A fascinating trend is consuming Silicon Valley and beginning to eat away at rest of the world: the radical simplification of everything.

Want to spot the next great technology or business opportunity? Just look for any market that lacks a minimally complex solution to a sufficiently large problem.

Take book publishing, for instance. Or website hosting. Jeff Bezos put these and other industries on notice in his annual shareholder letter, which included a self-service rallying cry against gatekeepers that perpetuate complexity and block innovation. After all, what could be simpler than provisioning servers in seconds with just a credit card and an API? But this call extends beyond Amazon’s empire to all ecosystems and products.

When you write a column on the “50 ways the Obama Administration has hurt the economy and job creation,” and say things like, “President Obama is the most anti-business president I’ve ever seen,” you’re not leaving much room for interpretation. But from my position as a champion of innovation and the tech sector, and to be fair and add balance, there were a few items on our list that Obama has indeed checked off. So, though my criticisms stand, I also want to highlight some positive achievements of the Obama administration as well.

The JOBS Act: In April, President Obama signed into law bipartisan legislation that encourages start-ups. It allows entrepreneurs and smaller businesses to raise money by exempting them from the expensive hurdles and limitations designed for larger companies. Because entrepreneurs fuel innovation, the JOBS Act will be a boon for innovators, venture capitalists and small businesses by making it easier to create and grow jobs-creating businesses in the United States.

Throughout the brutal recession, one metropolitan area floated serenely above the carnage: Washington, D.C.  Buoyed by government spending, the local economy expanded 17% from 2007 to 2012. But for the first time in four years, the capital region has fallen out of the top 15 big cities in our annual survey of the best places for jobs, dropping to 16th place from fifth last year.

It’s a symptom of a significant and welcome shift in the weak U.S. economic recovery:  employment growth has moved away from the public sector to private businesses. In 2011, for the first time since before the recession, growth in private-sector employment outstripped the public sector. More than half (231) of the 398 metro areas we surveyed for our annual study of employment trends registered declines in government jobs, with public-sector employment dropping 0.9 percent overall. Meanwhile, private-sector employment expanded 1.4 percent.

This morning FORBES tech team tallied its annual list of the most successful venture capitalists of the last 12 months—a year of incredible activity for the community. “After a decade of mediocre returns,” writes my colleague Tomio Geron, “The venture business is buzzing like it’s 1999. Facebook this year will launch an historic stock offering, following a spate of IPOs from other venture-backed startups, like LinkedIn, Groupon, Splunk and Zynga.”

Indeed, it seems like business in The Valley is booming: startup capital is plentiful the battle for talent is heating up and the venture capitalists are hot on the trail of the next big thing. But while money is certainly changing hands in the tech community—and the Midas list highlights the top 100 investors each year—one thing is still made glaringly obvious with the list: of the 100 venture capitalists profiled, only five of them are women. While it’s easy to bemoan the dirth of women (and oh, do we bemoan), first it’s time to celebrate.

A recent meeting focused on “Reinventing Biotech’s Business Model” provided an interesting window into the spectrum of approaches being used to create new biotech companies. Unfortunately, it did little to relieve the concerns I recently voiced regarding the expanding numbers of “virtual” biotechs. This model is becoming a popular archetype for the creation of new biotech companies because they require much smaller initial capital investments than traditional biotechs. The basic idea is to build a company around a small managerial group who then farm out most of the basic operations to contract organizations. These outsourced functions usually include research and development, clinical trials, intellectual property, regulatory, financial, and even human resources.

President Barack Obama’s administration rolled out its National Bioeconomy Blueprint last week, on April 26. It details measures by which Washington intends to apply biological innovations toward national challenges that include health, food, energy, and the environment.

At the top of the Blueprint’s five priorities is supporting “R&D investments that will provide the foundation for the future U.S. bioeconomy.” Also on the list: increasing the focus on translational and regulatory sciences, reforming regulations, updating training programs, and identifying and supporting opportunities for public-private partnerships.

SCOTT ANTHONY, A MANAGING DIRECTOR AT THE INNOVATION CONSULTING FIRM INNOSIGHT, OFFERS A STEP-BY-STEP GUIDE TO BUILDING INNOVATION INTO YOUR COMPANY’S DNA.

It sounds so seductive: a “culture of innovation.” The three words immediately conjure up images of innovation savants like 3M, Pixar, Apple, and Google--the sorts of places where innovation isn’t an unnatural act, but part of the very fabric of a company. It seems a panacea to many companies that struggle with innovation. But what exactly is a culture of innovation, and how does a company build it?

For small businesses, crowdfunding can be a real opportunity.

It represents an opportunity for existing small businesses to get new projects off the ground (just look at the wild success of Canadian-born Eric Migicovsky's multimillion-dollar Kickstarter campaign.

Crowdfunding also represents an opportunity for entrepreneurs to create brand new businesses. Successful one-off projects can be (and have been) spun off into full-fledged companies, as in the case of gadget accessory-maker Studio Neat.

I’m thinking about applying for a start-up accelerator program, but it seems like a lot of equity for not much funding. How can I be sure that the program will be worth it?  

Start-up accelerator programs are designed for one principal purpose: to incubate start-up businesses so that a successful product can be launched into the market, creating wealth for both the business founders and investors.  

The programs usually provide mentorship, access to investors, office space, legal, hosting, marketing and other services for a period of months.

The European Court of Justice has concluded that the functions performed by software applications – from drawing a box to performing complex statistical analyses – cannot be protected by copyright, opening the way for competitors to launch products that carry out the same tasks as existing programs without infringing intellectual property rights.

“To accept that the functionality of a computer program can be protected by copyright would amount to making it possible to monopolise ideas, to the detriment of technological progress and industrial development,” the Court said.

In effect, this gives the green light to reverse engineering of computer programs to produce look-alike versions. The ruling also opens the way for greater interoperability between computer systems, because software producers can use their understanding of functionality to ensure applications can be integrated with, and work alongside, existing products.

If you are a young startup founder, how do you find that CEO or other executive for your “dream team” to close on funding and kick start your company? It makes logical sense to scour the job boards, engage an executive recruiter, or scan the networking sites like LinkedIn for a good array of candidates, and then interview the ones with the best resumes.

If that’s as far as you go, you haven’t done the whole job. In reality, none of these alternatives is as effective as face-to-face networking. As I’ve said before, there is no substitute for building your network, or using your network of trusted advisors.

The group of elite universities offering free online courses just got bigger.

Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology today announced a partnership that will host online courses from both institutions free of charge. The platform, its creators say, has the potential to improve face-to-face classes on the home campuses while giving students around the world access to a blue-ribbon education.

The new venture, called edX, grew out of MIT’s announcement last year that it would offer free online courses on a platform called MITx. The combined effort will be overseen by a nonprofit organization governed equally by both universities, each of which has committed $30-million to the project. Anant Agarwal,  director of MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, who led the development of MITx, will serve as edX’s first president.

Motoring is an industry that is always worth keeping an eye on for innovation, creativity and technology. The people who design cars are all entrepreneurs in their own way: they actively seek new and better ways to utilize and access the world as we know it from within the realms of your car’s cabin.

Thanks to the Automotive Industry and a certain Henry Ford, we were given the assembly line, the Ford Model T and the concept that everyone could own a car. Over 100 years later the car has evolved into something truly remarkable and packed with technology.

A lot of people seem convinced that we're in a tech bubble, and since Facebook bought Instagram for $1 billion, that idea has broken into the mainstream. 

The reality is we're not in a tech bubble. As an analyst with Business Insider Intelligence, Business Insider's internet market research service, I spend all day analyzing tech companies, markets and trends. Here I'll  explain for a non-tech audience what's going on, and why there's no bubble.

Buzzfeed did a very good "Human's guide to the tech bubble" post where they argue for a non-tech audience that we're in a tech bubble, as an FAQ. So I'll do the opposite here. Here's a human's guide to the tech non-bubble.

Maryland has the foundation on which it can grow a robust environment of high-tech, innovative start-ups, but needs a stronger angel and venture capital network, more support for entrepreneurs and better programs to nurture young, creative minds, a group of business leaders said Tuesday.

"There's no reason Maryland can't be an entrepreneurial hotbed like Austin or Boston or Silicon Valley," said John M. Wasilisin, executive vice president of the Maryland Technology Development Corporation (TEDCO). "We have our challenges, but our assets are off the charts, our education system and our quality of life, our access to federal facilities."

The results of the human trials are startling. Even at a lower-than-usual dose, multiple lung metastases shrank or even disappeared after one patient received only two-hour-long intravenous infusions of an experimental cancer drug. Another patient saw her cervical tumor reduce by nearly 60 percent after six months of treatment. Though the drug trial—by Bind Biosciences in Cambridge, Massachusetts—of an experimental nanotechnology-based technique was designed simply to show whether the technology is safe, the encouraging results revive hopes that nanomedicine could realize its elusive promise.

Most high level executives do not expect a lot of recognition from others. Neither do they give a lot of recognition to others.

Many managers are like the classic husband who, when his wife complains that he doesn't tell her he loves her any more, responds that he told her he loved her when he married her -- and would have let her know if anything had changed.

Similarly, most managers act as if the act of hiring an employee is recognition enough -- this in spite of the fact that every one of these managers wants to be valued and appreciated by their superiors, and is regularly disappointed by the lack of appreciation coming their way.

Thursday is the spring "demo day" presentation for this year's crop of startups participating in the TechStars Boston accelerator program. Thirteen fledgling companies will be presenting in front of an audience of investors, press, and tech community members at the Wilbur Theater. Here's my scorecard of the companies presenting, what they do, who's involved, and how much money they've raised or are seeking. I'll update it throughout the morning on Thursday as I see their presentations.

For years as an executive at Rockwell Collins Inc., I worked with researchers at the state universities and entrepreneurs who were producing research and products that we needed to enhance our product line or create efficiencies. It could be a tedious process, but it was often more cost-effective than attempting to do the same thing in-house.

What I didn’t know is that this would be the basis of my next career – president and CEO of the Iowa Innovation Corporation.

Crowdfunding may be changing the rules of the financing game–witness the nearly $8 million plus that the Pebble smart watch raised on the site Kickstarter — but many entrepreneurs still want to raise venture capital.

And though seed money is flowing, as you’ll see in Forbes’ Midas List, it isn’t as easy as some news reports would make you think to raise equity capital. There’s a small universe of businesses that actually raise this form of financing. According to CB Insights, venture capitalists only invested in 785 companies in the first quarter. While that’s the second highest number in nine quarters, it obviously represents just a handful of all of the startups that are out there.