This season's flu shots are only moderately effective at combating the strains of the virus now circulating, according to government data released Friday, meaning some people will become ill even though they were vaccinated. The flu vaccine was estimated to be 62% effective in a one-month survey of 1,155 children and adults that ended Jan. 2, 2013, conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention . The findings are in line with how effective the vaccine has been in previous years. Flu shots are recommended for everyone aged 6 months or older....

Since we began the First State Innovation journey to Accelerate Delaware's Entrepreneurial Economy significant progress has been made. Here is continued validation of the progress that our private, public and academic initiative has contributed.

I am pleased to report that Delaware now ranks second among all states in being prepared for the new innovation economy according to the sixth edition of the bi-annual State New Economy Index published by The Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF). Massachusetts leads in the rankings, as it has since the launch of this index; however, it no longer holds the commanding lead it had in the 2010 index. These rankings appeared in a report issued last month by the ITIF. The report uses 26 indicators to assess the progress states have made for the new innovation economy. These indicators are divided into five major categories: 1) Knowledge 2) Globalization 3) Economic Dynamism 4) the Digital Economy 5) Innovation Capacity.

Depending upon where you are in the world this could be true, or it could be completely wrong. In most nations, the size and color or notes differs between denominations. Much of the world measures distances in kilometers. If you’re in the US, 20 degrees is a cold day, in Europe you could break a sweat (20 C = 68 F).

Societies are governed by standards; you grow up learning these values and measures. Rarely, if ever, do you question them. It is much easier to accept the standards you are accustomed to than to question them. The familiar seems correct and the unfamiliar wrong. These standards dictate societal norms, and by extension cross-cultural interaction. Take the movie Pulp Fiction for an example of the difference something as trivial as measures can have:

We are a business incubator hosted at the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay. Most of the entrepreneurs we incubate are first generation, low on cash, high on optimism and presumably good at technology. Passion, commitment and core expertise are essential ingredients of entrepreneurs, however, many of them lack understanding on what is involved in raising fund from a venture capital firm or an angel investor.

While venture capital can be of tremendous value for start-ups, only a small number of the companies chasing venture capital end up getting it.

Last year I predicted that social media would lose its sizzle. Since then, the bubble has burst for companies such as Facebook, Zynga and Groupon. The tablet computer market, on the other hand, is booming, voice recognition is becoming a standard feature in new computing devices, and there have been, as I alluded to in 2012, notable cloud-computing failures andsecurity breaches in the past year.

I am glad to have been wrong about LinkedIn. It is a great company with a stellar management team. Also, tablet prices haven’t quite hit the $100 mark in the U.S., as I predicted they would. But I still anticipate they will, and likely very soon.

Travelers have been chasing the sun ever since Europe's monarchs started constructing gaudy summer palaces. It is hard, after all, to relax while shivering.

It is also hard to shiver for months and remain optimistic about life in general. Seasonal Affective Disorder is both very real and entirely indicative of mankind's deeply felt need for sunshine. Doctors now prescribe flights south and with good reason: Warm temperatures courtesy of global warming have made winter a bleak, grey affair in the Northeast, where a little sun and snow used to temper the January blues.

When a marketer sets out to create a public relations strategy, the first move is often to get started publishing press releases. That would have been the most effective way to get out your message and get some press ... years ago. However, there are now other tactics that need to be coupled with press releases in order to make them effective.

As a marketer, it's important to know when press releases will benefit your public relations strategy, and when another tool or tactic should be used. There are many cases when press releases are still valuable to use, but there are even more misconceptions about them. We're going to debunk all of those right now, and lay out exactly when press releases rock -- and exactly when they don't.

Just in front of City Hall in Ithaca, N.Y., the mayor has a reserved parking spot. Or at least he did. When then-24-year-old Svante Myrick took office in January 2012, he decided he didn’t need it. During his four years as a student at Cornell University, Myrick had gotten used to traversing the city of 30,000 on his feet and via public transit. As an environmentally conscious member of Generation Y, he wanted to set an example. So Myrick authorized city workers to construct Ithaca’s smallest public park where his parking space once stood. They laid down turf and erected a small bench. Some evenings, he will sit out there and conduct a sort of open forum, letting residents come up and share their thoughts or concerns. A few feet away stands a “Mayor’s Mailbox” that Myrick has installed, a comment box for citizens to leave their praise and scorn for the city government.

These small touches are reminders that Ithaca’s youngest and first African-American mayor (he’s actually biracial) does things a little differently. When Myrick wants public input on a road project, he doesn’t wait for the 6 p.m. Tuesday City Council meetings, where folks have to fill out a comment card and get their allotted three minutes to speak. He posts a status on the city’s Facebook page -- a page he started -- and lets residents share their thoughts. His new style “still freaks people out a little bit,” Myrick says. “They’re used to getting feedback in a certain way and through a certain structure.”

As part of our series on generosity in business, we’re looking at some of the designers doing the best in their field at giving back and moving the world forward through their work.

As part on an ongoing series, Co.Exist and Catchafire are presenting an ongoing investigation of bold generosity with the goal of understanding its causes, its benefits, and how to inspire more. We’ll be interviewing a long list of impressive changemakers, who have demonstrated their generosity through acts of service, rather than exclusively deep-pocketed philanthropy.

This is the latest post in a series on generosity, in conjunction with Catchafire. Last month, we talked to the 10 most generous Social Media Mavens. Today, we have our 11 Most Generous Designers. This is an innovative group (co-curated by Ric Grefé, the executive director of AIGA) who are using design to make the world a better place. Whether creating a compelling graphic to raise money or developing a cause awareness campaign or producing a never-before-seen-product that improves an infant’s livelihood, these creative thinkers are impacting our society in ways that are hard to forget.

Corporate venturing is becoming an important tool for big companies to complement internally driven innovation activities. However, becoming a serious player in corporate venturing requires governance principles and creates cultural dynamics which do not fit into existing corporate environment easily. This article discusses those challenges in detail and suggests ways how to deal with them.

Since venture capital funds started to become a serious player in the financial world and began to have an impact on the world of corporate R&D, big corporations started to play there as well. They set up corporate venture funds shelling out several hundred million dollars in many cases.  For example BASF, the globally leading chemical company, has invested about € 150 millions in 23 ventures via their corporate venturing arm (BASF Venture Capital GmbH) since its creation in 2001. Evonik, another innovation focused chemical company recently announced to further strengthen its innovation capacity by establishing a corporate venturing unit within its Innovation Management organization. Evonik plans to invest a total of up to €100 million over the medium term in highly promising start-ups and leading specialist venture capital funds

Fierce competition for new business among Washington-area jurisdictions has left little interest in economic development collaboration on the region’s behalf, and little love for the center of it all — the District.

“Washington, D.C., is like California in that they can’t seem to chase companies out of their jurisdiction fast enough,” Gerry Gordon, president of the Fairfax County Economic Development Authority, said Friday during a panel discussion at the Cardinal Bank-George Mason University Greater Washington Economic Conference. The panel was moderated by Washington Business Journal Publisher Alex Orfinger.

Startups offer some great employee perks to attract top talent. For example, Evernote's employees can charge two house cleanings per month to the company. Quirky recently announced the best perk yet. The NYC invention shop just told its 100+ employees it will be shutting down for four weeks each year.

Montclair, New Jersey – January 4, 2013: Banking on the successful graduation of its inaugural class and capped off by an exciting Demo Day on November 14, TechLaunch is once again inviting aspiring tech entrepreneurs with a vision – and a great support team – to apply for a coveted position in the 2013 LaunchPad 2 program, slated to begin in May and culminate in mid-September with Demo Day at Montclair State University.

Applications will be accepted starting January 7 and ending Mid February. For details and qualifying conditions, go to our FAQ page. For the application details go to our Apply page. For an introduction to the Inaugural Class of 2012, including video highlights about what the TechLaunch experience has meant to their dreams of success, visit TechLaunch.com.

In May of 1961, President John F. Kennedy made a promise to put a man on the Moon--and return him back safely--by the end of the decade. Somehow, it worked.

Over 50 years later, it’s easy to forget how ambitious Kennedy’s promise was. We’d gotten our butts kicked in the Cold War space race with Russia. America hadn’t launched the first satellite. America hadn’t been first off this planet (with a human or an animal). America hadn’t been first to the Moon, even, if you count Russia’s Luna 2 and 3 satellites. In fact, Kennedy’s speech came just 20 days after we’d put our first man, Alan Shepard, into space. Then six years later, our manned quest to the moon would start with the most extreme failure possible, when three astronauts died in a fire during Apollo 1 launchpad testing.

For MBA Admissions, with the start of the new year comes a new round of applicants. Our Round 2 candidates submitted their applications last week and are now awaiting interview invitations which begin to be released later this month.

Just a few weeks ago, we welcomed our Round 1 admits right before the holidays. For our whole team, decision day is one of the best days of the year.  The Admissions team and I spend the morning calling our admitted students to congratulate and welcome them. Every year we are tickled by the surprise and emotions of our admitted students – many whoop with delight, some even shed a tear or two, and more than a handful ask if the call is for real or a prank. This year, one of our excited Class of 2015 admits jumped up in the air after hearing the news, and in doing so, accidentally hung up on my colleague.  He called back to apologize, saying, “That has to have happened before, right?”  There is a first for everything…

In its 31 years of bringing together health-care industry executives, investors and entrepreneurs, the J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference has become a top venue for deal making.

It’s also a place where you’ll hear plenty of complaints about industry woes, including the ongoing recession and the bureaucratic inefficiency of regulatory agencies.

But this year, some in the industry–especially biotech investors–are much more upbeat, saying 2013 will a time when promising new technologies will get the funding they need for development and eventual commercialization.

Traditional venture capital invests with a “gut” feeling approach, and as VentureBeat’s Christina Farr recently put it, “Relying on gut feeling simply isn’t good enough anymore”.

Investors suffer from a number of cognitive biases. The biggest, most powerful and most dangerous bias in Silicon Valley today is called the “herd mentality” or “bandwagon effect.” It’s difficult to oppose the general consensus.

As investors, this and other cognitive biases skew our decision-making process every day. How do you get around it? We believe that the answer lies in mathematics. If we can work with models that are built to protect us from human biases, guide us through the turbulent waters of high-risk investing and incorporate factors of safety, that would be a better option than swinging for the fences to make up for losses.

Earlier this week, the National Venture Capital Association and Thompson Reuters assessed the current state of the VC fundraising landscape. The verdict is that VC has "settled in a 'new normal,'" with the total number of funds decreasing while the total amount of money raised went up in 2012.

That performance lived up to expectations from earlier this year.

The total raised was $20.6 billion, which the NVCA suggests is the "Goldilocks" number: Not too big, not too small — but just right. There's a sense in the VC world that it's critical to keep the total amount of money raised under $25 billion.

Increased investments in the mobile and healthcare sectors helped boost the median size of angel and angel group syndicate rounds in the third quarter last year, according to a report by Silicon Valley Bank, Angel Resource Institute and CB Insights. The median size of the syndicate rounds? $640,000.

It’s not surprising that mobile companies accounted for the most deal volume. App growth, particularly for mobile health, has been through the roof. Mobile health technologies are projected to be worth $11.8 billion by 2018. Healthcare accounted for 23.6 percent of angel investment — narrowly beating the Internet sector by a few percentage points. And angel investment in healthcare is often motivated by personal experience or philanthropic desire to save or improve lives. The report defines healthcare as medical devices, equipment, biotechnology and pharmaceuticals.

IBM announced today that it once again led the United States in the number of patents. That's an achievement in its own right, but this is the 20th year in a row that IBM has lead the list.  It wasn't particularly close. Here's the top 10, from IFI claims. IBM's total was bigger than Accenture, Amazon, Apple, EMC, HP, Intel, Oracle/SUN and Symantec combined.