“Do you want us to charge your phone?” George Holmes asks. Normally, that would be an odd question. But Holmes is the vice president of sales and marketing for Energous, a company that is developing technology called WattUp that will allow you to charge smartphones, tablets, and other small gadgets from across a room without wires.

Image: http://www.technologyreview.com - Charge it: An iPhone in an Energous case gets a charge from the transmitter in the background. 

Most of the famous entrepreneurs we hear about are fairly young. We tend to read in the popular press about the Mark Zuckerbergs of the world and assume that all successful entrepreneurs launch businesses in their 20s. However, this couldn’t be further from reality.

Recent studies show that older entrepreneurs are increasing while the number of younger entrepreneurs is decreasing. According to the Kauffman Index of Entrepreneurial Activity, the share of entrepreneurs in the 55-64 age group jumped from 14.3 percent in 1996 to 23.4 percent in 2012. In contrast, the share of entrepreneurs in the youngest age group of 20-34-year-olds decreased from 34.8 percent in 1996 to 26.2 percent in 2012.

The age of hiring with generic job boards is over, and it’s about time you realign your hiring strategy.

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor and Statistics, millennials will make up half of the workforce by 2018, so it’s more important than ever to consider how the class of 2014 will carry out their hunt for the ideal job.

Image Courtesy of iosphere / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Early June is Health Datapalooza time, and this year’s event was again a whirlwind of energy, insights, and over 2,000 very motivated and passionate health data enthusiasts (health datapaloozers doesn’t sound right). The hallway conversations provided tons of of pragmatic, productive and engaging conversations, inspired by keynotes and presentations from Todd Park, Bryan Sivak, Jeremy Hunt, Atul Gawande, Steve Case, Jerry Levin, Vinod Khosla, Kathleen Seblius, Dwayne Spradlin, Francis Collins, Fred Trotter, and many more (if you haven’t heard of some of them, look them up, it’s worth your time).  

When I got started in business, I really didn’t have a choice. It was either put up or shut up. Make or break. Sink or swim. Not because I thought this was nice to have…or that it was my destiny to be who I am today, but I just HAD to make my business successful.

Since then, I’ve had my share of ups and downs. Sold some businesses, built some cool products, and made a boat load of money. When things were going well, I was on cloud 9. I would see my friends and family members still struggling, and I always wondered ‘why don’t they do what I do?’ I even went up to them and said, ‘hey do XYZ and you can quit your job forever’. 

Image: http://www.shoemoney.com/ 

For the newly minted Class of 2014, a diploma often comes with the tough decision to pack up and move to a new city. “Destination cities” like New York or London attract people from all over the world and from all walks of life. They act as giant talent magnets for a wide variety of industries. However, our data indicates that not all of them are equal. We analyzed the migration patterns of LinkedIn members over the the past year to determine the top 10 destination cities for recent graduates.

Image: http://blog.linkedin.com/ 

Are you following your passions? At some point, we’ve all thought about what might be our dream career and whether we are on that journey yet or not as our search for professional fulfillment is one of the most important in our lives.

Today, we launched What’s Your Dream?, a campaign in the UK to highlight the professional journeys of some truly inspirational LinkedIn members in the UK. These members have not only found their dream careers, but found success while pursuing their passions.

Image: http://blog.linkedin.com/ 

Microsoft is looking to make friends and partner with innovative tech start-ups across the world through designated spaces known as accelerators. 

Accelerators usually offer a fixed-term, cohort-based programme, that includes mentorship and educational components and culminates in a public pitch event or demo day where the start-ups can potentially secure funding.

Matt Harrigan recently bolted legs onto dozens of makeshift worktables. Within two weeks, the 15,000-square-foot space at a sprawling midtown office next to Grand Central Terminal in New York City will host 18 tech startups in a year-long program that includes advice from seasoned entrepreneurs and others on business strategies, raising capital, connecting with investors, and protecting intellectual property.

The goal, according to Mr. Harrigan of Grand Central Tech, a new so-called startup accelerator program, is to turn the risky, fledgling ventures into fast-growing, moneymaking companies.

Image: High school friends Charles Bonello, left, and Matt Harrigan co-founded Grand Central Tech, an accelerator program that will assist 18 startups. Steve Remich for The Wall Street Journal 

WASHINGTON – The IRS has enacted a provision championed by U.S. Senators Pat Roberts (R-Kan.) and Chris Coons (D-Del.), leader of the Senate’s Manufacturing Jobs for America initiative, that will make the valuable research and development tax credit more accessible to small businesses. The IRS announced a change to regulations this week that will for the first time allow small companies to claim the Alternative Simplified Credit, a simpler version of the R&D tax credit, on amended tax returns. Senators Roberts and Coons first proposed this change in the bipartisan Innovators Job Creation Act, introduced in January.

Image: http://www.freedigitalphotos.net

Verizon, in conjunction with Small Business Trends, conducted a survey of Philadelphia small business owners in May of 2014.  One of the questions was:

How do your customers find out about your business?

The answer was telling – and not because it was a surprise.  It was telling because it is almost exactly in alignment with a survey we conducted online here at Small Business Trends almost a decade ago.

Image: http://smallbiztrends.com/ 

Among tech startups today, there's a general belief that they'll never actually have to achieve profitability. But not every company can count on getting bought by Facebook for a cool $19 billion.

And, of course, those companies who don’t get bought by Amazon, Google or Facebook will have to fend for themselves. The best way to do this? Become profitable.

Image: http://www.freedigitalphotos.net

When we interact with other people, what do we want? As I started to study that question, I came across a wonderful quote. “There are two kinds of people in the world,” Robert Benchley wrote. “Those who divide the world into two kinds of people, and those who don’t.”

Image: http://www.freedigitalphotos.net

Close your eyes and think about summer vacation. A beach comes to mind, right?

It's common to dream about sandy beaches, crystal-clear blue water and a complete escape from daily life.

Using data from Priceline's most-searched summer destinations and TripAdvisor's top user-reviewed destinations, we've compiled a list of beach destinations in the United States, from the beaches of Kailua, Hawaii, to Ogunquit, Maine.

Image: FLICKR, JUN SEITA 

A United Nations report on Asian higher education has questioned the widely held belief among policymakers that investment in university research leads to economic growth.

The study, which looked at Malaysia and Thailand in particular, found that in those countries “very little” research could be commercialized, and even when it is, it “does not yield large financial payoffs.”

The report also suggests that the two nations may be spending on research largely to push themselves up world university rankings, which would mean that research has only “symbolic” value.

I speak quite a bit about leadership on college campuses and have been consulting with one particular college for the last year. And I’m struck by how often students make a point of telling me they don’t want to be a leader.

Image: http://www.freedigitalphotos.net

“More is better.”  From the number of gigs in a cellular data plan to the horsepower in a pickup truck, this mantra is ubiquitous in American culture.  When it comes to college students, the belief that more is better may underlie their widely-held view that laptops in the classroom enhance their academic performance.  Laptops do in fact allow students to do more, like engage in online activities and demonstrations, collaborate more easily on papers and projects, access information from the internet, and take more notes.  Indeed, because students can type significantly faster than they can write, those who use laptops in the classroom tend to take more notes than those who write out their notes by hand.  Moreover, when students take notes using laptops they tend to take notes verbatim, writing down every last word uttered by their professor.

Image: http://www.freedigitalphotos.net

Two distinct expressions of urbanism, the global city and the mega city, are often conflated in the public’s mind. This can lead people to implicitly link the future fortunes of megacities (urban regions of more than 10 million people) with the success of global cities (defined roughly as a very important node at the high end of the global economy), especially as there’s overlap between the two types. They can then assume that the world’s emerging megacities will ultimately be successful, maybe even very successful. Places like São Paulo and Istanbul are held up as global cities in the making. Even more clearly struggling megacities like Jakarta and Lagos are sometimes portrayed as up and coming hip.

Image: http://www.freedigitalphotos.net

Babson College has announced that the Bertarelli Foundation is funding a new faculty chair, the Bertarelli Foundation Distinguished Professor of Family Entrepreneurship (“Chair”), with a $3 million gift to Babson College. 

Building on Babson College’s long history educating family entrepreneurs and advancing the study of family entrepreneurship, the chair will lead a multidisciplinary approach to family enterprise, where the family, not the business, is the focus.

Image: Dona Bertarelli and Babson President Kerry Healey 

The Association of University Research Parks (AURP) and the Biotechnology Industry Organization (BIO) are pleased to invite you to attend the 2014 BIO International Convention to be held June 23-26, 2014 in San Diego. 

BIO 2014 is the largest venue for private company-to-company meetings ("partnering") in the world and offers tech transfer, licensing, and intellectual property professionals with unparalleled access to pharmaceutical and biotech companies, investors, and other potential partners from around the globe. According to the Campbell Alliance's Deal Makers' Intentions report from 2013, partnering events such as BIO 2014 drive the majority of successful deals in the biopharma industry.