When it comes to catching up with their male counterparts, women have made great strides in the business world over the years. But there's no doubt about it: Today's female entrepreneurs are still up against a few major obstacles. Seven women shared the biggest challenges they and their fellow female business owners have to face in the modern world, and give advice on how to best overcome them.

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I have a penchant for books about entrepreneurship and starting a business from almost nothing. Books about ideas, making those ideas work for you and the importance of building a sustainable company. So when I got asked to review Seth Rotherham’s foray into the world of lessons learnt from starting an online business I thought, why not? The book, titled Work is a Sideline. Live the holiday, arrived at my desk via a messenger fairy with a note of thanks (pressure!).

I talk to many people who have spent years struggling up the corporate ladder who dream of jumping ship and becoming an entrepreneur. I hasten to tell them that every job move is fraught with risk, but the move from employee to entrepreneur is on the high end of the risk curve. It’s a big jump, especially in today’s economy, so do your homework first on this one.

Job loss, a lack of retirement funds or just plain boredom at work have driven more people in their 50s and 60s to start their own businesses. Entrepreneurship by older Americans grew more than 60% between 1996 and 2012, says the Kansas City, Mo.-based Kauffman Foundation. 

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When my mom is asked what her sons do, she replies, “My oldest son is a doctor and my youngest son is an entrepreneur. Oh but, he’s a successful entrepreneur.” It is now necessary to qualify Entrepreneur because it’s so frequently overused. Since the recession in 2008 the word “Entrepreneur” has more than doubled in usage. (See Google GOOGL +0.9% Trends chart below). It seems everyone is a self-described entrepreneur.

Image: www.forbes.com 

The personal information that your smart phone can collect about you is increasingly detailed. Apps can record your location, your level of exercise, the phone calls that you make and receive, the photographs that you take and who you share them with, and so on. Various studies have shown that this data provides a detailed and comprehensive insight into an individual’s habits and lifestyle, information that advertisers and marketers dearly love to have.

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This year's class of 'Most Wired' hospitals are diving "deeper into data analytics and population health management," according to Hospitals & Health Networks.   The 16th annual survey, conducted by H&HN in partnership with the American Hospital Association, CHIME, McKesson and AT&T, finds that these 375 organizations are also using information technology to bridge gaps to outpatient providers, the report finds. In addition to highlighting the Most Wired, HHN also recognized hospitals in the 'Most Improved,' 'Small and Rural' and 'Most Wired Advanced' categories (see next page.)

Image: UC San Diego Health System is one of only 20 hospitals that received HHN's Most Wired Advanced designation. Photo: Wikicommons, 2008 

Is there more innovation action in the Philadelphia region than there was five years ago?

That’s one question the Economy League‘s recently released World Class Index seeks to answer. The Index, full of statistics and graphs, aims to track the region’s progress in business growth, but also infrastructure and education. It’s part of the organization’s new mission: to move from straight research to pushing a set of shared goals for the region.

Image: Members of Parsortix, Inc., a medical technology company. (Photo courtesy of University City Science Center) 

As I head to Mexico City this week, I reflect on the progress this ecosystem has demonstrated over the past few years in a quest to become a globally-recognized hub for entrepreneurs.

Long gone are the days when the government’s promotion of the private sector focused exclusively on making the nation a top manufacturing destination. Today, it is not unusual for startup-savvy civil servants to talk rather of the democratization of manufacturing through the entrepreneurial “maker movement”. In general, the public sector has begun making the case for a competitive Mexico by highlighting its entrepreneurs’ strong links to both the North and South, through its various free trade agreements and diaspora.

Image: http://entrepreneurship.org 

SV Angel, the seed-stage VC firm founded by Ron Conway and ex-Googler David Lee, is raising a fifth, $70 million fund.

Revealed in a public SEC filing, no limited partners (LPs) have officially committed to the new fund, but its projected size is certainly noteworthy; the fifth fund is 75 percent larger than SV Angel’s last two funds, both $40 million in size — announced August 2012 and May 2011 respectively. SV Angel’s second fund, raised in 2010, was $20 million, and the size of its first fund, raised in 2008, is unknown.

Image: http://venturebeat.com 

Just about every tech leader in Silicon Valley says they admire Steve Jobs, but when it comes to following his lead, where’s the love?

Visit any hacker hangout, tech firm, or investment company in Silicon Valley, and you’re sure to hear people say how much they admire Steve Jobs. They’ll say that he was the most effective CEO, the best innovator, the strongest motivator, the most ruthless negotiator, and the person with the clearest vision in the valley of where tech is going. Sure, he stepped on people’s toes, and sometimes was unfair to coworkers, but what counts is how successful he was, right?

John Hagel speaks with satisfying precision. He has kind eyes and stern glasses, which together dominate the screen during a Sunday-afternoon Skype conversation.

As co-chairman of Deloitte’s Center for the Edge, Hagel hunts for unexploited capability on the “edges” of business and makes the case to include them on the CEO’s agenda. “The edges are most fertile areas for innovation,” he says. They are an important place to watch, because what happens at the edges transforms the core.

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The largest flying bird known to ever have lived has now been revealed, an extinct giant with a wingspan more than twice the size of the largest living flying bird, researchers say.

These findings exceed some predictions for the largest size possible for flying birds, scientists added.

Image: Here, an illustration of what may be the largest flying bird, an extinct beast with a wingspan of 20 to 24 feet (6.1 to 7.3 meters) that flew the skies some 25 million to 28 million years ago. Credit: Liz Bradford 

When leaders want to create an open culture where people are willing to speak up and challenge one another, they often start by listening. This is a good instinct. But listening with your ears will only take you so far. You also need to demonstrate with words that you truly want people to raise risky issues.

Take the former president of a major defense company, whom I will call Phil. No one at the 13,000-employee firm believed Phil when he announced that he was going to create a culture of candor and openness. And why should they? He already had three strikes against him: his workforce, his past performance, and his manner.

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In recent decades as many countries have developed sophisticated national innovation strategies, the U.S. has generally avoided attempts to introduce a coordinated innovation policy system. Instead, U.S. leaders have placed their trust in the market, rather than the government, to generate knowledge, products and businesses. A new report from the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF) suggests that this approach ignores a major factor in the success of innovation economies. Modern, competitive nations rely on three elements that comprise an “Innovation Success Triangle” – business environment, regulatory environment and innovation policy system.

Your unusual trait may be acceptable, even endearing, in some contexts, but in others it could place you at professional risk.

With the global job market remaining ultra-competitive, a question on many people’s minds is what influences the evaluations of job candidates. Everyone wants to be evaluated at least as favourably as their qualifications justify, but can seemingly innocuous unusual traits make those aiming to socially network and land jobs less professionally attractive? For example, does being exceptionally curious, left-handed, or vegetarian catch people’s eye in a positive way if they notice at all, or could this reduce the extent to which others want to interact and work with people with this sort of unusual characteristic?

Image: http://knowledge.insead.edu/ 

A new study adds some empirical firepower to the idea that poor patent laws are crushing innovation in the technology industry. Researchers from the London School of Economics studied citations from patents that were invalidated by U.S. judges and found that invalidation increased the number of subsequent innovations in technology, but not in pharmaceuticals.

Image: Credit: Flickr user opensourceway 

The announcement that Google is to set up a European version of its venture capital operation is welcome news. Google Ventures’ new US$100m fund for fledgling European tech firms represents a new source of the sort of risk capital which has often been in short supply on this side of the Atlantic. Startups may also be able to access Google’s impressive technology and corporate networks.

In 2011, The Institute for the Future and the University of Phoenix published a report that looked at Future Work Skills 2020 (PDF). The report identified six drivers of change. I’ve added links to examples of each, three years later.

Ten future work skills were derived from these drivers and these were seen to be critical for success in the emerging network era workplace. Recently, a relatively simple infographic was published to show the relationship between these drivers and skills. It reminded me of the need to develop new workplace disciplines.

Image: http://www.jarche.com/ 

When considering a new job, it is important to ensure the grass will truly be greener on the other side.

While working for a new employer often helps an employee's career, it can also be a detriment. A new study from Spherion Staffing Services revealed that long-term career advancement doesn't always happen by moving from one employer to another, but rather by staying with one company.