It's a truism of entrepreneurship that the road to riches is full of at least as many lows as highs. That’s why many entrepreneurs don’t take the leap until they meet the right partner to jump into business with. This isn’t just about co-founders having complementary skills; the support of a business partner can be invaluable. For better or worse, it is often the difference between giving up and persevering.

Image: http://www.freedigitalphotos.net

One of the most important principles in the SIT Method is the Closed World principle. It states that there is an inverse relationship between the distance from the problem and the creativity of the solution. The farther away you have to go to find a solution, the less creative it will be. So it’s important where you set the boundaries of the Closed World as you apply the SIT Method.

A new EU regulation is meant to make clinical trials easier and more transparent, a pivotal tool in the fight against deadly diseases like cancer. But researchers in Germany warn that the country may lose its role as a leader in international medicine. EurActiv Germany reports.

Clinical trials are crucial for cancer researche, as demonstrated by numbers which scientists presented in Berlin on Tuesday (17 June).

Over the last three years, 31 drugs intended to treat cancer were approved by the European Medicines Agency (EMA).

Image: 31 drugs intended to treat cancer were approved by the European Medicines Agency (EMA) over the past three years. (Interpharma/Flickr) 

If you’re the gentle, sensitive sort who takes yourself and your business seriously – don’t read this review, don’t read this book, just go off and do something else.  You won’t like what you read here and you won’t like Mike. You will think the book I’m reviewing is doggie doo. You should just save yourself some brain space and go off living your life and running your business as it is.

Let go of any crippling anxieties for a second and think back to childhood. Remember the fear and trepidation you felt the first time you peered down from the top of the playground slide—which immediately turned to utter joy and triumph when you reached the bottom? Our creativity is hampered by that same type of fear, according to innovation and design firm IDEO founders (and brothers) David Kelley and Tom Kelley.

Image: http://www.freedigitalphotos.net

I've been an entrepreneur for 10 years. I learned business the old-fashioned way through pure trial and error. I don't believe that business can be taught any other way, and even if it could I don't believe it could be as effective. Entrepreneurship is really hot right now. Twenty-five year olds are becoming millionaires overnight simply by developing apps. In this environment there's no wonder why so many young people are becoming attracted to entrepreneurship. In typical college fashion, many universities are trying to exploit this trend by developing entrepreneurship courses and majors. This is total nonsense and here's three reasons why.

Image: http://www.freedigitalphotos.net

Entrepreneurship has become something of an addiction for Dwight Stewart.

He sold a data management company that specialized in sustainability in 2011, and now the 34-year-old Johnston resident is at it again. Stewart's new company, Igor, provides software for businesses to maximize the efficiency of their lighting systems and save energy.

For instance, once the system is installed, businesses can set up rules that dictate just how much energy each individual LED light should expend to illuminate a room.

Image: Christopher Gannon/The Register 

I was about 15 minutes late for my first phone call with Jan Scheuermann. When I tried to apologize for keeping her waiting, she stopped me. “I wasn’t just sitting around waiting for you, you know,” she said, before catching herself. “Well, actually I was sitting around.”

Scheuermann, who is 54, has been paralyzed for 14 years. She had been living in California and running a part-time business putting on mystery-theater dinners, where guests acted out roles she made up for them. “Perfectly healthy, married, with two kids,” she says. One night, during a dinner she’d organized, it felt as if her legs were dragging behind her. “I chalked it up to being a cold snowy night, but there were a couple of steps in the house, and boy, I was really having trouble,” she says.

Image: http://www.technologyreview.com/ 

Today it happened. I hit a wall, I was doing so many things to keep moving in my business…

answering emails, following up with clients, writing a blog post, coaching clients in my Awesome Business Community, pulling together some training, planning for my upcoming signature program in the fall and on and on….

‘Entrepreneur in Residence’ (EIR) is the tech community’s newest job title. They’re popping up at Fortune 500 companies like Dell and venture firms like Greylock Partners to introduce a lens into the changing innovation landscape.

“EIRs are the new ambassadors for investors and large organizations,” says Ellie Cachette, a seasoned entrepreneur, product designer and consultant for enterprise brands.

Image: http://www.freedigitalphotos.net

Technology combined with innovation has created unprecedented job upheaval and job loss. The global job gap could see 75 million jobless people within four years. What can a community do in the face of jobless economic recoveries where many middle-skilled jobs have been lost, never to return?

Brain Gain: How Innovative Cities Create Job Growth in an Age of Disruption is a new book that examines the most crucial issues facing the world's cities.

The three co-founders of the Intelligent Community Forum authored Brain Gain, their third book. They say that "Innovation is the core of the economy you live in, and is being fuelled by Information and Communications Technology as a fire is transformed into an inferno by a rush of oxygen."

Coworking spaces could be the first outposts of the innovation economy. If that’s the case, the opening of two new coworking spaces in Brooklyn may be further evidence of the expansion of tech’s footprint in the borough.

Obviously, coworking spaces are not exclusively tech, but there’s no question that freelancers of all sorts are entrepreneurial fellow-travelers.

Image: Photo courtesy of Dean Machine 

The services sector has come to dominate the global economy, yet innovation in that sector has accelerated only in the past decade. In this interview, McKinsey director Travis Fagan tells McKinsey’s Simon London how customers empowered by digitization are driving changes in service delivery, why that matters, and how service expertise can provide a competitive edge. An edited transcript of Fagan’s remarks follows.

Image: http://www.mckinsey.com/ 

Your eye could someday house its own high-tech information center, tracking important changes and letting you know when it’s time to see an eye doctor.

University of Washington engineers have designed a low-power sensor that could be placed permanently in a person’s eye to track hard-to-measure changes in eye pressure. The sensor would be embedded with an artificial lens during cataract surgery and would detect pressure changes instantaneously, then transmit the data wirelessly using radio frequency waves.

News about Aussie tech start-ups succeeding here and then overseas may suggest a thriving incubator scene. The reality for most of our the majority of Australian incubator participants is very different, argues Sydney start-up business consultant Greg Twemlow.

Australia has a seemingly vibrant tech incubator ecosystem where budding entrepreneurs can find basic funds, advice, like-minded co-located buddies and free rent from a number of initiatives.

If you’re in the increasing minority that thinks mobile is a passing fad, you’re deluded. Don’t believe us? Take a look at some of the numbers. The latest numbers from “Queen of the net” Mary Meeker for instance show that data traffic on mobile is going up 81% year-over-year, mostly thanks to video, where mobile accounts for 22% of consumption. Given that only around 30% of the world’s 5.2-billion mobile users have smartphones, there’s obviously still massive potential for growth in mobile advertising. Add in the fact that global mobile ad spend is projected to grow to over US$33-billion this year and that mobile is pipped to be second only to TV for keeping up with the 2014 FIFA World Cup and you can see that anyone not playing in the mobile ad space is missing out.

Image: http://www.freedigitalphotos.net

Recently a young engineer in Togo, Kodjo Afate Gnikou, had an inspiration. Surveying the electronic waste being deposited across West Africa, he designed and built a 3D printer using discarded parts from computers and scanners, which costs $100 and is named the W.Afate, combining the name of the incubator where he works, WoeLab, and his own name.

Image: infocux Technologies/Flickr 

Greycroft Partners, a New York firm that saw its early investments in Maker Studios, Buddy Media, Huffington Post and Braintree Payments Solutions turn into large payouts, has now closed on its first growth fund at $200 million.

Greycroft set out to raise its growth fund in late February with a target of $160 million and with a hard cap of $200 million.

One of the biggest opportunities for entrepreneurs and innovators in the enterprise is cutting out the human IT staff and going full automation, potentially with technologies like deep learning, said venture capitalist Vinod Khosla at Gigaom’s Structure conference on Wednesday. “It’s ridiculous to have humans manage the level of complexity that they do. People are a big cost in IT. Let’s take that out,” said Khosla.

Image: http://gigaom.com/ 

Having failed at a lot of things, I’m completely comfortable tackling this. But let me establish my bonafides first. My first company, Martingale Software, failed (we returned $7,000 of the $10,000 we raised.) My second company, DataVision Technologies failed. I didn’t have success until my third company, Feld Technologies. While my first angel investment was a success, I resigned as the chairman after the VCs came in and left the board after the CEO was replaced. In the late 1990s, what looked like my biggest success at the time, went public, peaked at an almost $3 billion market cap, and then went bankrupt three years after the IPO. And the second VC fund I was part of, which raised $660 million in 1999, was a complete disaster.