Lots of entrepreneurs would like to pick Chip Conley's brain. But when several dozen gathered in November to meet the founder of Joie de Vivre, a boutique hotel chain that he said had $220 million in revenue last year, their questions were not just about the nuts and bolts of running a company.

They also asked: How do you come out of the closet in your business? And how do you handle investors who might be uncomfortable with your vocal support of gay rights?

Conley, 49, who came out four years before he opened his first hotel, the Phoenix, in 1987, recounted steering such investors to the website of Kimpton Hotels, a competitor that promotes its support for gay employees.

Then he told them that one of Kimpton's biggest investors was a former Senate Republican leader, Bill Frist. That example, Conley recalled, was enough to ease the investors' concerns.

IBM is hoping its new smart metering system can help homeowners learn to use energy more wisely.

Working with energy consultant Hildebrand, Big Blue has embarked on a new project designed to let people view their energy consumption in the home. Hildebrand's monitoring technology analyzes real-time electricity usage, even for individual appliances, to show folks just how much juice they're grabbing.

In a 30-month research project geared specifically for the U.K. and Bulgaria, Hildebrand installed small energy monitors at different homes in five European cities--Birmingham, Bristol, and Manchester in the U.K., and Plovdiv and Ivanovo in Bulgaria. Using IBM's software, the homeowners view online information that displays their electricity use, figures out the cost, and compares it with usage by other people.

RSA Animate - Drive: The surprising truth about what motivates us

We have a lot of misconceptions when it comes to creativity. Not only it is a valuable tool in our personal development but it also can improve our life tremendously if it is properly understood. Let’s clarify some of the myths out there about creativity.

1. Only special talented people are creative.

While it is true that it seems like people like Mozart or Picasso are more creative then others, if looked at closer, their creative genius will reveal a lot of very hard work, rather then innate talent. Usually people, who demonstrate higher then average creative abilities, also work much harder then the average person.

LAST year was a fabulous one for entrepreneurs, at least according to the Kauffman Index of Entrepreneurial Activity released last month by the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation. “Rather than making history for its deep recession and record unemployment,” the foundation reported, “2009 might instead be remembered as the year business startups reached their highest level in 14 years — even exceeding the number of startups during the peak 1999-2000 technology boom.”

The Babson Entrepreneurship Ecosystem project has been established at Babson College to help societies around the world create the policies, structures, programs and climate that foster entrepreneurship. Daniel Isenberg, Professor of Management Practice at Babson Executive Education, is project director.

The project offers “rules for revolutionaries” that are down-to-earth guidelines for leaders who want to make a difference now by fostering greater levels of entrepreneurship. These rules are drawn from entrepreneurship experiences of over 2 dozen countries around the world, and will help the committed leader move his or her society to become more positive, vibrant, inclusive, and innovative.

The Federal Communications Commission on Tuesday released a survey that found widespread ignorance among broadband users about the speed at which they're sending and receiving data.

The survey, conducted by Abt/SRBI and Princeton Survey Research Associates, International during the period from April 19 to May 2, 2010, involved 3,005 adults, 1,742 of whom subscribed to broadband Internet services.

The House of Representatives has reauthorized an act that provides $84 billion in funding to help the United States stay competitive in technology and science.

On Friday, lawmakers passed the America Competes Reauthorization Act of 2010, or H.R. 5116, which allocates the money over five years to the National Science Foundation, the Department of Energy Office of Science, National Institute of Standards and Technology, and other organizations that conduct research and development in science and technology.

I have a problem with youth. Or to be more precise, I have a problem with society’s obsession around all things ‘youth’.

Take for example, Anthill’s 30under30 initiative, designed to “encourage and promote entrepreneurship among young Australians”.

Why has this particular demographic been singled out for recognition?

Alexander S. Szalay is a well-regarded astronomer, but he hasn't peered through a telescope in nearly a decade. Instead, the professor of physics and astronomy at the Johns Hopkins University learned how to write software code, build computer servers, and stitch millions of digital telescope images into a sweeping panorama of the universe.

Along the way, thanks to a friendship with a prominent computer scientist, he helped reinvent the way astronomy is studied, guiding it from a largely solo pursuit to a discipline in which sharing is the norm.

Psst! Want to pay £90 for a brand new, much enhanced iPhone with its own fold-out leather keyboard, built-in analogue TV set and slots for not one but two SIM cards? Or how about a shiny better-than-Nokia handset, containing an integrated heated coil that serves as your elegant cigarette lighter? Yup, if you want a cheap Vertu phone that incorporates Ferrari designs, or a pristine new iPad that runs Windows XP, our China contact, Tai-Pan, will sort you out. Just click on his website, shanzai.com, to survey the latest in not-quite-genuine brand-name electronics.

Sustainable development, economic growth, and peace and security cannot be achieved without gender equality, UN Deputy Secretary-General Asha-Rose Migiro said on Monday, citing evidence of the beneficial impact of women's empowerment.

"Numerous studies have found that companies with a more balanced representation of women and men in their top management teams considerably outperform those where such representation is low," she told the International Forum on the Role of Leadership in Promoting Gender Equality in Kigali, Rwanda, Martin Nesirky, the UN spokesman, told reporters here.

Globally recent times have been a roller-coaster in terms of economic stability. The world is still recovering from the crisis that started in the West while Europe is fighting it’s own battle and one would assume this may not be the best of times to start a new business or be an early stage startup. However, in the United States at least, figures would say otherwise.

A recent study published by National Association of Seed and Venture Funds (NASVF) and the Temple University Fox School of Business said the percentage of venture and angel funds focused on investing in seed stage companies has increased 40% from 2009. Some of their findings from the survey conducted include:

Last week, a young bottlenose dolphin named Merlin became the first of his species to join the growing number of enthusiasts using the Apple iPad. Dolphin research scientist, Jack Kassewitz of SpeakDolphin.com, introduced the iPad to the dolphin in early steps towards building a language interface.

“The use of the iPad is part of our continuing search to find a suitable touch screen technology which the dolphins can activate with the tip of their rostrums or beaks. After extensive searching and product review, it looks like our choice is between the Panasonic Toughbook and the Apple iPad,” Kassewitz explained. “We think that once the dolphins get the hang of the touch screen, we can let them choose from a wide assortment of symbols to represent objects, actions and even emotions.”

Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley has a new proposal aimed at boosting the amount of venture capital for businesses like bioscience companies.

The governor rolled out the proposal on Tuesday during a speech to academic, business and government officials in Rockville.

The plan, which is called InvestMaryland, will require approval by the Legislature.

Facebook Inc. and Solyndra Inc., two Silicon Valley darlings, have little in common. One company is connecting the world through the Web, while the other is energizing rooftops.

But there is one major bond between them. In just a few years, they have become among the top 10 richest venture-backed companies of all time.

We asked industry tracker Dow Jones VentureSource to compile a list of companies that have received the most venture capital. Expecting the list to be littered with a bunch of busted companies, especially troubled dot-coms, we were surprised with the results.

I swore I would go offline for much of Memorial Day Weekend. But I cheated and peeked at my email late Saturday afternoon and discovered an email from a friend saying, “I’m surprised to see you take such a public stance on the capital gains tax rates,” with a link to a New York Times article on the topic.

I read the article in the New York Times on the carried interest debate and was shocked to see my name and a reference to me that read:

“As the Senate Democrats sent signs that they were open to a tax increase, investors and their lobbyists mobilized quickly, warning that the proposal could stifle investments that create jobs. A group of 80 venture capitalists traveled to Boston to urge Senator John Kerry and Representative Barney Frank, Democrats of Massachusetts, to exclude their business from the tax change, according to Jeffrey Bussgang, a partner at the Boston venture capital firm Flybridge Capital Partners.”

Leading global early-stage venture capital firm Draper Fisher Jurvetson (DFJ) and Cisco /quotes/comstock/15*!csco/quotes/nls/csco (CSCO 23.27, -0.08, -0.34%) today announced they will jointly hold the second annual global business plan competition for students aimed at fostering innovation and entrepreneurship. The competition will leverage Cisco TelePresence(TM), which enables collaboration through a live, face-to-face video network communications experience, to allow finalists from around the world to present their business plans in real time to a joint panel of DFJ and Cisco executives based in San Jose.

The competition is designed to elicit new technology-oriented ideas from aspiring college and university student entrepreneurs around the world. Fourteen finalists will be announced on June 22, 2010. The winner, who will be announced on June 29, 2010, will receive a minimum of $250,000 seed money. The winner will also receive professional feedback and mentorship from both DFJ and Cisco.

Steve Jobs lived up to the hype at D8 on Tuesday, forecasting a dim future for PCs and Google TV, offering candid comments on the Gizmodo iPhone incident, and more.

Thrown by All Things D and hosted by the Wall Street Journal's head tech writer, Walt Mossberg, this year's D conference (the eighth, hence "D8") is the first since 2007 in which Jobs has participated. Given the media attention, you'd think Jobs was the only one speaking.

Last week, the OECD held its 2010 Ministerial meeting and policy forum. The focus of the meetings was on economic recovery and sustained growth. One of the highlights was the release of OECD's Innovation Strategy -- a three year multi-disciplinary effort.

The Key Findings report outlines why it matters.