GIC’s first program in the Southwest, held at the Phoenix Convention Center, was rich in content and thoughtful dialogue, addressing the economic vibrancy and challenges of the region, the impact of NAFTA and how the Phoenix area is increasingly positioned as an international city. Some of the great takeaways are highlighted next.

Leaving the corporate world means ditching those stressed-out long nights and enjoying life more. Right?

How’s that working out for you?

There’s no shortage of overstressed, sleep-deprived entrepreneurs. Building a company is an uphill battle. It takes time, energy, motivation, persistence, and a little bit of luck. There’s no clock-in and clock-out times. No five o’clock “close-of-business.” No one to tell you where your work life ends and where your personal life begins.

Image: http://under30ceo.com 

Last week (Thursday 6 March) the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) outlined how they would regulate crowdfunding in the UK from April 2014. This includes both debt-based / loan crowdfunding as well as equity based investment.

It is important to ensure there is a robust but also proportionate regulatory framework for this emerging source of alternative finance. There is obviously a need to provide the public and potential investors with adequate protection and confidence that there are appropriate safeguards in place.

The Sprint Mobile Health Accelerator has named the 10 companies, including one from Australia, that will call the Kansas City area home for the next three months.

No area companies were selected.

As suggested by their names, such as Tenacity Health, Fitbark, Sickweather and Symptom.ly, the companies focus on health care. They also have a mobile element, as the business program combines health and mobile services.

Image: http://www.kansascity.com 

As the annual TED conference is about to celebrate its 30th anniversary next week, the popularity of TED talks has never been higher--viewers now download or stream presentations on TED.com up to 2 million times per day.

After analyzing 500 of the most popular TED talks (more than 150 hours) and speaking directly to many of TED’s most successful speakers, I’ve discovered that the best TED presentations share several components. Here's how you can harness them to transform any pitch or presentation:

Wichita State University, like many universities, has worked for a long time to bring faculty discoveries into the commercial marketplace, such as by licensing inventions to private companies.

But it’s happening more often lately, now that “accelerating the discovery, creation and transfer of new knowledge” is a part of the university’s strategic plan.

Image:  State President John Bardo has made technology transfer a top priority for Wichita State University. - Kellen Jenkins / WBJ Wichita  

On March 12, 1989, British inventor Tim Berners-Lee filed the proposal for an "information management system" that would later become known as the World Wide Web. Now, on the Web's 25th birthday, Berners-Lee is calling for something to be done about protecting users’ privacy rights on the Internet. 

In a statement released Wednesday, Berners-Lee posed the question, “How do we build a universal Web accessible to all regardless of physical or cognitive capabilities?”

Wisconsin needs a few “wins” to kickstart its entrepreneurial scene, according to the California venture capitalist heading up Madison-based 4490 Ventures. Greg Robinson started this month as general partner at 4490, the new $30 million venture capital fund targeting early-stage information technology firms, provided by the State of Wisconsin Investment Board and Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation. 

Image: Jeff Goldbert, ESTO The new 4490 Ventures is temporarily housed in the University of Wisconsin's Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery building. 

COLLEGE PARK, Md., March 13, 2014 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ University of Maryland students will host Bitcamp, the university's first Major League Hackathon, April 46, 2014 in Cole Field House on the university's College Park, Md., campus. More than 750 college and high school students from across the country are expected to attend the innovative technology summit at UMD.

A hackathon is a weekend-long event where students work in teams to produce inventive hardware and applications for computers, mobile devices or the Websome of which could serve as the basis for new companies. After 24 to 36 hours of 'hacking," teams showcase their ideas to a panel of judges and participants.

Image: http://www.broadwayworld.com 

During the summer after my eighth birthday, my parents packed my three siblings and me into our ‘90 VW station wagon to drive from Chicago down to Teralingua, Tex. to visit my grandfather. Back then, a night out at Chevy’s was an exciting occasion reserved for birthdays and baptisms, so three road-trip days of Waffle Houses and Burger Kings were about as good as it got. (Now that I’ve grown up and live in San Francisco, finding a meal at any of these establishments is pretty tough.) During our road trip, we stopped at a Wal-Mart in Oklahoma City to rejuvenate our snack pile – and get a bribe of a new stuffed animal cow. Now, I couldn’t even tell you where the nearest Wal-Mart is. The big chains seem such a part of America’s vast mid-section.

Image: http://www.forbes.com - Tom Post

Speaking at the HIMSS14 Annual Conference & Exhibition this Wednesday evening, Former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton did not disappoint.    Addressing a packed crowd of thousands of health IT professionals, Clinton underscored the importance of electronic health records, IT infrastructure and why the industry needs to ditch ideologies at the door for the sake of patient care.

Bill Gates is aware that there's a lot of gridlock in Washington. He's just not sure it matters all that much for innovation.

"There's a lot of innovation that isn't dependent on Washington doing anything," the billionaire philanthropist and Microsoft co-founder said in a conversation with Atlantic Editor-in-Chief James Bennet on Wednesday evening. "It'd be great to fund basic research in energy more than we do. It'd be great to keep the (National Institutes of Health) budget going up. It would be great to have government at large doing more research into how to do education in a better way. But a lot of the things that will really improve the world fortunately aren't dependent on Washington doing something different."

Image: Reuters/Gus Ruelas 

If you look at the right side of your LinkedIn profile, you'll see an intriguing text box: Who's Viewed Your Profile, the networking equivalent of catching someone checking you out on the subway. And if you know how to use the feature right, it can land you business or a job.

When LinkedIn decided it was time to update their Who's Viewed Your Profile, Udi Milo, the product lead on the redesign, was faced with a riddle: how could he help LinkedIn's 277 million users make valuable connections happen?

In an epic battle of man-versus-machine ping-pong, man ultimately prevails, but the showdown highlights advances in developing human-like qualities in robots.

To celebrate the opening of a Shanghai factory, German robotics company Kuka pitted its one-armed ping-pong-playing robot against German table tennis champ Timo Boll.

2013 was a turning point for venture capital.

According to financial services firm Ernst&Young, global venture capital investment in 2013 increased 2 percent compared to 2012, to $48.5 billion. Meanwhile, economic conditions improved in many geographic markets due to increased levels of liquidity and a boost in investor confidence.

Image: Venture capitalists 'raised their game' in 2013, according to Ernst&Young Image Credit: Darius Monsef 

Leadership is not in your DNA. There is no genetic code for becoming a chief executive or a business owner. We’re all born with a clean slate, more or less. What happens next – your childhood, your upbringing, your education, your experience, your behavior, the choices you make – determines what you become. And what you make of yourself.

It might surprise you to know that growing up with nothing does not diminish your chances of accomplishing great things in your life. On the contrary, growing up with adversity, in a competitive environment, can have a positive impact on your career. It all depends on how you use that experience.

image: http://www.freedigitalphotos.net 

Most entrepreneurs are familiar with the ridiculously high percentage of small businesses that will fail in the first couple years.  The business owners who survived the odds will tell you that they didn’t achieve success on sheer passion alone.  It took hard work, and in most situations, it didn’t happen over night. 

After spending the last decade running my own business consulting for companies and corporations, I have witnessed it all. Here’s seven of the most common mistakes I’ve seen newbie entrepreneurs make with alarming consistency.

image: http://www.freedigitalphotos.net 

The SEC is in the process of formalizing rules to allow “general solicitation”, or the ability to advertise the sale of private securities, to both accredited and non-accredited investors. The implementation of these rules is meant to fully enable the crowdfunding provision of the federal JOBS Act that was signed into law in 2012. Some who have been involved in the process believe that crowdfunding portals will be able to operate under these rules in a matter of months while many others believe the time horizon is substantially longer.

Image: Alan McGlade  

Boston's Emerson College recently announced the launch of The Emerson Accelerator, a two-year, extracurricular program scheduled to launch next fall. The program will provide $6,000 in total seed funding per semester, to be distributed among participating startup teams. (There will most likely be three startup teams per semester, but that could change, depending on the quality and quantity of the applicants.)

Image: http://www.inc.com 

Too many customers have long felt distanced from many successful brands, seeing them as closed and mysterious environments, focused only on profits and killing competitors. They may not have noticed the wave of “open businesses,” spawned by the Internet and social media. These are responding to the demands of this new world for collaboration, trust, and transparency.

In a new book by David Cushman with Jamie Burke, “The 10 Principles of Open Business,” the authors contend that many recent success stories in business, including Google, Apple, and Amazon, were built on at least one open business principle. In fact, according to McKinsey, open businesses are 50% more likely to outperform their rivals today and grow sustainable profits.