Whether or not there will be a “shake out” in the venture industry depends on how you define it. If it means that certain formerly prestigious VC firms will close up shop and wind down, then yes. If it means a sharp decline in the number of venture firms, then no.

I look to the hedge fund industry for an analogy of how an alternative asset class has dealt with turmoil. Back in 2006, my original thesis was that the hedge fund industry would begin to resemble a barbell (as measured by assets under management), with a bubbling cauldron of smaller start-up funds focused on alpha at small scale, while a group of large asset management titans with best-in-class compliance, control and reporting environments would reinforce their already strong positions. Firms in the middle would have a hard time, as they lack the resources to compete with the largest firms while having “alpha at scale” problems not felt by the smaller firms. While small firms have jumped to the mega-class and some larger firms have imploded, I believe my thesis has largely been borne out.

For its first few decades Silicon Valley was content flying under the radar of Washington politics. It wasn’t until Fairchild and Intel were almost bankrupted by Japanese semiconductor manufacturers in the early 1980’s that they formed Silicon Valley’s first lobbying group. Microsoft did not open a Washington office until 1995.

Fast forward to today. The words “startup,” “entrepreneur,” and “innovation” are used fast, loose and furious by both parties in Washington. Last week the White House announced Startup America, a public/private initiative to accelerate accelerate high-growth entrepreneurship in the U.S. by expanding startups access to capital (with two $1 billion programs); creating a national network of entrepreneurship education, commercializing federally-funded research and development programs and getting rid of tax and paperwork barriers for startups.

What’s not to like?

In his 2011 State of the Union Address a couple of weeks ago, President Obama talked about the importance of innovation to create the jobs and industries of the future. A few days later, the White House released a new innovation strategy as part of the President’s plan to “win” that future. This strategy said: “America’s future economic growth and international competitiveness depend on our capacity to innovate. We can create the jobs and industries of the future by doing what America does best – investing in the creativity and imagination of our people. To win the future, we must out-innovate, out-educate, and out-build the rest of the world.” A few days later the White House, in partnership with the Kauffman Foundation and Case Foundation, launched a Startup America initiative aimed at doing just this.

Early stage education technology startups can now apply for Startl's second annual accelerator program. The program offers ed-tech startups a three-month residency in New York City and an opportunity to work with the social venture Startl and the tech accelerator DreamIt Ventures.

The program involves mentorship from marketing, business development, brand building, and customer acquisition experts, all with a special emphasis on the education technology industry. There's no funding associated with the program but like most accelerators, it culminates in a pitch day where each team gets to present to potential investors.

AOL just bought Huffington Post for $315 million, All Things D reports.

Arianna Huffington will become AOL's editor in chief, in charge of "All Huffington Post and AOL Content, Including News, Tech, Women, Local, Multicultural, Entertainment, Video, Community, and More."

The price is $300 million in cash, $15 million of stock.

At first glance, this looks like a great buy. AOL will get a much-needed editorial voice, and another huge content portal -- this one with cachet among younger and more progressive readers.

The computer industry is fairly young compared to many other industries, but one of founding pioneer companies of the information age is now officially a century old.

IBM, or International Business Machines, has changed our world for the last 100 years. The business may now have many more innovators, but IBM still stands as one of the biggest and most respected firms.

Today, IBM may be the all-business company that makes cool machines that kick ass on Jeopardy, but it's done other lots of amazing, world-changing things. Just check out the retrospective videos below to see what we mean.

General Electric had an innovative way to come up with innovations related to the emerging "smart" electric grid: the company asked for ideas.

Last July, GE launched what it called an "ecomagination challenge," a competition in which startups and inventors were asked to present technologies that could help GE accelerate its development of products and services related to the smart grid. GE got 4,000 submissions. It gave $100,000 cash awards to five young companies and formed strategic partnerships with 12 others; all of them are expected to help GE's business in one way or another in such areas as energy storage, utility security, energy management software, and electric-vehicle charging services.

Every entrepreneur dreams of that sweet spot in the life of their business when it will reach critical mass, and they can focus more on scaling it than finding another investment round, or pumping in more cash. The challenge is how to recognize the point where the business is self-sustaining and stable, rather than spinning out of control at the slightest glitch.

In fact, in the last decade, the whole concept of a business critical mass has been sent into a tailspin. It used to be simple – when your business became cash-flow positive, it had achieved critical mass. Then came the advent of social media companies like Facebook and Twitter that declared a critical mass with no revenue, counting on their user base of millions of people to get them market values in the billions of dollars.

It is widely known that fruit contains antioxidants which may be beneficial to health. New research published in the open access journal Chemistry Central Journal demonstrates that chocolate is a rich source of antioxidants and contains more polyphenols and flavanols than fruit juice.

When researchers at the Hershey Center for Health & Nutrition™ compared the antioxidant activity in cocoa powder and fruit powders they found that, gram per gram, there was more antioxidant capacity, and a greater total flavanol content, in the cocoa powder.

Would-be Harvard entrepreneurs will be grouped around tables in an Allston building working on their business plans, while others teleconference with their engineering teams halfway across the world. In the same large room, community members will sit in on a lecture about intellectual property or work their way through business boot camp.

That’s the vision for the Harvard Innovation Lab — the university’s first dedicated business incubation center, which is set to open next fall in a building that formerly housed public television station WGBH Boston.

The University of Memphis has received a $1 million gift from Hilliard and Harriett Crews to create a business start-up facilitator and incubator in the former Masonic Lodge at Walker and Patterson near the main U of M campus. The Crews gift is half of the $2 million needed to plan and complete the renovations as well as to establish an early operations fund. The facility and programs will be called the Crews Ventures Lab (CVL). The operation will be managed by the FedEx Institute of Technology at the University.

In making the gift, Hilliard Crews said, “The Ventures Lab at the University of Memphis will provide a vibrant environment for promising researchers and local entrepreneurs to collaborate on projects with real-world applications. Harriett and I are proud to be engaged in the exciting research innovations and commercialization opportunities happening at the University of Memphis. We are confident the Ventures Lab will have a powerful and positive impact on Memphis and the entire region.”

When we first began introducing YouTern through social media, we worked with incredibly bright people to learn how best to use Facebook and Twitter to organically grow our start-up.

Those experts described the difference between the two social media platforms well:

* “On Facebook, you talk to those you already know; on Twitter, you find those you want to know.”
* “On Facebook, you talk to people… On Twitter you talk at people.”
* “On Twitter you sell content and opportunity. On Facebook you sell yourself.”

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) today announced an investment of up to $7 million in total funding through DOE's National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) to support the development and commercialization of emerging solar energy technologies.

The PV Technology Incubator program has the primary goal of advancing the timeline and commercial potential of new manufacturing processes and products with the potential for dramatic price improvements.

Many observers have argued that venture capitalists and business angels are biased against female entrepreneurs. Academics, however, have found those claims hard to substantiate. The main evidence for bias – that only a small fraction of entrepreneurs receiving venture capital and angel money are women – is unconvincing. Female entrepreneurs might find it difficult to tap these funding sources because women tend not to start the kinds of businesses that VCs and angels are looking to back, a pattern that statistics also show.

However, a recent paper by Lyda Bigelow and Robert Wuebker of the University of Utah provides some solid evidence that investors are biased against female entrepreneurs.

Popular Mechanics interviews Bill Nye the Science Guy on the state of US science education (Nye: "It's horrible."). He's anxious that science education ramps up too late ("Nearly every rocket scientist got interested in it before they were 10.") and, of course, that teachers are intimidated out of teaching the good science of evolution and other controversial subjects:

They're doing their job but they're under tremendous pressure. The 60 percent who are cautious--those are the people who are really up against it. They want to keep their job, and they love teaching science, and their children are really excited about it, and yet they've got some people insisting they can't teach the most fundamental idea in all of biology. There's the phrase "just a theory." Which shows you that I have failed. I'm a failure. When we have a theory in science, it's the greatest thing you can have. Relativity is a theory, and people test it every which way. They test it and test it and test it. Gravity is a theory. People have landed spacecraft on the moon within a few feet of accuracy because we understand gravity so well. People make flu vaccinations that stop people from getting sick. Farmers raise crops with science; they hybridize them and make them better with every generation. That's all evolution. Evolution is a theory, and it's a theory that you can test. We've tested evolution in many ways. You can't present good evidence that says evolution is not a fact.

A quick fyi for TED heads in our audience: Right here, you can find an online spreadsheet that lists 875 TEDTalks, with handy links to each individual video. This evolving Google doc will give you access to more than 265 hours of “riveting talks by remarkable people.” Because the page is updated on a regular basis, you’ll definitely want to bookmark it and keep tabs on the new additions.

A reader asks: My business is in an industry where sales people and software engineers are often recruited by competitors. How can I protect my company from being raided?

Answer: Employers use what are called restrictive covenants to protect trade secrets and prevent employees from unfairly stealing clients and/or information. Courts heavily scrutinize these covenants so it is imperative to have a seasoned attorney assist you with writing one that will be enforceable under the laws of the state where your company is located. (Just missing a few words can create tremendous grief for an employer.)

BANGALORE, India & PHILADELPHIA--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Knowledge@Wharton, the online research and business analysis journal of the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, and Wipro Technologies, a provider of transformational IT solutions, will conduct a global Innovation Tournament in 2011. Entries are being accepted via http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/events/innovationtournament2011 until March 7, 2011. The tournament will generate bold, creative ideas and solutions with measurable results in the areas of sustainability and customer-centric innovation. There is no entry fee.

Rajan Kohli, Chief Marketing Officer, Wipro Technologies said, “Wipro has always been at the forefront of innovation and we believe in encouraging any ideas that we think can help our customers do business better. We are pleased to partner with Knowledge@Wharton and believe that this platform will continue to help identify pioneering innovations that are certainly brilliant, but also pragmatic.”

In exchange for a modest $1.4 million investment by the state, at least 418 jobs came out of a program that aims to help young Florida companies grow.

That's only about $3,400 per job – or less than the cost of a weeklong Disney cruise to the Caribbean for a family of four.

Not bad when you consider the state has spent far more per job to recruit companies in recent years.

The program known as GrowFL is the state's first large-scale stab at economic gardening, the theory that jobs can be created by nurturing companies that are already here and poised to grow.