The African Innovation Foundation (AIF) recently announced the finalists of the prestigious Innovation Prize for Africa (IPA) 2014. Like the years before, the 10 finalists have been chosen for their practical, innovative solutions to local problems that are unique to the African continent. From South Africa to Togo, the finalists were chosen from almost 700 applications from 42 countries and produce inspiring innovations from a domestic waste biogas system to a wafer matrix for pediatric antiretroviral (ARV) drug treatment.

Kinematics CEO Matthias Bürger snaps block after block together. Within 30 seconds, he has formed them into a racecar. He pulls out a remote control app on a tablet and begins directing the car to zoom forward and backward.

Image: A remote control car built out of TinkerBots modules. Photo by Signe Brewster. 

While good old paper may seem passé in the digital age, LinkedIn hasn't completely replaced the old-fashioned résumé.

"Résumés are the heartbeat of a career search,” says Jacqui Barrett-Poindexter, a career and workplace adviser at Glassdoor. “If done well, your résumé will tell your story and sell you.”

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Study, work hard, and you will be successful.

This was the mantra repeated by educators throughout my youth. None of them added "be happy" to the success equation.

But a growing body of research in positive psychology and neuroscience is demonstrating that happiness is the secret ingredient to success. It turns out, our brains are more engaged, creative, productive, and resilient when in a positive state.

image: http://www.freedigitalphotos.net 

EquityNet LLC raised $2.1 million from Proton Enterprises and individual angel investors to grow its "all-purpose" equity crowdfunding platform. The new funding brings the company's total funding raised to date to about $5 million.

Chief Executive Judd Hollas told VentureWire about one-quarter of the funding came from angel investors that were using EquityNet to find deals.

MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) — Alabamians are being given a new way to raise money to start a small business. A spokeswoman for Gov. Robert Bentley says he signed legislation Tuesday that was sponsored by Republican Sen. Arthur Orr of Decatur and supported by the Alabama Securities Commission.

Sussex Place Ventures now has a new pot of capital to go out and back early stage British technology firms.

The Regents Park Partners II ECF is two thirds populated by a contribution from the UK government's British business bank and one third from private investors, technology entrepreneurs, business angels and London Business School alumni.

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California requires persons who are engaged in the business of making loans to be licensed under the Finance Lenders Law.  Cal. Fin. Code § 22000 et seq.  This had been an issue for venture capital funds that extended bridge loans to see portfolio companies through to the next round of financing.  In 2003, the legislature provided some relief by enacting AB 169 (Chavez).  That bill exempts commercial bridge loans made by venture capital companies.  Cal. Fin. Code § 22062.  The relief, however, was limited.  Notably absent from the exemption were venture capital investments in the form of longer-term convertible debt.

image: http://www.freedigitalphotos.net 

You love your employees, and, obviously, you think they do awesome work, or else you probably wouldn’t have hired them. Yet, do you ever find yourself wishing they could become a little bit more innovative? After all, the companies that are thriving in today’s competitive marketplace are also some of the most creative.

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Most decisions in organizations are made by escalating them up the management hierarchy — and it’s usually the highest paid person in the room’s opinion (“HIPPO”) that prevails. The HIPPO model of decision-making will likely always be with us. But with the rise of digital technology, and with it the ability to get immediate feedback from customers and communities, crowdsourcing has become a powerful alternative for driving important decisions. The challenge is finding the right ways to introduce crowdsourcing into your management processes so that it opens up and democratizes decisions, harvesting the accumulated thoughts and perspectives from your customers and across your organization — but without bogging things down.

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The U.S. saw slightly fewer businesses created last year, but there’s a silver lining: the poorer numbers nationwide likely indicate that a stronger job market relieved some of the pressure on people to start companies out of necessity.

That’s among the takeaways from the latest Kauffman Index of Entrepreneurial Activity, an annual study from the Kauffman Foundation.

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Americans think the French have smelly armpits. Swedes think Germans make bad cars. Here are the narrow-minded and hilarious ways that people around the world envision the map of Europe.

When he was growing up in communist Bulgaria, graphic designer Yanko Tsvetkov became obsessed with maps. Atlases were among the few colorful books he had access to, and he spent hours tracing the maps and eventually altering them to draw slightly imaginary worlds. Decades later, he turned to maps again with the project Mapping Stereotypes, a series of satirical illustrations of national prejudices.

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There’s a price for ambition, and it’s been fodder for situation comedies for as long as any of us can remember, the young professional struggling to manage their work, social, and love lives. The young professional is immortal in the world of fiction because so many people can relate.

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Today, as part of the Obama administration’s work to make our health care system more transparent, affordable, and accountable, Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Kathleen Sebelius announced the release of new, privacy-protected data on services and procedures provided to Medicare beneficiaries by physicians and other health care professionals. The new data also show payment and submitted charges, or bills, for those services and procedures by provider.

Last Monday, a friend sent me a link to a weekend New York Times editorial which strongly condemned the SEC's proposed rules under Title III of the JOBS Act.

However, unlike the criticism coming from those in the nascent non-accredited crowdfunding industry, the NYT editorial board faults the SEC's proposed rules, not for being unworkable, but for not being restrictive enough.

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Author of The Capitalist and the Entrepreneur, Peter G. Klein has published numerous books and articles on entrepreneurship from an Austrian perspective. Dr. Klein, who is executive director and Carl Menger Research fellow at the Mises Institute, was interviewed in late 2013 by eTalk’s Niaz Uddin on the topic of entrepreneurship:

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The White House on Monday introduced several new ambassadors — ones it will be sending around the world to help entrepreneurs launch and grow new businesses.

Dubbed the Presidential Ambassadors for Global Entrepreneurship, the committee includes the founders of some of the nation’s most rapidly growing companies and well-known brands, like LinkedIn, Zillow and Tory Burch. Each has committed to spend time and resources to help public officials “develop the next generation of entrepreneurs.”

A battery that uses nanotechnology to charge your smartphone in 30 seconds may sound like something out of a sci-fi movie but an Israeli startup claims to have created just that.

StoreDot unveiled its battery charging prototype Monday at Microsoft's Think Next conference in Tel Aviv.

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"The more the merrier."

That's how German photographer and journalist Jonas Ginter feels about using GoPro cameras to create 360-degree panoramic footage.

After two years of practice — and a lot of trial and error with rubber bands, cable ties and wood — Ginter has successfully produced a rig that captures an interesting point of view that's out of this world.

Image: http://mashable.com 

Which demographic is a growth market for plastic surgeons in Silicon Valley?

Tech guys in their 40s worried about getting hired.

Dr. Seth Matarasso told me that, in ascending order of popularity, the male techies favor laser treatments to clear up broken blood vessels and skin splotches. Next is a treatment called ultherapy—essentially an ultrasound that tightens the skin. But, as yet, there is no technology that trumps good old-fashioned toxins, the most common treatment for the men of tech. They will go in for a little Botox between the eyes and around the mouth. Like most overachievers, they are preoccupied with the jugular.

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