At night, even from 200 miles above the Earth, an astronaut can float over to a window in the International Space Station and see cities in such incredible detail that it's possible to recognize individual streets. Since 2003, when an astronaut figured out how to snap a clear photo of the view from orbit, hundreds of thousands of amazing urban photographs have piled up in archives.

Image: At night, even from 200 miles above the Earth, an astronaut can float over to a window in the International Space Station and see cities in such incredible detail that it's possible to recognize individual streets.  - http://www.fastcoexist.com

Once again we have reached the dog-days of summer in Washington DC, when it is nice to day-dream about biotechnology in cooler climates. There may be no better destination for a biotech busman’s holiday than Iceland.  (For anyone keeping score, this series also has touched on biotech trends in India, Ireland, Israel (twice) and Italy.)

Since 2009 we’ve been in an unequivocal bull market. Venture capitalists have raised increasing amounts of money from their investors (LPs) every year. An impressive number of new VCs have been created – most of them with new seed funds. We’ve had an explosion of alternate sources of financing from crowd-sourcing, angels, accelerators, incubators, corporates, corporate incubators.  And importantly we’ve had revenue. Consumers buying through smart phones, travelers using the new, shared economy and businesses replacing old software with modern cloud-based solutions.

Perhaps you think I meant to use the word candle rather than calendar in the title of this post. Nope, calendar was what I meant but the idea came from a brain blip I had recently.

I was conducting interviews with about a dozen colleagues and friends of a new executive coaching client. One of my questions was, “What do you hope he gets out of this coaching engagement?” and someone answered, “I hope he’ll quit burning the candle at both ends.” When I went back to review my conversation notes to write the report, I saw that what I had actually written down was, “I hope he’ll quit burning the calendar at both ends.”

image: http://www.freedigitalphotos.net 

VENTURES AFRICA – Africa has its fair share of successful innovators, entrepreneurs and business people. We singled out three such people to ask what they believe makes a successful entrepreneur.

Image: http://www.ventures-africa.com/ 

The famous inventor, Thomas Edison, lived in a beautiful home. But something was unusual about the gate that led into his house. His visitors had to push the gate very hard to open it, and then again very hard to close it. It seemed odd that such a successful inventor like Thomas Edison wouldn’t fix his gate. Rumor has it that Thomas had attached a pump to his gate so that every time someone opened or closed it, they were pumping fresh water into the plumbing system of the house.

Image: http://www.freedigitalphotos.net

Last week, the maker movement gained a high profile supporter. On June 18, 2014, President Barack Obama proclaimed the day a National Day of Making, and hosted the first-ever White House Maker Faire, which featured makers, innovators and entrepreneurs of all ages.

Image: http://epicenter.stanford.edu/ 

As it celebrates its first decade, seed-stage investor SoftTech VC announced the closing of its fourth fund at $85 million, offering an illustration of how the micro-VC movement has grown up in Silicon Valley.

SoftTech founder Jeff Clavier, a software developer and former general partner at Reuters’s now-inactive investment affiliate RVC, started making angel investments in 2004. In 2007, he tapped institutional investors for his second fund, a $15 million pool.

Image: Jean-Francois “Jeff” Clavier, founder and managing partner of SoftTech VC. SoftTech VC 

The San Diego Tech Coast Angels invites up and coming entrepreneurs to "Meet the Angels". Sponsored by Procopio, this evening is a valuable opportunity for entrepreneurs to connect with local angel investors. Last year SDTCA lead 20 investments totaling $10m. We not only have the capital to fund your company, we have a wide range of expertise. Comprised of more than 100 members, we provide more than just money, we bring connections, knowledge, mentoring and operational assistance to bold early-stage entrepreneurs with game-changing ideas. Let us help you to turn your vision into a sustainable and successful business.

For those who dreamed about making it to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology or Silicon Valley, the State plans to offer the same opportunities here with its ambitious project, Technology Innovation Zone (TIZ).

Being set up by the Technopark-Technology Business Incubator (T-TBI) on a 13.2-acre campus at Kalamassery, the proposed 3 lakh-sq.ft facility aims to recreate the facilities at these premier institutions.

Image: http://www.thehindu.com 

Led by Dr. Sanjay Sarma, Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Director of Digital Learning at MIT, the course is held in partnership with Eruditus Executive Education and aims to give participants the opportunity to heighten their understanding of key technology trends applicable to the business world. This is the first time that the programme will be held in the Middle East.

Image: http://www.smeadvisor.com 

The two-year anniversary of the monumental Supreme Court decision upholding the Affordable Care Act may not have caused much fanfare, but Steve Kraus, a partner at Bessemer Venture Partners, said Massachusetts should be celebrating. Here are four takeaways from a conversation with the head of the firm’s health care investing, as he analyzes the shifts that have occurred in the two years since the Affordable Care Act was deemed constitutional.

Image: Steve Kraus is a partner at Bessemer Venture Partners 

This is, in other words, an economic approach that can unite left and right. Perhaps that’s one reason the right is beginning, inexorably, to wake up to this reality as well. Even Republicans as diverse as Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum recently came out in favor of raising the minimum wage, in defiance of the Republicans in Congress.

Image: http://www.politico.com/ 

Whether you’re a big businesses, small business, micro-business or twinkle-in-your-eye business, crowdfunding can be a powerful way to raise finance. With the crowd behind you, everything becomes infinitely more possible — the crowd decides, validating your idea with hard cash. Jess Ratty, brand manager at reward-based crowd-funding platform Crowdfunder, shares her top five tips for convincing the masses to back your idea.

Image: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/

"Our historical cost advantage is lost; the only way we can stay in the ball game is to optimize our production facilities worldwide.”

“But you can’t close the Livorno plant! The moment you do that, they’ll hit us with special tax regulations.”

“I’m sick and tired of that ‘every country is different’ routine. We’ve got to have a uniform worldwide product image, and that means . . .”

Apple has a habit of sending technologies off into the sunset—see CDs, Firewire, Adobe Flash, and that’s just for starters. 

Running a whole country down, however, is a first.

According to Alexander Stubb, prime minister of Finland, many of the country’s economic woes stem from Apple’s iPhone—the devices that brought about the downfall of Nokia, the country's former cell-phone champion, now a much-diminished part of Microsoft.

Ideas are the juice that powers our economy with innovation happening fast on multiple technology fronts. Rapid developments are in play in areas as diverse as 3D printing, Ultra HD, sensors, health care, automotive electronics, agriculture, transportation, biotech and genetic mapping.

The $211 billion consumer electronics (CE) industry is at the vanguard of innovation. Just last year, the U.S. Patent Office issued a record 277,835 patents. We are at the beginning of a surge of technology advances that we will all benefit from.

Two late 19th century theorists still firmly inform management thinking.

Henri Fayol’s functions of management pretty well sum up how many managers see their responsibilities today.

• To forecast and plan 
• To organize 
• To command or direct 
• To coordinate

The ability to work from home is an increasingly popular and coveted perk in modern workplaces, and it's not hard to see why. From an employee perspective, the benefits of avoiding a commute are obvious, but employers also see benefits: Overhead costs go down if you don't have to provide desk space and equipment for your staff, and you'll never have to worry about lateness due to traffic or transportation issues.

But if virtual employees aren't visible in the office, how can they remain accountable? Will their bosses treat them as "out of sight, out of mind?" Are they going to be reachable during normal business hours? Won't they get distracted by all of their personal responsibilities at home?

Image: FLICKR, DAVE MORRIS

Mid-level or even top executives who “grew up” in large companies often look with envy at startups, and dream of how easy it must be running a small organization, where you can see the whole picture and it appears you have total control. In reality, very few executives or professional stars from large corporations survive in the early-stage startup environment.

The job of a big-company executive is very different from the job of a small-company executive. The culture is different, the skills required are different, and the experience from one may be the exact opposite of what you need for the other. I agree with the seven survival challenges from Michael Fertik, in an old Harvard Business Review article, for executives making the transition: