Entrepreneurship is defined as the process by which a new venture is created when an entrepreneur identifies a new opportunity in the market to create economic products and services. An entrepreneur is therefore someone who is willing and able to convert a new idea or invention into a successful innovation in the market. The innovation could be in the form of a product, a service, or a novel business concept or model.

Call it the paradox of stock options.

Companies that succeed in going public tend to “find that the quality of internal innovation declines” post-IPO, according to a meticulous new study (PDF) by Shai Bernstein, assistant finance professor at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. Not only does the level of innovation fall at newly public companies, but top inventors there tend to bail, the study found. Those who remain to watch their options vest, meanwhile, suffer “a decline in productivity.”

In reaching his conclusion, Bernstein analyzed the patent data of over 1,500 public and private U.S. technology firms between 1983 and 2006, a data set that includes Microsoft and Google, among others. This isn’t to say the publicly traded company hits an innovation wall post-IPO. But instead of fostering invention in-house, they tend to acquire expertise and innovation by buying up other companies. Hewlett-Packard investors can tell you how that works out.

Fun. Friendly. Inspiring. Collaborative. Productive. If you wouldn't define your workplace with any or all of those terms, you may have to ditch your own desk and take a seat at a coworking space near you. Even if you aren’t an entrepreneur or freelancer, the benefits of coworking, according to Deskmag’s annual Global Coworking Survey, are pretty hard to ignore: 71 percent of participants reported a boost in creativity since joining a coworking space, while 62 percent said their standard of work had improved.

The study also found that half of all coworkers access their work space around the clock--with only 30 percent preferring to work during normal business hours. “The future of work should not be dictated by space or place, but by the individual and the tasks that he or she has to deliver,” Regus CEO Mark Dixon tells Fast Company. “Many employees are now measured by output and productivity, and not just 40 hours spent sitting at a desk. Workers and the companies for which they work are increasingly realizing that they need to provide and utilize a wide range of workplaces to accommodate an increasingly diverse workforce with very different expectations of what work is, and where and when it should happen,” he explains.

The next time you jump on a plane, remember that there is more new technology in your toothbrush.

Patents issued for the toothbrush:      1,937 Patents issued for the airplane:          1,505 (since 1976)

Before you start wondering why there are so many toothbrush patents, let me cite some other patent counts:  laser 63k, computer 125k, automobile 12k, television 15k, boat 7k - since 1976.

As people age, their brain tends to shrink and their memory gets worse. But what if this deterioration weren't inevitable? New research suggests not only that some elderly individuals retain sharp memory skills but also that their brain remains unscathed. Although scientists do not yet know what is responsible for this special resiliency—or how to help people acquire it—a brain region involved in attention may offer an important clue.

Researchers at the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine identified 12 individuals older than 80 years—whom they called “Super Agers”—who performed as well on memory tests as a group of 14 volunteers between the ages of 50 and 65. The scientists performed structural MRI scans on both groups as well as a third group of normal subjects over the age of 80. Although the researchers expected the Super Agers' brains to show some evidence of age-related decline, their average brain thickness matched that of the younger group, and both groups' brains were significantly thicker than those of normal octogenarians.

I’ve read several blog posts recently about the importance of finding the right “fit” in a company, and how a company’s culture greatly influences workplace satisfaction.

As you seek your next internship, the proverbial “lowest person on the totem pole”, viewing the collaborative nature of a company may never have occurred to you.

But it should – especially when you’re first starting your career and-or looking for your next internship. Factoring in culture, specifically making sure that culture includes healthy contributions from everyone, is very much to your advantage – in large part because you’re “just an intern.”

Tell us what  your company is all about.

Bunndle is a distribution platform and ad network for downloadable desktop and mobile applications. A “bundle” is a collection of apps distributed to the same end user.  For example, download one app, get another one. We help developers and software vendors acquire users and monetize their audience by co-promoting applications during the installation flow.

How did you come up with the idea for your company?

I started working on distribution at Yahoo about eight years ago and had the opportunity to touch almost every product at Yahoo because of the exciting growth the company was experiencing. From there, I went to work at a few startups and heard the same story over and over. User acquisition, distribution and monetization for any new company or product is hard. Small companies don’t always have the right contacts or the financials to compete with the big guys, and so they get cast aside when it comes to doing any type of meaningful distribution deals. There is a lot of competition in the market and getting in front of the end user takes a lot of work. Not that big companies also don’t face the problems with user acquisition and monetization. But the hurdle to get a deal done isn’t usually as bad. And the other tools out in the market — SEO, SEM, display advertising, etc. — those don’t always scale when you are competing for an end user’s attention. End users today are very efficient and don’t search the way they used to  – say five or ten years ago. We have become masters at blocking out ads which results in a difficult discovery process for new products. There were other services and competitors in the market but I thought there might be a different approach and so I started Bunndle.

We have all had people in our lives who we admire, go to when we are in distress, and with whom we confide.  Perhaps it was a special babysitter when we were little who took just the right amount of time to read to us so we too wanted to learn to read.  Maybe it was the coach in little league who taught us that winning is not always the most important thing but it is how well we played the game and worked as a team. Possibly it was a high school math teacher who made sense of algebra.  In college we all had a favorite professor who somehow made us laugh and learn at the same time.

As you launch and grow in your career and evolve as a leader, the need for great mentors does not change.  No matter what age, having a guide to show you the way or help you to understand how to maneuver in the maze of life and career is a very comforting asset.  As one who has worked my way from a GS-2 clerk typist in 1971 without any college degree to one who retired from the federal government as a GS-15 with 39 years of service and who is currently in the middle of a doctoral degree in education, I can vouch for the benefit of guidance from mentors along the way.

It’s not uncommon for me to see a startup business plan “mission” to be the “premier brand” for their product, yet their marketing budget in the financials is trivial. This combination will almost certainly get your plan tossed by potential investors, who understand all too well the need and cost for marketing in today’s environment.

When questioned, founders usually mention word-of-mouth, viral marketing, and a top quality product. These founders need a reality check on what recognized brand names have spent to reach that threshold, and how long it is likely to take. Viral marketing costs real money these days, which usually means adding at least an extra zero to budget estimates.

2011 saw economic turmoil and financial scandals that led to only two Chinese tech companies venturing to IPO in 2012. But 2013 is looking up. This year there’s the distinct possibility of there being nine major Chinese web company IPOs, among which will be the biggest ever that China has produced.

Buoyed by the solid progress of the small class of 2012 (VIPShop and YY), these are the names to look out for in the year ahead. Inspired by a longer list on QQ Tech, we’ve pruned that down to nine realistic contenders. Some of these Chinese internet companies have been more candid than others when it comes to intent or timing, but they are, to varying extents, likely to be hitting the stock tickers in New York or Shanghai in the months to come.

Facing unstable global markets and an upcoming presidential election, venture capitalists took a more disciplined approach to their investments in 2012 than in previous years.

Results from a MoneyTree report in partnership with the National Venture Capital Association (NVCA) found that investments totaled $26.5 billion in 2012, with VCs closing 3,698 deals. This is a 10 percent decrease in dollars and a 6 percent decline in deals over the prior year.

Google is the best company to work for in 2013, according to Fortune. I guess that’s what benefits like paying your spouse for 10 years after your death will do for you. Or providing 100,000 hours of nearly-free massages.

Other tech companies on the list include SAS in second place, cloud services company NetApp at number six, and Qualcomm, Salesforce.com, and Intuit in the top 25. Rackspace clocks in at #22, Intel at #68, and Microsoft at #75.

Apple didn’t make the list, nor did Facebook.

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a former entrepreneur in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of investments.

Or to put it another way: If you’re a 30-year-old startup founder who’s cashed out of your first company and you suddenly find yourself with a life-altering amount of money (and a lot of time) on your hands, it’s de rigueur to start spreading the wealth by becoming an angel investor. Before you know it, you’ve spent a couple of years and a couple million dollars, dropping $50,000 here and $100,000 there on the companies your friends are starting.

The climate has never been better for entrepreneurs, but the startling reality is that for the past thirty years, the failure rate of new businesses hasn’t changed--and it’s pretty depressing. Whatever way you look at it, the fact is, most companies fail.

Data from the Small Business Administration and the Bureau of Labor Statistics consistently show that approximately half of new start-ups no longer exist after five years, and that approximately two-thirds will cease to be in operation ten years after founding. Dane Stangler of the Kauffman Foundation notes that approximately five hundred thousand new firms are created every year and that after five years, fewer than half of these companies will remain. Shikhar Ghosh, a senior lecturer at the Harvard Business School, looks at startups that take in outside money and finds that 30 to 40 percent fail. He defines failure as liquidating all assets, with investors losing most or all the money they put into the company. If failure is defined as not realizing the projected return on investment, then the failure rate is 70 to 80 percent.

A friend of mine recently came back from a trip to Australia, where he simply marveled at the predominant “can-do” attitude that existed throughout the country. His enthusiasm was shocking to me only in that as I reflected on the last year, I realized how many people I had encountered who were obsessed with what could not be done in today’s world.

It seems that globalism, technology, and political gridlock have convinced many Americans that the change brought on by each is making it impossible to do anything. This obsession with explaining why things can’t happen seems so antithetical to everything that America and our entrepreneurial spirit are founded on that I, for one, am sick of it. So I suggest we all take on a resolution to dream a little bigger this year.

During the past century, governments and charitable organizations have mounted massive efforts to address social problems such as poverty, lack of education, and disease. Governments around the world are straining to fund their commitments to solve these problems and are limited by old ways of doing things. Social entrepreneurs are stultified by traditional forms of financing. Donations and grants don't allow them to innovate and grow. They have virtually no access to capital markets and little flexibility to experiment at various stages of growth. The biggest obstacle to scale for the social sector is this lack of effective funding models.

But the problem is not money, per se. Take a look at the social sector in the U.S. There are $700 billion of foundation assets, and 10 million people working for non-profits. These are huge numbers. Yet there are massive inefficiencies in capital allocation. Too often donors starve organizations and entrepreneurs by refusing to cover overhead. This makes it impossible for social organizations to scale. Interviews conducted in 2000 by the Social Investment Task Force in the United Kingdom, revealed what most nonprofit leaders already know: Almost all social sector organizations are small and perennially underfunded, with barely three months' worth of working capital at their disposal. And that hasn't changed in the last 12 years.

Wharton Entrepreneurship is proud to be housed within The Wharton School but we’re aware that our name and location can mislead students.  You certainly don’t need to pursue an MBA to participate in our programs! The reality is that we work with students, undergrad and grad, across the University.  Over the years we’ve stepped up our outreach outside of Wharton and we’re excited to see increased levels of awareness and engagement from students in Engineering, the College, and across the graduate schools – from pretty much every population on campus. Of course, we’re always looking for student advocates to spread the message of entrepreneurship at Penn. We hope that our ongoing work to inform and involve the wider Penn population will grow Penn’s entrepreneurial community.

A new Moneytree report is being released this evening, showing that annual VC investment dollars have declined for the first time in three years. The study, which was conducted by PricewaterhouseCoopers and the National Venture Capital Association (NVCA), and based on data from Thomson Reuters, reports that there were $26.5 billion put into 3,698 VC deals in 2012, a decrease of 10 percent in dollars and a 6 percent decline in deals over the prior year.

For the fourth quarter, venture investment of $6.4 billion into 968 companies fell 3 percent in dollars, but rose 5 percent in deal volume over Q3 2012. While the numbers differ slightly, this data is in line with a similar report released earlier this week from CB Insights.

It's now conventional wisdom that human capital (what economists call educated people) is a key factor in the growth of cities and metro regions. Cities are engines of economic development, and the skilled people are the high-powered fuel that drives them.

Most studies of the role of human capital in regional economic growth track its effects on and across metro regions. But metros vary widely in size, shape, and spatial and demographic compositions; human capital doesn't always cluster in the same places at the same densities. The revitalization of the urban center in cities like New York, San Francisco, Boston, and others has fueled in-migrations of more skilled and affluent people. Other cities, like Los Angeles and Detroit, still suffer from the proverbial "hole in the donut" effect, with their more educated, higher income populations spread out across their suburbs while their urban centers lag.

Entrepreneur David Cancel just tweeted this great quote from Vince Lombardi about success: "The dictionary is the only place that success comes before work." Truer words...