There’s a good chance you’re reading this article during your workday as a distraction from whatever it is you’re supposed to be focusing on at work right now. Whatever you were working on, which you still need to finish up, is likely open in another window.

"It’s just a few-minute break. No big deal."

But I’m guessing this isn’t the first article you’ve read, and when you’re done skimming this, another one might catch your eye, over there on the right. Or you’ll get an IM from a coworker asking for restaurant recommendations in Atlanta, where they’re traveling to tomorrow on business, and you’ll be tempted to give it some thought--after all, you used to live there and they need your help. Add in a few tweets and a scan of your Facebook newsfeed, and before you know it, you just lost half an hour from your workday.

At first glance, these ocean robots don’t look like much more than toy boats outfitted with solar panels. But the modest appearance of Liquid Robotics' Wave Glider ocean bots belies their ambition of traversing the Pacific Ocean and breaking the record for the longest distance ever traveled by an unmanned ocean vehicle. The bots aren’t making a frivolous expedition; they will collect and transmit huge amounts of data that could change our understanding of the ocean.

The Wave Glider robot, the first marine robot to use wave energy to propel itself forward (with wings attached 22 feet below the ocean’s surface), has been used by organizations like NOAA, BP, and the Scripps Institute of Oceanography to monitor everything from pollution to ocean salinity levels. The robot’s solar-powered sensors transmit information via satellite.

Collaborators from Harvard University, Massachusetts General Hospital, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) and Harvard Medical School (HMS) transplanted normally functioning embryonic neurons at a carefully selected stage of their development into the hypothalamus of mice unable to respond to leptin, a hormone that regulates metabolism and controls body weight. These mutant mice usually become morbidly obese, but the neuron transplants repaired defective brain circuits, enabling them to respond to leptin and thus experience substantially less weight gain.

Repair at the cellular-level of the hypothalamus -- a critical and complex region of the brain that regulates phenomena such as hunger, metabolism, body temperature, and basic behaviors such as sex and aggression -- indicates the possibility of new therapeutic approaches to even higher level conditions such as spinal cord injury, autism, epilepsy, ALS (Lou Gehrig's disease), Parkinson's disease, and Huntington's disease.

Designing learning experiences can be a demanding task, particularly if you’re devoted to coming up with creative strategies to engage your audience while facilitating learning.

At times, however, it feels as though the well is dry and your creative flow has disappeared. This can be due to creative blocks, which you can overcome once you recognize them.

Creativity Defined

Creativity manifests in many ways, making it difficult for psychologists to study, research and define it. Think of how creativity informs technical innovation, artistic expression, scientific endeavors, individual life choices, problem solving and game play. Such a variety of domains!

DEVELOPING ECONOMIES are slowly growing their share of intellectual assets as multinational firms and increased public spending drive up patent filings and research, the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) reported last week.

Low- and middle-income countries spent a combined $350 billion in research & development (R&D) in 2009, accounting for nearly 30% of the global investment worth $1.2 trillion. Their share rose 13 percentage points since 1993 against their wealthier counterparts which spent $854 billion in 2009.

While high-income countries still claim almost 70% of the spending, the global agency took the uptrend as indication of the indispensable role of innovation in corporate competitiveness, economic growth, and social development. This narrowing gap between developed and developing economies in this respect could be attributed to “The Changing Face of Innovation,” according to a report titled as such.

Does your business's culture encourage innovation? Or do you discourage new ideas, initiatives, and change?

"Life must be lived as play," said Plato. Especially in difficult times, you should heed that advice and have some fun in your business. One great way is to play Innovation Bingo, an adaptation of the Buzzword Bingo. Innovation Bingo makes long, mind-numbing meetings more fun, and at the same time helps you see how innovation-hostile your meetings can be. Here's how to play:

1. Make your Innovation Bingo card: Divide a sheet of paper in thirds both vertically and horizontally to make a 3x3 grid.

To encourage your creativity, sometimes you have to get your hands dirty. As it turns out, exploring a terrible idea can be the best way to come up with a unique solution by reframing your thinking, says Forbes. For example:

When The Cosmopolitan of Las Vegasteam was working on restaurant concepts, the obligatory (for Las Vegas) buffet came under discussion. In the context of the Worst Idea, this thought was posed: What if, instead of the mountains of food in the typical “all you can eat” spirit, you had a buffet offering tiny, bite-sized portions? The more the idea was explored, the more it started sounding like a good one that could align quite nicely with the Cosmopolitan’s aim to reinvent the Las Vegas experience.

Newswise — Deerfield, IL — In fiscal year 2010, 50 new companies were formed as a result of Canadian university research, an increase of 4 percent over the previous year, according to a survey report published Nov. 21 by the Association of University Technology Managers (AUTM), a nonprofit association of academic technology transfer professionals.

The survey also showed a 20 percent increase in industry support for university research, with companies committing $795 million towards innovative research projects.

The results were part of the annual AUTM Canadian Licensing Activity Survey: FY2010, which shares quantitative information about licensing activities at Canadian universities, hospitals and research institutions.

NEW YORK (MainStreet) -- What's happening in small business today?

1.Daily deals sites need a reboot. Daily deals promotions have become the norm for consumers to see in their inboxes and Facebook pages, but many small businesses say the deals are not worth the effort -- most lose money from them. A new batch of daily deal sites are looking to change that, including one called LevelUp.

2. Entrepreneurial lessons from Guitar Hero. Mashable has a Q&A with Charles and Kai Huang, founders of RedOctane, the publisher of Guitar Hero. Lessons from their experience in going into business for themselves: Make sure you control the whole product and don't need to rely on outsourcing certain components; keep careful watch over cash flow; don't overproduce; and finally, have some very close -- and rich -- friends.

What do Millennials in the work force really want? One thing is loud and clear: They want their Facebook, Twitter and smartphones—and if your business doesn’t give them what they want, they’ll find an employer that will.

That’s a major finding from the second annual “Cisco Connected World Technology Report” which surveyed 1,400 college students and 1,400 young professionals under age of 30.  The report states:

“The growing use of the Internet and mobile devices in the workplace is creating a significant impact on job decisions, hiring and work-life balance.  The ability to use social media, mobile devices, and the Internet more freely in the workplace is strong enough to influence job choice, sometimes more than salary.”

“If there are only a very limited number of jobs available, training, and education are solutions only of a temporary nature. The answer is in fostering entrepreneurship,” Matjašič said, responding to new - and bleak - data underlined by the European Commission yesterday (23 November) in the Annual Growth Survey 2012.

For Matjašič, entrepreneurship is not only a form of employment but also a way of realising innovative ideas and solutions.

“Entrepreneurship creates jobs, fosters wealth for society as a whole and particularly via social entrepreneurship, including green entrepreneurship, contributes to community development, supports environmental sustainability and produces social capital,” he said.

I still remember, it was Sunday morning, having our Grande family break-fast and my Dad suddenly had an outburst to give out his Wisdom Pearls to me.

I was 10 when he looked at me with his clairvoyant charm and uttered the golden words “You are not a born entrepreneur, so go make yourself one” (the way Chris Tucker talks to Jackie Chan in Rush Hour – like he dint understand which language he was talking!)

Well, that’s the only secret he told me “loud” & “clear” and my entire life till date has revolved around this 1 sentence figuring out how to make it happen ? Well, he said 1 more thing : “Here is the #1 rule to become a great entrepreneur and everything else crap !” :

PUTRAJAYA: Six high impact programmes have been underlined to boost the growth of small and medium enterprises from an annual growth of 6.5% to 8.7% by 2020.

Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak said the programmes were among 32 key measures that the Government would introduce to achieve the new SME growth target which would be achievable through Phase Two of the SME Masterplan (2012-2020).

“Without government intervention, the SMEs are expected to grow by 6.5% annually,” the Prime Minister said after chairing the SME Development Council at his office here.

Chris Loo is a man who wants to turn everyone into time travellers and he reckons the Chinese can help him step into the future.

The co-founder of Singapore-based firm Time Voyager is developing an online time travel game. And while his game is pushing the scientific barriers in the virtual world, Mr Loo is challenging the norms of funding in the real one.

His company is one of the few outside China that has received funding from a Chinese venture capital firm.

China's Gobi Partners along with South Korea's East Gate Capital, invested $3.3m (£2.1m) in Mr Loo's business in July this year, a cash injection that has come just at the right time.

While most people only gain about a pound of weight during the holiday season, that pound may never come off, increasing the likelihood of becoming overweight or obese and the risk of related health problems, according to a National Institutes of Health study.University of Missouri dietitians recommend families maintain healthy diet and exercise habits during the holiday season beginning with Thanksgiving.

Donna Mehrle, registered dietitian and extension associate in theDepartment of Nutrition and Exercise Physiology, reminds people to consider how they feel when they eat healthy foods and are physically active, so they’re more likely to continue those behaviors when holiday stress and cold weather offer convenient excuses. Feeling better is a great motivator, she says.

A healthy diet and the right amount of exercise are key players in treating and preventing obesity but we still know little about the relationship both factors have with each other. A new study now reveals that an increase in physical activity is linked to an improvement in diet quality.

Many questions arise when trying to lose weight. Would it be better to start on a diet and then do exercise, or the other way around? And how much does one compensate the other?

“Understanding the interaction between exercise and a healthy diet could improve preventative and therapeutic measures against obesity by strengthening current approaches and treatments,” explains Miguel Alonso Alonso, researcher at Harvard University (USA) who has published a bibliographical compilation on the subject, to SINC.

Both entrepreneurs and innovators are important but only a small number of ideas can ever achieve commercial success. A market is needed and sometimes a product or service can create one.

In Ireland as in many other countries searching for a solution for unemployment, innovation is viewed by politicians as the philosopher's stone that will produce a miracle but billions of euros spent on Irish university research produce little - - Science Foundation, the Irish State agency, reported in September, that it supported four university spinout  companies in 2010 - - and in a small country, there isn't a big market or maybe none and that key fact gets little attention.

Kick-starting this year’s Seedcamp Week in London is Ilya Segalovich, Chief Technology Officer at Yandex. If you’ve never heard of it, you might want to get Googling.

What you’ll find is that the search company is much bigger in its home market of Russia than Google, handling 65% of all searches there.

It’s just had the biggest IPO on New York’s Nasdaq since Google, raising $1.4 billion when it listed in May… and it’s recently launched an English language search engine.

“If you address the right product with a good technology, you’ll be successful.”

Yandex isn’t the only Russian tech company to enjoy a blockbuster IPO over the past year. Mail.ru raised around $1 billion when it listed in London last November.

Creativity and innovative thinking are not genetic traits. What makes people great innovators is not their genetic makeup, but a set of skills and behaviors. The good news: anyone can learn, practice, and master the skills necessary to become a disruptive innovator.

Hear Clay Christensen and Hal Gregersen, authors of The Innovator's DNA, talk about the ways in which leaders can improve their organization's innovative skills.

Intro: this post has been triggered by an innocent DM from Zuzanna Stanska of GammaRebels, asking me nicely if I would like to write about their increased funding news. So I spent the whole day pulling together interview notes, bookmarks and emails to prepare this post, which was long overdue.

My personal view is that the accelerator programs have become MBA2.0 for entrepreneurs. Compared to a standard MBA degree, which covers generic topics from macroeconomics, to general management and corporate finance, accelerator programs have a more focused approach to teach and prepare tech entrepreneurs to do one thing very well: build and grow their tech businesses. Of course they are as good as their mentor network.