The Technical University of Berlin excels at churning out top engineering and science graduates, but lately it has started minting something new – technology entrepreneurs. Over the past four years, TU Berlin students and researchers have created an average 33 start-up companies a year, more than double the rate of the previous four years.

That’s a company-creation pipeline that ranks among the best for any European university, including those where entrepreneurship has a longer and deeper tradition, such as Cambridge University or ETH Zurich. The relatively rapid creation of a hotspot for entrepreneurship at TU Berlin - despite a tough economic environment - holds valuable lessons for other universities keen to support the same dynamic.

A few months ago TechStars ran a program for military veterans called TechStars Patriot Boot Camp. It was powerful and well received. Since then I’ve had a few emails exchanges about the lack of veterans, especially entrepreneurs who are veterans, in Boulder. Several negative perceptions and biases arose and as the conversation continued, Taylor McLemore and Dave Cass asked if they could put a guest blog about the issue and their perspective up on this blog. I agreed and thought what they wrote up was important. It follows.

What if I told you there is a valuable group of entrepreneurs that know Boulder to be a great place for startups BUT a place that is not welcoming to them…WHAT?…”our Boulder. No way!”

This past summer, I worked with David Cohen, Tom Chickoore and the great people at TechStars to develop and organize a startup boot camp for Veterans.  The program was a great success, however, a theme arose that startled me. Multiple Veterans told me: “I know Boulder is a great place for startups, but I hear it is not that welcoming to Veterans.”

We already know the facts: Our country is in the midst of an obesity epidemic. Few American adults exercise enough, and that poor lifestyle choice is getting handed down to our children, who are getting fat at record levels. And all that obesity is affecting our health, causing heart disease, diabetes, and untold other health consequences. But what if the effects aren’t only mental?

This new infographic, from OnlineCollegeCourses.com points out that exercise has some great benefits for not just how our body works, but how our brains work, too. It’s clearly important for kids, who need all the brain power they can get for school, but it’s equally important for adults: A fit worker is a fast, efficient worker.

The Securities and Exchange Commission, which governs investing and trading stocks, is proposing an update that will enable crowdfunders to more easily sell shares in their companies.

Currently, entrepreneurs starting a company can crowdfund, but only by offering products or services in exchange for contributions. That’s due to an SEC rule that forbids the marketing of “private securities,” Econ 101 for shares that do not trade on a public exchange, such as the NASDAQ or NYSE.

Previous estimates about the total mass of all life on our planet have to be reduced by about one third. This is the result of a study by a German-US science team published in the current online issue of “Proceedings of the National Academy of Science (PNAS).

According to previous estimates about one thousand billion tons of carbon are stored in living organisms, of which 30% in single-cell microbes in the ocean floor and 55 % reside in land plants. The science team around Dr. Jens Kallmeyer of the GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences and University of Potsdam has now revised this number: Instead of 300 billion tons of carbon there are only about 4 billion tons stored in subseafloor microbes. This reduces the total amount of carbon stored in living organisms by about one third.

AUTM released highlights from its comprehensive AUTM Licensing Activity Survey Summary: FY2011, which will be published later this year. The U.S. highlights reveal that, despite continuing difficult economic conditions, university and research institute licensing and start-up activity remained strong. The number of start-ups formed increased 3% over the previous year, and the number of start-ups remaining operational increased 7%. The University of California System had 48 start-ups in 2011, followed by the University of Illinois Chicago/Urbana, with 21.

In addition, the number of licenses and options executed increased 14% and 7%, respectively, and there was a 24% increase in deals with established small companies. In 2011, the UC System executed 292 licenses and options, followed by the University of Washington/Washington Research Foundation at 194. Fifteen AUTM U.S. member universities executed 100 or more licenses last year.

I think we're at the start of a major shift in the way technology startups are funded.

Current Trends

The two major factors that will drive the change are:

1) Less demand for venture capital

There are a few reasons for this. First, open-source technology, cloud computing, and online distribution have made it cheaper than ever to build a product and get customers.

Your management style must flex to accommodate both the thinkers and the feelers in your office--even if their approaches to work are worlds apart.

Your success--and fulfillment--as a manager is neatly encased in one bite-sized nugget:

Be who you are, just flex your style to manage others.

Flexing your style means being versatile in how you lead, communicate, and motivate. A tough approach propels one employee; mild-mannered encouragement inspires another. Being flexible requires proficiency in a range of techniques, to draw upon as needed.

The fundamental good news: BDC clients are continuing to show resilience through difficult economic times.

Our clients, the entrepreneurs who are creating and growing businesses in Canada, strengthened their financial positions in fiscal 2012. More than 16,000 entrepreneurs benefited from our new financing and consulting services to help them invest in information and communication technologies. We are serving almost 28,000 entrepreneurs across Canada.

BECAUSE IF APPLE CAN’T FIGURE OUT IPAD TYPING, WE’RE GOING TO TAKE SOME EXTREME MEASURES.

Some say typewriters ruined writing, making it too impulsive. Others insist the word processor really did it in, making it too editable (and thereby even more impulsive). But as a writer, for whatever my flimsy badge be worth, I think it’s pretty clear that the iPad (and iPhone) ruined writing, as every ducking word that I type comes out wrong.

So maybe it’s fitting that Austin Yang designed the iTypewriter--a real, functioning typewriter that strikes its hammers right against the iPad’s Gorilla Glass keyboard instead of paper.

BOWLING GREEN, Ky. – Kentucky’s entrepreneurial community received a boost today with the unveiling of an expanded and rebranded program designed to provide free business services to innovative start-up companies. Enhanced with a new name, logo, focus and expanded locations, the Kentucky Innovation Network was unveiled by Governor Steve Beshear today at the Western Kentucky Innovation and Commercialization Center.

A program of the Cabinet for Economic Development, the Kentucky Innovation Network now provides business assistance from 13 locations across the state, including its newest Innovation and Commercialization Center (ICC) in London and three former Innovation Center offices that have been upgraded to full-service ICCs. Additionally, clients will have greater access to the expertise and assets at all locations, rather than just the resources of their local ICC.

Manufacturing has been driving the recent — albeit tenuous — economic recovery in the U.S. Yet maintaining and strengthening the nation’s manufacturing competitiveness in the global market will require tremendous planning, effort and focused financial investment in four key areas, a new study says.

Overall, manufacturing has been a relative bright spot for the United States economy during the recovery. Until this summer, the sector had expanded for 34 months in a row. However, for the first time since July 2009, U.S. manufacturing contracted in June and then again in July. After an extremely strong start to 2012, manufacturing growth has halted nearly completely.

The theme of the first day of the Republican National Convention was "We Built It," a clever riff on a distorted quote by President Obama. It served as an epigraph for stories and speeches about entrepreneurs who took a risk and created a lasting small business.

To a large extent, the debate between Democrats and Republicans is a debate not just about whether entrepreneurs "built that" but what role government should play in getting more entrepreneurs taking risks and building companies.

Starting a business is not for everyone. You need a strong constitution and the ability to face failure. Because if statistics are any guide, you will likely fail.

But the web makes it easier for first-time entrepreneurs to tap into that spirit of risk. What do these go-getters have in common? They likely started a “business” in childhood (a lemonade stand, a paper route, etc.). They’ve likely used their own money to fund their dreams (and are likely to have maxed-out credit cards, as a result). And they are less averse to risk than the average human.

Check out the launch calendar now!

The calendar

Visit the inaugural Baltimore Innovation Week site and calendar, featuring our 20 initial partner events. How are you getting involved in the first ever open-calendar of events celebrating technology and innovation in and around Baltimore?

• Organize an event: Read our Organizer Guide to see how easy it is to get involved and let us know at info (at) technicallybaltimore.com

• Sponsor the week: Sponsorship opportunities to help support the week, including defraying some logistical costs, are available with details here.

We'll see you in less than a month! 

A new study by researchers from The Johns Hopkins University and The National Aquarium shows that wild dolphins have higher levels of mercury than their captive cousins, suggesting that mercury pollution in the oceans is a continuing problem.

The captive animals were fed a controlled diet, while the wild mammals dined on marine life that may carry more of the toxic metal.

Sure, you know that you must sell. Deep in your heart of hearts though you despise it. You know that making sales is the only way to increase your revenue, build up your company and, well, stay in business. You have heard of the results others get. You know that selling works.

But, for some reason, it’s not working for you.

You work hard researching and contacting prospects. You do your best to interest them with your work during a sales presentation. Hell, you even follow up, which is not something many small business owners would do.  But you still don’t make sales. At least not as many as you would like. You do everything by the book but you get no results. And, the sales that you make, well, sometimes they feel kind of accidental. Like as if they just happened, as if you were simply in the right place at the right time.

In his new book, Aisle50 cofounder Christopher Steiner counts the (many, many) ways digits have come to dominate. "If you look at who has the biggest opportunity in society right now," he says, "it’s developers."

When Christopher Steiner, the 35-year-old cofounder of Aisle50, a Y Combinator startup offering online grocery deals, set out to write the book Automate This: How Algorithms Came to Rule Our World, (out tomorrow) he’d planned to focus solely on Wall Street. “There were a ton of good stories and then the Flash Crash happened. There was a lot to tell,” says Steiner. “But at some point I thought ‘Do people really care about the 13 different electronic training networks that were going on in the 1990’s?’” Instead the former technology journalist expanded his research to explore how the power of algorithms has spread far beyond Wall Street and now touches all of us--starting with today’s young innovators.

You can have it all. It just won't all be perfect.

After years of observing individual struggles to achieve work-life balance — and of enlightened companies to provide it — I've concluded that one major hurdle is artificial images of perfection. Certainly institutional structures don't make it easy to balance work and the rest of life. This is especially true in the U.S., where vacations are short, sabbaticals are rare, school schedules don't align with office hours, and working parents cobble together their own costly support systems. But in addition, American culture holds up myths of perfection — the perfect body, the perfect job, the perfect child, the perfect lawn — that consume time, money, and attention. This plagues everyone, but especially women who are candidates for high-powered careers.

A look at how often speakers at the Republican National Convention have used certain words and phrases so far, based on an analysis of transcripts from the Federal News Service.

Where are the words.......Entrpreneurship, Innovation, Creativity and Science and Technology?????????