A few months ago, I was chatting with Andy Bechtolsheim, who is perhaps one of the smartest people in Silicon Valley (as his Sun Microsystems co-founders such as Vinod Khosla would attest). The conversation, which started out very technical in nature, turned into a philosophical discussion, mostly about how much of a role intangibles and timing play in startups. Of course, Andy should know. As an angel investor in startups like Google and co-founder of companies like Sun and Arista Networks, Bechtolsheim has seen that timing is often the key difference between startup success and ignominy.

A team of engineers out of Stanford is introducing a truly tiny wireless cardiac device to demonstrate that, thanks to a little ingenuity and impressive math, all medical implants may soon be powered wirelessly.

Ada Poon led the research. (Credit: Stanford) Which means that devices such as pacemakers, which owe the majority of their bulk to the battery, are about to get a whole lot smaller.

The widely accepted skills mismatch hypothesis has come under fire recently, with implications for local and regional economic development. The debate reveals that a skills mismatch does not exist across the board, but is limited to middle skill jobs, or those requiring education and training beyond high school but less than a bachelor’s degree. Recent policy dialogues have conflated “talent” with a college degree, encouraging practitioners to tie a neat bow of “college for everyone” around the complex challenges of unemployment, a competitive workforce and business viability and compelling the use of local talent chasing strategies. Talent chasing favors low-hanging-fruit approaches, like building coffee shops and artist lofts, or out-competing other jurisdictions for small gains in the percentage of college graduates, rather than driving at the harder work of growing a pipeline of talent in the community.

Scientific American partnered with grassroots organization ScienceDebate.org earlier this summer to encourage the two main presidential candidates--Barack Obama and Mitt Romney--to answer 14 questions on some of the biggest scientific and technological challenges facing the nation. President Obama and Governor Romney have now answered these Top American Science Questions, which you can read below.

Editors will grade the candidates' answers for SA's November issue, which will be available on the iPad and in print in mid-October.

I just returned from a three-week journey to Russia and Ukraine. It was my third trip to the region in the past year, and, as with most anything, with familiarity comes comfort.

After overcoming the typical language and cultural differences, the main conclusion I can make is, at least within the technology, innovation, and entrepreneurial communities, Russians are really no different than us. They aspire, create, wonder, design, dream, scratch and claw, fail and succeed just like we do. Of course they speak, interact, and eat differently, but you know, I've grown to really love a bowl of borscht, Uzbeki plov (pilaf), and especially these delicious meat dumplings called pelmeni.

Can you write code? Yes, but I do not actively practice any more. I started out as a developer 15 years ago and spent the first five years of my professional life as a developer or tech lead.

If you do write code, is it the most important skill to be an entrepreneur? No, but someone in the core/founding team must know if you are building a digital business. Later on, the management team must understand how things work to be able to move the business forward.

Innovation is a vital source of economic growth; technology transfer from public research to private development is a significant source of economic stimulus. The U.S. government’s federal laboratory system has been a source of such innovation from the Manhattan Project to the Human Genome Project. Building on these past successes, are the ongoing means of technology transfer best nurturing innovation to seed economic growth? What lessons are emerging from both government-owned labs’ government-operated and company-operated (GOGO/GOCO) management styles? This panel will discuss efforts to optimize federal labs’ technology transfer to ensure the public return on investment of a robust national economy.

Getting halfway through something — a book, workout program, or project at work — and losing motivation is an experience everybody can identify with. New research from Miguel Brendl of the Kellog School of Management, Andrea Bonezzi, and Matteo De Angelis examines the psychological reasons for this behavior. It's all about frames of reference. When somebody first embarks on something, it's easy to see how much progress has been made relative to the start, keeping motivation high. People get more motivated near completion as well, as the end's in sight.  

If you aren’t paying attention to your competition on social media, I want to help you start practicing.  The fact that so many small businesses are on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and elsewhere means that there are plenty examples out there of what’s working – and what’s not working.

Let’s look at four questions you can ask to guide your competitive research in social media:

Who are your competitors targeting? How often are they talking?  How often are they interacting? Are they peppering their conversation with valuable content or sales-y pushes? In what light do they cast the competition (i.e. you)?

Cape Girardeau's Career and Technology Center recently received one of nine grants that aims to allow high school students to receive college credit and gain work experience, ideally preparing students even faster for college and the workforce.

The "Innovation Campus" (not to be confused with the Innovation Center at Southeast Missouri State University) grant was for $1 million, paid for by the Missouri Department of Economic Development. Locally, the Cape Girardeau Business Development Foundation, a separate entity with its own board that the Cape Girardeau Chamber of Commerce works with, is administering the grant by collaborating with the CTC, Southeast, Mineral Area College and Three Rivers College.

You can get a lot for $35 these days. It bought me what looks like a credit card-sized James Bond gadget prototype, but is actually a fully functional computer. It has an ARM processor like those in many cell phones, 256 megabytes of RAM, a wired network connection, two USB ports, an HDMI video connection, and a graphics coprocessor able to decode a Blu-ray DVD. It's powered by a cell-phone charger and is intended to revolutionize technology education by helping to create a new generation of hackers and makers (see "An Ultracheap Computer").

Many try, but only some succeed in self-employment.

It’s not enough to have a great idea, or the necessary personal attributes to succeed. It’s also not enough to have capital. Ramping up in self-employment takes time.

MORE: Innovation, entrepreneurship and small business news on RocNext.

I’m not trying to discourage you from entrepreneurship, but rather open your eyes and make sure that you prepare sufficiently to reduce the possibility of failure. In our nation, our culture, and our society, there is equal opportunity — but not equal results. This process of finding a business you can create and sustain is a lot more work than looking for a job!

Entrepreneurs are always looking for “the next big thing,” when maybe in fact it’s a lot of little things that are only recognized after the fact as components of a big evolution or revolution. In my view, the Internet “connectivity anywhere” has already spawned several of these, but the global change has only begun.

Emily Nagle Green, in her book from a while back “ANYWHERE,” argues effectively that the future of the world and business is ubiquitous connectivity, the total interconnection of people, ideas, and products through a global digital network. Every person will have access to virtually anything in the world from virtually anywhere he or she happens to be at the moment. Key vehicles already include wireless for communication, and RFID for product location.

Why didn't Blockbuster create Netflix? Why didn't record companies create iTunes or Spotify, Crate and Barrel create One Kings Lane, or Sephora start Birchbox? Huge businesses have the money, brand and power to create whatever they want, but most aren't innovative. Scrappy, disruptive startups have to come along and steal market share before anything changes.

I love words and language, I have been writing and reading since I was 10 years old. Poetry, lyrics, essays, reports, articles, presentations, a book, eBook, blogging – you get the idea.  Words have always had great power to change things for the good and their meaning can impact others greatly.

Words describe our personality, spirit, soul, personal brand and what we stand for. How we present ourselves, treat others and how others describe us is crucial to happiness and success.

Here are 5 descriptive words that can make a big difference not only in our lives, but in the lives of others:

Organizations spend billions of dollars on research and development in the hope of scoring the next game changer. The life blood of start-ups is innovative people with innovative ideas.  But unlike, say, marketing campaigns or IT upgrades, it’s difficult to quantify the return on investment on the people part of innovation. More importantly, it’s hard to know how to get more bang for your buck. Many organizations’ R&D strategy tends to focus on equipping intelligent people with top of the range technology and hope for a breakthrough. Until now.

Robert Keller of the University of Houston followed 644 scientists and engineers from five corporate research and development organizations over five years.  He measured job performance, as rated by supervisors, and the number of patents and publications achieved by each individual. He discovered that three key personality traits predict high performance and innovation:

"The Oogieloves in the Big Balloon Adventure" opened to box-office results only Bialystock & Bloom could want.

Some are calling the just-released toddler movie about outsize, brightly-colored pillowy creatures the biggest big-screen bomb ever. Investors ponied up a reported $55 million or more to make and market the film with an eye to sequels, TV programming, stage shows and merchandise. Gross receipts over its debut weekend in more 2,160 locations amounted to only a little more than $200 per screen.

Gautam Mukunda, Harvard Business School assistant professor, explains why "abnormal" leaders make a real difference. He is the author of the HBR Press book Indispensable: When Leaders Really Matter.

Texting, instant messaging, Facebook, Twitter - we have dozens of ways to pass a message from one user to the next, and yet we keep coming back to email. Why? According to the man who sent the first one, because there’s still nothing quite like it.

Possibly the most revealing statement that can be made about the power and perseverence of email is that - unlike almost everything else in the technology industry - how we use it has remained virtually unchanged for more than 40 years.

According to the Radicati Group, 144.8 billion emails are sent every day, and that number is projected to rise to 192.2 billion in 2016. There are about 3.4 billion email accounts worldwide, Radicati said, with three-quarters owned by individual consumers.

Shopping for children can be an exercise in futility: As soon as you buy them something, they’re too big for it. These bikes solve that problem by expanding along with the growth spurts.

Kids outgrow their bikes unless, that is, they grow with them. Spanish bicycle designer Orbea has designed what may be the first line of bikes that expands with the frame of the owner.

With a crossbar, stem and seat that can be lengthened over time, as well as longer-lasting components, the aptly named Grow bikes only need to be replaced every five to seven years compared to two to three years for conventional bikes, reports Orbea.