In a commentary to be published in the Dec. 12 issue of The Journal of the American Medical Association, two Johns Hopkins faculty members predict an ever-diminishing role for government and drug company funding of basic biomedical research and suggest scientists look to "innovative" kinds of private investment for future resources. Current negotiations in Washington over sequestration and the so-called "fiscal cliff" provide an opportunity to fundamentally rethink the funding of biomedical research, they say.

Pointing to a decade of flat government funding for biomedical research, higher-than-ever costs of clinical trials, reduced drug industry investment and the threat of deep cuts to the federal research budget without congressional action by January to stop them, the commentators warn that without "creative" new sources of funding, biomedical innovation faces a crisis.

It seems so long ago that we had to start hiding our Blackberry’s in our pockets to avoid always being chastised.

If you were caught sending out an email on your Blackberry you had to quickly whip out your iPhone to show that – wait! – I have one of these, too.

It is stunning to think about the blind spots that market leaders can develop. For years Palm had such a significant lead in the PDA market it seemed inconceivable that they would be replaced.

A new analysis of global health data shows that the years of life lost from obesity outnumber those lost by hunger.

Data from the World Health Organization’s Global Burden of Disease Study 2010 was unveiled yesterday and will be published in The Lancet. It reveals that obesity rates have increased 82 percent worldwide over the past two decades. It’s now a problem in all countries except for those in sub-Saharan Africa. Obesity and its associated complications produce health burdens higher than those caused by hunger, CNN reported.

Turns out the trope is true: You should trust your gut — as long as you’re an expert. So says a new study from researchers at Rice University, George Mason University and Boston College.

“How expert someone is within a particular domain has a positive impact on their ability to make an accurate gut decision,” said Rice’s Erik Dane, lead author of a study published last month in the journal Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes. However, he added, “Even if you’re an expert, intuitive decision-making is better for some types of tasks than others. Tasks that can be solved through predetermined steps, like math problems, are not as conducive to intuitive decision-making as less-structured tasks, which may include certain strategic or human resource management problems.”

A successful career is often defined by the salary one earns. As such, it’s not uncommon for would-be entrepreneurs to focus on how they’re going to earn a big paycheck or raise their profile, and then shape their business around whatever they think will help them reach those goals the fastest. In reality, those motivated by creating “the next big thing” aren’t usually the ones to do it.  Entrepreneurs are increasingly achieving lasting success not by determining what product will help them “get rich quick,” but rather honing in on a problem they’ve experienced personally and engineering a solution to address it.

This has been the case for companies like Mint, Airbnb and Dropbox, among others, and it’s also how my company got started.  When I co-founded Bomgar with our CEO, Joel Bomgar, we’d recently graduated from college where he earned extra money as a part-time IT rep. He got the idea for our company after spending countless hours driving from site to site because no software existed that would enable him to remotely access and fix customers’ computers. To address this issue, Joel invented our flagship remote support solution and within a few months things took off and never stopped. Because we built the business around a product we wanted to create, versus building a product around a business we wanted to create, our mindset differs from those who are motivated for financial reasons. This seems to be a common theme among other “accidental entrepreneurs.”

Corporate renewal is essential but immensely challenging.  Today’s hot stock is often tomorrow’s humdrum company.  Many companies address their growth gaps by establishing incubators for new efforts, and they struggle.  One study of 300 such incubators found that only 47% met their strategic goals and 24% met their financial goals.  What makes for a successful incubator?

Begin by recognizing that incubation is hard.  Incubators tend to be small units in much larger firms, addressing a universe of possibility with scant resources.  They get stretched too thin, become captured by core business units, pursue irrelevant ideas, or all of the above.   Moreover, they pursue inherently medium and long-term growth initiatives in a climate that usually values hitting short-term financial targets, and so they are prime candidates for cost-cutting when inevitable budget crunches arise.

Drawing closer to realizing its plan for developing a commercialization center, Purdue University Calumet has purchased the former Kaplan Commons building, half a mile west of campus.

The vacant facility is located on the west side of Indianapolis Boulevard, south of 171st Street.

Building purchased, then renovation Though Purdue Calumet previously budgeted the $1 million purchase cost of the 18,000 square feet structure, Chancellor Thomas L. Keon said the time frame for the center’s opening is contingent on the university’s ability to raise another $1 million from private donors to cover renovation and furnishing costs.

You Gotta Have Faith

Building a business requires logic, dedication, and the ability to implement ideas. Besides these practical characteristics, you’ll need the assistance of something a little less tangible; a hearty dose of faith.

Without faith in your ideas and yourself, you won’t have the drive to actualize your vision. Your faith is the catalyst that ignites your passion.

The Rise of Science

The Greek philosopher Aristotle was obsessed by the idea of amassing all the knowledge that existed in the world. Of course, this lofty goal undoubtedly proved to be futile, but thousands of years ago, you could get pretty close with some hard work and dedication.

Aristotle not only tried to collect the world’s knowledge, he made observations and formed plenty of theories of his own, increasing the sum total of information.

In 2012, in partnership with Stanford University, U.C. Berkeley and NCIIA, Jerry Engel and I first offered the Lean LaunchPad Educators Class. The class was designed to teach educators (and the entrepreneurs that support them) the Lean LaunchPad approach (Business Model Design, Customer Development and Agile Engineering) for teaching entrepreneurship. In addition the class offers a suggested “Lean Entrepreneurship” curriculum and the details of how to teach the capstone Lean LaunchPad class.

Sidnee Peck from Arizona State University’s Carey School of Business attended the last Lean LaunchPad Educators Class. At ASU Sidnee is the Director of Entrepreneurial Initiatives, and the co-facilitator for the Venture Catalyst’s Rapid Startup School. Sidnee taught her own Lean LaunchPad class a week after returning to ASU, (holding some sort of record for a curriculum Pivot.) I asked her to share what she learned in the class and what she learned when she put it to practice. Here’s what she had to say…

We prefer it when they’re the ones who give us our flu shots, and we’ll trust them to tell us what we’re supposed to do after leaving the hospital or doctor’s office. That’s probably because Americans think nurses are more honest and ethical than any other professionals, including doctors, pharmacists and even police officers, according to new Gallup data.

In an online poll that ran Nov. 26 to 29, Gallup asked Americans to rank the honesty and ethical standards of professionals in 22 different fields. Eighty-five percent of respondents said nurses possessed high or very high honesty and ethical standards, compared to 75 percent who said the same about pharmacists and 70 percent who said doctors are highly honest and ethical.

I had just finished a guest lecture on business and innovation at Parson's School for Design, and a particularly attentive front-row audience member kicked off question time with the curliest one of the day. I answered quickly with the hope of getting back on target. But judging from the scores of follow-up questions and the volume of post-lecture emails I received, a talk on career regret would have been the real bull's-eye.

Ever since that afternoon, I've been on a mission to categorically answer the awkward but significant question of exactly what we'd do if we could magically rewind our careers. The hope? That by exposing what others are most disappointed about in their professional lives, we're maximizing our chances of minimizing regret in our own.

This may be good news for some and bad news for others:  You are not your past.

If you’ve had a great past, with many successes, perhaps this is not good news.

If you’ve had a tough time in the past, with few positive experiences, this may be great news.

The reality for most people probably lies somewhere in between.

Regardless, it is important that you understand that you can start fresh today.  In fact, you can start fresh right now.  All you have to do is give yourself permission to do so!  This is the toughest part for most people.  Don’t dwell on your failures; don’t rest on your laurels.  Rather, decide that the future begins fresh right now.

WHAT WILL THE KEY CHANGES BE IN BUSINESS AND DESIGN DURING 2013, AND WHAT SHOULD YOU DO ABOUT IT? HERE ARE FIVE PREDICTIONS FROM THE DESIGN FIRM FJORD.

At Fjord, we work across domains like media, health care, retail, education, and banking, and the work always involves an element of “new.” A new platform or technology, a new business proposition, or new target users. We work at the front edge of mainstream, where innovation meets mass-market appeal. The constant presence of “new” in our work feeds our curiosity, and makes exploration a necessity.

Women entrepreneurs are starting new businesses at twice the rate of men, but they're not getting funding at the same rate. In fact, less than one percent of women business owners acquire funding from venture capitalists and if you add in angel investors, the rate is still less than 1%, (.08%), according to the 2007 Survey of Business Owners by the US Census Bureau.

More recent statistics show improvement for women entrepreneurs.  In June 2011, Illuminate Ventures reported that 3 - 5% of women entrepreneurs achieve funding  from venture capitalists, and less than 16% when including Angel Capital.

We've talked a lot recently about the amazing amount of talent that exists in universities across the country – and one of the main reasons we launched the Dorm Room Fund was to create a new and more efficient way for capital to flow onto campuses and into the best and brightest entrepreneurs.  But we realize that not everyone wants to start a company; many students, instead,  would love to join one.   But it’s often really hard for students to find the perfect startup jobs.  Startups typically don’t recruit/interview on college campuses.  And they rarely post job openings for internships.  Too often, it is often based on who you know.  So a lot of top university talent simply end up taking an internship or full-time job at Google or Microsoft.   We don't think this makes sense.

To be successful as an entrepreneur, you don’t have to be a fabulous person, but it helps. Some people, and some entrepreneurs, have that something extra, like Simon Cowell is searching for on the X-Factor, that you can’t quite put your finger on. But the entrepreneurs that have “it” seem to be able to effortlessly get team members, investors, and customers to follow them anywhere.

In a recent book on this subject, “The Essentials of Fabulous,” Ellen Lubin-Sherman, who has been tracking fabulous people most of her life as a writer and journalist, tried to net “it” out. She identifies less than a dozen primary qualities for fabulous people in general, and I have honed and tuned these to ten that apply especially to entrepreneurs, in my experience:

I know everything. Or at least, I’d like to think I do. But I have to say, running a small business has brought me down a notch or two. I realize there’s so much I don’t know. That’s where having a mentor comes in handy.

I’ve had a retired oceanographer/SCORE leader as a mentor. A business and life coach. A VP of marketing. Another marketing consultant. A leadership management expert. I’ve come across people who know more than me, and I’ve built relationships with them so that I can benefit from their knowledge and experience.