Entrepreneurship is a contrarian process in which the entrepreneur uniquely realizes and reaps extraordinary value by seeing its potential where others do not, largely because the particular constellation of factors at that moment is perceived by virtually everyone but the entrepreneur as valueless. But the potential extraordinary value becomes actual because of the entrepreneur’s ability to recognize, realize (as in “bring forth”), and then reap the value that no one else anticipates.

In its latest attempt to connect with believers via social media, the Vatican has said people who follow messages about an upcoming event shared by the Pope on Twitter can receive ‘indulgences’, which will reduce the amount of time Catholics believe they will have to spend in purgatory.

If you Google the phrase “fastest growing online ad format” you’ll see there’s not much debate about the answer. It’s video.

As an online ad format, video is now more popular than search, more popular than email marketing, more popular than blogs and more popular than Facebook. The facts related to that growth are staggering.

Tony Hsieh doesn’t really like sports, but he loves llamas and community gatherings. So once a month during baseball season, the CEO of the online shoe retailer Zappos holds a company-sponsored parade led by a llama named Cusco. The marchers get free baseball caps and noisemakers as they make the trek from Las Vegas’s Fremont Street to nearby Cashman Field.

For Hsieh, 39, the cheerful walk through a rough patch of the city is just one part of a very calculated attempt to revitalize downtown Las Vegas through an urban renewal effort called the Downtown Project, which he is bankrolling with $350 million of his own money.

Health IT venture capital funding set a 'torrid' pace in the first quarter, but Q2 deals have topped even that, as records continue to topple. There were 168 funding deals this quarter, compared to 104 in Q1 and 163 in the whole of 2012.

With $623 million dished out in the second quarter, "VC funding in healthcare IT is now on pace to exceed $2 billion in 2013," said Raj Prabhu, CEO of Mercom Capital Group, in a press statement.

Today it feels like the CIO has been around since Rockefeller, making decisions with the other C-Suiters. But the truth is the position of CIO isn’t working for today’s business world, less than 30 years after CIOs were born. Often CIOs make decisions on a day to day, project to project basis. Due to this constraint, communication with the CIO and other departments suffer. Toni Bowers at TechRepublic suggests bringing out a Chief Automation Officer (CAO) who can reconnect the CIO and COO in a way where the CIO can go back to doing what a CIO does best--manage information and technology. In this way, CIOs can tack back control of their destiny by refocusing their skills where they are best applied, while the CAO takes control of streamlining how the various branches of the business interact.

Nobody seems to want to make money any more. I remember just a decade ago in 2003 when we all laughed at how dumb people in the 90′s were talking about the race to “capture as many eyeballs as possible” before your competition. You would figure out how to monetize later.

I say ring the freaking cash register. I have said so for years.

Startup Conference + Showcase will be held in San Mateo, California from September 17 to 18. The event is a transaction-based conference for Global 1000, angels, VCs, universities, accelerators, incubators, state programs and SBIR programs. It features Fortune/Global 1000 and International VC and Angel Panels and Startup Showcase and Meetings.

Register before August 10th for an early-bird discount of $200.

Use Code: "InnovationAmerica" for an additional $400 discount.

Please visit http://ncet2.org for more information or email to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

If you're wearing a sleep monitor that is awkward and gets in the way, you might choose not to use it, and even if you do, the act of wearing it might change the way you sleep. It's a bit like the Heisenberg uncertainty principle: the observer changes the outcome of the experiment. If a sleep monitor has electrodes and wires that look like something from Frankenstein's lab, you might not wear it consistently, and the information it gathers and reports may be compromised.

In recent years wearable technology has improved drastically. Improvements in sensor technology are now making it possible to design wearable devices that are so noninvasive that we can forget we are wearing them. Inventors—myself included—are working to make sensors more accurate, smaller, with longer battery lives. The goal is to deliver great user experiences.

These days, it's all about convenience. Time is money, and people are willing to pay a premium for not having to go out of the way to run errands and buy certain things. We like having other people go through the clutter for us, and we love to click a few buttons and have things to be delivered right to us.

Below, we've rounded up 18 products and services that streamline your life and bring items right to your door, saving you time and keeping you hip.

There is an important, interesting topic for entrepreneurs, policy makers, people from venture industry, and eventually, for ordinary citizens who benefit from innovations. It is:

How to create a successful innovation ecosystem and what are those enabling factors that should be implemeted within a given economy?

Recently I’ve read a couple of interesting books about innovation ecosystems (one of them I warmly suggest you to read – “The Rainforest: The Secret to Building the Next Silicon Valley“) and democratic capitalism (“How Capitalism Will Save Us: Why Free People and Free Markets Are the Best Answer in Today’s Economy”). I would like to give you short summary of these books and my opinion on the points presented there. Moreover, it’s interesting to read these books syntopically (meaning having in mind one subject or topic, and crossreading in several books and from several authors).

The recruiting world is changing fast – recruiters are becoming more social, mobile, and data-driven. In our newly released 2013 Global Recruiting Trends Report*,  we uncovered five key trends that are changing how employers find, engage, and hire you. What does LinkedIn know about recruiting? Well, 88% of the Fortune 100 and corporations from every industry around the globe use us for recruiting. If you follow these trends, you’ll spot career-advancing opportunities that you wouldn’t have otherwise.

1. Recruiters are relying more and more on social professional networks to find you.

Most of you are happy in your current jobs, but if your dream opportunity fell into your lap today, you’d consider it, right? Well, there’s a recruiter out there who is sitting on your dream job, and they are looking for you.

By 2050 the number of people living in cities will have nearly doubled, from 3.6 billion in 2011 to more than 6 billion. Yet the world's urban areas are already overcrowded and, particularly in developing countries, suffer from shortages of clean water, electricity, and other resources essential to the support of their exploding populations and fragile economies.

The problems created by rampant urbanization are among the most important challenges of our time. They also represent one of the greatest opportunities — and responsibilities — for the private sector.

Venture-backed IPOs staged something of a comeback during the second quarter, as 22 VC-backed startups went public with an aggregated valuation of about $9.6 billion. Healthcare companies made up about half of those IPOs, according to the venture-data tracking firm, CB Insights.

Still, it was a relatively modest period for VC activity. CB Insights says U.S. venture investments totaled $7 billion in 807 deals during the second quarter that ended June 30th.

The JOBS Act, which was approved by Congress and signed by President Obama with much fanfare over a year ago, was intended to help small business. It is, after all, called the Jumpstart Our Business Startups Act. A number of the provisions have been slow to get written into law and the SEC has missed their deadlines on a bunch of stuff, including the often talked about equity crowdfunding activity.

Recently, the SEC weighed in on a number of the things they were required to with much fanfare. Fred Wilson wrote Let The Games Begin in response to the SEC lifting the General Solicitation Ban. However, Fred, and many others, missed the new proposed Amendments to Regulation D, Form D and Rule 156 under the Securities Act. And they look like one scary mess that could undermine the whole thing if approved.

Pressing ahead with its plan to build an entrepreneurial economy, Malaysia’s Ministry of Finance will host the fourth Global Entrepreneurship Summit (GES) on October 11-12, 2013. With the expected participation of U.S. President Barack Obama and other heads of state, the summit in Kuala Lumpur is set to be a milestone for Malaysia’s quest to become an entrepreneurship hub. I met with the planners in Kuala Lumpur recently to discuss progress.

The government of Malaysia’s Economic Transformation Program (ETP) which was launched in 2010 has a clear aim to move the country from being an upper-middle to a high-income economy by 2020. As part of its plan, the government has undertaken structural reforms to enhance the entrepreneurial environment. Progress on that front is reflected in the improvements in Malaysia’s Doing Business indicators, where the country ranks among the top 20 in the world in areas such as the ease of getting credit, protecting investors, paying taxes and trading across borders. In terms of tangible impact on the ground, it has been reported that since the start of the ETP, private investment has tripled—recording a 22% growth last year, 12.2% in 2011 and an average of 6.7% between 2000 and 2010. The national 2013 budget aims to boost innovation by allowing firms to use intellectual property rights as collateral to obtain financing for business expansion and by offering significant tax deductions for angel investors.

It is my experience that open innovation is going to affect all industries, but some more than others, and some sooner than others.

Overall, I see four external factors that matter here:

1) cycle time for products/services development, 2) money and 3) IPR needed for getting new products/services to market and 4) the level of conservatism in the industry.

Everyone knows MBAs tend to be a confident bunch. But when does self-confidence veer into the Pollyannaish territory of completely unrealistic expectations?

Business school applicants in the U.S. say they expect the MBA degree to lift their current salaries by a whopping 140%, to an average of $140,000 a year from their pre-MBA salaries of $58,000.

If that increase sounds overly optimistic, candidates in many other countries have even greater expectations, according to a new survey of MBA candidates by QS TopMBA.com, an organization that holds admissions fairs for business schools. Prospective students in Switzerland said they anticipate post-MBA salaries of $200,000, which would reflect a 145% increase over pre-MBA pay of $82,000, the highest salaries of any MBA applicants in the world.

I don’t have to convince you of the power of a professional network, do I? One that is not only inside your current company but that reaches outside of its walls? Or that networking is often listed as one of the most important unwritten rules of success in business? And that research shows that your next business opportunity (and often, job) is more likely to come from a loose connection in your network than from a friend or close colleague?

But networks are like any good investment. The great ones can have an extremely high ROI (return on investment)…. but not right away, and often not from the sources that one might expect.

In an earlier post, I discussed how venture capital deals have changed since the financial crisis and the Great Recession. Today, I want to point out some changes in angel deals and angel investments over the same period.

Because there is a lot less information on angel investing than on venture capital, I will concentrate on just four dimensions of angel finance:

The number of investors. The amount invested annually. The number of businesses funded each year. The average size of the investments.