In an era of high unemployment and limited opportunity, more Americans are taking matters into their own hands and going to work for themselves out of their homes.

Normally small businesses have led the way during economic recoveries, but this time around they’re not creating many jobs. Instead much of the growth we are now seeing is in “lone eagle” businesses, to borrow a phrase from Phil Burgess, often operating out of the worker’s residence. This reverses the trend from 1960 to 1980, when there were steady reductions in the number of people who worked at home. Indeed, despite all the talk of increased mass transit usage, the percentage of Americans working at home has grown 1.5 times faster over the past decade; there are now more telecommuters than people who take mass transit to work in 38 out of the 52 U.S. metropolitan areas with more than 1,000,000 residents.

Image: http://www.newgeography.com 

Securities regulators are still formulating new rules that would allow startups to use Kickstarter-like campaigns for equity crowdfunding. But in the meantime, a couple of investment groups have put together Internet crowdfunding platforms for people who qualify as accredited investors under existing law.

One of the crowdfunding portals, OpenRound, was unveiled last October by Roth Capital, the investment-banking firm based in Newport Beach, CA. So far Roth has used its new crowdfunding website to raise capital from accredited investors for two California startups—San Diego’s Mogl, which operates a Web-based restaurant rewards program, and Mountain View, CA-based Soasta, which provides cloud-based software used by developers to test their Web and mobile apps.

Image: http://www.freedigitalphotos.net 

If you read my last post, “Why Is It So Hard To Start A Business in India?” then you know that there are some big challenges to starting a business, especially a tech business, in India. But as I keep saying, this is actually the best time ever to be an entrepreneur in India.

Here’s why:

• The cool factor. It’s cool to be an entrepreneur in India today; “startups” have become a buzzword on most top college campuses across the country as well as among the top employers in the country. Parents (and even more importantly in the Indian context, potential wives and husbands!) are beginning to consider “startups” as a good way to begin or further a career. Three years ago, when I moved back to India, my father wasn’t exactly thrilled with the idea of “startups” but today, with all the major newspapers covering new startups every day, he’s excited too! It bodes well for the future of entrepreneurship in India.

Sometimes you don’t know your household brands as well as you think.

From the oil fields of Texas and the Social Security Act to experimental aircraft and even a Disney movie, here are some of the unusual circumstances that brought about five of the largest tech companies in America.

General Electric General Electric traces its origin back to one of America’s greatest inventors and the foundation of America’s electrical infrastructure.

Image: Thomas Edison experimenting in his laboratory. Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons / Library of Congress 

When you have been on the startup firing line, you quickly learn that any insight from experts and entrepreneurs who have been there before you can make the difference between failure and success. Yet, many new entrepreneurs brazenly assume they are bulletproof, and march blindly into the fray. The result is that half or more of startups fail in the first two years.

I don’t think anyone proclaims to have any silver bullets, but there are common failure threads that appear all too often. There are many books written about failure in startups, and I don’t recommend any of them. I prefer the more positive approach of getting you better prepared up-front, as outlined in the popular book “It’s Your Biz” by Susan Wilson Solovic.

An image sharing mobile platform for physicians and patients, an app that would not only help train people in CPR but also helping to build a global database of defibrillators in public places and making PhysEd classes more productive. Those mobile health ideas come from the three finalists in the American Heart Association’ Open Innovation Challenge. About 10 teams together raised nearly $50,000 in the crowdfunding leg of the contest on MedStartr.

Image: http://medcitynews.com 

MADISON – As the Wisconsin Legislature rolls toward a spring wrap-up of its work, economic development items on its agenda range from protecting intellectual property from “patent trolls” to setting the stage for more classified research to rethinking the state’s sore-thumb tax on capital raised by many young companies. It’s all part of a trend, not only in Wisconsin but nationwide, where most state governments are paying attention to what makes the tech-based economy tick.

Momentum is building in Washington to finally fix the country’s patent system, but the good guys better hurry. While Sen. Clare McCaskill, who has decried patent troll “bottom feeders,” moved to fast-track a reform bill this week, the trolls have been busy too. The most pernicious of them, Intellectual Ventures, has started a PAC and could succeed in neutering real reform before Congress scatters to campaign for the mid-terms.

Image: Wikipedia 

Ever since the Great Recession ripped through the economies of the Sunbelt, America’s coastal pundit class has been giddily predicting its demise. Strangled by high-energy prices, cooked by global warming, rejected by a new generation of urban-centric millennials, this vast southern was doomed to become become, in the words of the Atlantic, where the “American dream” has gone to die. If the doomsayers are right, Americans must be the ultimate masochists. After a brief hiatus, people seem to, once again, be streaming towards the expanse of warm-weather states extending from the southeastern seaboard to Phoenix.

Image: http://www.freedigitalphotos.net

We entrepreneurs have a few secrets that most of us won’t talk about. Like, ever. Because if you’re successful, you’re not supposed to experience this stuff, right? WRONG. Successful business owners experience this stuff, too! And if you don’t know that even the most successful entrepreneurs have doubts, uncertainties, and yes, even fear, when you do experience these things you might think you’re a) crazy, b) doing something wrong, or c) a big failure. But the correct answer is D) NONE of those things. So read on, because you’re about to feel better, just knowing that you’re not alone.

Image: http://www.business2community.com 

There has been much talk about Facebook’s inability to crack the tough, localized Asian market, but in an interview with Facebook’s top brass in Korea, this situation seems to be improving.

Korea is a key test market for Facebook, and this should send a message to other global tech companies hoping to do business in Korea, particularly those engaged with expansion on mobile.

Image: http://www.freedigitalphotos.net

Mention the term “wearables” and most people conjure up a fitness-tracking watch or some kind of futuristic fashion accessory.

But wearables are much more than this.

Disabled people are increasingly relying on these gadgets to augment how they see and experience the world. On a personal note, my aunt, Wendy Poth, lost her vision when she was 7.

Image: http://venturebeat.com - The OrCam device can interpret words on a page 

If the rounds that Health Catalyst and Zephyr Health have put together are any indication of how the rest of the year might go for fledgling healthcare data analytics startups, we can expect to see bigger, mid-stage deals this year, and not in the places you might expect.

New analysis from research firm CB Insights found that venture funding for companies developing predictive and prescriptive data analytics for healthcare more than doubled from 2012 to 2013, while deal volume rose 40 percent. These are companies that are working with providers or payers to convert all of the data they’re collecting into insights that will hopefully guide more effective and less costly care.

Image: http://medcitynews.com 

Academic programs in information systems are in a strong position to train the workforce that will assume the challenge of understanding and managing Big Data, according to a recently released report by a special panel of the Association for Information Systems, the leading organization of business analytics professionals worldwide.

But these programs will have to adjust curricula frequently and also hire and train faculty to meet the demands of a rapidly changing field, according to the report of the 10-member group, which included two members of the W. P. Carey School's Information Systems faculty.

Image: http://www.knowwpcarey.com 

Innovation is said to be a key driver of economic growth and prosperity. Vaccinations and sanitation throughout the world have saved millions of lives in the last century. Inventions and technology have fostered increases in industry and productivity that have changed the face of our cities and infrastructures. But what makes a one country more favorable than another?

The Global Innovation Index by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) aims to answer that very question in their 417 page analysis found here: 2013 GII Index. Using an inclusive, horizontal vision of innovation applicable to both emerging and developed countries, this index ranks various countries based upon dozens of factors that impact the environment for innovation.

Image: http://www.freedigitalphotos.net

If there was a map of the Internet, which country would you call home?

This fascinating map was created by Slovakian student and amateur graphic design artist Martin Vargic, who often goes by the pseudonym Jay Simons, and he left no detail untouched.

Image: http://mashable.com - DEVIANT ART JAY SIMMONS 

It's time to do some serious life evaluation. Glassdoor has compiled a list of the top 25 companies with the best-paid internships, and annualized, interns at all of these organizations make more than the median household income in the U.S., which sits at around $53,000. With that kind of money, you know no one's fetching coffee.

Unsurprisingly, the list is tech-heavy. The highest-paying company for interns, based on average monthly base pay, is Palantir ($7,012), followed by VMWare ($6,966), and Twitter ($6,791). Oil and energy companies also made a strong showing, including ExxonMobil (No. 8, $5,972), Chevron (No. 13, $5,424), ConocoPhillips (No. 15, $5,357), and Schlumberger (No. 25, $4,634). Overall, the average intern makes between $2,400 and $3,100 a month, according to Glassdoor.

Image: http://www.fastcompany.com 

How do you define the word "Failure?" How does it help move innovation forward? Thomas Edison had at least 1,000 different ways to not create the light bulb, and it led to one of the greatest modern inventions.

Join us and the Edison Awards on March 6th at 3pm (Central Standard Time) on twitter (#innovationchat) discussing how to embrace failure in innovation.

A faculty group in Kansas is fighting for intellectual property rights on inventions that university employees create off campus.

The Kansas chapter of the American Association of University Professors is trying to persuade the Kansas Legislature that it's in the state's interest to ensure faculty retain the right to patent technology they develop on their own time.

Image: http://www.freedigitalphotos.net

Real innovation in the business world is still rare. As I’ve said before, everyone talks about innovation, but the majority of new business plans I see still reflect linear thinking – one more social network with more features, another smartphone app for marketing, or one more platform for faster e-commerce. Historic changes and great successes don’t come from linear thinking.