking. These start-ups provide employment and productivity. In the USA, they account for twice the percentage of new companies compared to Europe and Japan. The cause of this difference lies in the organization of postgraduate studies. In Italy, for example, doctorate programmes are tailored to suit the training needs of new university researchers and lecturers. Candidates are required to prepare a thesis, certainly not to create an enterprise. The provision of business doctorates alongside research doctorates would surely open the door for setting up companies such as Hewlett-Packard and Google in the IT and media businesses and Genentech and Amgen in cellular and molecular biology. However, such a goal is as ambitious as it is distant.

The crowdfunding scene in Europe is evolving fast. This year France, Spain and the UK adopted regulations for securities crowdfunding, while the European Commission officially announced its support to crowdfunding, as a valid financial source, able to help fuel Europe’s sustainable growth. In Finland, like in Sweden, the crowdfunding scene has been flourishing and active for a few years now, with more and more actors getting involved.

Image: http://www.crowdvalley.com 

Like many of you, I often work outside of regular office hours while at home, in the airport, and sometimes on vacation. Mobile technology has created a “new normal” work life for a lot of us: Gallup’s research reveals that nearly all full-time U.S. workers (96%) have access to a computer, smartphone, or tablet, with 86% using a smartphone or tablet or both. And a full two-thirds of Americans report that the amount of work they do outside normal working hours has increased “a little” to “a lot” because of mobile technology advances over the last decade.

image: http://www.freedigitalphotos.net 

Weak handshakes are often frowned upon, but they may be healthier than firm ones. A fist bump, though, may be an even healthier choice.

British researchers did a simple experiment. After dipping a gloved hand into a dense culture of Escherichia coli, a bacterium commonly found in human intestines, an experimenter shook hands, bumped fists or high-fived with a person wearing a sterile glove. They repeated the tests several times and analyzed the gloves for transmission of germs.

image: http://www.freedigitalphotos.net 

“Remember before the internet?” asks Joi Ito. “Remember when people used to try to predict the future?” In this engaging talk, the head of the MIT Media Lab skips the future predictions and instead shares a new approach to creating in the moment: building quickly and improving constantly, without waiting for permission or for proof that you have the right idea. This kind of bottom-up innovation is seen in the most fascinating, futuristic projects emerging today, and it starts, he says, with being open and alert to what’s going on around you right now. Don’t be a futurist, he suggests: be a now-ist.

image: http://www.freedigitalphotos.net 

Today’s installment of the Techstars Mentor Manifesto is #4: Be Direct. Tell The Truth, However Hard.

Let’s start with “Be Direct.”

At some intellectual level, being direct is easy. You just say what is on your mind. You say it in a declarative way. You lead with it and support it with either experience or examples.

Wisconsin economic development officials and startup advocates like to say that innovation happens in all parts of the state, not just in its two biggest cities, Milwaukee and Madison.

That mantra isn’t always evident, given the lower level of startup activity outside the state’s two hubs. But there certainly are pockets of innovation statewide.

Richard Saul Wurman, best known as the founder of the TED conference, has made it his job to produce clarity out of the complex. In Newport, RI, lives an old magician in splendid, self-imposed exile.

His eclectic body of work boasts over 80 books, including the original Access city guides, the bestsellers Information Anxiety and Information Anxiety II, as well as esteemed companions on all topics from football, to estate-planning, to healthcare. He has founded 40-odd conferences and chaired numerous information-mapping projects.

Image: http://itssaulconnected.com 

Large companies such as Google and Intel have venture capital arms that provide investment capital to startup companies around the country. The 7-Eleven international chain of convenience stores, which started in Texas nearly 90 years ago, also has a venture capital arm called 7-Ventures. The company aims to invest in new technology that can help the company better interact with its customers.

New Delhi: Large royalty payments made by some Indian companies to overseas parents are on the central government’s radar, though the new regime has not decided whether to put a cap on them. The previous United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government had contemplated bringing back such limits that were in place till 2009. The government, though, did not adopt the measure as it may have been viewed as a retrograde step.

Image: Before 2009, companies could only remit royalty involving foreign technology transfer up to 5% on domestic sales and 8% on exports, and up to 1% for domestic sales and 2% for exports when no technology transfer was involved, such as on account of brand value. Photo: Ramesh Pathania/Mint Read more at: http://www.livemint.com/Companies/RNBHfLKqRmcZZpnrBK9mAP/Surging-royalty-payments-to-parent-firms-abroad-on-govt-rada.html?utm_source=copy 

We live in an age of information overload. While many of us find ourselves inundated with vast amounts of data daily, our fast-paced society also requires us to make more rapid decisions.

Psychologist and behavioral neuroscientist Daniel Levitin, author of the upcoming book The Organized Mind: Thinking Straight in the Age of Information Overload, says information overload creates daily challenges for our brains, causing us to feel mentally exhausted before the day's end.

image: http://www.freedigitalphotos.net 

One of the primary reasons I quit my job 2 years ago was so that I would have time to do things that I enjoy.

Time to read, write, meditate and train my body.

Time to learn languages and master new skills.

Time to travel and spend time with my loved ones.

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It never fails.

If I am creating a new presentation, I go through the same tortured creative thinking stages EVERY TIME.

As I pass the various STAGES, they always feel familiar based on past experiences.

Yet no matter how much creative thinking I do or how much I recognize the stages and WANT to skip over those that cause the most frustration and anxiety, I repeat them every time while creating a new presentation.

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By any standard, the greenhouse where Henry Daniell cultivates his tobacco plants is state of the art.

At a cost of $1 million, the glass enclosure is outfitted with an irrigation system and technology that measures temperature and humidity that can be accessed remotely. The expense and complexity to maintain a proper climate within the structure is necessary. The plants Daniell grows are very special.

Image: Daniel Mellinger and Alex Kushleyev are “pushing the limits of experimental robotics” at KMel Robotics, one of the many innovators at the University of Pennsylvania’s South Bank campus. University of Pennsylvania 

More and more academics are recognizing the potential to supplement their income from higher education positions with out-of-the-box projects and schemes. To try and get to grips with the so called academic entrepreneur, I met with Shonell Bacon, Instructor of Mass Communication at McNeese State University.

The goal of this discussion is to help other academics understand the relationship between academic standing and entrepreneurship, how you can marry the two concepts together to generate supplementary income.

image: http://www.freedigitalphotos.net 

Should science be taught in native languages or in the global language of scientific research, asks Saleh Al-Shair.

Discussing modern education involves discussing a specific type of communication. The language of education is similar to other types of communication in that it involves a sender, a recipient, a medium and a message. But it is also different in that it does not depend on only one type of medium — speaking, for example. Instead it combines lecturing, writing, discussion, brainstorming, audiovisual and other forms of communication, bring them to the foreground as methods for transmitting science.

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