Most skyscrapers don't do much more than house people or offices, but one day, they could also help solve problems like urban pollution and waste collection. For the last nine years, eVolo Magazine has held a competition for the problem-solving skyscrapers of the future. Here are a handful of this year’s ideas, selected from over 600 entries from around the world. Scroll through the images above for more solutions.

Image: LAUNCHSPIRE These designs for the skyscrapers of the future put tall buildings to use for something more than just housing people. This supertall building uses an electromagnetic vertical accelerator to help launch airplanes, so they can save fuel on takeoff. HENRY SMITH, ADAM WOODWARD, PAUL ATTKINS 

Here’s a scary thought: What happens if you outlive your retirement savings? Forget exotic vacations, even early bird specials would be out of reach in your golden years.

According to a December 2013 study by financial services provider Fidelity Investments, 55% of the 2,200 Americans surveyed have insufficient savings to cover essential living expenses (housing, health care, and food) in retirement.

Venture capital firm Rise Capital is aiming to secure $146 million right now. The news is based on a recent document filed with the Security and Exchange Commission (SEC), according to VentureBeat.

The American firm wants to support startups based in Africa, South America, and other emerging markets. Rise Capital had already invested in a handful of startups such as Sub-Saharan Africa's on-demand TV firm iROKOTV and Chilean online comparison service Comparaonline, the report stated.

We are faced with the need to make decisions every day.  Should we bring product A or B to market?  Which marketing strategy should we use?  Of the choices that we have available, who is the best person to hire or who would make the best partner? In each case, we try to rely on as many facts as we can so that we can make a reasonable estimation of the best path to follow.  At first glance, the approach of weighing the evidence rationally seems perfectly reasonable.  Yet, in so many instances, rational predictions fail.  Why is that? And what can we do about it?

When it comes to venture capital firms, few come bigger than New Enterprise Associates. With $11 billion under management, including a $2.6 billion pot raised 18 months ago that ranks among the largest in history, NEA operates from bases in Menlo Park, Maryland and Mumbai.

Among those Menlo Park investors is Jon Sakoda, co-head of the firm's seed-stage practice. He drops in on Elevator Pitch this week to talk about why even a giant invests in tiny companies.

Image: Jon Sakoda of New Enterprise Associates. 

The idea that you can develop a concept for a company and launch it within 48 hours is at the heart of Startup Weekend. When you add healthcare to the mix it becomes a lot more challenging but no less interesting. Philadelphia hosted its third Startup Weekend for healthcare at Venturef0rth over the weekend.

Advertisement Elliot Menschik, who was one of the judges to review the 12 team pitches, heads up shared workspace Venturef0rth and is a managing partner for healthcare with DreamIt Health, DreamIt Ventures’ health IT accelerator. He said it’s the longest running StartUp Weekend for healthcare in the country. About 14 cities have since hosted their own version of the event. Duke University is planning to host one in August.

image: http://www.freedigitalphotos.net 

I spoke for the third time recently as part of an internal leadership development program for a client organization.

Across the three creating strategic impact workshops, the client has made significant changes to its multi-day program. The modifications have had ripple effects on the creating strategic impact workshop, including changes to its location, length, day of the week, time of day, and room size / configuration.

We’ve also changed the workshop’s content and format each time to dial in the content specifically for the attendees’ complex needs.

Image: http://brainzooming.com 

What makes a startup a startup? Is it the headcount of a nascent company that earns it the title, or the achievement of fast growth, driven either by a growing market or the mere fact founders have taken money from venture capitalists? Whatever your definition of startup, each organization is unique.

For our series, The First 100, we tracked down the first 100 employees at 100 startups and small businesses.

Image: http://mashable.com 

SPECIAL REPORT / Pharmaceutical companies hesitate before investing in brain research, as it is seen as an overly complex area, but a European Commission initiative is a step in the right direction, according to the European Brain Council (EBC).

The direct cost of healthcare in Europe related to brain diseases has soared from €386 billion in 2004 to to €798 billion in 2010, according to data from 30 European countries, highlighting the need for research in that area.

image: http://www.freedigitalphotos.net 

Before the collapse of the U.S. financial system in 2008, Brad Katsuyama could tell himself that he bore no responsibility for that system. He worked for the Royal Bank of Canada, for a start. RBC might have been the fifth-biggest bank in North America, by some measures, but it was on nobody’s mental map of Wall Street. It was stable and relatively virtuous and soon to be known for having resisted the temptation to make bad subprime loans to Americans or peddle them to ignorant investors. But its management didn’t understand just what an afterthought the bank was — on the rare occasions American financiers thought about it at all. Katsuyama’s bosses sent him to New York from Toronto in 2002, when he was 23, as part of a “big push” for the bank to become a player on Wall Street. The sad truth was that hardly anyone noticed it. “The people in Canada are always saying, ‘We’re paying too much for people in the United States,’ ” Katsuyama says. “What they don’t realize is that the reason you have to pay them too much is that no one wants to work for RBC. RBC is a nobody.”

Image: From left: Rob Park, Brad Katsuyama and Ronan Ryan. Credit Stefan Ruiz for The New York Times 

Morrison & Foerster LLP has been publishing a quarterly report since last year that looks at deals in the biotech industry, but for the first time in March the law firm added a new element – looking at biotech deals on a regional basis. With this, the law firm analyzed the number of innovating companies that, in 2013, developed and licensed products. 

Image: Courtesy of Morrison & Foerster Morrison & Foerster's Stephen Thau says Boston lags other regions on the number of deals done by innovator companies. 

If you think it’s hard to start a business here in the United States, you might just consider how hard people perceive it in other countries.  A whopping 96% of Italians say their government makes it hard to start a business. Greece, Spain and Portugal aren’t far behind — with 93%, 82% and 80% respectively saying their governments make it hard.

Image: http://smallbiztrends.com 

These days, your online Internet reputation is your reputation. Of course, having no reputation is usually better than a bad one, but don’t wait for someone else to establish a good one for you. It’s time for every business and business person to proactively create a positive presence, before someone else puts you in a defensive mode that is hard to win.

The first step in the process is to claim your online identity. This is simple in concept, but requires real effort and can be time consuming, and even expensive, if someone gets there before you and tries to sell you the rights to your preferred business or personal domain name. See my Forbes article on “Get A Domain Name Without Bankrupting Your Startup ”

Image: http://blog.startupprofessionals.com 

Offering a preview of what future wearable medical devices may look like, researchers in Korea have built a skin patch that’s thinner than a sheet of paper and can detect subtle tremors, release drugs stored inside nanoparticles on-demand, and record all of this activity for review later.

While still under development, the technology might someday be useful to sufferers of Parkinson’s disease or other movement disorders. “The system represents a new direction in personalized health care that will eventually enable advanced diagnostics and therapy on devices that can be worn like a child’s temporary tattoo,” says Dae-Hyeong Kim, assistant professor of chemical and biological engineering at Seoul National University, who led the work (see “Innovators Under 35: Dae-Hyeong Kim”).

Image: Drug patch: A new prototype of an electronic skin patch can detect muscle tremors and deliver drugs from nanoparticles. http://www.technologyreview.com 

A few years ago scientists thought climate change wouldn’t cause much harm to overall food production until temperatures in a region rose by three to four degrees Celsius compared to current levels. But in the latest United Nations report on climate change, released today, scientists have revised those estimates, pointing to significant losses with a temperature rise of just two degrees Celsius.

Image: Dry times: The U.N. says climate change will likely hurt crops. http://www.technologyreview.com

How could this be: A 100-year-old government consulting firm that's always taken its marching orders from Uncle Sam, investing its own money in the big ideas of the underfunded? It actually makes perfect sense, said Karen Dahut, Booz Allen's executive vice president who leads the company's strategic innovation group. And it's just one possibility that might come of the company's partnership with downtown technology startup hub 1776 announced Monday.

Image: Brett Wilhelm - Karen Dahut, Booz Allen Hamilton's executive vice president for the strategic innovation group, speaking during the company's Ideas Festival that rewards innovative ideas from the staff. The company announced a partnership with 1776 Monday, to tap the innovation coming from the D.C. startup community. 

With a long history of operating a resource-based economy, Canada still has a love/hate relationship with its resource industries.

Canadians love that our natural resources make us one of the world’s most prosperous countries, but dislike the boom-and-bust cycles that signify, for some, an overdependence on resources.

image: http://www.freedigitalphotos.net 

When starting out in business, you may be able to fumble your way to short-term success if you have a good product and a measure of business savvy. If you want to experience long-term success, however, there are some core disciplines you learn and execute. At some point (sooner is better than later), you will need to become skilled in the following six areas:

image: http://www.freedigitalphotos.net 

I’m scared to death about the state of the American economy.

For the first time since the measurement of U.S. business birth and death rates began, business closures are outpacing new business startups. Up until 2008, business startups outpaced business failures by about 100,000 per year. But, in the past six years, that number has reversed; we now have 70,000 more businesses dying than being born. Scary indeed, but I’m convinced we can reverse this course.

image: http://www.freedigitalphotos.net 

Next E-Team Stage 1 Deadline: May 9, 2014

Click here to view our most recently funded E-Teams.

The E-Team Program provides early-stage support and funding of up to $75,000 for collegiate entrepreneurs working on market-based technology inventions.

Since 1995, our E-Team grants have been funding collegiate student and student/faculty teams to move ideas out of the lab and classroom and into the marketplace. The program enhances this opportunity by providing expert entrepreneurial and venture coaching, experiential workshops, and a potential investment opportunity to help realize the commercial success of the technology inventions and innovations that come through our organization.

 Image: http://nciia.org