Beloit College marks the start of new academic years by releasing its annual "mindset list" -- helping academics understand that their newest students didn't experience (except maybe from reading on Wikipedia) that may have shaped their professors. Some highlights of the new list, released today:

For the entering class, most born in 1994:

• Kurt Cobain, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, Richard Nixon and John Wayne Gacy have always been dead. 
• They have always lived in cyberspace, addicted to a new generation of “electronic narcotics.” 
• If they miss "The Daily Show," they can always get their news on YouTube.

QUESTION: WHAT IS ONE HIGH-LEVEL TECH TREND THAT NON-TECH COMPANIES ARE USING TO SUCCESSFULLY TAKE THEIR BUSINESS TO THE NEXT LEVEL?

The marketing automation software industry has doubled each year the last 3 years, and is set to double again in 2012. Companies like Hubspot, Marketo, Automize, Infusion are really penetrating the "non-tech" local company markets to help them automate their digital marketing. As more companies come online, they'll learn the ropes and find ways to automate some of those marketing tasks."

- Trevor Mauch | CEO (Chief Entrepreneurial Officer), Automize, LLC

The world has caught crowdfunding fever.

Not a day goes by that I don’t get pitched to cover another niche portal or platform for crowdfunding publishing, independent TV shows, farmland investing, small business financing, or charity. The overarching idea behind all of them — providing worthy projects and businesses with otherwise unavailable access to capital  – is a noble one. But, for investors and entrepreneurs alike, the landscape is bloated and overwhelming.

The babies are growing up.

The Fitzsimons Redevelopment Authority is celebrating the move of four startup companies from the Bioscience Park Center "incubator" to its new wing known as the "accelerator."

The four biotech companies — Mitomics USA, Greffex Inc., Touch of Life Technologies and Light Labs — are among 39 firms that have been housed in Bioscience Park Center. They have run out of room and are graduating to the $8 million, three-story, 37,000-square-foot expansion, taking up most of that space. The new facility already is 78 percent leased.

"It's a nice problem to have when you haven't even opened your new building yet and you could potentially now be limited in space again," said the authority's new president and chief executive, Steve VanNurden.

MIT students and alumni have a new place to turn great ideas into promising business startups. This summer some 40 teams, all involving at least one MIT student, tapped into the Beehive Cooperative, MIT’s newest and largest startup accelerator.

This Trust Center for MIT Entrepreneurship initiative provides a dynamic and supportive environment for early-stage companies. The heart of the hive is 5,000 square feet in E52, the site of office space and work tables, plus the buzz of brainstorming sessions, guest lectures, advice, and camaraderie. Budding companies include efforts to develop art works that generate solar energy, a twitter-like Q&A platform for management issues, and a universal design watch band attractive to people with and without vision problems.

You arrive at the airport two hours early, check your bag, get through security, take out your laptop and liquids — the process can be nightmarish and stressful. It’s time for a major (good) shakeup in the travel industry.

Could a startup called Surf Air be the ticket?

Founded by Eyerly brothers Wade and Dave, Surf Air offers subscription-based air travel on private planes. “We’re trying to provide access to private planes to folks who otherwise wouldn’t have had it,” Wade says.

This is one of the best episodes of This Week in VC for a long time. I had the chance to speak with Andrew Siegel who runs corp dev & strategy for Condé Nast (aka Advance Publications).

In case you don’t know, they are one of the biggest media companies in the world. They are best known for their magazine titles such as The New Yorker, Wired, Vanity Fair and Vogue.

But did you also know that they are a large cable operator? That they own a large piece of The Discovery Network? That they own Reddit? Who knew?

If you are an entrepreneur today, and not using social media to promote your business, you are missing out on a huge opportunity. But, contrary to what most people preach, it isn’t entirely free. Most social media outlets don’t require a subscription charge, but they certainly require an investment – in people, in technology, your reputation, and your time.

There are hundreds of consultants out there who will take your money for guidance in this area, but I recommend that you start with some free resources on the Internet, or one of the many recent books on this topic. One I read a while back, “How to Make Money with Social Media” by Jamie Turner and Reshma Shah, Ph.D., hits all the right points from my perspective:

If you're running a venture-backed startup, don't expect to be able to set a high salary for yourself.  One founder who's getting ready to quit his job and raise a $500,000 seed round asked on Quora: "Is a $100K salary too much for an angel/VC-backed startup co-founder?" He says his co-founder, who's a software engineer with a great resume, "won't accept less than a $100K salary."

We are excited to announce that MySmark has been chosen as a Global Hot 100 innovation by The World Summit on Innovation and Entrepreneurship (THEWSIE), and is invited to participate to its upcoming meeting in Boston, Massachusetts – America’s leading innovation city, on September 26-28, 2012.

“We are proud to announce the inclusion of MySmark team as one of the World Summit’s Global Hot Enterprises transforming the future of marketing, contributing to the advancement of the consumer experience in the global markets.” said Sam Hamdan, CEO of Tranzishen, and the Chairman and Chief Architect of The World Summit.

Governor Andrew M. Cuomo today hosted the Regional Economic Development Councils to hear from Co-Chairs on the economic successes to date that have occurred as a result of the Regional Council planning which has transformed the way New York invests in economic development and creates jobs. Currently, all 739 projects that are receiving state funds are underway and more than 75 percent have already reached their first milestone. The meeting featured progress updates from each of the 10 regions on implementing the strategic plans and job-creating projects. The meeting also provided a preview of regional economic development planning for the coming year.  

During the meeting, the Governor made announcements on key programs and new initiatives that will support the next round of the Regional Councils and rebuild New York’s economy, including the Connect NY Program which will provide $25 million in grants to bring high speed Internet access to unserved communities throughout the state.

Tim Cook is Silicon Valley’s highest paid CEO, but you already knew that. What do other high profile execs earn?

Personal finance and credit service comparison company, NerdWallet, created a tool that shows the compensation of the highest paid executive for each of the S&P 500 companies. We delved into the data for 2011 and ranked the highest earners for some of the more well known US tech companies.

The web is packed with some of the greatest educational material on entrepreneurship and enterprise, material that didn’t exist a decade ago and is now within the mouse-click reach of vast swaths of humanity. Are we taking advantage of it?

Doug French and I set out to collect the top 15 videos on entrepreneurship — a totally subjective list, of course, but these are the ones we have found most compelling. Watching all of these provides a great overview of the contribution that enterprise makes to the quality of life.

There’s a new type of business. It's called social entrepreneurship. It's a business that does not put profit and income as prime concerns. Instead, it is geared toward social change and development. More people are engaging in this endeavor after realizing its practicality and effect in general.   Because of this, social entrepreneurship is projected to become more popular in the coming years.

Definition of Social Entrepreneurship

University of Oxford’s Centre for Social Entrepreneurship provides the following definition:

“Social Entrepreneurship is the product of individuals, organizations, and networks that challenge conventional structures causing inadequate provision or unequal distribution of social and environmental goods by addressing these failures and identifying new opportunities for better alternatives.”

A team from the company deCode Genetics reports today in the journal Nature that a father's age determines how many new DNA mutations a child inherits, and that this may explain a recent rise in the number of children being diagnosed with autism.

The chance substitution of one DNA letter for another—a mutation—is what allows bacteria to become resistant to drugs and, over the stretch of ages, the human species to evolve. Such changes can be dangerous in the short term, however, as they may disrupt the function of genes, including those involved in cognition.

The Center for Integration of Medicine and Innovative Technology (CIMIT®) and Induct Software™ AS (Induct), “The Open Innovation Company™,” today announced the launch of “CIMIT CoLab™” (CoLab). Focused on the unique needs of healthcare institutions and non-profits, CoLab is a secure, cloud-based platform that enables an institution to encourage, manage and measure innovation. CoLab provides a vehicle to connect the needs of healthcare institutions, universities, medical foundations, and other non-profits with the vast experience, insight and innovative talents of their staff, faculty, industry partners, advisors, and patients/families within or beyond their physical and/or virtual borders to accelerate and maximize the impact of innovations. Additional information about CoLab is available at http://cimit.org/CoLab.html.

The new Centre for Creativity, Regulation, Enterprise and Technology (CREATe), led by the University of Glasgow, will examine a range of issues relating to digitisation, intellectual property issues and the growing creative economy. It will be funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) and Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC). NESTA, the Intellectual Property Office (IPO) and the Technology Strategy Board will also be involved, although will not be providing funding.

The UK has probably the largest creative sector in the world as a percentage of gross domestic profit (GDP), accounting for over 6% of the country's overall economy and contributing around £60 billion per year. CREATe will, according to its founders, address the challenges related to building a business, cultural and regulatory infrastructure to support and encourage those businesses, sparking innovation and allowing the economy to capitalise on new revenue streams.

Ever been to a rumble? It is not a workshop…not a conference…certainly not a convention. Not even ‘Summit’ is an adequate term. It is a happening – when the best in the world interact for mutual advantage. It could be called an Olympics; but many would note the competition between countries. In the end, it is what they do TOGETHER to advance the vision of what might be possible. It IS an Olympics where the best and brightest are brought together to create a fusion to catapult forward the innovation capability of the world.  

Held under the theme, "The New, Smarter Innovation Economy", and under the support of OECD, Inter-American Development Bank and many multinationals, the Summit will share the world’s most meaningful ideas, designs, enterprises, and innovations transforming the future of technology, communication, health, education, lifestyle, energy, and cities. Home to one of the world’s top innovation ecosystems, Boston will welcome the World Summit, thereby staging the world’s most remarkable living lab of dreamers, doers, and drivers from 50 nations.

According to a new policy announced this week (August 20) by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), scientists receiving more than $1 million in direct NIH grant funds each year will be more carefully reviewed when they submit new proposals. The policy is a variation on one instituted in May that initiated an additional layer of review for researchers with $1.5 million or more in total annual funding. This extra scrutiny is designed to avoid overlap from ongoing research and stretch the flat NIH budget as far as possible.