It'd be easy to conclude that all governors say the same things in every state of the state address. “It’s jobs, it’s the economy, and then transportation and education,” said Tucker Martin, who helped write the annual speeches for former Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell.

In some respects, that was true in 2014. Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley announced a new advisory council to make sure small businesses “have the resources and support needed to not only grow their business, but to create well-paying jobs.” Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper called for extending job creation tax credits to enable “more businesses to maintain employees and hire new ones.” Others, such as Delaware Gov. Jack Markell, touted public-private partnerships that match skills being taught in college classrooms with local labor demand.

Image: Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam delivers his State of the State address on Feb. 3, 2014. AP/Mark Zalesk 

One day in 2010, while taking a stroll in his backyard, Kandula the elephant smelled something scrumptious. The scent pulled his attention skyward. There, seemingly suspended in the air, was a sprig of bamboo decorated with bits of cantaloupe and honeydew. Stretching out his trunk, he managed to get the fruit and break off a piece of the branch, but the rest of the tasty leaves remained tantalizingly out of reach. Without hesitation he marched straight to a large plastic cube in the yard, rolled it just beneath the hovering bamboo and used it as a step stool to pull the whole branch to the ground. Seven-year-old Kandula had never before interacted with a cube in this manner. Determined to satisfy his stomach and his curiosity, he did something scientists did not know elephants could do: he had an aha moment.

Image: Elephants walking in line in Amboseli national park, south Kenya. Credit: blieusong/Flickr 

Problems at the Tokyo-based Mt. Gox Bitcoin exchange, once the world’s largest, have come to a head, leaving the virtual currency and peer-to-peer payment system in a state of flux and threatening to undermine much of the acceptance Bitcoins have garnered over the past year or so. The Mt. Gox Web site has been shut down, and the organization’s Twitter feed has been cleared amid reports that the exchange was hacked, resulting in the theft of hundreds of thousands of Bitcoins.  

Image: What will become of Bitcoins? Courtesy of Casascius, via Wikimedia Commons 

Christine Lagarde, managing director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), addressed a packed Bechtel Conference Room in Encina Hall on Tuesday, in a talk that focused on the current state of the world economy and global innovation and interconnections. Lagarde had recently flown in from the G-20 summit in Sydney, Australia, during which the financial leaders of the world’s 20 largest economies had agreed to complete core financial reforms in order to mitigate the risk of another global financial crisis.

Image: by Rod Searcey 

Today President Obama announced two new public-private manufacturing innovation institutes – one in Chicago and one in the Detroit area -- as well as a competition for the first of four additional institutes that will will boost advanced manufacturing in the United States and attract the types of high-quality jobs that a growing middle class requires.

"For generations of Americans, manufacturing was the ticket to a good, middle-class life. The stuff we made – like steel and cars and planes – is what made America what it is," President Obama said. "But advances in technology allowed manufacturers to do more with less, and global competition meant a lot of good manufacturing jobs went overseas."

Image: President Barack Obama delivers remarks announcing two new public-private Manufacturing Innovation Institutes, and launches the first of four new Manufacturing Innovation Institute Competitions, in the East Room of the White House, Feb. 25, 2014. (Official White House Photo by Lawrence Jackson) 

Entrepreneurs’ most frequent complaint is how challenging it is to raise money, especially risk capital: founders in developing countries have even more difficulty since the amounts of venture money for investment in most emerging countries is less vs. the USA.

Yet with the millions invested in food & beverage, fast moving consumer goods, retailing, wholesaling, and construction to name a few in the developing world, why does so little of this money flow to tech enterprises—from Peru to Paraguay to the Philippines, Beirut to Buenos Aires to Bangalore—or from Moscow to Manila to Mexico City? One reason is the mismatch between risks sold enthusiastically by entrepreneurs and risks willingly purchased by investors.

Image: http://scalingupinnovation.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/Photo-coutsey-of-Vanity-Fair1.jpg 

FORTUNE -- In the shadow of London's 87-story Shard tower, on the south side of the Thames, a new kind of "brain drain" is underway. The term once referred to talent moving across borders; here, it represents a new phenomenon. Britain's best technical graduates are shunning traditional jobs in banks or large corporations to create their own startups instead.

Image: Entrepreneur First co-founders Alice Bentinck and Matt Clifford want to bring Silicon Valley-style thinking to London. 

The IT department isn't traditionally perceived as the hub for organizational innovation and growth, but it’s slowly getting there.

Gartner recently forecasted a number of developments that will significantly impact the IT function in years to come, spanning mobile device management, hybrid cloud integration and software-defined networking. As these disruptive technologies continue to mature, IT is well-positioned to drive overall corporate success, enabling organizations’ innovative capabilities to really shine through.

Image: http://www.freedigitalphotos.net 

So you want to join a startup? You’re ready for the crazy perks, long hours, and nagging fear that the company may buckle at any moment?

For all you dreamers out there, a corporate cubicle isn’t going to cut it.

With tech jobs plentiful right now, how do you discern between the good, bad, ugly, and severely underpaid startup jobs? Tech reporters hear from hundreds of startups each month that are raising funding and, inevitably, hiring like crazy. So we’re starting a new weekly jobs digest that will help you choose between an overwhelming number of startup positions.

Image: http://www.freedigitalphotos.net 

So far, big data startups continue to command hefty funding rounds in 2014, just like they did last year. If you want to know why, watch this video.

In a new video, Jake Flomenberg of Accel Partners lays out his view of the big data market and the investing opportunities he’s excited about. He’s talking with another data expert: Stefan Groschupf, the chief executive of well-funded big data startup Datameer.

Image: http://www.freedigitalphotos.net 

2014 is a year of commemorations: it marks the 200th anniversary of the Congress of Vienna, the 100th anniversary of the First World War, and the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. We use these events as an opportunity to initiate a future-oriented discourse that takes into account the lessons learned from our past. Now as then, Europe is at a crossroads, and we have to take a series of fundamental decisions on where to go and how to continue. In which direction do we want to develop as a society? What are our ideas for an economically, politically and socially stable future, and how much are we ready to pay for it? Which steps are needed in order to promote the optimal level of development that transcends political and ideological barriers? In order to find answers to these questions, we want to look at a series of prognoses ranging from those that are pragmatically and politically possible to visions and apparently impossible dreams – keeping in mind that a final judgement can only be made in the process of critical analysis. At the European Forum Alpbach 2014, we will draw a sketch of the decisions and possibilities before us, analyse the corresponding opportunities and risks, and discuss ways to put them into practice.

The compositions of the boards of Silicon Valley companies are once again in the spotlight. Recently, Twitter was called out for having a board comprising of members of the Silicon Valley Boys Club. Now Carl Icahn is accusing eBay board members of being in conflict.  He wrote an open letter to eBay shareholders excoriating its management and board for various alleged lapses in corporate governance.

Many have pronounced that the era of innovation dead, peace be to its soul. From Tyler Cowen’s decree that we’ve picked all the low hanging fruit of innovation, through Robert Gordon’s idea that further innovation growth is threatened by “six headwinds”, to Gary Karparov’s and Peter Thiel’s theory that risk aversion has stifled innovation, there is no lack of predictions about the end of discovery.

I don’t propose to address the issue with something as practical and useful as actual data. Instead, staying true to my philosophical environment, I propose a thought experiment that hopefully may shed some light. The core idea is that we might be estimating the impact of innovation because we have so much of it.

Image: http://www.freedigitalphotos.net 

Ever heard this life advice? When solving a big problem seems impossible, break it into smaller steps.

Well, scientists just took one of geology's biggest controversies and shrunk it down to atomic size. By zapping single atoms of lead in a tiny zircon crystal from Australia, researchers have confirmed the crystal is the oldest rock fragment ever found on Earth — 4.375 billion years old, plus or minus 6 million years.

Image: Cathodoluminescence image of a 400-μm Jack Hills zircon. Credit: John Valley, University of Wisconsin 

The Intelligent Community Forum welcomes Dr. Norman Jacknis, as its first Senior Fellow. Dr. Jacknis will be responsible for the Intelligent Community Forum's Rural Imperative program that focuses on how to use information and communication technologies to build and create a renaissance of rural life. Dr. Jacknis will identify innovations that will ultimately enable residents of rural communities to improve participation in the global economy while preserving a treasured way of life.

Dr. Jacknis is familiar with the Intelligent Community movement. For ten years he was the CIO for Westchester County, New York. In 2008, under his leadership his community was named one of the world's Top7 Intelligent Communities.

I’ve been in the startup trenches in India for the last three years. I’m currently the CEO of Findable.in, a location-based product search platform based in India, and I’m also the Founding Partner of India Internet Group, an early stage venture capital fund based in Mumbai, Delhi and New York. I think this is the best time ever to be an entrepreneur in India. However, it’s also an incredibly difficult journey.

In this post, I explain what makes starting a business in India so hard. But don’t be discouraged! My next post will explain why this is actually such a great time to be an entrepreneur in India.

Twenty-somethings can be a tough crowd to please. They’re glued to their smartphones, opinionated, and entirely dependent on technology. When facing an illness, they’ll jump head-first into the information-abyss of a Google search. By the time they make it to the doctor’s office, they’ve already digested 15 academic studies and 10 online articles.

As the Pew Center points out, this hyper-connected behavior is a double edged sword — on the one hand, millennial patients have the resources to be their most empowered and informed. The problem? These young information-seekers risk falling prey to poorly researched online articles, bad advice on social media, and the impulse to self-medicate to avoid expensive ER visits. Not to mention, some members of this demographic are deluded enough to think that they’re ‘too healthy for healthcare.’

Image: http://www.freedigitalphotos.net 

Two weeks ago, a respected crowdfunding site, Kickstarter, was hacked. Snapchat was hacked the week before that. Skype's social media accounts were targeted the week before that.

"These days, criminal hacking is a business," Patrick Thomas, a security consultant at Neohapsis, tells Fast Company. "Everything that is done has a chain linked to real dollars. And hackers are looking for the shortest chain."

Image: http://www.fastcompany.com 

The sad truth is, nobody’s life is perfect. When the going gets tough, what separates those who can hold their own and keep going, from everyone else? A few years ago, two former business school professors of mine, Professor Jeffrey Pfeffer, author of Power, and Jim Collins, author of Good to Great, did an informal study of my Stanford MBA classmates to discern what factors were the most influential in determining which students had “made it” and which had not.

Image: http://www.freedigitalphotos.net