“Experimentation, prototyping, beta testing — sure, great for tech start-ups, but this is a pharmaceutical company. We can’t just meddle around with customers or physicians like that! There are rules.”

Some industries, like aviation, banking or health care are steeped in regulations, high capital costs, and long development cycles. Quick turnarounds seem beyond reach. But they shouldn’t give up; the danger is that these organizations don’t try anything new and become numb to entrepreneurial activity. Scour the cupboards for short-term changes. If you can’t change the molecules, can you change the packaging?

The new vending machine in Drexel University’s main library doesn’t dispense soda or study-time snacks. In fact, those snacks should be kept away from what this machine delivers, to keep crumbs from getting in the keyboards.

This kiosk lends out 15-inch MacBooks free, with the swipe of a Drexel ID card.

When the library started staying open 24 hours a day during midterms, in 2012, a student-government representative noticed a potential problem.

Imagine a place where computer nerds are revered like jocks and rockstars. That was San Francisco this past weekend.

A carefully selected group of 100 college students flocked to the Bay Area to powwow with veterans of the famed tech startup scene. The students came for an all-expense paid weekend to compete in the inaugural run of the "University Hacker Olympics."

As part of the 2012 Best B-Schools ranking, Bloomberg Businessweek asked MBAs from the Class of 2012 to tell us, via an online survey, about the full range of their business school experience, from getting in to getting a job. One section of the survey singled out specific aspects of the business program and asked the students to rate them on a scale from “poor” to “outstanding.” Over the next few weeks, we will publish the top 10 B-schools in each of the nine specialty areas, from diversity to sustainability, culminating with publication of the entire specialty MBA ranking, including each of the 82 ranked schools.

Today we look at entrepreneurship. The ranking is based on student responses to the question asking them to rank their program’s entrepreneurship offerings. Points are awarded for each response—one point for “poor” through six points for “outstanding”—and then averaged for each school. The average entrepreneurship score for all 82 U.S. and international schools in the ranking was 4.49. At the top of the list is Stanford’s Graduate School of Business.

Governments could be described as the largest and longest running crowd-funding schemes in existence. Sadly, whereas crowd-funding is seen as innovative, flexible, responsive, bottom up, transparent, enabling – among other things; governments would be hard pushed to receive similar accolades. However, times are changing and governments are beginning to adopt some of the characteristics of crowd-funding and crowdsourcing. But there is a long way to go.

What is changing?

Governments are facing triple pressures – demands for greater transparency, the need to cut costs and the expectation to be more innovative. Crowdsourcing and crowd-funding could bring the solutions, and redefine the way in which we perceive and engage with government, but more importantly also how it functions locally and nationally.

Paging Peter Thiel! Blueseed, a sea-faring tech incubator that aims to skirt visa laws by hosting its programs in international waters, has raised $300,000 from Silicon Valley investor Mike Maples. The startup incubator and business center intends to provide a place for non-US citizens to have the same access to the ideas and capital in the Valley without having to go through the complicated visa process. Though it’s just a fraction of the $10-30 million needed for the project to actually take off, no doubt Silicon Valley’s principled libertarian population will be excited to hear the news.

Last we checked in with the Valley libertarians, Peter Thiel pal Patri Friedman was preparing a book on Seasteading, the practice of living at sea in order to avoid national laws. Blueseed, meanwhile, raised $500,000 in September 2011 and is planning to launch at the end of this year.

The world does not exist in a vacuum. We are susceptible to emotion, time-pressure, and often a lack of information. Translating what you read into action leads you to realize the inevitable role that trial-and-error plays in building experience and perfecting your craft. Especially the error part…

The Importance of Trial and Error

No one likes to fail, which is what makes the error part so difficult. Instead of putting into action what we read on a daily basis, we fall into the trap of collecting a library’s worth of information (I’ve personally promised myself I’ll only check my RSS feed once a day… or twice). That information is perfect to the uninitiated. Untouched, infallible, and full of potential. As long as we continue to collect, we never have to feel pain.

A NEW BOOK FROM TASCHEN COLLECTS 50 OF THE MOST INCREDIBLE ARBOREAL DWELLINGS FROM AROUND THE GLOBE.

The appeal of tree houses is fairly obvious: seclusion, sustainability, coziness, communion with nature. Of course, often times those are qualities that are felt rather than understood--there’s a reason that, for many youngsters, the first real architectural impulse is to want a nest among the trees. But tree houses can retain their magic for adults, too. And as a gorgeous new book from Taschen shows, when that childhood dream is realized with grown-up resources, the results can be truly stunning.

Venture capital investment in Israeli high-tech companies declined in 2012, but overall investment in the sector has returned for the second consecutive year to its pre-global financial crisis level, according to a report released on Monday.

Silicon Valley continues to attract by far the most venture capital investments, but several other regions are hot on its heels. Outside the Valley, start-ups in the following cities and regions are expected to secure the most venture funding in 2013, according to new estimates by Revolution LLC in Washington D.C.

The buzz around biotechnology investing that could be felt this year at the J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference could reach the beleaguered medical-device sector as well.

But it won’t be a spate of IPOs—and the headlines they generate–that re-ignites interest in device companies, several investors said.

“What we are really hoping to see in 2013 are great new products approved, and put on the market,” said Ryan Drant, a general partner at New Enterprise Associates and a board member at the Medical Device Manufacturers Association.

Sometimes it seems like there is research for the sake of research.

A new infographic from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation says that stable jobs equal healthier lives. Since 1977, life expectancy of U.S. males retiring at 65 has increased by six years for people in the top half of the income distribution but only 1.3 years for those in the bottom half.

Did we really need an infographic to tell us that richer people, who have sustained access to healthcare and presumably lower stress about their day-to-day existence, live longer? Did we really need an infographic telling us that unemployed people are more likely to suffer from poor health?

California is a great place to live and work, but it is not a particularly friendly place to start and run a small business.

In 1999, I co-founded Sagient Research Systems, an enterprise-focused data company in San Diego. Over the ensuing 13 years we tinkered, triumphed, failed, and even tempted bankruptcy. But through it all, we worked hard, we worked fairly, and we grew. Slowly, we evolved into a successful business employing nearly 40 people, all in California. In mid-2012, we sold Sagient Research in a transaction that was a good exit for everyone involved.

Academic research not only contributes to a university’s success, but also drives national economic growth necessary to thrive in today’s dynamic global marketplace.  "All of us should be concerned about their continued strength and ability to educate and conduct cutting-edge research,” said National Science Board (NSB) member Ray Bowen.

Despite its importance, however, funding is waning.  A NSB report released in September showed a 47% decline in major public research university funding between 2002 and 2010.   Operating costs are increasing, endowments are shrinking, and the fiscal health of Universities, both public and private, is becoming increasingly strained.

The government of India has declared 2010-2020 as the decade of innovation. The endeavour of the national innovation council (NInC) is to develop an inclusive innovation strategy geared towards creating ‘more from less for more’. The Indian model of innovation is frugal, distributed and affordable. “The idea is to encourage, inspire and empower people to think, discover, deliberate, innovate and implement novel solutions at the local and national level to expedite the process of development for the benefit of the nation”, writes Sam Pitroda, chairman, NInC. I recently attended a conference on innovation and the ecosystem. Since cities are an important part of the ecosystem, after the conference, a thought occurred to me – Is an innovation city co-dependent, and if so, what size of a city is ideal for innovation?

In this exciting period of development, our lives and the whole human ecosystem are going through a major transformation. As we grow, cities are growing too. We are seeing massive migration of rural population to urban centres. More than half of the world’s population now lives in cities. It has several implications. One is that towns are becoming cities and cities are getting transformed into metropolis. As the city grows, one observes a change in its character. We observe changes in consumption patterns and population behaviour. As the city grows, it attracts creative people, and thus, its potential for innovation increases. As the city grows, new resources of wealth generation are created. It starts optimising the delivery of the social services. This is due to the economies of scale in infrastructure. However, as the city grows, there is also an increase in crime, pollution and diseases. A city loses or gains its identity when it becomes a megacity.

Scientists think that they have the answer to why the skin on human fingers and toes shrivels up like an old prune when we soak in the bath. Laboratory tests confirmed a theory that wrinkly fingers improve our grip on wet or submerged objects, working to channel away the water like the rain treads in car tires.

People often assume that wrinkling is the result of water passing into the outer layer of the skin and making it swell up. But researchers have known since the 1930s that the effect does not occur when there is nerve damage in the fingers. This points to the change being an involuntary reaction by the body's autonomic nervous system — the system that also controls breathing, heart rate and perspiration. In fact, the distinctive wrinkling is caused by blood vessels constricting below the skin.

We all know that every startup is risky. No risk means no reward. Yet every investor has his own “rules of thumb” on what makes a specific startup too high a risk for his investment taste. You need to know these guidelines to set your expectations on funding.

Of course, if you intend to fund the business yourself, or have a rich uncle, external investment funding concerns are not a problem. Yet, it’s still worthwhile to understand the issues so you can minimize your own risk of failure. Here is a summary of the “big picture” high risk considerations:

Looking for some innovation inspiration as you kick-start the year? We have compiled some of the best advice from today’s top innovators in this episode of Innovator’s Exchange that could be just what you need to find the next big breakthrough.

Hear from Bruce Upbin, managing editor of Forbes magazine; Soren Kaplan, author of the Wall Street Journal bestselling book Leapfrogging and consultant at InnovationPoint; Hal Gregersen, INSEAD professor and co-author of the Innovator’s DNA; Nilofer Merchant, HBR blogger and author of The New How and 11 Rules for Creating Value in the Social Era; Hal Gregersen, INSEAD professor and co-author of the Innovator’s DNA; and Hugh Molotsi, vice president of technology innovation at Intuit.

Over 50 and thinking of starting a business? You’re in good company. Approximately 7.4 million Americans over the age of 50 work for themselves. And according to the AARP, one in six baby boomers working for someone else hopes to be self-employed in the future.

Senior entrepreneurs have many advantages. Starting a business later in life brings with it a wealth of business experience, aptitude for what it takes to compete and succeed and self-awareness that youth doesn’t always possess.

When the Commission on Presidential Debates selected Lynn University as the site for the third presidential debate, it probably didn’t realize that hosting the debate would force Lynn to upgrade its wireless infrastructure to accommodate the thousands of reporters who would swarm the campus – and that those upgrades would be significantly discounted because of the debate. This turned out to be just the push the university needed to launch a program it had been discussing for a while: moving its new core curriculum to the iPad.

“We thought we were a few years out, but realized after the debate that we could throw that switch. We’re set up now for a mobile environment in a way we never were before,” said Lynn President Kevin Ross.