When Adam Lilling, a Los Angeles-based entrepreneur and investor, was getting his startup BiggerBoat going in 2006, he tried to recruit talent from Silicon Valley but found it impossible.

LA V. SF, Who Has It Better? | Click to expand Infographic by Hired “I interviewed amazing engineers from the Bay Area, but no matter how much we offered, how great the opportunity, how perfect the circumstance, all of them ended up staying for fear of career suicide and losing the valuable relationships they made,” said Lilling, who went on to co-found the startup accelerator Launchpad LA.

Image: http://www.fastcompany.com

If you think the term “government invention” is an oxymoron—well, think again. You may be surprised to learn that many of the breakthrough technologies that shape our lives today are the brainchildren of government researchers—including those at FDA.

Take the Internet and that GPS in your car or on your cell phone. Both technologies were developed by the U.S. Department of Defense —as were the turbine engines that power the wind farms generating some 6% of our nation’s electrical energy. Those long-lasting radial tires on your vehicle? They’re reinforced with a material five times tougher than steel that was developed by a NASA partnership. And you can thank the government for your flu shot and the development of many other life-saving vaccines such as those for hepatitis A and B and HPV. 

Image: Alice Welch

In the latest ranking of 143 economies, India slipped 10 notches on the 2014 Global Innovation Index (GII)—the only one among the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) economies to see a decline. India’s fall from 66 to 76 raises the question if its companies lack the innovation DNA even though the country is known for its skilled talent.

image: http://www.freedigitalphotos.net 

Man-made climate change stoked some of 2013's most extreme heat on the planet, a new report shows.

Twenty-two separate research teams analyzed 16 of last year's extreme weather events, including the California drought and devastating flooding in Colorado, to determine whether climate change — primarily caused by the burning of fossil fuels — made any of the events more likely or severe.

Image: Scientists looked for the fingerprints of climate change in 16 different extreme climate and weather events in 2013. Credit: NOAA

Dolphins can now add magnetic sense to their already impressive resume of abilities, new research suggests.

When researchers presented the brainy cetaceans with magnetized or unmagnetized objects, the dolphins swam more quickly toward the magnets, the new study found. The animals may use their magnetic sense to navigate based on the Earth's magnetic field, the researchers said.

Image: Bottlenose dolphins can sense whether an object is magnetic or not, research suggests. Credit: Courtesy of Planète Sauvage, France

Odds are good you’ve seen your doctors using computers a lot more in the past three years. During appointments or while at the hospital, they’ve stopped at a desktop computer or taken a tablet out of their pocket. It’s not because technology lets them provide better care, it’s because federal legislation is changing the way health care providers and insurers use computers.

Image: Free Digital Photos

Ed Catmull, president and co-founder of Pixar Animation Studios, describes to Stanford Prof. Bob Sutton how the late Steve Jobs would enter into talks with other companies about selling Pixar as a tactic to determine its market worth. Jobs co-founded Pixar and was its chief executive officer.

Sophomore Adrienne Baer always knew she wanted to help people. That’s why she started college on the pre-med track. But after enrolling in an entrepreneurial course at this university, Baer realized there were other ways to help others — so she swapped all pre-med courses for non-profit courses in the business school.

Image: Rachel George/The Diamondback The Mediascape in the Academy for Innovation and Entrepreneurship, located in the third floor of Symons Hall, is available for students to reserve to share, discuss, and refine their ideas.

It is hard not to be impressed with Alibaba. After raising $25 billion in a U.S. initial public offering earlier this month, the company that was founded 15 years ago in a modest apartment in southeastern China has officially minted the biggest IPO on record. With a market value of $220 billion, Alibaba is worth more than Facebook, Amazon or eBay. And now that it has a substantial war chest, what is next for the Chinese e-commerce giant?

Image: http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu

New information technologies and innovative business models are transforming the health care industry in several ways. The industry is beginning to focus on creating seamless interoperability among organizations, greater efficiencies in the delivery of care and increased consumer engagement through access to electronic health records and use of mobile health devices and apps. “While creating forward movement and excitement in the industry, the very innovations that are driving growth and system improvement may also expose organizations to potentially more threats to security and privacy,” says Russ Rudish, Global Health Care Leader, Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Limited.

Image: Russ Rudish, Global Health Care Leader, Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Limited - http://deloitte.wsj.com

Watch this video to see why traditional employee evaluations are flawed. For more insights, read “Kill Your Performance Ratings.”

The notion that the best ideas come from organized brainstorms is an outdated fallacy. Ask leaders how they come up with their groundbreaking ideas and you’ll hear everything from “in the shower” or “at the gym” to “looking totally outside of our industry” and “getting out of the office and meeting someone new.” The common thread is that inspiration strikes people in different ways at different, and often unexpected, times.

Image: Lisa Bodell is the founder and CEO of futurethink and author of Kill the Company.

While spending the summer of 2007 in Aspen, Colo., Walter Isaacson and his wife, Cathy, spent much of their waking moments hounding their daughter to finish — or even start, for all they knew — her compulsory college essay. Finally, after hearing enough from her nagging parents, Betsy Isaacson locked herself in her bedroom until she emerged with a completed two-page essay.

Image: Walter Isaacson, at his home in Washington, has written a book on how collaboration brought about advances in technology. Credit Vanessa Vick for The New York Times

CEOs agree that there are some essential traits and competencies fundamental to success.

In our last post, we explained how an interesting notion had recently been put to us by an executive in the classroom: whether there should be a CEO school to train high performing executives for the top job. Intrigued, we conducted a study that sought an answer from the leaders of industry.

Image: http://knowledge.insead.edu

A piece that my colleague Ali Mese wrote recently went viral instantly. My Facebook timeline became a mish-mash of people — entrepreneurs or not — sharing it and applauding his bravery in leaving his corporate job, and leaving comments on how it made them want to drop all they were doing and dive into the deep end of entrepreneurship. You know, the usual viral reaction.

Image: http://ventureburn.com

The cash keeps flowing in digital health.

Venture funding invested into the digital health realm has surpassed $3 billion through the first three quarters of 2014, up from $2 billion through midyear and up 100 percent over the year, according to the latest report from Rock Health.

But the average deal size for the year did drop by $2.5 million, reaching $13 million since the mid-year mark, according to the San Francisco-based incubator. Yet the average deal does remain larger, by 31 percent, compared to 2013.

Image: http://medcitynews.com

Ever since D-Wave Systems unveiled what it called the world’s first quantum computer in 2007, the small Canadian company has attracted controversy.

Computers capable of exploiting quantum physics for computation on a large scale promise to solve in mere seconds problems that would take conventional machines millions of years. But whether D-Wave’s machine uses quantum tricks to process data more efficiently is still an open question. Nonetheless, the company has attracted significant investment funding, and it has struck deals to supply its hardware to companies including Google and Lockheed Martin for research (see “The CIA and Jeff Bezos Bet on Quantum Computing”).

Image: This superconducting chip made by D-Wave Systems is designed to work on data super-efficiently, using quantum mechanics. - http://www.technologyreview.com

Is a worm conscious? How about a bumblebee? Does a computer that can play chess “feel” anything?

To Christof Koch, chief scientific officer of the Allen Institute for Brain Science in Seattle, the answer to these questions may lie in the fabric of the universe itself. Consciousness, he believes, is an intrinsic property of matter, just like mass or energy. Organize matter in just the right way, as in the mammalian brain, and voilà, you can feel.

Image: Christof Koch - http://www.technologyreview.com

Most of the entrepreneurs I have met are smart, but many are not always wise. That means they may show great insights into a new technology that has marginal business value, their passion may motivate team members more than customers, or they may allow themselves to be pulled over the ethical line in their success drive. Wise leaders are authentic, timeless, and enduring.