Swift global integration, the rapid expansion of a global consumer class, and the rise of urban regions as the engines of global economic growth have ushered in a new era. The global economy no longer revolves around a handful of dominant states and their national urban centers. This fundamental shift has both challenged the United States with greater global competition but also offered the prospect of all U.S. metropolitan areas to benefiting from engaging in growing markets abroad.

In the knowledge age, "smart" cities and metros have a considerable economic advantage. Economists like Harvard's Edward Glaeser have shown how urban and regional economic growth turn on education levels or so-called "human capital" (measured by the share of adults who hold college degrees). Others show the connections between knowledge and creative jobs, innovation, and economic growth. Still others focus on the role of specific skills — knowledge, social, and physical — in economic and urban development (a subject I covered back in October 2011 for The Atlantic.)

Last week, WXY Architecture + Urban Design presented a major strategic planning initiative to the Brooklyn Tech Triangle coalition – a development team that includes the Downtown Brooklyn Partnership, the DUMBO Improvement District, and the Brooklyn Navy Yard Development Corporation. Its goal? To continue transforming downtown Brooklyn – already the largest location for tech activity outside of Manhattan – into a vibrant destination for technology industry tenants.

Within two years, Brooklyn’s 18,000 tech jobs and 43,000 supporting jobs will face a lack of commercial and light industrial space. And with Midtown South vacancies low and rents sky high, WXY is proposing some broad initiatives designed to continue attracting technology companies, start-up firms, and other workers to the Tech Triangle, which stretches roughly across downtown Brooklyn, DUMBO, and the Brooklyn Navy Yard.

The people at NerdWallet, a four-year-old personal finance website based in San Francisco, have done the odd exercise of ranking the most educated places in America. These are communities where the highest proportion of the adult population has high school, college or graduate degrees. Because they were looking for a broad base of educated people, as opposed to, say, the highest concentration of Ph.D.s, none of the places are urban centers or places with a lot of poor people.

Todd Defren and Jim Joyal had built a company together.

Shift Communications had grown from a small PR startup to a company of 110 employees, with offices in Boston, New York, and San Francisco. They’d won a suite of awards, were doing strong revenue, and were beginning to receive overtures from larger companies about a possible acquisition. The only problem was that Defren and Joyal had “asymmetrical motivations,” as Defren puts it. Joyal was over a decade older and ready to start thinking about estate planning. Defren felt he had years of work ahead of him. So Defren and Joyal began to strategize about possible ways Joyal could convert most of his ownership into cash.

Everyone has something hanging around their desk that makes it unique, right? That was our hunch.

Last week, we took a fun look at the quirks specific to your (and our) offices. For a new workplace issue, we thought we'd narrow our focus down and look at those things stowed away in the depths of your desk that that you can't live without.

Greenhouse gases are heating up the planet, spurring plenty of controversy about whether — and how — to stop pumping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. But some scientists are looking at another option, one they often see as an emergency brake: Geoengineering.

The idea behind geoengineering is to combat man-made climate change with man-made solutions, mostly involving ways to pull carbon out of the atmosphere or to deflect the sun's rays so the carbon dioxide has less heat to trap. The ideas are largely untested and highly controversial. They also involve tackling major technological challenges, some of which may be too great to overcome.

Taking the helm of EFPIA, Viehbacher says R&D and innovation are the keys to rescuing Europe from its economic slump, but more harmonization across the pharmaceutical sector will be needed too.

The popular ‘Happy Birthday’ song has been in the headlines recently over a copyright battle. While the nuances of the legal battle are interesting, and worth reading, there is a larger lesson.

If something so naturally prevalent and ubiquitous as the “Happy Birthday” song can have an owner, then entrepreneurs and investors beware!

People who were making and tasting lemonade while memorizing a seven-digit number ended up with a 50% higher sugar concentration in the drink than people who were memorizing just one number, say Reine C. van der Wal of Radboud University Nijmegen and Lotte F. van Dillen of Leiden University, both in the Netherlands. This and other experiments suggest that dealing with a cognitive load dulls the experience of taste (not just sweet but also salty and sour), leading people to drink or eat more in order to obtain a pleasurable experience. Abstaining from cognitive activities during meals may enhance taste perception and limit overconsumption, the researchers say.

In the early years of a company's life cycle, an entrepreneur's ambition can be a double-edged sword. The drive to align quickly with marquee customers to establish credibility can sometimes cloud your judgment. At my company, TransPerfect, we have mostly been served well by our mantra of 20 years: "Listen to the clients and respond to their needs." But we have also learned that the desire to please a potential client at all costs can actually be a setback if you fail to fully evaluate all potential outcomes.

In our formative years, one of the vital lessons I had to learn was how to recognize when an opportunity was not a good fit for us. Signing the wrong deal can cost you time and money — two things entrepreneurs can't afford to lose. How can an entrepreneur eager to build their firm recognize when a deal is a bad idea? Here are some lessons I've learned to keep in mind.

IPOs for private equity-backed companies have bounced back from their 2008 doldrums. Last year, 37 PE-backed, U.S-headquartered companies completed IPOs, more than triple 2008's count of 12 and up from 2011, as well. With 23 PE-backed IPOs completed at the halfway point of this year, 2013 activity may very well end up surpassing 2012's. Overall, though, IPO activity has a ways to go to get back to the level seen in 2005, when there were 70 IPOs by PE-backed companies.

Although 2011 saw a slowdown in IPO activity from 2010, total capital raised through the year's 31 IPOs was $15.4 billion, nearly doubled 2010's $8.5 billion. A handful of big IPOs made the difference, including an over $4 billion offering for Hospital Corporation of America, a $2.9 billion offering for Kinder Morgan and a $1.6 billion offering for The Nielsen Company.

There's almost no real reason to own a flashlight now that all smartphones have bright flashes that work as flashlights.

However!

If, for some reason, you do want a dedicated flashlight in your life, a 15 year-old genius, Ann Makosinski from Victoria, B.C. has developed a new, innovative version of the flashlight. 

I spent this weekend in Cleveland for my little cousin's high school graduation. He's 18. Most of his friends are 17-19 years old. And when their eyes weren't glued to the coolers of beer they couldn't drink, they were looking at their smartphones: swiping around and giggling about whatever appeared on their tiny screens.

This is part of a series that describes a sales methodology for technology companies or frankly many other types of companies, too.

This post is about finding your “champion.”

We developed this at our first company and called it PUCCKA – the overall methodology is described here.

Some investors seem to focus wholly on the strengths of the management team, or a sustainable competitive advantage, and in reality these are the core attributes for every funding equation. While these may be necessary for funding, they may not be sufficient to make your startup the great success embodied in your vision.

In the last couple of years, perhaps in reaction to some business atrocities leading to the recent Recession, I am seeing a renewed focus on other less tangible attributes which can set your startup apart. Examples include the Conscious Capitalism® movement, led by John Mackey of Whole Foods, The B Team, led by serial entrepreneur Sir Richard Branson, and the Benefit Corporation (B Corp) form of business now available in 14 states.

You’ve heard the tabloid tell of the man who awakened from a coma after 10+ years. Well, this real news is about one social entrepreneur who emerged from his own social impact incubator after 11+ years and why he believes now is the right time to make a difference with the 501c3 he founded.

In his words, “The market is a modern day frontier akin to the Wild West with uncharted rough terrain, certain impassable dead ends and some hidden dangers. So our challenge has been less about trying to fix a system as it is about how to best build one from scratch and layering it in like connective tissue.”

He believes this non-profit can be the perfect intersection of education, employment and economic development. “This is where we can remedy numerous societal ills at once – with both a sense of urgency and purpose with mutual and exponential gains, much like how the sum of ones parts can be greater, so too can the opportunity to restore some rungs on the ladder of the American Dream.”

One of the biggest challenges in Research is to actually get the ideas reach the market, with sustainable business models, which may lead to new companies, products or services, and create jobs and economic impact.

FEDIT, Spanish technology facilities network, brings together 67 research centers specialized in technology and industrial sectors as diverse as footwear, agribusiness, aerospace technology or materials science. With more than 8,000 researchers and more than 30,000 client companies, technology centers play a key role in the transfer of technology to market.

When you think of the "World Wide Web," you likely imagine a sprawling network of computers circling the globe, blasting information to each other 24 hours a day. And you'd be right, though this wasn't always the case.

When he first invented it in 1989, Tim Berners-Lee kept the entire World Wide Web (which was still rather small for a time) on his NeXTcube from NeXT, the company started by Steve Jobs after being ousted from Apple.

We love a good entrepreneurial success story — entrepreneur as protagonist overcomes obstacles and builds a thriving, successful company (and become wealthy while doing so). We want to hear about, learn from and even replicate what they’ve done. However, this survivorship bias is problematic. Jason Cohen of Smart Bear Software does a nice job articulating this issue stating: