We’re all tempted to use words that we’re not too familiar with. We throw them around in meetings, e-mails and important documents (such as resumes and client proposals), and they land, like fingernails across a chalkboard, on everyone who has to hear or read them.

No matter how talented you are or what you’ve accomplished, using words incorrectly can change the way people see you and forever cast you in a negative light. You may not think it’s a big deal, but if your language is driving people up the wall you need to do something about it.

Keith Pavitt was a professor at the Science Policy Research Unit at Sussex University, one of the most influential think-tanks within European innovation policy. Like many of his peers, Pavitt had grown frustrated by shortcomings of the Framework Programmes. In June 2000 he was invited to a workshop in Lisbon of a FP-funded project on ‘Scenarios for the evaluation of the European science and technology policy’.

Image: http://sciencebusiness.net/

Silicon Valley start-ups get lots of attention. But the reality is that the vast majority of successfully scaled ventures are not mythical unicorns with billion-dollar paper values, but real-world workhorses that plug along, steadily producing results and scaling up, year after year.

One strategy for successfully scaling your company can be to become a supplier to-and an integral part of the supply chain for-large, global corporations. But while the growth from tapping into corporate supply chains and procurement processes can be significant, becoming a supplier for large corporations is extremely difficult and time consuming.

In the old days, an investor hoping to get in on the ground floor of the next Google or Facebook had a couple of options: have a friend or relative on the inside, or sign on with a big brokerage firm handling the startup company’s private placement—a sale of stock that hasn’t yet gone public.

Not anymore. Ordinary investors now can buy shares in startups that are just getting off the ground, sometimes for just a few dollars. If, that is, they are willing to take on a whole lot of risk.

The Finnish government has decided that a good ‘second life’, a digital one (www.secondlife.com), must be included in the pantheon of citizens’ rights. Helsinki is already a digital city. At lunchtime on any day of the week in the Finnish capital, crowds of young – and not so young – people navigate the Internet readily and easily in the streets and public places. These people, let us call them ‘Internauts’, make use of superfast network connections. Access is free in bars, restaurants and hotels: computers are available free of charge for anyone who does not own a portable computer.

By all appearances, we’re in a golden age of innovation. Every month sees new advances in artificial intelligence, gene therapy, robotics and software apps. Research and development as a share of gross domestic product is near an all-time high. There are more scientists and engineers in the U.S. than ever before.

This infographic was created by Naka Kondo, an editor for The Economist, Intelligence Unit’s thought leadership division based in Tokyo. The full report Old problems, new solutions: Measuring the capacity for social innovation across the world can be read here.

ROCKY HILL _ The state's venture capital fund, prodded by investors suggesting a new direction, is scouting for high-tech funds where it can invest public money to broaden its network of technology-based startups.

Connecticut Innovations, which invests in startup bioscience, medical equipment and other high-tech companies, is responding to entrepreneurs, investors and others urging a different tack to spur business expansion and job growth.

Following the 2008 financial crisis, Mary Schapiro, the former chairwoman of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), said during testimony to the financial crisis inquiry commission that “the quality of a board's oversight of risk management – traditionally viewed as just a compliance cost – can make an enormous difference in our economy, and particularly in financial markets.”

The boards of banks were heavily criticised by investors and regulators for overseeing the incentive structures that allowed management teams to take big risks which eventually led to the crisis.

Chinese inventors filed over one million patents in 2015, which made them the world’s most prolific innovators and the first country in history reaching the one million mark within a single year.

China’s 2015 innovation harvest was driven mostly by advances in telecommunications, computer technology and semiconductors, the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) has revealed.

Every big company was a lean and mean startup at one time. Now, confronted with digital disruption all around us, we’re all rushing to rekindle the entrepreneurial flame that first put our businesses on the map.

Every company wants to be “innovative,” but “innovation” has become an overused buzzword that has lost its meaning. Executives at companies of all sizes toss the word around as if they’re doing it. They point to experiments that range from departmental contests and monetary awards to innovation fairs, idea boxes and time to dream big. Executives at one company even dressed up as innovation superheroes in an “intervention” to rally employees around innovation.

Annual Survey of Entrepreneurs Data Briefing Series

Using new data from the 2014 Annual Survey of Entrepreneurs (ASE), this data briefing looks across the largest fifty metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs) to see how entrepreneurs have fared in their quests to secure money from venture capitalists, angel investors, and online crowds. 

Venture Capital Received when Starting a Business: While 10.3 percent of entrepreneurs report using personal credit cards when starting their business, nationally, only 0.6 percent initially received venture capital.

Innovation drives countries’ long-term economic growth and improvements in quality of life. But the competition amongst nations for innovation leadership has intensified even as the increased complexity of technological innovation has made it more difficult to achieve. For these reasons, the federal government needs to step up its game when it comes to technology commercialization policies and programs.

If America is going to effectively compete with the world in the modern global innovation economy, it will need to do a better job of transforming knowledge into new companies and products here at home. Achieving this requires new policies that can help get technologies out of the laboratory and transfer them to market for commercialization by private-sector actors.

Walking around San Francisco’s Union Square during biotech conference season in January—during this time of industry prosperity—you might expect it to be crawling with brainy young people. You might expect hot startups to come from students and postdocs, like in the tech industry, with VCs scrambling to get in on the ground floor.

Business owners make a lot of mistakes, especially first-timers—I'm one, and I know I have. But some entrepreneurs' entire businesses are based on helping others start their own. And since those experts interact with hundreds and even thousands of first-time entrepreneurs each week, they have a wider view than most of the types of errors new business owners keep making as we head toward 2017. These are a few of the most common they've seen over and over again in the past year.

Reward crowdfunding has evolved.

Campaigns on platforms such as Kickstarter and Indiegogo are largely more sophisticated than their counterparts from just a few years ago. As a result, the audience also has raised the bar for marketing these crowdfunding initiatives.

Modeling afforded a number of insights about why high-technology companies fail. It is much harder to change decision-making procedures than we realized when system dynamics started. Whether in school or management education, the focus will be on “generic structures.”

Sometimes, the best tech is simple.

While 2016 was littered with futuristic gadgets — mind-melting virtual reality headsets, an iPhone without a headphone jack — we'd wager most of the technology you use day to day is a bit less amazing. Maybe you have a really good keyboard, or a neat smartphone app that saves you money: they may not dazzle, exactly, but they make a difference in your life.

Clayton Christensen, professor at Harvard Business School, builds upon the theory of disruptive innovation for which he is well-known. He speaks about his new book examining how successful companies know how to grow.

As dramatic music played in the background, Penn Engineering grads Matt Lisle ENG’15 and Adrian Lievano ENG’15 walked nervously onto the set of CNBC’s Make Me a Millionaire Inventor. After weeks of preparation, this was the moment they had been waiting for—pitching their water filtration system to a potential investor.

As fate would have it, that investor turned out to be Alicia Syrett W’99, founder and CEO of Pantegrion Capital and board member of New York Angels.

Image: Everwaters founders Matt Lisle ENG’15 and Adrian Lievano ENG’15