You come back from vacation and start your game of catch-up. This is an especially challenging game if you’re a senior leader. You have hundreds, maybe thousands of emails, a backlog of voicemails, and a to-do list that doubled or tripled in length while you were away. You need to respond to the pent-up needs of clients, managers, colleagues, employees, and vendors. You need to fight fires. You need to regain control.

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Four years ago Dr. Scott Shane wrote about  a presentation he had made at a workshop at Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland on trends in the venture capital industry. In the intervening period, a number of people have asked for updated slides. The updated venture capital trends slides are now available. This article will highlight key venture capital trends.

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We would interact with our games consoles by waving our limbs like a drunken mime. The most popular platform for this would have a name that sounds like urine. This would become one of the great success stories of the decade:

One of the reasons that now is the time to be an entrepreneur is the explosion of startup assistance organizations, usually called incubators or accelerators. According to the National Business Incubator Association (NBIA), there are over 7,000 of these locations worldwide, and even new online versions like Pitchswag springing up here and there.

In a meritocracy, talent is supposed to rise to the top. That way, important positions like political and executive offices can be filled by those best-equipped to do the job.

But when it comes to sizing up others’ abilities, a new study says we pay more attention to confidence than competence. People with an inflated view of their own abilities are judged by others to be more capable; conversely, people with low confidence are thought to be less capable.

Hari, a smart and very savvy early-stage entrepreneur, emailed me to ask if it was worth joining a well-known accelerator. I texted an emphatic “No!” We then spoke to each other for over 30 minutes and I don’t recall having made such an impassioned argument. I almost felt like it was my duty to save an entrepreneur.

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Careers aren’t made overnight, but a few mistakes can easily derail your career pretty quickly. Whether you’re complacent in your current position, or you’re swept up in office politics, there are many career damaging moves and snafus seasoned professionals can run into. “People make a lot of mistakes in their careers, some are small and can be recovered from with an apology or the passage of time. Others can fully derail your career and your reputation.”says Julie Bauke, career strategist, president of The Bauke Group, and author of “Stop Peeing on our Shoes: Avoiding the 7 Mistakes that Screw Up your Job Search.”

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Many recent college graduates struggle to transition into adulthood, and their alma maters must share some of the blame, argue the authors of Aspiring Adults Adrift: Tentative Transitions of College Graduates, scheduled for release this week.

The book is a follow-up to its authors’ 2011 hit, Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses. In their new book, published by the University of Chicago Press, Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa tracked many of the same 2009 graduates they studied in their first book, compiling data on employment outcomes, living arrangements, relationships, and levels of civic engagement after college, among other things.

In times like these, data points get wielded like cudgels.

Student-loan debt tops $1-trillion. As many as half of recent graduates are out of work, earn trifling wages, or have jobs that don’t require college degrees. Clearly, such numbers suggest, college isn’t worthwhile.

Image: Social Science Research Council Josipa Roksa and Richard Arum track the same Class of 2009 students they studied in their 2011 book, "Academically Adrift," in a new work that examines that cohort’s success—or lack of it—after college. 

Influential alliances can help grow your business fast. It’s never too early to start building your global network.

Henrik Nielsen knew he was on to a good thing when he directed members of the Nielsen Innovation team to design a hand-held espresso machine back in 2005. When Fiat came on board eight years later, unveiling a bespoke version of the innovative drink-maker in its 500L model at the Paris Motor Show, interest sky-rocketed.

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“Trade secrets: tools for innovation and collaboration” is the third installment in a research paper series produced by the ICC Commission on Intellectual Property. The five-paper series explores how intellectual property (IP) interacts with decisions, transactions and processes related to technology development and dissemination. The latest paper, prepared by external researchers Jennifer Brant and Sebastian Lohse, aims to inform policymakers about shortcomings in existing frameworks for trade secret protection, which can undermine cross-border collaboration. It comes amid growing awareness among companies of their vulnerability to the theft of confidential business information.

Every day our DNA breaks a little. Special enzymes keep our genome intact while we’re alive, but after death, once the oxygen runs out, there is no more repair. Chemical damage accumulates, and decomposition brings its own kind of collapse: membranes dissolve, enzymes leak, and bacteria multiply. How long until DNA disappears altogether? Since the delicate molecule was discovered, most scientists had assumed that the DNA of the dead was rapidly and irretrievably lost. When Svante Pääbo, now the director of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany, first considered the question more than three decades ago, he dared to wonder if it might last beyond a few days or weeks. But Pääbo and other scientists have now shown that if only a few of the trillions of cells in a body escape destruction, a genome may survive for tens of thousands of years.

A startup called Algorithmia has a new twist on online matchmaking. Its website is a place for businesses with piles of data to find researchers with a dreamboat algorithm that could extract insights–and profits–from it all.

The aim is to make better use of the many algorithms that are developed in academia but then languish after being published in research papers, says cofounder Diego Oppenheimer. Many have the potential to help companies sort through and make sense of the data they collect from customers or on the Web at large. If Algorithmia makes a fruitful match, a researcher is paid a fee for the algorithm’s use, and the matchmaker takes a small cut.

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Interfaces within materials can be patterned as a means of controlling the properties of composites.

Patterned surfaces are all the rage among researchers seeking to induce surfaces to repel water or adhere to other things, or to modify materials’ electrical properties.

Now materials scientists at MIT have added a new wrinkle to research on the patterning of surfaces: While most research has focused on patterns on the outer surfaces of materials, Michael Demkowicz and his team in MIT’s Department of Materials Science and Engineering (DMSE) have begun to explore the effects of patterned surfaces deep within materials — specifically, at the interfaces between layers of crystalline materials.

You’re greeted at the pearly gates to heaven by St. Peter who asks where you’d like to spend eternity. “Well, heaven of course!” you say. Peter replies: “You have to check out hell just to see what you think before you commit.” Disappointed, you shrug but agree. And to your surprise, when the elevator doors open into hell, you see golden beaches, golf courses, gorgeous people mingling with colorful drinks. It’s not what you expected, but maybe heaven is even better, you think. So you take the elevator back up, but all you find there is a bunch of dull harp-playing on clouds. There doesn’t even seem to be anything great to eat.

Image: Free Digital Photos

Janice Bowling, a 67-year-old grandmother and Republican state senator from rural Tennessee, thought it only made sense that the city of Tullahoma be able to offer its local high-speed Internet service to areas beyond the city limits.

After all, many of her rural constituents had slow service or did not have access to commercial providers, like AT&T Inc. and Charter Communications Inc.

Image: Above: he 400-acre Coffee County Joint Industrial Park, outside Tullahoma, Tennessee, struggles to attract businesses without high speed internet. Image Credit: Allan Holmes/Center for Public Integrity

In the name of transparency, Apple has revealed the top reasons why it rejects apps from its App Store.

The most common reason Apple blocks apps isn’t censorship, as some folks might believe. About 14 percent of apps rejected during the seven-day period ending Aug. 28 were rejected because more information was needed.

Image: The app store Image Credit: Fiksu

This Labor Day Weekend, thousands of Americans will begin one final migration to the local beach, in what will doubtless be their last chance to enjoy some sun and surf before a gray half-year of winter sets in.

On ground level, these crowds look like tidal waves of coconut-oiled flesh, but as seen in the work of Belgian photographer Antoine Rose, the effect is much different: from above, the crowds that gather on the beaches of New York and Miami take on splendid geometries that make each beachgoer's place in the sand seem almost methodical.

Image: http://www.fastcodesign.com

If it’s true that many people fear public speaking more than death, it’s equally true that businesspeople are condemned to a thousand small deaths in client pitches, in boardrooms, and on stage. And that death can turn slow and torturous when you are asked to speak unexpectedly with little or no time to prepare. One of the key demands of business is the ability to speak extemporaneously. Whether giving an unexpected “elevator pitch” to a potential investor or being asked at the last minute to offer remarks to a sales team over dinner, the demands for a business person to speak with limited preparation are diverse, endless, and — to many — terrifying.

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Research repeatedly suggests that levels of employee engagement in the workplace are low and worsening. But what really perplexes executives when we talk to them is that their employees are often fully engaged in a host of other activities.

Among the growing perplexed population is Mark Barnes (not his real name), vice president of a marketing company. When we spoke with Mark he was becoming increasingly frustrated at the behavior of Jennifer Moline (also not her real name), his most talented employee. “She is intelligent, great at her job, and highly creative,” said Mark.