The idea: People who know people at the company they're applying to get hired more often than people who don't.

JIBE, an online social recruiting business, helps you find those connections and attach them along with your cover letter and resume when you apply for jobs online.

Here's how it works:

* JIBE blasts out current openings for businesses that partner with them on a bunch of job boards (partners include big firms like Bank of America and small startups like SecondMarket)

* The job seeker clicks on the opening and fills out the application.

* Before the application can be submitted, the user must login to Facebook and LinkedIn.

The world is changing fast, and schools are scrambling to keep up by offering new, innovative majors.

With new majors comes the death of old ones. The Chronicle of Higher Education compared the academic fields four year colleges were offering in 1971 to those offered in 2006, and some of the once-notable majors seem to be disappearing quickly.

The literature, math, and science fields have been hit the worst.

When is an office not just an office?

When you wonder if the ceiling is the wall and the wall is the floor.

Or when you are sitting IN a desk designed for a more intimate view of your co-workers.

These are just two examples of offices that will make you reconsider your choice of work space.

In Silicon Valley, every serious startup has a founders' story.

In Christmas of 2008, Jack Dorsey, the creator and chairman of Twitter, was visiting his parents in St. Louis. At the time, he was at loose ends. Twitter had five million users, but in October he had been replaced as chief executive by his better-known cofounder Evan Williams, who, rich from the sale of an earlier company to Google, had funded the original development of the communications network. Dorsey was wondering what he should do next. He felt it should be something big and complex. The economy was in a recession, but that was the best time to begin a new venture, he believed. "Everything has been cleared away and you can start fresh," he explains.

In St. Louis, Dorsey came across Jim McKelvey, a serial entrepreneur he knew. "Jim was my first technology boss," says Dorsey, who at 15 had written CD-ROM software for McKelvey. "We'd not spoken in years, and I had to tell him what Twitter was, but we immediately decided that we wanted to work together again. We didn't know what. But we spoke every week. One day in February he called me and said, 'I've just lost a $3,000 sale because I couldn't accept credit cards.'"

Pablo Picasso once famously quipped, "Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up."

There is a relatively new phenomenon that, truth be told, started decades ago, as phenomena often do -- it's called "creativity and aging." A landmark study by researcher Gene Cohen M.D., who passed away this past year, proves that older people who engage in arts programs taught by professional artists show improved health -- fewer doctor visits, reduced medication usage, overall improvements in physical and mental health. The programs studied drew upon a range of art and cultural disciplines, such as pai

This past Friday I was surrounded by entrepreneurship education leaders from all sectors the Future of Entrepreneurship Education Summit, a gathering held at the University of Central Florida where actors of our entrepreneurship ecosystem met alongside established entrepreneurship educators to discuss current trends and ideas to nourish the entrepreneurship mindset.

The summit was typical in as much as it focused on sharing ideas. However, it was different from others in that it brought together both the traditional players in entrepreneurship education with some of those driving a few of the latest grassroots initiatives aimed at supporting aspiring growth entrepreneurs. The breadth of stakeholders is natural. As the Kauffman Panel on Entrepreneurship Curriculum in Higher Education concluded in a recent report, a canon or single approach to entrepreneurship education is unrealistic given the wide array of educational models, practices and institutional types. But it also made sense for another reason. It was clear to me that the older attendees—such as myself—had much to learn from the younger thinkers in the room as to what interventions and help are necessary to have impact.

You don’t need to invent an innovative product to be a real entrepreneur. Self-employed services specialists are just as important, and are a growing part of this new “age of the entrepreneur” that I discussed last week. Many of these new entrepreneurs were regular employees a few years ago, focused on a skill specialty. They are not the generalists required for new product startups.

Some specialists have existed for some time with titles like business consultant, independent contractor, or freelancer. But these titles have lost their credibility and aren’t even descriptive of the roles. I propose we standardize on the “specialist” title, which is much more meaningful and focused, and can be applied to almost any role. Here are a few examples:

* Marketing specialists. As your business starts up, you need marketing programs, Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Search Engine Marketing (SEM), a modern “pull” strategy based on social networks, and lead generation. This world changes rapidly and needs a highly focused specialist to keep up.

* Administrative specialists. These were once called secretaries, who looked forward to a long career with a single company, starting in the typing pool, with careers often paralleling top executives. Now some never see the people they support, but are experts on the technology involved.

In many ways, the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT) is a classic European compromise. What started out as an effort to build an innovation power­house to rival the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge has been transformed by years of political wrangling into a gossamer web of academic and industry partnerships.

But some research policy-makers are pinning their hopes on the EIT as a cornerstone of the big push by the European Union (EU)to commercialize research and boost industry research and development (R&D) spending. Last week, after a long and painful gestation, the last piece of the EIT fell into place as its governing board gave the green light to a third and final Knowledge and Innovation Community (KIC).

When the economy is down, times are difficult for all of us. History has shown that it is often the small businesses that end up bringing the economy back up to speed, but starting a business can prove to be difficult. What type of business should you start? How do you get the funding? These are all great questions. The good news is that some of the biggest businesses in Corporate America were started during recessionary times. Plus, you benefit from lower rent and utility payments and reduced salaries. Everything is a little less expensive in troubled times. There are, in fact, some solid business ideas that work well in a down economy. These recession proof business ideas allow you to start a business that could thrive even when most markets are down. Here are four solid business ideas that will do very well in recessionary times:

1. Bulk Foods

When times get difficult, people start growing more concerned about food than they do about some of the more flashy gadgets they are typically interested in. Families can save a great deal of money when the buy bulk foods rather than individual, prepackaged, pre-produced foods. Bulk foods that a family can buy in large quantities and use for a long time tend to sell well when the markets are down. As recession proof business ideas go, getting into the bulk foods industry may be the way to go.

New research buildings at USU and U of U open up opportunities for growth
One of the major goals of the USTAR initiative, as set forth in legislation passed in 2006, was to build two new state-of-the-art research facilities. The building at USU was completed on time, within budget. The U of U building is on schedule and within budget. Both facilities strive for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Gold Certification and will be among the most sustainable, energy-efficient research centers in the nation.

Some 800 construction workers were employed in the second half of 2010 working on the two USTAR construction projects.

As technology entrepreneurs develop their businesses, it is common to encounter the “valley of death” – a period early in the development of a company when sales have not yet begun but capital is desperately needed to build the business. Companies have to traverse this valley of death to reach the stage when sales begin and institutional investors feel confident injecting the major growth capital funds required.

For some types of entrepreneurial companies – especially those engaged in the development of new chemicals, polymers, materials, energy products or bio-based products – there is another significant hurdle to overcome. These companies need to be able to prove that their innovations will scale-up from the bench to the manufacturing plant. This stage of development requires access to specialized pilot plants and scale-up technologies – expensive infrastructure required to prove that the chemicals or materials can be produced cost-effectively in volume.

So what are entrepreneurs to do when they reach this piloting and scale-up phase? Building one’s own pilot-plant is a daunting, time consuming and very expensive task. Raising the capital for this constitutes part of the valley of death for these companies. One option is to approach contract manufacturers (called toll manufacturers in the chemicals industry), but this again poses challenges since toll manufacturers seldom want to produce small batches of an experimental chemical, polymer or material and those who will charge a high price for accessing their facilities, plus you may have to wait in line.

Purdue University is looking to take a bite out of the Big Apple.

The office of New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg has asked the university to consider developing a research campus in the city focused on applied science, engineering and commercialization.

If successful, in just a few years Purdue could have a presence in the most populous city in the country, offering graduate programs.

"New York City is apparently interested in something Indiana already has with Purdue -- a center for science and engineering innovation," Purdue President France Córdova said Monday during a Faculty Senate meeting on the West Lafayette campus. "Purdue is one of a select few institutions that New York City officials are talking to about creating a high-profile branch campus in New York City. There are potential benefits to Purdue and Indiana that could come from having a location in the global capital of financial and international affairs."

A newly created venture capital fund from Pittsburgh may be coming to Northeast Ohio — if it can hit its fundraising goal.

Corridor Venture Partners is in the process of raising capital for its first fund, and is targeting Cleveland due to the city’s abundance of healthcare investment opportunities, from medical devices to diagnostics to health IT.

The fund is aiming for an initial closing of $20 million and would look to add an office in Cleveland if it’s able to hit $50 million, co-founder Gary Glausser told the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. Corridor is in discussions with BioEnterprise, a Cleveland nonprofit that helps biomedical firms with business development.

Klout is the new Groupon. Everybody’s asking about Klout scores. We hear about Klout swag, Klout Kribs, and Klout parties. Every major blogger – perhaps to beef up their Klout score – is doing a story on… Klout.

And earlier this week, I saw a job seeker claiming he was denied an interview for a social media internship because his “Klout score was too low.” Then he asked, “Is there a way to game my Klout score?”

I admit I was/am confused. This Twitter account has been open just 2 months, he’s tweeted a total of 32 times to just 118 followers. And he somehow blames his failure to get an interview on some ever-changing score based on some always-modified algorithm that even its founders admit is “far from perfect”? And then he wants to “game” his score?

The role (and value) of ideas vs. execution continues to be a frequent topic of conversation at a time when demonstrating utility, proof of concept and potential returns are increasingly demanded – and expected. From entrepreneurs to creative minds to anyone working in and with knowledge capital – we’re expected to demonstrate potential and produce earlier and more quickly than ever. Many argue that execution is more important and valuable than the idea itself.

An article in Inc. offers some constructive advice for entrepreneurs on how to execute their great ideas. While the full article is worth the read, we’ve pulled and surmised some of the key suggestions. While there are likely as many different potential paths to executing a good ideas as there are good ideas, we appreciate these ideas for their constructive nature – applying some discipline and loose structure to the process of creativity and ideation can only contribute to a more well-thought out idea – that is likelier to be ‘bought’.

* Write your ideas down. Sort them, organize them, prioritize them against what you’re trying to achieve. Pick one, apply the below.

The probability of Muammar al-Qaddafi losing power in the rebellion is 75% on inTrade.

Although the country is in a state of war, the 68-year-old leader has held onto power for 41 years -- that is about two thirds of his life and the entire lifespan of most Libyans.

But then again Hosni Mubarak just fell after 30 years.

We looked up the world's longest serving leaders who are not monarchs.

Want your work to feel more fulfilling? Just do a little soul searching, says Dan Buettner of Psychology Today.

Specifically, ask yourself ten questions. "Examining the answers will help you to maximize the aspects of your job which contribute to overall workplace satisfaction," Buettner writes.

Here's what to ask:

* How is this work important?

* What can I contribute?

* What excites me?

* How can this work challenge me in an ongoing way?

* Would I do this work even if I didn't get paid?

* How does this address my passions?

Maybe it takes a little bit of crazy to be a CEO. Or at the very least, maybe it helps. After all, would you consider Steve Jobs completely ‘normal’? Or might you say he’s a touch overconfident? How about Bill Gates? Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg?

Timothy Simcoe, of Boston University’s School of Management, and Alberto Galasso, of the University of Toronto, set out to find out if there are any advantages to having an overconfident CEO. They found that firms with overconfident CEOs invested more in research and development, and were more innovative, than companies led by CEOs whose outlook was more realistic.

Every good technology company needs great people. The best companies invest time, money, and sweat equity into becoming world-class recruiting machines. But how far should you take your quest to build the world's greatest team? Is it fair game to hire employees from your friend's company? Will you still be friends?

First, what do I mean by "friends?" There are two relevant categories:

* Important business partners
* Friends

For this discussion, friends and important business partners are roughly the same.

02.21.2011– New York, NY (February 21) The Worldwide Investor Network (W.I.N.) -http://worldwidein.com, the only U.S-based investor network of accredited angel investors, venture capitalists, and corporate/institutional investors focused solely on helping international companies launch their businesses in the U.S., will host its first event on February 23rd in New York City. The event will feature a line-up of handpicked entrepreneurs presenting their companies’ strategic plans for expanding into the US market to a group of active investors.

Co-Founded by Larry Chaityn, the President of the New York Tri-State Chapters of The Keiretsu Forum (www.keiretsuforum.com), and Eyal Bino, CEO and Founder of BornGlobal (www.born-global.net), W.I.N ‘s monthly events will feature innovative international companies with a desire to expand to the U.S. market, becoming global players in their respective markets.