Millions of Americans will be hitting the beach this summer, but when it comes to water quality, not all beaches are created equal. According to a new report from the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), 10% of beaches in the U.S. contained bacterial levels that failed to meet the EPA's most protective benchmark for swimmer safety in 2013. The report found that water pollution continues to be an issue at many U.S. beaches.

Image: FLICKR, MIKE MCCUNE 

The State of Michigan continues to lead the way for crowdfunding initiatives with the new crowdfunding bill passed earlier in 2014, and now an innovative grant matching program that is the first of its kind in the United States.

If you’re looking to crowdfund a community place-based project the MEDC will match your successful campaign with up to $100K. The program is partnering with local crowdfunding platform Patronicity based out of Detroit. They are specifically looking for community placemaking efforts, like redeveloping a neighborhood building for shared use, an activation of an outdoor space, or creating a local park.

Image: http://www.michipreneur.com/ 

In today’s networked society we are at risk of becoming victims of information overload. Introspection and reflection have become lost arts as the temptation to ‘just finish this’ or ‘find out that’ is often too great to resist. But working harder is not necessarily working smarter. In fact slacking off and setting aside regular periods of ‘doing nothing’ may be the best thing we can do to induce states of mind that nurture our imagination and improve our mental health.

Nothing slows business down more than a sluggish computer. Of course, Apple fans will be pleased to note that there are not many tools for them here because. . .well, their machines are often invincible. I use many of these ideas to keep my machines running lean and mean in the fast lane. If your PC is wasting what little precious time you have, these tips and websites will help you to make it faster.

Don’t bash the competition. Every investor knows how vulnerable a new startup is to competitors, so investors always ask about your sustainable competitive advantage in the marketplace. How an entrepreneur answers this question speaks volumes about their knowledge of business realities, customers, confidence, and their ability to handle investor funding.

It started with a simple message from Internet billionaire Yuri Milner: Let’s meet up.   Before responding to that e-mail in April, Jacob Lurie, a Harvard University mathematics professor, decided to look up Milner and found that the venture capitalist, along with Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, had started awarding a $3-million prize in mathematics this year. Lurie figured Milner wanted his advice on whom to pick. “I was surprised,” Lurie says, “when he offered me the prize.”

Image: U.C.L.A. mathematician Terence Tao, one of five winners of the inaugural $3-million Breakthrough Prize in Mathematics. Credit: Terence Tao 

MADISON, Wis., June 25, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- The Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation (WEDC) and the Wisconsin Technology Innovation Initiative (Wi2) have established a $1 million seed fund to support commercialization of medical technology developed by the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health.

Most startups will not succeed. A variety of factors can lead to failure, but much of the time, it’s because they simply ran out of funds. Raising capital is a challenge for all businesses and many entrepreneurs fail to realize that investors have set criteria when evaluating a company as a potential investment opportunity. There’s a reason why most angel investors only invest in one out of every ten companies they review, or the typical venture capital firm will invest in one out of every 100. Most of those companies did not meet those investors’ criteria. In this article, we’ll look at six common reasons why an investor will say “no” to your company.

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Pipeline Inc. landed a $1.435 million challenge grant from the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation to further its entrepreneurial impact in the region. Launched in 2006, Pipeline is a group of regional entrepreneurs that builds high-growth companies though a rigorous yearlong business development program and networking among Pipeline members. It now welcomes businesspeople from Missouri, Kansas and Nebraska.

Image: Dave Kaup Joni Cobb 

You can have your interview materials rehearsed and ready to blow them away, but it's the sound of your voice that could be holding you back.

Try recording yourself speaking, and check for these common habits of speech that are proven to undermine your words.

We all want to see our content read and shared widely, but no one wants to look like an attention hog.

There seems to be a fine line between sharing enough of your own stuff and sharing too much. Most people would rather err on the side of just enough (or even less) in their social media strategy.

Image: http://www.freedigitalphotos.net

Many organizations are adopting Open Innovation and Crowdsourcing as ways to generate new products or services. Opening up your innovation initiatives to outsiders is seen as more effective than relying solely on your internal R&D or marketing departments. However, because this approach is so new there is a dearth of guidance on how to measure the success of open innovation activities. This issue is addressed directly in a paper by Erkens, Wosch, Piller and Luttgens from Ernst Young in Germany and the University of Aachen. The report points out that 90% of corporate innovation efforts do not result in new products or services so a tool to help us understand how to measure success is badly needed. Furthermore, companies that do measure innovation tend to use generic metrics based on R&D and product-development (e.g. number of patents filed) which are of very limited value

When Nitin Saluja graduated from IIT-Bombay and moved to Houston, US, to work for Opera Solutions in 2007, the thing he missed the most was a good cup of chai, especially after an Indian meal. A few years and much research into Indian tea later, he decided to come back home in 2012 to launch Chaayos in Gurgaon, along with co-founder Raghav Verma.

Image: Nitin Saluja. Photo: Ramesh Pathania/Mint Read more at: http://www.livemint.com/Companies/bgMV7uRxA59qcSo7riRveL/Road-to-entrepreneurship-Off-the-beaten-track.html?utm_source=copy 

Okay, you can't really "teach" entrepreneurship. It's an experience, not so much a content-area like history. As Sir Richard Branson put it in a recent interview about implementing enterprise culture at schools, "The best way of learning about anything is doing." That said, teachers all around the world are finding ways to bring entrepreneurship into their instruction. Why? Because in a world with fewer jobs and the increasing ability to make a living off of your passion, it just makes sense.

The reaction of people to my articles for Fairfax Media on “seniorprenuership” falls into two camps: those who see the incredible potential of helping people over 50 start a business; and those who believe the prospect of a sharp lift in senior entrepreneurs is ludicrous.

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Every single day I have multiple conversations and emails from CEOs and people at companies I work with about how to work with Big Tech Companies. You know – Google, Apple, Microsoft, Oracle, IBM, Amazon, Facebook, Twitter, Salesforce, SAP, LinkedIn, Cisco, Yahoo, HP, AT&T, Verizon, Icouldkeepgoingforalongtime.

But this conversation is not limited to just the gigantic tech companies. They include all the up and comers andtheabunchmoreyouprobablydontthinkarethatbigbutare, including a long list of newly public companies or still private but mega-funded companies.

What are common mistakes that new or inexperienced managers make? What are three things (more or less) you would have done differently managing your team during your first few weeks on the job (i.e. politics, control, motivation, etc.)?

Answer by Ian McAllister, general manager at Amazon.

Below are some mistakes I made as a new manager or have seen other new managers make. Experienced managers still make some of these mistakes, though hopefully fewer.

Bipartisanship is so rare in Congress these days that one hopes every meaningful law passed with even just an ounce of across-the-aisle support is the best gosh-darn law it can be. Unfortunately, that can’t be said about one of the last bipartisan laws of note, the JOBS Act of 2012.

Most of the JOBS Act’s provisions involved arcane tweaks to federal securities regulations—stuff so tediously complex that if I described it here, I would get arrested for boring hundreds of readers to death. However! The law’s Title III, which covered equity crowdfunding for non-accredited investors, caught the collective imagination of serial entrepreneurs, business writers, Silicon Valley CEOs, and tech bloggers, inspiring breathlessly predictions of a revolution in investing, the death of venture capital, the long overdue victory against sexism and racism in business, the democratization of capitalism, the end of unemployment, and the restoration of the American Dream. 

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There’s an old saying that “one man’s trash is another man’s treasure.” Meaning, what one person considers worthless, could be of value to another. No need to tell Yong Ho Ji that, the Korean artist has amazed the world with his sculptures, which are completely comprised of steel frames and recycled tires. What Yong Ho Ji does with old rubber is truly impressive. These pieces are much more than patched-up flats with googly eyes on them, believe me.

Image: http://www.viralnova.com/ 

Stop chasing the latest technology wave. It’s much better to make sense of it while also watching for the next wave. These waves of technology will most likely come faster and faster with the Internet of Everything (IoE). Faster feedback loops will be built into all product development cycles. Cloud-based technologies will mean constant change, much of it not even seen by end-users. As a result, better ways to negotiate a connected world will have to be developed. These will have to be human-centric if we expect them to last. Processes, data, and things may be able to change quickly, but people do not. While they may be agile, adaptable, and flexible, people cannot get a new operating system and start working in a different way overnight.

Image: http://www.freedigitalphotos.net