On my college graduation day my parents ceremoniously handed down to me our only family heirloom, a shiny gold watch.  The watch had originally been given to my grandfather for his 25 years of employment with a large insurance company.  My parents hoped that this symbolic gift handed to me as I entered the workforce would inspire me to pursue my own 25 years of dedicated service.  Fast forward a few decades, and while my parents are very proud of my accomplishments, I followed a very different path than that of my grandfather, leading to my founding of CultureIQ.

Image: http://cultureiq.com

Santa Monica, Calif. (October 20, 2014) – Today 32 cities launched Next Century Cities, a bipartisan, city-to-city initiative dedicated to ensuring the availability of next-generation broadband Internet for all communities. The cities and their elected leaders are joining together to recognize the importance of leveraging gigabit-level Internet to attract new businesses and create jobs, improve health care and education, and connect residents to new opportunities.

Next Century Cities will support communities and their elected leaders across the country as they seek to ensure that all have access to fast, affordable, and reliable Internet. Today’s launch, held at a dynamic coworking space for Santa Monica’s technology companies, convened mayors and other leaders from 31 cities for a cross-cutting discussion about what’s worked in their cities and how to support next-generation networks nationwide.

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After a decade of development, a $100 million in funding, and some twists and turns (including a name change), Silicon Valley startup Imergy Power Systems will soon start shipping the next generation of its batteries made from recycled vanadium. The 50-kilowatt battery will be available next month and can store up to 200 kilowatt hours of electricity, using vanadium recycled from mining and power combustion industries as well as environmental waste.

Image: Imergy

Three days after IBM reported yet another disappointing quarter, its stock is still in a downward spiral, and people are piling on to criticize the company.

That’s because this was 10 quarters in a row of declining revenue, with every business unit shrinking.

Outspoken billionaire investor Mark Cuban told CNBC on Wednesday that he would “absolutely not invest in IBM”.

Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia M. Burwell today announced an initiative that will fund successful applicants who work directly with medical providers to rethink and redesign their practices, moving from systems driven by quantity of care to ones focused on patients’ health outcomes, and coordinated health care systems. These applicants could include group practices, health care systems, medical provider associations and others. This effort will help clinicians develop strategies to share, adapt and further improve the quality of care they provide, while holding down costs. Strategies could include:

PHILADELPHIA – October 21, 2014 – Some of the most promising startup teams in healthtech will pitch their companies to an audience of several hundred investors, industry leaders and potential customers at DreamIt Health Philadelphia Demo Day (#DreamItHealth) on Thursday, October 30 from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. at World Cafe Live in Philadelphia. These teams have spent the last four months participating in the DreamIt Health Philadelphia 2014 accelerator program, where they’ve received hands-on support and resources to develop their ideas into scalable companies with high-growth potential. At Demo Day, each team will have seven minutes to share their progress and present key business milestones and plans for future growth.

With one ceremonial push, work has begun in Paris on what French government leaders are calling the world’s largest startup incubator.

The $190-million project will renovate Paris’ Halle Freyssinet, a 323,000-square-foot railway building constructed in the 1920s, for use as an incubator space with room for 1,000 startups, according to Journal du Net. 

Image: http://venturebeat.com

What is the biggest dream you have for yourself? Is it to travel the world? Is it to be the first person in your family to attend college? Or it is to get a big promotion at work or even start your own business?

For many of us, these dreams remain just dreams. But for others, these dreams are fuel to build a better life or career. In a recent Mashable Spotlight piece, writer Gili Malinsky chronicled New York food vendor Thiru Kumar, better known as the Dosa Man, who opened a tiny food cart in 2001, and has built it into an amazing culinary success.

Stapling up skin post-surgery is pretty much the norm to quickly seal up wounds, but it runs a risk of infection and injury from the extra damage to already sensitive skin.

Bay Area startup ZipLine Medical has developed a non-invasive but suture-like alternative that it’s positioning as a quicker, simpler and more desirable way to close small surgical wounds. To boot, clinical trials have shown the method decreases both infection likelihood as well as scarring. The company just closed a $5.7 million extension to its Series C financing round, led by a new venture firm in Shanghai called China Materialia that wants to expand the technology there.

It’s not just the FDA that is making life difficult for medical device companies. Executives are having to follow sales opportunities as medical care shifts out of hospitals into homes and physician offices. They are having to revamp their entire business model to survive in the new world of the ACA.

Image: http://medcitynews.com

Women own 28.2 percent of U.S. companies and yet only a tiny number of these companies are securing backing from venture capital investors, according to a report by the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation. Based on this research, female-founded companies receive just 4 percent to 9 percent of the funds doled out by venture capital firms.

The Internet of Things is emerging as the third wave in the development of the internet. While the fixed internet that grew up in the 1990s connected 1 billion users via PCs, and the mobile internet of the 2000s connected 2 billion users via smartphones (on its way to 6 billion), the IoT is expected to connect 28 billion “things” to the internet by 2020, ranging from wearable devices such as smartwatches to automobiles, appliances, and industrial equipment. The repercussions span industries and regions.

Image: http://blogs.hbr.org

On a chilly October Friday night, about 20 people gathered in my living room near the Jersey shore, listening author Kristin Ohlson talk about her book The Soil Will Save Us. Afterward, we disscussed everything from the impact of various farming methods on the environment to the challenges small farmers face in various economic climates.

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Crow’s feet, saggy skin, facial hair, cellulite… yes, women are plagued by these not so pretty woes. The answer: expensive spa treatments or surgery. However there is a less costly answer. Thanks to modern technology and science, the era of digital beauty devices has begun. The latest beauty devices promise to deliver results on par with spa treatments and in the comfort of your own home. But are they worth the investment and do they really work?

Image: http://gearburn.com

According to TechRepublic, Google produced two of the five worst tech products of 2009 – Android 1.0 and Google Wave. The fact that Google remains dominant suggests that, while not infallible, it’s rich enough to take risks and weather occasional failures.

If you are as rich as Google it’s not extravagant to allow a chosen few to spend their Friday afternoons pursuing blue-sky projects.

Successful innovators care about solving interesting and important problems — innovation is merely a byproduct. If this distinction seems like hair-splitting, it isn’t. The two focuses create vastly different realities.

Focusing on innovating — as a worthy goal unto itself — tends to be born from self-centered motives: We need to protect ourselves from competitive forces. We need to ensure we have a growth engine. We need to keep up with other companies. To do all these things, we need to innovate.

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Can't tell the difference between a coder and a maker? Don't know the first thing about FIRST robotics? Then this A to Z guide is for you. It's not comprehensive, but it'll help you get a handle on Vermont's evolving innovation ecosystem.

Image: http://www.sevendaysvt.com

Most people think innovation is all about ideas, when in fact it is more about delivery, people, and process. Entrepreneurs looking to innovate need to understand the execution challenge if they expect their startup to carve out a profitable niche in the marketplace, and keep innovating to build and maintain a sustainable competitive advantage.

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.

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One of the most important companies driving the next generation of wireless communications is Qualcomm. Its chips and wireless modems are in just about every phone on the market, and have made it possible for much of the world to go online via wireless technology. So when I got an invite to its recent developer conference in San Francisco, I decided to go and see what else it was doing in wireless technology that might advance the world of communication.

Image: http://www.pcmag.com