Personalized shopping is changing the way we find, buy and recommend products to our friends already.

But from a business point of view, what's going to capture shoppers' attention next?

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With the cost of entry at an all-time low, and the odds of success equally low, more and more entrepreneurs are starting multiple companies concurrently. This “parallel entrepreneur” idea has been around since at least the days of Thomas Edison, and for the new generation of entrepreneurs, who have been multi-tasking since birth, it’s probably not even a stretch.

Some entrepreneurs, like Paul Graham of Y Combinator, and Dave McClure of 500 Startups, mask their focus on multiple startups by running an incubator or accelerator, and providing seed funding for a number of individual efforts. They skip from one to the next, providing expert guidance and money, getting their satisfaction (and reward) from the best of the best.

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The internet is full of advice on how startups should cut costs. Much of them start with ‘start from home’ and lead to ‘cut down on the fancy furniture’ and ‘go green’. Some go as far as suggesting ‘keep manpower thin’. In an era of global warming, ‘go green’ is a solution not only for startups but for all small enterprises and large conglomerates too, an activity that cuts across industries – very important to earn carbon credits. Start from home, may sound like an ideal situation, yet it requires a lot of disciplining and deprives employees and often clients of a formal work and discussion environment. A garage instead could be a better solution. Yes, cutting down on fancy furniture, and browsing through deals sites for furniture or travel tickets may not be such a bad idea.

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Revolution Ventures, the early-stage division of Steve Case's Revolution LLC, announced on Monday the closing of its new $200 million fund. Here's Case, along with managing partners Tige Savage and David Golden, in a promo explaining how the fund came together and what they plan to do with the cash.

Every investor expects to see some business traction, both before and after a funding event. If you have been working 20 hours a day, and spent your last dollar, but have no results to show, investors will be sympathetic, but will probably tell you that your dream doesn’t have wheels. Traction means forward progress.

If you are interested in entrepreneurship, this degree program will help you gain skills and knowledge to start a successful business. You will have the opportunity to explore and learn about all aspects of a business: finance, accounting, human resources, marketing and so on. Not only would you learn the theories in class, but you will be able to put it into practice through several co-curricular activities like- case studies, internships and business development/ reformation of existing companies. There are a variety of positions that would be available for you once you get your entrepreneurship degree. The key is to mold your experience and courses at the university in such way that you are on the career path that you would like to follow.

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How do you think entrepreneurs can best maintain a work-life balance?

JAMES SCHRAGER: The demands on most entrepreneurs make it tough to develop a work-life balance. The best I have seen make themselves off-limits at certain times—Sunday mornings perhaps—but work at other odd times, say Sunday night, to make up for the time away. The effort required to start and sustain a successful business is often underestimated and never to be taken for granted. It is simply not a nine-to-five job.

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More than a third of European jobs rely on intellectual property rights (IPR) such as patents, trademarks and design rights according to a new pan-European study, which the EU executive will use to boost policymaking.

According to the analysis – produced jointly by the Munich-based European Patent Office and the Office for the Harmonization of the Internal Market based in Alicante, Spain – 39% of all European economic activity, worth €4.7 trillion, arises annually from IPR.

Google has shown that the camera integrated into Google Glass, the company’s head-worn computer, can capture some striking video. Now machine learning company AlchemyAPI has built an app that uses that camera to recognize what a person is looking at. The app was built at an employee hack session held by the company this month to experiment with ways to demonstrate their new image recognition service.

Being born in Britain might explain my bias, but I find myself asking again whether we have overlooked the important leadership role of royalty in providing help from the top for bottom-up startup communities. I recently spoke with the Prince of Wales at St. James Palace in London and while he is from a different generation, I heard a man with his heart and mind fully in step with today’s unemployed youth and the path they must beat to create their own future as entrepreneurs.

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As I have argued before, a few key people in every organization can make a huge difference on its success. Even for very large companies or even at a citywide level.

But that doesn’t forgive the CEO, the board or for that matter anybody in an organization from allowing weak links.

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In an advance that could dramatically shrink particle accelerators for science and medicine, researchers used a laser to accelerate electrons at a rate 10 times higher than conventional technology in a nanostructured glass chip smaller than a grain of rice.

The achievement was reported in Nature by a team including scientists from the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory and Stanford University.

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It seemed like no one was willing to take a chance on Louisa Edgerly. She had been working for months to get funding for her research trip to the Republic of Congo—nothing came. Her flight was booked and her equipment ready, but she knew she couldn’t fund herself for two months in the field.

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Google wanted a more networking-friendly Facebook, so it created Google+. Apple’s team wanted its own navigation app, so it tried its hand at Google Maps. Facebook didn’t want to miss out on Snapchat-sized success, so Facebook whipped up its own app, Poke. Tech companies are notorious for copying each other’s products and services, essentially “stealing” ideas. While some consumers get frustrated with companies releasing copycat products, the reality is that this game of one-upmanship results in better services for the consumer.

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Millennials change jobs about every 2.3 years. On average, we will hold 14 jobs before we are forty.

You’ve probably seen – and nodded along to – this post on why Generation Y yuppies are unhappy.

I’m seeing parallels between the Innovator’s Dilemma and the career uncertainties millennials face. The Innovator’s Dilemma says that when companies choose to invest in areas where nobody else is playing, their revenue opportunity increases by 20 times,  according to Harvard Business professor Clay Christensen.  But first, the company must be up against inertia, or situations where the old way of doing things isn’t working.

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- Five things to consider when searching for the right partner -

By: Mike Hoggatt, CEO at Leardon Solutions

Not all product development companies are created equal and when it comes down to spending your hard earned money and valuable time developing an offering, you need every advantage possible to avoid cost overruns, missed delivery schedules and quality control issues. All of these risks can be minimized or avoided by choosing the product development company that best fits your needs. Here are five things that entrepreneurs and small businesses should take into account when searching for the right partner.

1) End-to-end solution provider.

In an effort to save significant time and money, it’s extremely beneficial for an organization to work with a team that specializes in end-to-end product development solutions. With so many variables already working against the entrepreneur, going this route can eliminate a lot of areas of risk. These include, but are not limited to, the common pitfalls of communication issues between engineering and manufacturing groups, cultural differences when doing business overseas and negotiating costs with suppliers.

Improving health literacy and patient engagement and developing alternative ways to appraise apps and physicians are among the ideas that have reached the finals of a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation competition. The people and companies behind these ideas are vying for the opportunity to get funding as part of a program to fund transformative innovations in healthcare.

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What makes a great city? It is a pressing question because by 2030, 5 billion people—60 percent of the world’s population—will live in cities, compared with 3.6 billion today, turbocharging the world’s economic growth. Leaders in developing nations must cope with urbanization on an unprecedented scale, while those in developed ones wrestle with aging infrastructures and stretched budgets. All are fighting to secure or maintain the competitiveness of their cities and the livelihoods of the people who live in them. And all are aware of the environmental legacy they will leave if they fail to find more sustainable, resource-efficient ways of managing these cities.

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The clock ran out for the U.S. Congress to agree on a budget bill and avoid a federal government shutdown. In addition to furloughs keeping thousands of government workers from their jobs, the shutdown will have wide consequences for the country's science, innovation and health.

From a panda cam gone dark and national park visitors getting the boot, to a halt on the government's flu program, here's a look at six ways the shutdown will impact science.

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Someone in my network in Chicago was contemplating starting a business and wasn’t sure how to structure his arrangement with his partners/collaborators…and protect themselves in the event things didn’t work out. This sparked a rich online discussion which became the catalyst for this month’s post on Tech Cocktail. 

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