TRENTON, N.J. (Feb. 12, 2013) - The Christie Administration is looking to tap into the expertise of the private sector to bolster New Jersey's status as a leader in life sciences and healthcare technology. To help the industry's most promising entrepreneurs deliver products to market, the New Jersey Economic Development Authority (EDA) today announced that it will launch a Life Sciences/Healthcare IT Accelerator and secure a private partner to manage the effort.

"Governor Christie recognizes how important it is to nurture the growth of New Jersey's early-stage life sciences and technology companies, and this is another opportunity for the state to partner with the private sector to fill a market need," said EDA Chief Executive Officer Michele Brown. "The Life Sciences/Healthcare IT Accelerator will allow us to capitalize on the talent in our region and provide an environment that catalyzes innovation, entrepreneurship and job creation."

This initiative builds on the market success of New Jersey's first technology accelerator, TechLaunch, which the EDA created in 2012 with industry pioneer Mario Casabona. Consistent with TechLaunch, the concept and model of the Life Sciences/Healthcare IT Accelerator is based on a competitive selection of companies interested in advancing the commercialization of technology through seed funding and access to industry expertise. The EDA will host the Accelerator at its North Brunswick-based Commercialization Center for Innovative Technologies (CCIT), the state's leading life sciences incubator.

Since the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid toughened their stance on unnecessary hospital readmissions, they began by penalizing institutions with reduced Medicare reimbursements if they fail to reduce their readmission rates for heart attacks, congestive heart failure and pneumonia.

In an effort to draw attention to this problem, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation has funded a report by Dartmouth Atlas Project highlighting readmissions from 2010-2011 and released an interactive map contrasting the readmission rates for surgery and other medical stays region by region in 2010. It not only shows the disparity of the numbers across the country, but also compares readmission after surgery with readmission for other medical procedures.

Shifts in technology often occur first in large organizations and trickle their way down to small businesses years later. During the Internet boom of the mid-to-late 1990s, most small businesses avoided having a Web presence. In the early-to-mid 2000s, while these companies finally ventured into the Web, the overwhelming majority didn’t offer e-commerce solutions to push their goods and services. And now, in the early 2010s, small business is hesitant to adopt mobile. But the truth is, every company—large, medium, and especially small—should be actively embracing mobility.

First off, let’s take a look at the word “mobility.” While the word is now synonymous with smartphones and tablets, there are a few who will remember that pagers, laptops, and netbooks were also once referred to as mobile as well. How the times change.

More Americans are electing to go back to school and earn advanced degrees, recent estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau indicate. Nationwide, about 22.7 million Americans held master’s, professional or doctorate degrees last year. That’s more than 11 percent of the total population, up from 9 percent 10 years ago. While Census data shows increases across all levels of educational attainment in recent years, the group earning advanced degrees has seen the fastest growth.

Many social enterprises start small and grow fast. This puts a premium on the need to develop, or recruit, talented people who can take on evolving roles and responsibilities. Yet planning for future leadership needs falls between the cracks at most social enterprises. Leaders plead lack of time and money to make development a priority. If you are among them, be aware that neither excuse holds up under close scrutiny. What you really need is a change in mindset.

That change begins with answering three key questions:

What is your organization's strategy for the near term, and how will you fulfill it?

What kinds of people do you need to make the strategy a reality?

How do you develop, or hire, the staff you will need?

Why is everybody so concerned about work-life balance?

According to one urban legend, based on 1950s pop psychology*, workaholics are greedy and selfish people who are bound to die from a heart attack.

Not really. As the great David Ogilvy once said: "Men die of boredom, psychological conflict, and disease. They do not die of hard work." This is especially true if your work is meaningful.

Most of the studies on the harmful effects of excessive work rely on subjective evaluations of work "overload." They fail to disentangle respondents' beliefs and emotions about work. If something bores you, it will surely seem tedious. When you hate your job, you will register any amount of work as excessive — it's like forcing someone to eat a big plate of food they dislike, then asking if they had enough of it.

Being an entrepreneur means constantly having to prove oneself to the business world, from clients to investors to the media. First impressions are key to building a lasting relationship and opening up opportunities for yourself and your company. However, young entrepreneurs face a key hurdle in their quest for a great first impression, their age. Not everyone will judge you based on your date of birth, but there will be times when you will have to deal with negative preconceptions pertaining to your youthfulness.

It is paramount to your success as a young entrepreneur to get past this bias and really showcase who you are as a person and a professional. These guidelines will help you immediately establish credibility and offer you a better chance to be seen as a business person rather than a young person.

How to be a young entrepreneur? It’s the million dollar question we seem to hear everyday at Under30CEO. The problem is that there isn’t a blueprint out there that will show you every step along the way to building a successful business. Not only is every business different but every person/founder is different. We all have different interests, opinions on what is right/wrong, different skill-sets & traits and a million other things that make each business unique in it’s own way. There are principles you can follow that will help guide you in the right direction. Hopefully they will help you make the right decisions or motivate you to execute your idea 110%. But that is all we can ask for.

We decided to build a list of questions that everyone should ask themselves before starting a business. These questions will hopefully help you form an idea, evaluate your idea, evaluate yourself and even execute your idea. If you answer all of these things honestly you might just figure out what your business should be and if you’re even cut out to run your own business.

When modern-day crooner Trey Songz sings, “Cause girl, my heart beats for you,” in his romantic ballad, “Flatline,” his lyrics could be telling a tale that’s as much physiological as it is emotional, according to a University of California, Davis, study that found lovers’ hearts indeed beat for each other, or at least at the same rate.

Emilio Ferrer, a UC Davis psychology professor who has conducted a series of studies on couples in romantic relationships, found that couples connected to monitors measuring heart rates and respiration get their heart rate in sync, and they breathe in and out at the same intervals.

For years, U.S. life-sciences startups have sought to avoid some of the problems in their industry–including a scarcity of investment funding and a sometimes-daunting regulatory process–by raising funding or commercializing overseas.

Nowadays, foreign organizations and governments are the ones making the overtures, hoping that American life-sciences companies can create jobs and stimulate the life-sciences industries in their countries.

ROMEO GACAD/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images While far from being an ideal situation for the U.S. economy, the development has opened up new opportunities for life-sciences startups that are simply looking to stay afloat until they can commercialize, said Dale Wahlstrom, chief executive of Minnesota-based industry association LifeScience Alley.

Imagine you are on vacation and find yourself running low on a few necessities. You stop by a small convenience store to stock up and are immediately faced with the usual suspects: cramped aisles lined with chips and candy, a “beer cave” in the back, an oddly placed rack of discount t-shirts…and a lottery showcase behind the counter—a veritable gambler’s paradise. Normally you wouldn’t play; today, however, you’re overcome by the urge to try your luck. But what game do you choose? Do you select among the dozen or so varieties of scratch tickets? Or do you opt for the classic pick-6 lotto?

Starting a business sounds easy enough, right? Have a great idea, hire a team to turn it into a reality, and immediately raise millions of investment dollars.

If only any of that were true.

The startup life is long and hard, with no guarantees of success. Looking back on my entrance into the startup, I wish that I had known so many things to better prepare myself for the work that lay ahead. Here are some tips that I wish I could have passed on to my newbie entrepreneur self.

New York venture capitalists say they plan to invest this year in a mix of online industries -- good news for technology entrepreneurs who hope their product or service is the next big thing.

At Tuesday's "State of the Union" Venture Capital Lunch Club, an annual panel discussion at law firm Chadbourne & Parke LLP in New York, investors said they hadn't been put off by 2012's lukewarm initial public offerings (including Facebook's), and see plenty of new ventures that are ripe for investment.

During our childhood years, measuring success was as simple as counting gold stars and smiley face stickers. In high school and college, we relied on report cards. But how do we determine success now, as entrepreneurs?

In Southern California’s bustling startup scene, known as “Silicon Beach,” many professionals leave the comfort of a steady paycheck to pursue the American dream of starting something they can call their own.

After numerous conversations with like-minded entrepreneurs, we found that many of these entrepreneurs measured their venture’s success not in dollars, but by their own satisfaction or happiness.

FAYETTEVILLE, AR – February 13, 2013 – EquityNet published today a free crowdfunding industry report containing statistics and trends based on U.S. businesses that used EquityNet from 2007 to 2012 to seek equity-based crowdfunding from accredited Reg D investors. Made available in the form of an embeddable infographic, the report presents some of the first statistics available on the original form of equity crowdfunding that involves the use of funding platforms such as EquityNet by accredited investors. It offers insight into how crowdfunding will appear under the deregulating provisions of the U.S. JOBS Act in which millions of non-accredited investors will be able to invest in privately-held businesses.

In introducing the report, Judd Hollas, EquityNet’s founder and CEO, said that the crowdfunding industry is hungry for “more data and less rhetoric.” “We are in the unique position of having 6 years of granular data from our patented platform and prepared this report to provide a statistical industry perspective for investors, entrepreneurs, policymakers, service providers, and others in the crowdfunding ecosystem. Although some high-level information has been available, the trends and statistics that emerge from this report present valuable new insights into the emerging crowdfunding industry.”

The U.S. Census has published its list of U.S. metropolitan areas with the highest concentrations of wealth in the country. These are places where a large percentage of your neighbors earn incomes in the top 5th percentile.

Career experts stress the importance of networking in creating the career you want, but for introverts, the task can be especially daunting. An evening exchanging business cards and elevator pitches in a crowded bar feels more like a nightmare than a smart career move. But expanding your professional network and letting them know where you want to be can have a profound impact on actually getting you there.

So what’s an introvert to do?

A recent discussion in Connect: Professional Women’s Network made me realize there are plenty of ways introverts can ease into networking events — and even come to enjoy them. It’s all about your perspective and how you handle the event — from pretending you’re the host to wearing colors that attract people to you. We’ve compiled some of the best tips from Connect members in this SlideShare. If you have any other networking secrets, be sure to let us know!

Even those with a higher calling know when it’s time to move on, as evidenced by the shocking news that Pope Benedict XVI will resign the papacy at the end of the month—the first pope in 600 years to do so. While your decision to change jobs probably won’t warrant national news coverage, how you handle your last days at your current company can have a lasting impact on your professional reputation. Here are some often overlooked Do’s and Don’ts to set you up for a clean, damage-free breakup.  

Don’t vent. You may be absolutely right: your boss is a jerk, your company is mismanaged, your co-workers are incompetent, but now’s not the time to point that out.   Keep in mind that while you may be on your way out the door, the person (or even worse, people) you’re sitting across from aren’t.  The trick is to make the ‘I’m leaving’ conversation as quick and dignified as possible.   I say quick because I’ve seen even the most rehearsed professionals stumble with even five minutes too many.  Plus, if your parting words are, “You’re the most incompetent person I’ve ever worked for,” you can be sure that’ll be top of mind during your reference check.  This is especially important if you’ve been asked to leave.  Repeat after me: Thank you for this opportunity (to learn how I will never, ever manage a team.)  I have learned a tremendous amount (about why you shouldn’t take credit for your co-workers ideas.)   While getting all your grievances off your chest may feel cathartic to you, I promise that weeks or months later when you see your colleagues at an industry event, or are sitting across from that former boss in an interview years later, you’ll be wishing you reigned it in. The world’s a small one.

I was taken aback when I saw the Vigeland sculpture park in Oslo, one of Norway's most popular tourist destinations. Then I was shocked by my shock. I realized it was the first time in my life that I had ever seen depictions of fatherhood in art. Here, all around me, were depictions of masculine men tenderly embracing tiny babies, teaching toddlers their paces, or tossing teens in laughing play.

Thank God for the Nordics. The Economist has just written a hymn of a Special Report, full of rapt wonder at "probably the best governed countries in the world." But they hardly mention that it's also the region that boasts the most gender-balanced governments in the world, as though that's not really a critical factor in the success of its 'pragmatic' approach to governing.

In separate January surveys, Gallup’s pollsters asked samples of American small business owners and adults how different political and economic situations were affecting them.

The results tell an interesting story. While many Americans are adversely affected by energy prices and health care costs, a higher fraction of small business owners feel that taxes and government regulations are hurting them.

The Comparison is Admittedly Imperfect

Gallup interviewed small business owners between January 7th and 11th and American adults between January 21st and 22nd. More importantly, small business owners were asked about whether different situations were hurting or helping “the operating environment” of their businesses, while people in general were asked whether the situations were hurting or helping their “finances.”