Innovation is about more than groundbreaking technology. Rigorous, systematic questioning of risks in your business model can unleash opportunities for game changing performance improvements.

For a decade or more, listings website Craigslist seemed a rare exception to the Internet’s innovate-or-die rule. Very early in the new millennium, the San Francisco-based site nestled comfortably into the space once solely occupied by local newspapers’ classified sections, thanks to a singular, free-ad-based business model predicated on low operating costs. It has since expanded into more than 70 countries without making any major changes to either how it does business or its infamously drab design.

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To win at any game, you need to first learn its rules inside out and then practice, practice, practice till you become an expert at it. The same philosophy applies to most things in life, including email marketing. Email marketing is probably the most scientific part of marketing, where every single aspect of the communication can be tested to zero in on the best variation, its results are distinctly measured and attributable to specific actions made by the user, thanks to the latest advances in email automation technology.

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From wearable transmitters to smart cars, many things in our lives are already interconnected digitally as we embrace technology a little more each day. So what does the future of the Internet of Things hold? First, ambitious efforts like Project Loon are hoping to provide everyone in the world with access to the Internet via balloons. If you think that sounds a little crazy, how about this – 100 years from now, the Internet we know and love today could be obsolete.

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Do you know the difference between invention and innovation? The Huffington Post sums up the contrast for us:

In its purest sense, invention can be defined as the creation of a product or introduction of a process for the first time. Innovation, on the other hand, occurs if someone improves on or makes a significant contribution to an existing product, process or service.

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Happy Independence Day from the Innovation America Team!

Despite increasingly good job numbers, pessimism about the economy persists. According to Gallup, almost 60 percent of Americans think the economy is still getting worse. Last week, Clayton Christensen told Innovation Hub that America was on its way to becoming Japan—a country that has been wrestling with stagnation for a quarter century.

But Joel Kurtzman, senior fellow at the Milken Institute and author of Unleashing the Second American Century, disagrees. Kurtzman says that America is in surprisingly strong shape economically.

Maybe it’s time for your annual review, maybe there’s been a recent restructuring, or maybe you are interviewing for a new job. Whatever the reason, the time has come for one of the most important and anxiety-inducing events in your career – negotiating your salary.

Even in a down market, there are important reasons to negotiate your salary. You have to be careful though that you don’t make a misstep that could hurt your position in the company.

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SAN FRANCISCO — The idea that eating certain foods make us feel better when we're down may be a myth, psychologists say.

In fact, we may simply feel better after some time has passed, regardless of what food we eat, a new study says.

In the study, people were asked to pick foods that they thought would make them feel better if they were in a bad mood, such as chocolate, cookies or ice cream.

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Everyone knows about bug spray, but if you're serious about keeping that bite count down, there are more ways to prepare for those mosquitoes descending upon the D.C. area.

Looking at the backyard bucket where he collects his local mosquito specimens, University of Maryland entomology professor Mike Raupp says simply, "I think there will be blood."

With the estimated 510 million live websites at last year-end, and 280,000 new ones being added every day, the biggest challenge for an entrepreneur is to get found, and get some credibility for a new startup. I can attest from experience that publishing a regular blog to properly showcase your brand value, even before you have it, is a most cost effective approach in time and money.

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The digital health space has continued to heat up, and it’s looking like 2014 will be a big year for investment in the space.

A new Rock Health report says that halfway through 2014 more than $2.2B has been invested in digital health startups. That’s already more than the $1.97 billion invested in the space during all of 2013, and 2013 was a record year for funding in the space.

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NewGenAngels is a members-only investment club that wants to highlight the cream of Africa’s early-stage business crop. The Angel investment group has a keen focus on the diaspora and, with rather deep pockets, is looking to deploy between US$150 000 and US$500 000 per company and aims to activate 1000 angels by 2020. Very bold indeed.

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Contracts are an essential part of working online — they help you and your client to outline what to expect of one another, and protects you against losses. Without a contract there's no legal requirement for the other party to pay you upon completion of work, which means having one is essential to running a successful business.

We love to make decisions and form strategies based on statistics. It’s why we A/B test and how we change directions on our social sharing.

Who doesn’t love a good statistic, especially one that has an actionable next step?

You’re likely to find a sea of statistics for social media--I know I’m amazed at how many are out there. My favorite finds are those that are just a bit surprising or unique or even counterintuitive.

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You may have a great business idea, solid financial backing, and optimistic market research, but if your founding team doesn’t have the right balance of personalities, you could soon be closing up shop, says Bernd Schoner, author of The Tech Entrepreneur’s Survival Guide (McGraw-Hill, May 2014).

“Having the right team determines the path and outcome of a new venture more than any decision in the lifecycle of a company,” he says. He speaks from experience--in 2002 Schoner cofounded the radio frequency identification technology company ThingMagic with four fellow Media Lab graduates at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and experienced a year of “extreme turmoil.”

In a June 12th blog post that made instant waves, Elon Musk, founder and CEO of electric vehicle (EV) manufacturer Tesla Motors, declared: “Tesla will not initiate patent lawsuits against anyone who, in good faith, wants to use our technology.” The words stood in stark contrast to most of the other recent news about patents – the headlines of wars being fought in the courts by, for example, Apple, Samsung, and Google Android.

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The CEO of an emerging growth company called me a while ago, a bit shocked after having seen the employment contracts that had just been issued to a couple of new hires in Hong Kong. “How could they be longer than mine!? Are you sure that is the approach we should take as we expand our operations?”

This CEO, like many US executives, employment lawyers and HR representatives, is accustomed to one- or two-page US-style at-will offer letters. But in many jurisdictions around the world,. detailed employment agreements are not only customary and best practices, but are simply required. In fact, as foreign companies expand into the US, we see the reverse phenomenon – foreign companies rolling out foreign-style employment agreements to US-based regular employees, thus losing the benefits of the unique concept of at-will employment in the US.

The startup world has a lot of movers and shakers. You know the  people that jump from advisors to entrepreneurs to VCs and back again. I am no different.

Before founding Earnest, a merit-based lending company, I had the good fortune of serving as a partner at the VC firm Andreessen Horowitz, where I worked on a variety of things from analyzing data to better help our portfolio companies to early-stage fundraising.

Image: Louis Beryl, Ceo and Co-Founder of Earnest Image credit: meetearnest.com 

The LEED Programme of the OECD recently released two reports in its series of reviews on entrepreneurship support in universities and vocational training centres.

The research “Supporting Graduate Entrepreneurship in Wielkopolska and Kujawsko-Pomorskie, Poland” focus on increasing interest in entrepreneurship in the Higher Education Institution (HEI) leadership and developing entrepreneurship training for professors and university staff.

The battle between Google and Apple is moving from smart phones to smart things, with both companies vying to provide the underlying architecture that networks your appliances, utilities, and entertainment equipment. Earlier in June, at its annual developer conference, Apple announced HomeKit, a new software framework for communications between home devices and Apple’s devices. Meanwhile, Nest, a maker of smart thermostats and smoke alarms that was bought by Google earlier this year for $3.2 billion, recently launched a similar endeavor with software that lets developers build apps for its products and those from several other companies.

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