As social technology moves forward, businesses need to adapt to this evolving trend and turn their businesses into social ones. In order to do that, business managers first need to understand five crucial points about social media in order to use it efficiently within the realm of their organizations. 1. Balancing gains against risks. Social technology is moving forward and here to stay; companies that want to take their businesses one step ahead need to participate in this social revolution before they end up lagging behind their competitors.

The Science|Business Academic Enterprise Awards for spin-outs highlight Europe’s innovation potential and underline the need for closer collaboration between industry and academe, says Jerzy Buzek MEP, former president of the European Parliament

European businesses and academic researchers need to collaborate more closely to create an innovation-driven economy says MEP Jerzy Buzek, former president of the European Parliament. “Innovation is not a policy – it’s a state of mind,” Buzek told delegates at the Science|Business Academic Enterprise (ACES) Awards held in Brussels last month. 

A new Unitary Patent system is being set up, alongside a Unified Patent Court; the EU member-states are now in the process of ratifying it, and the European Patent Office is preparing the paperwork for it. 

In practice, what are the remaining obstacles? Will it cut the high cost of patenting in Europe? Will it open the door to “patent trolls”, or herald a new era of invention in Europe? How are universities and companies across Europe preparing?

A “downer” is defined here as someone who seems to dwell on the negatives of every business challenge, and loves to highlight bad news or potential problems. No matter how smart or experienced this person may otherwise be, things must change or they will kill your startup.

I’m not talking about someone who has an occasional bad day, but rather people who when asked, “How are things?” will proceed to give you a 20-minute dissertation on their latest health symptoms, the latest company problem, and the sad state of the world in general.

Wearable tech is all the rage and GoPro has one of the most popular camera products on the market.

GoPro is a video camera that can be worn on your head or strapped to an object so the owner can can capture incredible action shots.

On the 4th of July, a few men in Ocean City, Maryland decided to go fishing with a GoPro. The strapped their camera onto some bait, dangled it over their boat, and waited. Before long, a hungry Mako shark crept up, jaws wide open, and relentlessly attacked the bait. At the 1:50 mark the shark goes for the GoPro camera and you can practically see down the fish's throat. It's as close as you can get to a shark attack without being the bait yourself.

Each year, the Intelligent Community Forum presents an awards program for Intelligent Communities and the public-sector and private-sector partners who contribute to them.  The awards program has two goals: to salute the accomplishments of communities in developing inclusive prosperity on a foundation of information and communications technology, and to gather data for ICF's research programs.  See the event calendar for upcoming dates. 

It's common knowledge that college costs are on the rise. But you may be surprised to know that some schools currently charge over $60,000 to educate a student for just one year. A list recently released by the Department of Education charts the highest tuition in the country. Unfortunately, the tuition numbers used in the rankings are two years old, and fail to show the contemporary college landscape.

The list also ignores the total cost of an education. Most four-year residential colleges will tack on an extra ten grand or more for room, board, and a wide range of other fees. 

Imagine you're a first-time entrepreneur with an unvalidated business idea and no track record of making money for investors. You may have another kind of track record, such as working successfully at a large company. Or you could be a young entrepreneur, fresh out of college, ready and raring to get yourself launched.

Unless you are willing to bootstrap yourself to some degree of validation of your concept, and can convince investors that there is real demand for what you offer, and a really large market, no one will write a check. Certainly not VCs. Not even, these days, angel investors.

The project team had certainly prepared for the workshop. Its members had a carefully constructed PowerPoint document, replete with facts and figures that showed the attractiveness of what we'll call the booming management-training market in China (details have been disguised to protect the client's confidentiality). Embedded video clips showed potential customers raving about the offering the team had recently piloted. A meticulously constructed business plan showed how the venture could thoughtfully expand into six major cities in China.

Yet, the presentation highlighted a critical gap between the team and its senior management sponsors. Executives immediately began asking questions about why the team was focusing on only six cities. The team responded by saying that its model required substantial marketing and a large local staff. Smaller cities just couldn't support that overhead. Executives pressed, asking the team to figure out how to reach 100 cities. Team members assumed that meant going back to the drawing board to develop a business model that would be profitable in smaller cities. And that meant, they thought, sharply lower investments in marketing and smaller staff.

Fourteen days of email rehab

The overwhelming reaction to Death by Email (part 1) shows this really is a huge problem. Thanks for the comments and for the emails, articles and suggestions you sent. Too many people are chained to their inboxes that are open all day: on desks and in pockets, with nagging pop-ups, reminders, pings and beeps.

Hundreds of emails a day is thousands of interruptions a week. Dipping in and out and quickly scanning mail, not only disrupts work and concentration but still leaves hundreds, thousands, even tens-of-thousands of messages ‘touched’ then left for later and ultimately forgotten.

Taking a close look at recent trends in the PE space, PitchBook has released its 3Q 2013 Private Equity Breakdown. Powered by the PitchBook Platform and sponsored by Merrill DataSite and NewStar Financial, this report offers data-driven analysis on deal flow, investment trends, exit activity and fundraising. Some highlights include:

? PE firms completed 738 deals totaling $140 billion in the first half of 2013; this is the slowest start to a year since 2009

? Strong public markets spurred an increase in IPO activity for PE-backed portfolio companies

Is Silicon Valley losing its long established reign over U.S. and global high-technology? Bruce Katz, director of the Brookings institution's Metropolitan Policy Program and co-author of the new book The Metropolitan Revolution, thinks so. Here's Derek Thompson reporting on Katz's recent talk at the Aspen Ideas Festival:

"What's happening now is workers want to be in Oakland and San Francisco," (Katz) told Walter Isaacson. Young workers want to live in a city -- somewhere they can ride bikes, shop locally, walk to their favorite restaurants and bars, and live in a dense urban or urban-lite environment with nearby amenities. But Silicon Valley isn't like a city. It's like a suburb. "Silicon Valley is going to have to urbanize," Katz said. "(There is a) migration out of Silicon Valley to places where people really want to live."

There are currently between 5-7.2 million people in the United States who are accepted as accredited investors. This group of people, which represents as little as 1% of the U.S. population, is made up of wealthy individuals that make $200,000 or more in base salary every year, or maintain a net worth of over $1,000,000.

A common investing trend where the rich commit part of their portfolio in startups is called angel investing. According to the recent Reynolds survey, there are currently 756,000 angel investors in the U.S. who have made an angel investment or participated in a friends and family round of financing.

When Legg Mason chief investment strategist Michael J. Mauboussin met Nobel Prize-winning psychologist, the investor asked the Thinking, Fast and Slow author how to best improve his decision making. Kahneman had a hestitation-free reply: go to the drug store, buy a notebook.

This tome-to-be is now your decision notebook. (Feel free to take a big fat marker at scrawl that across the front). What's it for?

To recap, the JOBS Act of 2012 required the SEC, by last summer, to write rules to implement the lifting of the ban on general solicitation in Rule 506 offerings where all purchasers are accredited investors.

The difficult aspect of this charge from Congress was in figuring out how to implement the "verification" mandate also imposed by Congress: one way or another, it's going to take more process and effort to validate who is and is not accredited, at least with respect to offerings that want to utilize general solicitation.

I had a group of ex-students out to the ranch who were puzzling over a dilemma—they’ve been working hard on their startup, were close at finding product/market fit and had been approached by Oren, a potential angel investor. Oren had been investing since he left Google four years ago and was insisting on not only a board seat, but he wanted to be chairman of the board. The team wasn’t sure what to do.

I listened for a while as they went back and forth about whether he should be chairman. Then I asked, “Why should he even be on your board at all?” I got looks of confusion and then they said, “We thought all investors get a board seat. At least that’s what Oren told us.”

We hope the word is getting out about all of the exciting things happening at Innovation Guelph. We’ve been a community partner for only a short time, but our vision is taking shape. We aim to create community well-being in Guelph and Wellington County by cultivating prosperity and spearheading innovative approaches to community building. We are reaching for these lofty goals by focusing on growing entrepreneurs, channeling investment into local companies and employing the best coaching and teaching strategies to help companies find customers, grow sales and thrive.

We actively promote equality, opportunity and well-being by teaching our companies that success is about more than the bottom line. It’s about long-term sustainability and the success of our community as a whole. After all, companies that thrive contribute to the well-being of Guelph and Wellington County and, by proxy, the province of Ontario.

Yes, I am very early here. The paradigm shift in which companies to a high degree merge internal and external resources in order to bring out better innovation has just begun and companies will spend the next 5-10 years getting better at this. But still, what comes after this paradigm shift of innovation?

I think the question is quite interesting as this open innovation or external collaboration movement happens at the same as we see a more mature approach to innovation management led by a growing cadre of executives, who actually understand what innovation is in the modern sense (more than just R&D) and are willing to let this drive their business agendas.

Biotechnology investments have not been easy for venture-capital firms in recent years. So now that the market is finally turning around, it’s no surprise to see firms doubling down on the winners.

The public and private markets of the past decade are littered with biotech startups that failed to develop an initially promising drug. Even for those that did make it to an IPO, it was not unheard of to see a company’s stock fall 90% in a day with bad news.