One of the most important efforts you’ll want to make as part of Five Ways to Make Your Innovation Culture Smell Better (free white paper download) is to create a common language of innovation.

Unfortunately, there is no universally accepted definition of the word innovation, and there have even been multiple articles written by the Doblin Group, Geoffrey Moore and others about how many different types of innovation there are and how you must choose which types of innovation to focus on. When it comes to innovation, individuals speak about it differently and there are lots of misunderstandings.

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Peter Thiel’s Zero to One is a provocative and stimulating book, however, the Silicon Valley institutional structure may not drive the future as much as it has the recent past.

In Zero to One, Peter Thiel claims that what is best for the economy and for individual entrepreneurs is for entrepreneurs to create unique businesses based on contrarian ideas.

In Oracle’s early days Kathryn Gould was the founding VP of Marketing, working there from 1982 to 1984. When I heard that Larry Ellison was stepping down as Oracle’s CEO I asked Kathryn to think about the skills she saw in a young Larry Ellison that might make today’s founders winners.

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Though I haven’t talked to Larry face-to-face for 20 years, and haven’t worked at Oracle for 30 years, he’s the yardstick I’ve used to pick entrepreneurs all of these years since.

Image: Oracle founder Larry Ellison Image Credit: Oracle/Flickr 

Innovation is a key driver in business success. While it’s not something that business owners and employees need to have top of mind every day, it does help to always be thinking about how you can move business, and who knows, maybe the world, a little further.

One reason innovation is so important is it helps business owners push themselves and their businesses to evolve. It makes them better managers, better business people and maybe even better people as innovation constantly challenges what we know and accept as the truth. Innovation also pushes employees to think harder about not how they can just fulfill their job responsibilities but take their positions even further.

Image: http://www.innocentive.com

Start-ups that own patents prior to securing venture capital achieve a successful exit more quickly than those that do not, according to the findings of a recent study.

‘Can patent data predict the success of start-ups?’ – commissioned by France Brevets and researched by a team at MINES ParisTech – also reports that start-ups which strengthen their patent positions post-VC investment enhance their chances of a successful exit in the form of an acquisition, merger, initial public offering or leveraged buyout.

Image: http://www.iam-magazine.com

Q. Were you in leadership roles when you were young?

A. I had two different sides to me growing up. I was captain of some of the hockey teams I was on, and that taught me a fair amount about leadership. My dad also taught me a lot about setting a good example for other teammates and trying hard.

Image: “One of the things I always tell entrepreneurs is to solve your own problem. A lot of people are way too academic about what they’re trying to create.” Credit Chester Higgins Jr./The New York Times 

The technology industry is clearly prospering, but has it entered a period of irrational exuberance? There are good reasons to worry that it has and that the bursting of this bubble could be painful, to investors in and employees of tech firms as well as to the broader economy.

By several measures — stock prices, multibillion-dollar acquisitions, the compensation of employees, the money being spent by start-ups that have little revenue or profits — the technology industry is in a period that is starting to feel like the late 1990s. Even some industry elders who lived through the previous boom and bust, including the venture capitalists Marc Andreessen and Bill Gurley, are warning that Silicon Valley might be overheating.

Vestaron makes an eco-friendly pesticide derived from spider venom. Bagaveev uses 3-D printers to make rocket engines for nanosatellites. Transatomic Power is developing a next-generation reactor that runs on nuclear waste.

They all have one thing in common: money from Silicon Valley venture capitalists.

Image: A ROCKET, AND MAYBE A SPACE PLANE Xcor raised $14.2 million and is building its plane’s fuselage. Credit Mike Massee/XCOR Aerospace

Techstars Boulder Demo Day was last week and it was the best one yet. As I got up on stage to close things out, I was incredibly proud of all of the entrepreneurs, but even more proud as I looked out at the audience and saw many of the mentors who make Techstars the experience that it is.

Element seven of the Techstars Mentor Manifesto is Be Responsive.

Yeah, it’s obvious, but it’s remarkable to me the number of people who don’t internalize this.

I don’t want to brag, but my email inbox is one of my most complimented possessions.

It baffles me when people regularly say things like, “It got lost in my inbox,” or “I have 839 unread emails.” How do you survive? How can you be productive with that kind of virtual baggage hanging over your head all day? That said, I know things can get out of hand and there are people in the world who receive far more emails than me. But with a combination of time-saving and simple labeling tactics, you too can have an email inbox that’s the envy of all your frazzled friends.

Prorata rights are one of the most important rights of private market technology investors and yet are seldom fully understood. They often create the biggest tensions between investors who are investing at different stages in the business.

These tensions seep out in some angels or seed funds publicly or semi-privately deriding later-stage VCs for their “bad” behavior. I have seen bad behavior from later-stage VCs, believe me. But I have seen equally bad behavior from super early stage investors.

The iPhone’s simplicity conceals 200 years of extraordinary invention. In hindsight, many of the features seem obvious, but they are only possible thanks to a few scientific geniuses who turned imagination into hardware.

I sat down with the famous author of Steve Jobs’ biography, Walter Isaacson, to discuss his new book, The Innovators, which is a timeline of how humanity got to the digital revolution.

Image: Ada Lovelace - http://venturebeat.com

One of the most frequent questions I get as a mentor to entrepreneurs is “How do I find the money to start my business?” I always answer that there isn’t any magic, and contrary to the popular myth, nobody is waiting in the wings to throw money at you, just because you have a new and exciting business idea.

SPECIAL REPORT: Once seen as the exclusive province of a handful of computer experts, coding has moved firmly into the mainstream as policymakers, educators and business have realised its potential.

Coding is the language of computers – learn to write it and you will be able to create software, websites, and apps.

That’s no surprise to many young Europeans, who have grown up with coding and the Internet since birth. But it’s only recently that the older generation has begun to appreciate what benefits it can bring.

Image: Does code have the potential to be the next official language of the EU? (txmx 2/Flickr)

PHOTOS et VIDEOS -  Après les pluies qui se sont abattues sur la ville héraultaise lundi, c'était l'heure du grand nettoyage mardi. Les dégâts s'élèveraient à plusieurs millions d'euros 

Image: http://www.sudouest.fr

If you could create a gadget with the benefits of Google Glass—an eye-level display for quick, discreet access to messages, news, and updates—but without the literally in-your-face design, what would it look like?

For a group of researchers from Nokia and several universities, it would be a cylinder about the size of a tube of lipstick that you hold up to one eye only when you want to check your Twitter feed or Instagram. When you didn’t want to use it, you might wear it as a pendant or tuck it away in a pocket.

Image: Loupe, a wearable tech prototype created by researchers at Nokia and several universities, lets you see a tiny display when you hold it up to your eye. - http://www.technologyreview.com

Lucrative exit multiples, bolstered by M&A-hungry strategics, may generate a new record tally for U.S. private equity capital exited in 2014. Concurrently, those valuations boosted middle-market activity, with a historically high amount of deals and capital invested in the $100 million to $1 billion range. Those are just two takeaways from PitchBook’s 4Q 2014 U.S. PE Breakdown; to digest even more highlights, watch our video recap of the report and see our top 5 takeaways below:

Image: http://blog.pitchbook.com

What would you do if you had a working prototype of a revolutionary tablet computer that was receiving rave reviews well before Apple came out with its iPad? Cancel further funding for the project in favor of developing an updated version of an existing company product? In hindsight that seems crazy, but it’s exactly what Microsoft did with its prototype “Courier” tablet.

Similar fates often befall innovations within large companies. It is not enough to come up with next great idea. To turn that idea into a reality you have to influence people and gain their support.

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First, I would like to state that all three I’s (Infrastructure, Innovation, Information) are considered co-enablers to achieve the country’s transformation by means of sustainable growth that is inclusive. These are part of the eight key factors for competitiveness which were targeted for improvement in 2007 when the National Competitiveness Council (NCC) was formed.

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One of Helen Jihan Zhong’s role models is Jack Ma, the founder of Chinese e-commerce company Alibaba which became the world’s largest ever stock market-floatation, a record $25 billion, in New York last month.

“His successfulness will encourage more people (in China) to start their own businesses,” says Helen, a Shanghai-based entrepreneur who launched Nature Gift, a child-care business, earlier this year.

Image: http://www.businessbecause.com