After a year-long reporting effort by The GroundTruth Project, a clearer picture is emerging of a millennial generation facing an uncertain global economy. Our team of 21 GroundTruth reporting fellows journeyed to 11 countries to tell the story of their own generation. It’s a complex picture which combines devastating realities for many young people who economists believe will be the first generation to be worse off than their parents.

image: http://www.freedigitalphotos.net 

HOLYOKE — Like Dorothy stepping through the front door after crash-landing in Oz, I knew I wasn’t in Boston anymore.

Boston’s Innovation District is pricey. Construction cranes are everywhere, parking is scarce, and lunch options plentiful. Here in Holyoke’s newly-christened Innovation District, there are beautiful brick mill buildings, cheap hydroelectric power, and a new walkway alongside the canals — but almost no people.

Image: Kamil Peters of Kamil Peters Metal Sculpture at work in the Brick Coworkshop in Holyoke. (Matthew Cavanaugh for The Boston Globe) 

Even though it's been up and running since the summer, a startup accelerator focused on German companies seeking to break into the U.S. market put on a big show today to highlight its presence in New York. The German program, which is officially called the German Accelerator, expanded to New York after operating for three years in Silicon Valley. Both outposts are focused on German technology startups. Another branch is set to open next year in Boston that will have a bio-tech concentration.

Note: A photograph originally attached to this story has been removed. Groton - Pfizer Inc. has officially transferred an unused building on its campus here to Connecticut United for Research Excellence for use as a bioscience incubator hub, Gov. Dannel P. Malloy announced Friday. The 24,000-square-foot Building 286 will become CURE Innovation Commons, which is expected to be fully operational by July 1, 2015.

It’s no secret that Washington has a funding problem, with lawmakers and federal departments currently operating under unprecedented fiscal constraints.

It’s a very different story for the city’s entrepreneurs.

The District of Columbia ranks higher than any state in the country in terms of the ease with which entrepreneurs and small business owners can raise money through new online funding portals called crowdfunding sites, according to a new index compiled by Crowdfund Capital Advisors, a research and advisory group based in San Francisco.

Image: Crowdfunding portals are now being used to determine how certain commercial real estate properties should be developed in Washington. (N/A) 

I’ve lived in San Francisco long enough (I’m getting old) that I’ve seen several waves of bright young people arrive, burn out, then move away. For some they were looking for adventure, found it, and then carried on with normal life elsewhere. But for most it was simply a matter of the numbers not adding up. Working a dead end low wage job while sharing a two bedroom apartment with seven room mates is only romantic for so long. I’m fairly inquisitive so I’ve kept up with many of these folks to see how they manage after they leave. I travel a lot and pop in to visit on occasion. The big surprise is that they aren’t moving to the suburbs the way previous generations did when they were done with their youthful excursions in the city.

Image: http://www.newgeography.com 

Toronto has a blooming tech scene and we could not be more excited to be apart of it. MasterCard is helping us launch City Meetup in Toronto for the first time Nov. 6th. Come out to network with entrepreneurs in technology.

Katherine Hague (Co-founder, Shoplocket & The Blueprint)

Hague launched Shoplocket, a platform for hardware entrepreneurs looking to bring innovative products to life, in 2012 (acquired by PCH International) & The Blueprint, an online retail destination, in 2014. Prior to founding those companies, Hague worked in a variety of marketing positions for Toronto startups.

image: http://www.freedigitalphotos.net 

Every startup lucky enough to get some traction gets to the point where they decide to hire some “regular employees” for sales, marketing, and administrative tasks. Then they are surprised to see productivity and creativity take a big dip. What they should be doing is hiring only “entrepreneurs,” meaning people who think and act as if this is their own business.

If the slow charging and short overall life of the battery in your smartphone or tablet is the bane of your existence, good news is on the way. New lithium ion battery technology is advancing to the point where it soon may take just a few minutes to get a substantial charge. And the battery inside the phone or tablet you’ve paid good money for could last for up to two decades, not just a few years.

It’s not unusual to find yourself talking to an uncoöperative appliance or gadget. Soon, though, it could soon be more common for those devices to actually pay attention.

A startup called Wit.ai plans to make it easy for hardware makers and software developers to add custom voice controls to everything from smartphones and smart watches to Internet-connected thermostats and drones.

Image: http://www.technologyreview.com

There’s a secret characteristic that just about every successful entrepreneur has. It’s not just brains. It’s not just passion. It’s not just capital.

Do you know what it is? It’s called grit. Educators are trying to figure out if it can be taught. Because if you can teach grit, you can create entrepreneurs.

ROMIO and Juliette means more to us than a Shakespearean, romantic tragedy. We chose to name our separate businesses in a complementary way, which is the way we approach our relationship. Our cats are even named Mark Anthony and Cleopatra.

When we first got together, only one of us was in the startup role. Now, happily married for nearly seven years, we’re both running our own businesses in New York City. Tarik runs ROMIO, a platform that provides trusted recommendations for local services from friends and neighbors, while Rechelle runs Juliette, a mobile app that offers premium overnight laundry service.

Image: Free Digital Photos

Most of us would agree that to have any type of entrepreneurship, it involves the creation of something new. Just consider—entrepreneurial action almost always leads to creating new products or processes, a new market, a new ventures, new channels of distribution or even personal initiatives. Unfortunately, the way we teach entrepreneurship has been traditionally focused on a prescriptive, linear process. For example, a quick survey of business plan competitions shows that every year in the U.S. there are more than 230 business plan competitions! In any month, there are between 30 and 70 business plan events for the various phases, including submissions, presentations, final presentations, and awards.

Mermaids may not exist, but the ocean is still full of mysteries.

Those large, beautiful bodies of water are home to an infinite number of strange creatures and bewildering phenomena. The average ocean depth is 14,000 feet deep — that leaves a lot of room for the mysterious, the mythical and everything in between.

Image: FLICKR, SPRENG BEN

In the film, “What Women Want”, Mel Gibson’s character has the ability to read women’s minds and understand what they’re thinking.  In the real world, we often need to second-guess what our existing or potential partners want. This is the case for Open Innovation (OI), when smaller companies with something to offer try to understand just exactly what large companies need, and whether there would be complementarity between the two.

Image: Free Digital Photos

As I've observed in past columns, innovation may be one of the most overused buzzwords in modern discourse. That doesn't mean that large and small organizations in every sector don't need to find ways to achieve the real thing. Beyond the hype, after all, is a simple goal: improve processes, products, services, and outcomes through a change in how something is manufactured, delivered, planned, or implemented.

Image: Andrew Ostrovsky

Meet Matt Cartagena — a quarter-life millennial who believes in not only learning everything he can about being an entrepreneur, but also actively sharing that knowledge with others.

You see, Cartagena and fellow Montclair State University graduate Luke Deering had started a blog — as many forward-thinking millennials do these days — called “How To Write a Business Plan,” posting insights they had learned from entrepreneurs who had graduated from top accelerator programs.

Last week, the National Venture Capital Association (NVCA), a trade association representing the U.S. venture capital industry, released the results of its MoneyTree Report on venture funding for the third quarter of 2014. The report, which is prepared by the NVCA and PriceWaterhouseCoopers LLP using data from Thomson Reuters, indicates that venture capitalists invested $9.9 billion in 1,023 deals in the third quarter, which constituted a 27% decrease in dollars and a 9% decrease in deals as compared with the second quarter of 2014, when nearly $13.5 billion was invested in 1,129 deals (see chart below, which shows total venture funding from the first quarter of 2011 through the third quarter of 2014; data from MoneyTree Reports; click on chart to expand). Despite the third quarter decline, total venture funding for 2014 ($33.0 billion) has already eclipsed total funding for all of 2013 ($30.0 billion).

Quit your job to take a better paying position? Definitely. Quit your job for a great opportunity? Absolutely.

But there are a lot more reasons to quit your job (once you have something else lined up, of course.) And they all fall under one main category:

You might be limited to a strict budget when you want to start a business, but that doesn’t mean you don’t have any options. It is possible to start a business with very little money, if you have the right combination of skills, work ethic and marketing know-how.

According to Chris Guillebeau, author of The $100 Startup, “To succeed in a business project, especially one you’re excited about, it helps to think carefully about all the skills you have that could be helpful to others and particularly about the combination of those skills.”