Every aspiring entrepreneur would love to be the next Mark Zuckerberg or Jeff Bezos, but most have no idea what really sets these guys apart from all the rest. Conventional wisdom has them looking for a painful problem, a very large opportunity, and minimal competitive barriers to entry. In reality, most great entrepreneurs find these necessary, but not sufficient for the big win.

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SoftBank was behind four of the five biggest venture capital deals globally in the third quarter of 2017, according to a new report by PwC and CB Insights.

SoftBank, both with other investors and with its $100 billion Vision Fund, invested $6.2 billion last quarter in Grab, WeWork, Flipkart and Roivant. The Japanese investment firm has been raising the stakes in Silicon Valley with its enormous infusions of cash.

A new ranking shows how companies around the world are actually faring in the fight to protect data from cybercriminals.

Most Americans were unfamiliar with credit bureau Equifax, before news broke of its recent data breach. A large number of the 145 million people potentially affected had never directly supplied information to the company. Equifax receives most of its sensitive information from third parties such as lenders, retailers and debt collectors. How much blame, if any, should these entities bear? Perhaps no one could have anticipated the size and scope of the breach, yet it fits an emerging cybercrime pattern that too many organisations are ignoring.

A college education is a wonderful thing. Unfortunately for entrepreneurs, attending a four-year university also carries some significant drawbacks. The latest data on student loan debt from Debt.org tells a grim story for new graduates: The average debt at graduation is now more than $37,172 per student.

There was a time when the lone-genius business founder was revered – the Howard Hughes type who operated in secret, acting only on intuition. That time has passed and now instead of looking within ourselves to find inspiration, entrepreneurs are looking outward and coming together to support each other, collaborate, test and exchange ideas.

Over the past 30 years, more and more faculty members and institutions have embraced undergraduate research as a way to further faculty research and to enhance student learning. It has been used to attract and retain talented students, to improve the educational experience of minorities, and to prepare more students for graduate school.

Economists would almost universally agree that fiscal discipline is a good thing. No government should aspire to live beyond its means. If it does, the consequences can be severe: higher inflation, higher interest rates, low private investment and lower growth.

QuickTake India's Aspirations

India's current government has justly been praised for its fiscal restraint. It's reduced the overall fiscal deficit and reoriented spending away from wasteful programs such as fuel subsidies and toward more productive investments in infrastructure. What it hasn't done, however, is deliver the sustained high growth of over 8 percent that India needs. To do so may require loosening the purse strings.

Sanket Atal is Group Vice President, Product Development at Oracle. In this role, Sanket is responsible for leading product development at Oracle India’s Development Center in specific product areas as Fusion Middleware and Java. He re-joined Oracle in October, 2014 and is based out of Bangalore.

Prior to Oracle Sanket held senior positions at MakeMy Trip and CA Technologies as CTO & Head of Technology Center, respectively. He earlier worked with Oracle in 1997 for over 13 years. He was the founding member of the team that setup the R&D centre for Oracle in the city of Portland, Oregon, U.S.

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When a Swiss watchmaker visited Silicon Valley seeking help to create a luxury smart watch, it brought with it intangible benefits.

Industries working in clusters share linkages, synergies and other self-reinforcing mechanisms which can help them become a global reference point for their specific product. Much has been written about the benefits of cooperative research, competitive striving and sharing of information which speeds up innovation, creating a smarter, more efficient industry. The challenge comes when cluster members are forced to look outside their sphere of expertise and the industry they know so well, in order to improve the value of their product.

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For years, proponents of increased downtown development and innovation districts have spoken of the important interplay between universities, startups, and local jobs. Cities such as Pittsburgh, which has seen its stock rise as a center for technology and innovation, found that local universities such as Carnegie Mellon served as catalysts for commercial and creative growth.

More than ever universities today are carving out fresh ways to bypass bureaucracy and drive innovation in higher education—and it’s working.

Colleges are pioneering novel forms of credentialing and breakthrough education technologies for non-traditional learners around the globe. They are experimenting with more intensive ways to partner with the K-12 system and with employers, and they are creating new lines of revenue and educational business models.

Alex Kipman knows about hardware. Since joining Microsoft 16 years ago, he has been the primary inventor on more than 100 patents, including Xbox Kinect’s pioneering motion-sensing technology that paved the way for some of the features in his latest creation, the holographic 3D headset called the HoloLens.

Smart incentive use begins with good upfront due diligence on recipients and proposed investments. This post provides a quick refresher on why it is important to conduct background research on incentive applicants and the essential steps in the process.

Problem prospects can drag down economic development efforts, but due diligence on companies seeking incentives can help economic development organizations:

Image: https://www.smartincentives.org

Vermonters: Do you want your state to be more prosperous?

Simple. Just create metropolitan areas.

How about quintupling (at least) the population of Bennington and its county? Then persuade 200,000 or so folks from other states or countries to move into the Northeast Kingdom.

Presto! Instead of having one metropolitan area, Vermont would have three. Then it would be richer, because that’s where the money is. The biggest cities and their suburbs are booming while small towns and rural areas get smaller and poorer.

Image: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Middlebury_VT_-_Main_Street.jpg

If you are working, there is a good chance you are part of the up to 56 million meetings taking place today. And as the new infographic from Cincinnati Bell Inc. (CBTS) indicates, you also might be part of the 76 percent that thinks they are unnecessary meetings.

This brings us to the title of the CBTS infographic, “How to Master Meetings.” Being able to master meetings in today’s collaborative workforce is extremely important. Small and large businesses alike are holding more meetings because of the readily available technology, remote work, and easy access to global resources. But how do you master meetings?

Image: https://smallbiztrends.com

You don’t want to be hit by a recession in a city like Steubenville, Ohio.

Eight years into the economic recovery, there are thousands fewer jobs in the metropolitan area that joins Steubenville with Weirton, W.Va., than there were at the onset of the Great Recession. Hourly wages are lower than they were a decade ago. The labor force has shrunk by 14 percent.

Succesful entrepreneurs consider themselves mavericks and disruptors -- people who shatter the status quo. And it's true that most of them made their fortune by thinking differently.

But the truly successful may not be as unique as they'd like to think. According to the Shark Tank judges, they all share common characteristics, good and bad, that have made them very rich. Here's their take on millionaire-billionaire traits.

Being an entrepreneur isn’t as glamorous as some make it out to be. For the most part, being an entrepreneur takes hard work and perseverance. A 60-hour workweek is not unusual by any means. According to a study reported by Real Business, entrepreneurs work 63 percent longer than average employees.

If you have a regular job and are moonlighting as an entrepreneur, chances are you’re working even harder. As you grow your dream company while supporting yourself with a steady 9-to-5, you have to be careful. You don’t want to make mistakes or burn out before you even get your company off the ground.

Emma - short for Expert Manipulative Massage Automation - is a robotic massager, developed by a team of researchers, engineers and programmers at AiTreat, a start-up incubated by Nanyang Technological University (NTU). It is particularly good for neck and knee massages.

Emma has soft silicone tips that mimic the human palm and thumb, and can be warmed up for a traditional acupoint massage, also known as "tui na".

Image: Emma can massage a patient's back and knees. PHOTO:THE STRAITS TIMES - http://www.tnp.sg

1804, the organization that calls itself the front door for entrepreneurs in Louisville, has extended that reach to Southern Indiana. Not only has it opened a co-working space in Maker13 in Jeffersonville, but it also will serve as steward of a new partnership from Elevate Ventures.

Last week, at the StartupGrind at Maker13, the area’s newest maker space, Elevate Ventures released details of a three-year, $2.5 million investment to boost entrepreneurship and innovation in the region that includes Southern Indiana.