There have recently been some angry grumblings from the blogosphere about the government wanting to stick its fingers in the crowdfunding pie. The concern across the internet seems to be that new regulations will destroy the rapidly-growing crowdfunding industry that brought us the Pebble Watch and the Veronica Mars movie.

I am here to paraphrase Mark Twain and assure you that the rumors of Kickstarter’s death have been greatly exaggerated.

This Memo explains the objectives of the Innovation Union Scoreboard and provides an overview of the research and innovation performance of EU Member States and some associated and neighbouring countries at national and regional levels, as measured by the Innovation Union Scoreboard 2014 and the Regional Innovation Scoreboard 2014.

The rumors were true – kind of: The Founders Fund has been out raising a massive amount of cash for a fifth fund, but it’s not $750 million as originally thought. It’s $1 billion, the fund said today.

Most known for backing Facebook, Spotify and Elon Musk’s SpaceX, FF is a “stage agnostic” fund that focuses on aerospace, artificial intelligence, advanced computing, energy, health and consumer Internet.

Image: http://medcitynews.com 

Startup incubator DreamIt Ventures Austin is kicking off a new microfund this week that will benefit the companies involved with its second accelerator program.

The microfund, which will run through a partnership with AngelList, allows accredited investors to crowdfund money for startups. Everyone who participates in DreamIt Austin’s microfund will need to make a $2,500 minimum investment that will fund all nine companies within DreamIt’s Austin program — that means you can’t just pick and chose to fund only the companies you like.

I am very proud that my son just published his novel, Uncommon Stock. It’s a fictional thriller about two entrepreneurs starting a new technology company.

One of the most powerful pieces of the book that resonated with me was its focus on resilience, the ability to bounce back after a setback/disaster, with total commitment towards achieving a specific.  For young students searching for a career,  parents of children who are striking out on a career, teachers who counsel students on career choices and clinicians who help clients learn work/life balance and enhance health, they may be unaware of the dynamic emotional and commitment struggles that underlie successful entrepreneurship.

China's first venture capital (VC) fund focused on solely female entrepreneurship - the Wuhan Cybernaut Women's Innovation Entrepreneurship Venture Capital Fund - has been established in Wuhan, capital of central China's Hubei Province.    The fund was co-planned and launched by the Wuhan Women's Federation and Silicon Valley-backed Cybernaut (China) Investment.

Image: http://www.womenofchina.cn 

J. Craig Venter is the latest wealthy entrepreneur to think he can cheat aging and death. And he hopes to do so by resorting to his first love: sequencing genomes.

On Tuesday, Dr. Venter announced that he was starting a new company, Human Longevity, which will focus on figuring out how people can live longer and healthier lives.

Image: Karen Xu, a scientist at J. Craig Venter’s Synthetic Genomics, prepares samples of microorganisms from desert soil and rock. Credit Michal Czerwonka for The New York Times 

When we were in college, most of us heard about legendary summer internship programs at companies like Google, Facebook, and LinkedIn with summer days filled with baseball games, cool swag, and even free sushi at lunch. While all those special treats are a dream to the average college student, how many interns actually end up returning to those companies as full-time employees?

Founded in 1997, Getty Images has made a business out of licensing stock photography to web sites. But, in recent years, the company has struggled, facing stiffer competition from other companies …. and from online piracy. Quoted in the British Journal of Photography, Craig Peters, a Senior VP at Getty Images, observes that Getty is “really starting to see the extent of online infringement. In essence, everybody today is a publisher thanks to social media and self-publishing platforms. And it’s incredibly easy to find content online and simply right-click to utilise it.” All of this becomes a problem, for Getty, when cash-strapped “self publishers, who typically don’t know anything about copyright and licensing,” start right clicking and using the company’s images without attribution or payment.

A talented videogame-designing friend had a ready quip whenever start-up executives asked him if he was a “team player.” “Yes,” he always responded, “team captain.” He usually got hired.

“Makes teams better” is fast-becoming both an essential ingredient to getting hired and a mission-critical skill-set worth measuring. After spending the weekend at the annual MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference,  “quantifying chemistry”—identifying those talents, attributes and combinatorial skills that make a team play so much better than a group of talented individuals—has clearly become the new Holy Grail of sports analytics.

Image: http://www.freedigitalphotos.net

There is an old cartoon I often show to the managers I work with. It portrays a smiling executive team around a long table. The chairman is asking, “All in favor?” Everyone’s hand is up. Meanwhile, the cloud hovering above each head contains a dissonant view: “You’ve got to be kidding;” “Heaven forbid;” “Perish the thought.” It never fails to provoke awkward laughter of self-recognition.

Image Courtesy of dan / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

So Tech stocks are taking big swings, investors are rolling in dough and Venture Capital is infusing obscene amounts of money into the Startup scene. Doesn’t it all appear a little too over-confident? Just like a fairy-tale romance? There are just too many analogies with the erstwhile dot com bubble to not pay attention. It sounds almost like everyone’s falling in love with Tech stocks at first sight.

Image: http://www.wallstreetoasis.com 

In the last few years we’ve recognized that a startup is not a smaller version of a large company. We’re now learning that companies are not larger versions of startups. There’s been lots written about how companies need to be more innovative, but very little on what stops them from doing so. Companies looking to be innovative face a conundrum: Every policy and procedure that makes them efficient execution machines stifles innovation.

Image: http://www.freedigitalphotos.net

Misao Okawa blew out the candles of her birthday cake on Wednesday and became the world's oldest person at the ripe old age of 116.

The daughter of a kimono maker, Okawa was born in Osaka, Japan, on March 5, 1898 — a year when Queen Victoria sat on the British throne, New York added surrounding counties that would become the five famous boroughs, and the Philippines declared independence.

Image: http://www.freedigitalphotos.net

In what may be a critical breakthrough for creating artificial organs, Harvard researchers say they have created tissue interlaced with blood vessels.

Using a custom-built four-head 3-D printer and a “disappearing” ink, materials scientist Jennifer Lewis and her team created a patch of tissue containing skin cells and biological structural material interwoven with blood-vessel-like structures. Reported by the team in Advanced Materials, the tissue is the first made through 3-D printing to include potentially functional blood vessels embedded among multiple, patterned cell types.

Image: http://www.technologyreview.com - Living layers: Harvard researchers demonstrate their method for creating vascularized tissue constructs by printing cell-laden inks in a layered zig-zag pattern. 

It’s that time of year again: the W2 and 1099 forms have all been sent out. You're staring at a new collection of tax forms, and it’s peak season for the tax prep software industry and accountants.

Have you wondered if you are one of those Americans who have left money on the table by overpaying your bill to Uncle Sam? Most likely, you want to do all you can to get as big a refund (or pay as little as possible) this year. Here are six simple filing fixes to help you put more money in your wallet this year:

Image: http://www.freedigitalphotos.net

NEW DELHI, India — The economy is (finally) picking up. That means it’s acquisition season in Silicon Valley. As Facebook’s exorbitant $19-billion purchase of WhatsApp illustrates, tech titans are flush, and willing to write fat checks to beat the competition.

Naturally, most of the big purchases focus on the tech heavy hubs of Silicon Valley, New York and Boston. But startups with ties to India are also attracting a lot of attention.

Image: http://www.freedigitalphotos.net

It was an event watched by billions around the world and one which saw Ellen DeGeneres steal Barack Obama’s spot in the Twitter hall of fame with the most retweeted tweet ever, but there’s more to the Academy Awards than statues and celebs. As part of its partnership with ratings company Nielsen, Twitter’s released a fresh batch of statistics about the awards, which give some insight into how big the conversation really was — and into its own plans to prove its worth as a second screen companion.

Image: http://memeburn.com 

AUSTIN, Texas — The Austin Technology Incubator (ATI), and the private companies it has nurtured, generated 6,520 jobs and produced $880 million in economic benefit for Texas during the past decade, according to a new study of the business incubator’s success.

ATI’s contributions have come as Central Texas has experienced an economic and high-tech boom. The report detailing these successes comes as the region prepares to host the 21st annual SXSW Interactive Festival, which draws global attention to the area’s tech industry.

angelMD, a crowdfunding platform that connects physicians and leading medical startups, has stated the number of medical startups with live profiles on the site  now exceeds 100. Startups listed on the site must be a medical product or product enabled service, must be a legal entity and be ready to share their story. angelMD selects investment candidates from those listed on the site seeking capital.  Based in both San Francisco and Seattle, Washington, angelMD has incorporated the participation of leading physicians from all over the United States to source and evaluate opportunities.