How do you measure and gauge your success today? Is success all that you thought it was cracked up to be?  By definition, success is a noun: “the favorable outcome of something attempted.”

The answers to the two questions above are tied into the lens we look through at any place in our life cycle. Each place in that cycle is real, legitimate and important. The question and answer of how we gauge our success has dramatically changed for most of us in the past few years, as we have seen our circumstances and assets change. That has gotten me thinking about what the benchmarks are today that gauge success for me.

Often entrepreneurs forget to set aside for their own retirement funds. However, our employees may want a retirement fund, and it is important for us to listen to their needs. A recent survey showed that only 10% of small businesses offer some type of retirement plan.

The Harris Poll of 501 small business owners indicates only 11 percent say they are likely to add an employee sponsored 401(k) plan within the next two years, 69 percent say they won’t because their business is too small, and more than half say it would be too expensive.

Google’s vice president of engineering for the Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) region, Nelson Mattos, commands god-like respect among googlers. He is, after all, the man responsible for engineering and product development.

Mattos, the brain behind analytics products such as Google Trends and Google Instant, believes that Africa is in a unique position to change the way we experience the web via mobile devices. This is why Google is paying particular attention to the continent.

Mattos spoke to Memeburn about the future of search and why it lies with social. He says that Google+ is not simply a social network, but more of a platform that all other Google products can take advantage of, thanks to the social graph.

When Shane Snow co-founded Contently a year ago he had just 48 cents in his bank account. Fast forward to the end of 2011 and the startup is on track to clear over $1 million in revenue.

Watch Snow’s interview to hear about his experience going through the TechStars mentorship program, raising money and how his experience of losing a big sale helped him better understand Contently’s business model.

Los Angeles-based Start Engine, the business accelerator being spearheaded by Activision co-founder Howard Marks, said today that it has created a new, $15M investment fund for its portfolio of startups, and added former Governor Gray Davis as an advisor. The accelerator--just one of the many accelerators to emerge in Southern California in recent weeks--also said it has added John Maataa, the COO of the CW; Hayward D. Fisk, former VP and General Counsel of Computer Sciences Corporation; General Merrill A. McPeak; and Greg Suess of ROAR to its advisory board. Governor Gray Davis is currently in the Los Angeles office of Loeb& Loeb; Davis was Governor from 1999-2003. Start Engine did not provide deals on the structure of its new $15M investment fund. Start Engine, modeled after the YCombinator and TechStars accelerators, is running its first class of startups in January; the group is investing $20,000 in those companies, and providing other resources, mentors, and a program to help those startups get funded and into the market.

The Technopolicy Network organized its 8th annual conference in Tampere, Finland on Sept 26-27 with the theme Open Innovation for Regional Development. It’s not the weather in late September which attracts people to Finland, so it must have been the current topic that did the trick and attracted some 140 participants to Tampere.

The first day was an interesting mix of talks providing varied aspects to the topic. Dr . Erkki Ormala of Nokia Corporation provided the day’s most insightful talk on contemplating on the innovation needs of and processes in a multinational firm. Given Dr. Ormala’s experience on the international innovation arena, the presentation was to the point. The day ended with parallel sessions on how to utilize open innovation in the regions.

Anthony DeFelipo is a living, breathing, 16-year old argument for why entrepreneurship should be an elective at every public school. DeFelipo and a friend placed third at a recent Boston Startup Weekend event with a mobile app called BiteRight, and he's planning to launch a jewelry business soon, Earth Custom Designs, that will use non-precious stones imported from developing countries.

And DeFelipo tells me he probably wouldn't have discovered entrepreneurship if not for a course offered at his high school, Providence's MET Center. "I wasn't doing good. I got Ds and Fs. I had problems with showing up late," DeFelipo says. But ever since taking a course designed by the Network for Teaching Entrepreneurship, DeFelipo says, "I found a passion in entrepreneurship. I carry a notebook with me, and whenever I see a problem, I try to think of a solution." (DeFelipo is pictured at right, holding a prototype piece of jewelry from Earth Custom Designs.)

Businesses need to be more open with one another to help boost the economy.

The call comes from David Gill, director of St John’s Innovation Centre, as the annual Meerkats and Avatars event gets under way today.

Open innovation between mid-sized businesses and early-stage companies would allow UK plc to derive greater benefit from its thriving technology sector and would make a lasting contribution to the country’s competitiveness, Mr Gill says.

Introduction of the Small Business Research Initiative (SBRI), in which early-stage, high-technology SMEs tender for government contracts, has already made a tangible difference to many Cambridge companies, he says, by introducing them to a “real” client and this concept could be extended.

When city services can autonomously go online and digest information from the cloud, they can reach a level of performance never before seen. First up, water systems that automatically know when it will rain and react accordingly.

With a little help from what's called the Internet of Things, engineers are transforming cities from passive conduits for water into dynamic systems that store and manage it like the tissues of desert animals. By using the Internet to connect real-world sensors and control mechanisms to cloud-based control systems that can pull in streams from any other data source, including weather reports, these efforts enable conservation and money-saving measures that would have been impossible without this virtual nervous system.

Need capital to start or build your business?  Ever try to figure out who the best fit VC is for you?  In my view, the absolute best way for you to get the capital to build your business is to get your capital from your customers in the form of gross profits.

VC Money is Expensive

VC money is dilutive, meaning that if you take their money, you will own less of your company and you have an investor with rights that reduce your control over your business. The only way for VC money to add value to your business is if you use the money in a way that builds more value in your business than the dilutive effects of the VC money.  It is true that the value of your business will be higher when you first take the money, as your business will have both its enterprise value plus the cash that is sitting on the balance sheet, but let’s face it — you will spend the cash building your business and you need to turn the cash into business value that is a lot greater than the cash in order for your VC money to add value to your business!

At the mHealth Summit taking place in Washington, D.C. this week, a panel discussion on mobile health and pharmaceutical companies talked about how companies are using mHealth in developing nations, particularly for their supply chains.

Susan Shiff of Pfizer (NYSE:PFE) focused on how the pharmaceutical company was developing an epidemiological database with Lagos University Teaching Hospital to help organize its pharmacies and improve patient health. The program has helped improve the management of its stocks and order transaction system between the hospital and its vendors, Shiff noted.

To start a new business… or to buy an existing business? That’s the question that many entrepreneurs ask themselves before taking the plunge. Creating a business from scratch, while intoxicating during the day-dream phase, may not be as exciting when it comes to the reality of execution. After all, there are so many steps to follow to plan, fund, and market the new business idea. With the concept not yet ‘proven’, there are the added hurdles to jump over. While many of us may ultimately choose this route, what about buying an existing business instead? After all, the big plus that comes with buying an existing business is that it’s already up and running. The planning legwork has already been done. If the business is already generating revenue, this may be a better model for you if you want to mitigate your tolerance for risk but want to be your own boss, especially if it’s a business that you’re passionate about.

The commercialization of Australian innovation and research has received a welcome boost following the Commonwealth Government’s announcement it would allocate up to 100 million Australian dollars (US$102 million) to venture capital funds.

The Australian Private Equity and Venture Capital Association (AVCAL) noted the amount was “pleasingly greater” than the expected A$60 million already allocated to the Innovation Investment Fund (IIF) program.

The European Union is stepping up efforts to make it easier for small companies to access finance from venture capital firms with a proposal to standardise rules applying to such investors, the bloc's executive said on Wednesday.

The European Commission said its proposal for a new law would make it easier for venture capitalists to raise funds for start-ups by standardising their legal status across the EU.

The 14 companies that have taken part in DreamIt Ventures’ current accelerator program will make their pitches to possible funders Wednesday, and Kerry Rupp thinks they’ll do just fine.

“We feel like it’s one of the strongest classes that we’ve had,” said Rupp, who is the DreamIt partner most involved with the day-to-day functions of the venture firm’s accelerator programs.

Rupp thinks one reason for that might be the timing of the current program. It’s the first DreamIt has held in fall, so, unlike its predecessors, it hasn’t attracted college students on summer break who want to give entrepreneurship a fling before returning to their studies.

Water levels in the Dead Sea have been dropping over the last few years as towns and villages in Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Palestine and Syria suck up run-off water that would normally fill the extra-salty lake. But new research finds that even in periods without human pressures, the Dead Sea may have dried up, including once when it did so almost entirely more than 100,000 years ago.

The finding does not bode well for the region, according to study researcher Steven Goldstein, a professor at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University. If the giant body of water nearly vanished with no human pressures, what could be the consequences with both man-made climate change and water diversions for irrigation that keep much of the resource from even reaching the Dead Sea?

The good old days of the pharmaceutical industry are gone forever. Even an improved global economic climate is unlikely to halt efforts by the developed world’s governments to contain spending on drugs. Emerging markets will follow their lead and pursue further spending control measures. Regulatory requirements—particularly the linkage among the benefits, risks, and cost of products—will increase, while the industry pipeline shows little sign of delivering sufficient innovation to compensate for such pressures.

Google Chairman Eric Schmidt just took the stage at the Le Web conference to chat about Android, the search giant’s expansion and more. When he was asked about why the search engine hadn’t acquired any French companies, Schmidt jokingly commented on stage that Google was now buying around one company day.

That’s clearly a lot of companies to purchase even for a company with deep pockets like Google. So our intrepid reporter Alexia Tsotsis ran backstage to confirm this, where Schmidt told her on the record that Google was actually acquiring around one company per week. “But why do you never announce them?” she asked him. “We don’t have to,” he said.

The European Commission put forward proposals Wednesday to create a single set of rules for venture capital funds in the European Union, in its latest move to overcome a credit squeeze hitting smaller companies. ...

The Front End of Innovation - brings together innovators, R&D experts, and higher customer insights executives from all across the EMEA. The result: an immerse 3-day experience that leaves you with the ability to take innovation further with your organization.

Download the complete conference brochure.

Main Conference Break Out-Tracks... Provide depth and breadth on topics to move from complexity to clarity.

• Business Model Adjacencies: Opportunities Beyond your Core
• Design Therapy: Enhancing Lives… Improving Business
• Profit & Purpose: Aligning Sustainability and Business Objectives
• Fail Forward: Create a Culture of Continuous Learning
• Involve Everyone: Overcome the Not Invented Here Syndrome