There was a time when being a “solo founder” in London’s Tech City was simply “not cool.” The equivalent of being the last guy on the dance-floor at 2 a.m. when the bar was closing.

But times change, and what may have looked like a mistake just a year ago, for change happens fast on the Silicon Roundabout, is looking like the smart move now. Perhaps, as they surely told themselves back then, the solo founders just didn’t happen to click with anyone suitable.

A Peruvian scientist invented a system based on a stationary bicycle that can produce enough power to light up a house for nearly a whole day. The invention may have wide application to provide electric power for lighting and heating in remote locations.

The invention The device is called “Kallpa Runa”, which in Quechua (a native language spoken primarily in the central Andean region of South America), means “human power”. It consists on using the mechanical traction of a stationary bike along with a novel system of copper bovines and neodymium magnets.

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When 16-year-old Dick Fosbury first attempted the high jump in high school track-and-field, he couldn’t even qualify for his meets. With a bad back, bad feet, and an easily worn-out body, Dick was hardly champion material. He also had a terrible habit of jumping and landing the wrong way, to the dismay of his coaches and probably his mother.

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In 1974, a shaggy-haired Swedish tennis player named Björn Borg won the Italian Open. He was 17 years old. Weeks later, he won the French Open--becoming the contest’s youngest champion in history, then at 20 years old, he won Wimbledon.

Like many champion athletes, Borg began playing at a young age. He’d practiced hard for several years by the time he started winning titles, but he also had less experience--thousands of hours less--than his competitors at the Opens.

Fifty years ago, women in the United States won a major achievement: Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act listed sex as one of the characteristics that employers couldn’t discriminate against. American women began to enter the workforce in larger numbers across sectors, paving the way for social and economic change.

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“The road to hell is paved with good intentions” says the proverb. Such good intentions are sometimes dashed by bad decisions, but we can improve our ability to choose the best path.

Too few options is clearly not a good thing, but too many good choices can be just as great a bane. Many healthy and wealthy residents of the rich world are overwhelmed with options and attractive choices, yet find themselves unhappy and anxious.

Today’s demands for rapid innovation require many companies to test new product ideas and explore changing market conditions before competitors can step in. That’s why companies like Nike, Samsung and AT&T have launched internal innovation labs and accelerators within their organizations.

For some large companies, however, these models don’t work due to technical, research and development constraints. New ideas, which may be outside of an organization’s core business focus, can be too expensive to pursue and develop.

Asana Co-Founder Justin Rosenstein shares why impact and user happiness are far more important product metrics than time on site and page views.

Eugene Izhikevich thinks you shouldn’t have to write code in order to teach robots new tricks. “It should be more like training a dog,” he says.  “Instead of programming, you show it consistent examples of desired behavior.”

Image: In an onstage demonstration this week, Todd Hylton of Brain Corporation used gestures to train a wheeled robot to come when he beckoned to it.  - http://www.technologyreview.com

In Europe, hundreds of entrepreneurs have set up incubators that are adapting the Silicon Valley model to fast-track new companies. For politicians, the trend represents an economic bright spot, although few, if any, of these firms will ever be a Google or Facebook.

Rockstart Accelerator is an Amsterdam-based private bootcamp for tech firms. In the two years it has been going, Rockstart has backed 20 startups that have raised €15 million and created nearly 150 permanent jobs along the way.

Image: Campus Party Europe advert. Berlin, 2012. (CPE/Flickr)

European start-ups can access EU funding worth €80 million, if they use an open internet platform to develop their web-based businesses.

The European Commission today (17 September) announced the money would be available for internet SMEs and entrepreneurs, using FIWARE technology.

Image: The European Commission wants to encourage web entrepreneurs to create apps using the open-source "toolbox" FIWARE (Jason Howie/ Flickr)

Too many people, young and older, let their career and their lifestyle happen to them, rather than proactively making things happen based on their personal passions, skills, and interests. Others make decisions based on someone else’s interests, such as the father who wants his son to take over the family business, or dreams openly of having a doctor in the family. Neither of these approaches is likely to lead to a satisfying career or personal happiness for you.

There are two prevailing perceptions about innovation and start-ups: first, they are all tech driven, and second, they originate from just a few regions — chief among them, Silicon Valley.  I’ve seen firsthand that innovation can happen anywhere, and that it is accelerating in places that typically don’t grab headlines. And I have met hundreds of entrepreneurs living in cities in “flyover country” that are building great companies and creating jobs in a wide range of industries.

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Mark Cuban recently published his thoughts about what it takes to be great in business, boiled down to six fundamental practices.

But for startups in particular, Cuban, whose net worth Forbes recently estimated to be $2.6 billion, has a few extra pointers. Illumination Consulting, based in La Jolla, Calif., gathered together those tips in the below infographic.

Image: http://www.bizjournals.com 

Venture capital is slowly but surely becoming a more data-driven business. Although data on private companies can sometimes be scarce, an increasing number of firms are relying on quantitative analysis to help determine which start-ups to back. But Bloomberg’s venture capital arm, Bloomberg Beta, is going one step further: it’s using an algorithm to try to select would-be entrepreneurs before they’ve even decided to start a company.

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Is there someone on your team who you’d like to coach, but resists your help? A high-performer who could reach further? A hard-worker who could grow faster?  The best managers know to coach their employees, but what if someone doesn’t want your help? How can you convince a hesitant employee that your advice is worthwhile?

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With this year’s review of the State of New Jersey’s life sciences industry, BioNJ expands on its remit of prior years by assessing the three major sectors that make up New Jersey’s life sciences innovation cluster: biotechnology, pharmaceuticals, and medical devices.

The report also is meant to rebut Ben Franklin’s infamous pronouncement that New Jersey is “a barrel tapped at both ends”. All too often reports analyzing the life sciences industry have followed Franklin’s notion by dividing New Jersey along the metropolitan statistical area (MSA) boundaries of New York/Northern New Jersey and the Delaware Valley which incorporates southern New Jersey.

Some startups are useful, some are beautiful, and some are pointless – I’m looking at you, Yo!

Then, there are some design ideas that have the potential to radically change our futures. These are creations that 15 years ago you wouldn’t have dreamed possible.

Image: Peeks makes an app and a clip-on piece of hardware that non-healthcare experts can use to perform eye-health checks for people who might not otherwise have access to them. Image Credit: Tech City News 

When the world ends, it may not be by fire or ice or an evil robot overlord. Our demise may come at the hands of a superintelligence that just wants more paper clips.

So says Nick Bostrom, a philosopher who founded and directs the Future of Humanity Institute, in the Oxford Martin School at the University of Oxford. He created the "paper-clip maximizer" thought experiment to expose flaws in how we conceive of superintelligence.

Image: Photofest 

At a time of widespread unemployment, one part of the economy has consistently provided jobs: health care. In the past decade, the industry added 2.6 million positions, according to a report last year from the Brookings Institution. That's a growth rate of 22.7%, compared to just 2.1% for all other sectors.

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