The world is changing and tech is changing with it. Over the next 10 years the global tech market will be completely redefined as people’s values and expectations evolve.

These new expectations and values will shaped by global economics, technology itself, and social change. How this change takes place will be defined by what people value enough to pay for, how their values are changing, and how technology and service providers can respond to this profitably.

Research company Gartner has identified 10 big trends for the next decade that will change the way we all view tech.

The excitement evoked by the word ‘entrepreneurship’ too often drains away when the business leaders of tomorrow start trying to turn their ‘big idea’ into reality. Along with challenges around securing funding, building a client base and finding skilled staff, the challenges around setting up the essential IT organs required for running a healthy and secure small business is possibly one of most daunting prospects.

Beyond a great idea, two things drive successful startups: speed to market and keeping the burn rate to a minimum. The cloud can help startups do both and is quickly proving a competitive advantage. By freeing up valuable time and capital, the cloud can help fast-track a great idea into a successful business. Entrepreneurs need to spend as much time and focus as possible providing early life-support for the business, not becoming technology support agents. IT solutions should be fast, easy and agile thereby lending that extra level of professionalism at inception.

Twitter announced an internal patent agreement on Tuesday that it says will empower designers and engineers — as well as hopefully begin a movement to quell the tech world’s rash of patent infringement lawsuits.

Publicly revealed in a blog post and dubbed the Innovator’s Patent Agreement (IPA), the policy pledges that Twitter will not pursue offensive litigation over patents without the consent of the employees who created them.

Last November, 12 startups presented to hundreds of investors and journalists at TechStars NYC Demo Day.

Six months later, some are alive and well. Others have lost co-founders. One has died.

This is a continuation of a discussion originally started here, in a piece titled, “Fear Factor 101: Is Fear a Factor?”  So let’s proceed by picking up where we left off.

The fact of the matter is that the lessons are usually in the failures.  Bill Gates himself said that success is a lousy teacher.  Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m not suggesting you look to fail for the sake of learning lessons.  The failures will come along the way to success in business and in life so IF you want to start, build, or grow a business, just be prepared for some failures along the way.

The European Union has bet big on innovation as a source for growth, but on the ground, the finances of many regional research agencies and competitiveness clusters are endangered by conflicting public finance rules. EurActiv France reports.

France has long provided significant public support to joint projects for small and medium enterprises (called “collective actions”) to encourage their research and business, EurActiv.fr reports.

This can include the financing of competitive clusters (see background), contacts with potential investors, or facilitating exports.

Is it true that left-handed people are smarter than right-handed people?

Matthew Robison, Concord, N.H.

Chris McManus, professor of psychology and medical education at University College London, responds:

If by intelligent you mean someone who performs better on IQ tests, the simple answer is no. Studies in the U.K., U.S. and Australia have revealed that left-handed people differ from right-handers by only one IQ point, which is not noteworthy.

Biotechnologists are in the tomorrow business. They strive to innovate, invent, and make progress. They must; survival depends on it. Biotechnologists are future-oriented.

Yet, biotechnologists are also steeped in history. They swim in the past, and strive constantly to remember it. They must; survival depends on it. Biotechnologists are history-oriented.

Is there a corporate leader who doesn't extol the virtues of innovation these days? Yet if innovation is so important, why do so many companies have so much trouble with it?

The reflexive response is that it is a human capital problem — that is, that most people just don't have what it takes to successfully innovate. I reject that view. Academic research in fact shows that almost anyone can become a competent innovator (with sufficient practice). I've seen countless examples of ordinary individuals displaying the creativity, ingenuity, and perseverance of the world's great innovators.

One of the oldest, and often most contested, debates in the world of entrepreneurship research concerns the most basic definition of the field: what, exactly, is meant by the term entrepreneur? In its original use by Jean-Baptiste Say, it was someone who undertook economic activities and capitalized on arbitrage opportunities. Joseph Schumpeter ushered in the modern way in which people typically use the term by equating it with newness--new products, services, combinations, business models, etc. Israel Kirzner saw entrepreneurs as those who targeted and eliminated disequilibria in the economy (for Schumpeter, entrepreneurs created those disequilibria).

By now, however, the word has come to be so overused as to potentially lose a great deal of meaning. Those who navigate the world of new technology companies that receive venture capital or angel money prefer "startup" to entrepreneur, or sometimes simply "venture." This often connotes a company that is aiming for scale or growth from day one. You can find "Startup (Anything)" these days, it seems, all over the world. A related term that has gained currency is "founder," used to distinguish individuals/teams and their ideas or businesses. And, of course, there is the constant tension between those who use "entrepreneur" to refer to small businesses that stay small and those who refer to small businesses that grow quickly or to larger sizes. On these points, Erik Hurst and Ben Pugsley delivered a useful discussion and taxonomy in their paper on the heterogeneity of the world of small business.

I’m always looking for evidence of early startup characteristics that might be predictors of long-term success. Every investor has his own list, usually based on his own very small sample, or simply his gut feeling. Of course, we would all like to have a magic list based on more definitive tracking of many real startups over time.

In that context, I recently came across an old study of 27 startups featured in Inc’s annual “Anatomies of a Start-up,” done for “The Journal of Business Venturing,” and published by George Gendron in Inc Magazine. As it turned out, 17 of the 27 companies were still in business seven years later, which is at least double that of other studies.

Brad Feld visited Los Angeles this past week. I always enjoy spending time with Brad as the antidote to the eco chamber. He is a unique human being with original thoughts & ideas and very limited concern for having to fit into other people’s narratives.

And I’ve always remembered a quote from high school, “Non Conformity is the Highest Form of Social Attainment.” That always stuck with me. That seems very Brad to me. It’s what I strive to.

We threw a Launchpad LA dinner to bring the community together as we tend to do 6-10 times a year. Brad was our guest of honor.

With the job market extremely tight, even the small stuff counts, especially when you’re on a job interview. That’s why it’s so important not to say or do the wrong things, since that first impression could end up being the last one.

With that in mind, here are seven deadly sins of job interviewing.

1. Don’t Be Late To the Interview

Even if you car broke down or the subway derailed, do everything you can to get to that job interview on time.

Apple‘s amazing increase in value is more than just a “rah-rah” story for a turnaround.  Fundamentally, Apple is telling everyone – globally – that there has been a tectonic shift in markets. And if leaders don’t understand this shift, and incorporate it into their strategy and tactics, their organizations are going to have a very difficult future.

Recently Apple’s value peaked at $600B.  Yes, that is an astounding number, for it reflects not only 50% greater value than the oil giant Exxon/Mobil (~$390B), but more than the entire value of the stock markets in Spain, Greece and Portugal combined!

Tomorrow, April 17th, marks the release of Creating Innovators: The Making of Young People Who Will Change the World by author Tony Wagner.  Please watch for upcoming Interview with the author and also a Video Presentation from collaborator-filmmaker Robert A. Compton on this site. Book Excerpt –

I am struck by the interrelationship and overlap between lists of skills identified in the two articles quoted above and what Google looks for in its employees. The “DNA” of innovators might be considered a set of skills that are essential elements in design thinking. One cannot have empathy without having practiced the skills of listening and observing. And integrative thinking begins with the ability to ask good questions and to make associations. There is also a kinship between collaboration and networking. And what all three lists have in common is the importance of experimenting — an activity that, at its root, requires a kind of optimism, a belief that through trial and error a deeper understanding and better approaches can be discovered.

IBM Chairman Sam Palmisano disrupted his industry, and like any good executive, he did it because he knows how to lead.

One of the most difficult parts of leadership is taking a step back and listening.

In an article for McKinsey Quarterly, Amgen's CEO Kevin Sharer talks about how he was a terrible listener until Palmisano convinced him to change...

Intelligence, as measured by IQ tests, is at least 50 percent inheritable and positively correlated with better socioeconomic outcomes in education, income, health, and crime. It may seem obvious that you want your kids to be smarter. Satoshi Kanazawa makes an intriguing point in his book The Intelligence Paradox that it is not so simple:

Yes, intelligent people make better physicians, astronauts, better scientists, and better violinists, because all these pursuits are evolutionarily novel.  But these are all the unimportant things in life...They do not make better friends, they do not make better spouses and partners, and they do not make better parents, precisely because these are things our ancestors have done for hundreds of thousands of years on the African savanna.

The arrival of eLife, a new open access journal, together with new science networking sites and new metrics to measure the impact of research publications may force the pace of change facing the business of scientific and academic publishing. We may be witnessing a tipping point in collaboration, faster access and new opportunities.

Innovation projects are said to fail 90% of the time. Why is this? Part of the answer lies in the special “innovation teams” who are mandated with finding breakthrough growth in large corporations. Setting these teams up for success is vital, yet corporations often fail when doing this. This article provides a collection of ten tips that serve as a talent management roadmap for growth companies in search of high-performance teams that deliver.

Policy makers love young high growth companies for their job creating capabilities. However, they are often quite naïve about how rare these companies actually are.

According to the Organization of Economic Development and Cooperation (OECD) publication, Entrepreneurship at a Glance 2011, less than one percent of companies with ten or more employees are gazelles – employers that have been in operation for no more than five years with ten or more employees that increase employment by 20 percent per year or more for three years.