For all its success, Google’s famous Page Rank algorithm has never understood a word of the billions of Web pages it has directed people to over the years. That’s why in 2010 Google acquired Metaweb, a company building a database intended to give computers the ability to understand the world. Two years later the company’s technology resurfaced as the Knowledge Graph (see “Google’s New Brain Could Have a Big Impact”). John Giannandrea, vice president of engineering at Google and a Metaweb cofounder, says that will lead to Google’s future products being able to truly understand the people who use them and the things they care about. He told MIT Technology Review’s Tom Simonite how a data store designed to link together all the knowledge on Earth might do that.

Babson's research defines a new category of entrepreneurial leaders who draw on powerful new ways to create economic and social value.

The Babson Entrepreneur Experience Lab, a partnership between Babson College and the Business Innovation Factory, has released a Masterclass report that defines a new category of entrepreneurial leaders who, in their work and in the organizations they build, draw on powerful new ways to create economic and social value.

The Masterclass report details the distinctive actions of these entrepreneurs that set them apart. “Masterclass Entrepreneurs challenge the separation of profit and purpose; contradict current conversation about models and scale; disrupt our ideas of a market; and call into question exactly who gets to innovate.” said Babson College Entrepreneurship Professor Heidi Neck, Director of the Entrepreneur Experience Lab. “They deliver significant outcomes and generate socioeconomic value for the communities, markets and organizations they serve.”

TOPEKA — The head of a state-funded business accelerator on Monday said Kansas will soon be recognized worldwide as a place to bring bioscience businesses.

STATEHOUSE NEWS More State Legislature News Legislature coverage Statehouse Live blog "Our mission is for Kansas to become a global destination for bioscience. That is closer to a reality today than many realize," said Duane Cantrell, chief executive officer of the Kansas Bioscience Authority.

What do Albert Einstein, Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, Mahatma Gandhi, Eleanor Roosevelt, Charles Darwin, J.K. Rowling, and Rosa Parks have in common? They are all people who made an impact on their world. They are also introverts.

In previous centuries our culture valued quiet integrity and introspection. However, in today’s culture the emphasis on personality and striving to be noticed has propelled the extroverted personalities to be valued. That person speaks fast, loud, and a lot. They think while they are speaking. The introvert, who articulates her ideas in her mind before speaking, is quiet and reserved, has been pushed to the background.

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After Kristin Mosher signed up for Pathbuilders, an Atlanta, Georgia, leadership and mentoring company, and found out her new mentor was a man, she was a little skeptical. Newly promoted and leading a production and operations services team within Turner Sports’ Creative Services Sports Unit, she was unsure that a man would understand some of the challenges women face in the workplace leadership roles.

Now, she admits, she couldn’t have been more wrong. Her mentor, Peter Scalera, currently vice president of trade marketing and execution at InComm in Atlanta, brought several important attributes to his role that made him a great fit--and helped Mosher settle into her big new role with ease. He even went so far as to meet with her supervisor and some of her informal mentors at Turner to get a better sense of who she was and where she could use advice.

I often write about the things I believe we all should be doing, trying or experimenting with in order to maximize our success and happiness. However, it’s not always the things we do that make the biggest difference in our lives; it’s often the things we avoid doing that have the biggest effect. As human beings, we have a strong aversion to not doing; we feel that in order to produce results, there must be an initial action.

Image: http://elitedaily.com 

I was in Washington D.C. today at the State of the Net conference, listening to conversations about internet governance, Bitcoin, broadband metrics and privacy. And despite the fact that this an event about technology I’ve never felt so out of place.

It’s not just because everyone around me is wearing a suit. Here a few differences between political conferences and tech conferences; some of which are humorous, but others that are worth learning from.

Image: http://gigaom.com - Stacey Higginbotham/Gigaom 

My name is Marc Freccero and I am a DJ/Music Producer that goes by the name of Prismic. I am driven by inspiring people to love life and pursue their dreams. Sometimes, this isn’t so easy.

When I hit the “real world,” as they call it, I started at one of the biggest Accounting and Consulting firms in the world. At that very moment, I felt a giant pull in two different directions – should I continue with a “real job” or risk it all by chasing my dreams? Determined to lead by example, I decided to do both.

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The startup lifestyle can be grueling. If you’re not careful, it can take a serious toll on your physical and mental health. It doesn’t matter whether you’re a CTO, a programmer, or work in a nontechnical capacity; everyone needs a startup survival strategy to help them maintain their work-life balance as they learn to juggle an ever-growing workload, excessively long days and a personal life. It can be a pretty daunting task. Those who aren’t careful may find themselves suffering from burnout.

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Very few people have ever claimed that stating your own company is a simple and stress-free process. There are countless responsibilities that new entrepreneurs need to worry about, and a plethora of skillsets they must have in order to get everything accomplished proficiently. In most cases, having a solid core team alongside of you can take a large chunk of the required tasks off of your plate, as well as strengthening your business’ prospects for when it finally gets out of the gate.

Recruiting quality employees can be a challenge in itself for a fresh startup. Here are five ways to make recruiting easier and help you get the right people in the right positions to maximize your future growth potential:

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Source: Aging & Cognition Research Group, German Center for Neurodegenerative Diseases (DZNE)

Elderly people often report substantial declines in navigational abilities, such as finding one's way in a complex environment or returning to one's car after a trip to the supermarket. Given that these types of challenges can severely restrict both the physical and social mobility of elderly people, looking at navigational changes in old age is a frontier research area that is of major relevance for improving quality of life for elderly individuals.

The core aim of the Aging and Cognition Research Group is to develop a detailed understanding of age-related changes in spatial navigation and the underlying neural network. Key components of this network are particularly sensitive to the aging process. To probe age-related changes in this navigational network, the group employs a multi-pronged methodological approach that combines cutting-edge interactive virtual reality technology, electrophysiology, neuroimaging, and advanced data analysis.

We hear a lot about a few standout efforts to boost Internet speeds here and there (see “When Will the Rest of Us Get Google Fiber?”). But ultimately, what’s more relevant are broad-based trends, and there’s some good news:

+ Average connection speeds globally increased 29 percent in the past year, to 3.6 megabits per second.

+ Mobile traffic increased by about 10 percent during the third quarter of 2013, and grew by 80 percent year over year.

I certainly do have a lot of fun… But I certainly do work my butt off too. The life of an entrepreneur is not easy. We sacrifice a lot to do what we love. We are always thinking, often mildly worrying, struggling, and going through an ongoing rollercoaster. We work hard. Harder than one might realize. We take things personally and often wish we had a “boss” to give us a pat on the back and a bonus. We stay up late working, sometimes get very little sleep, not able to shut our brains off. We carry our own weight with nobody but to blame but ourselves. We do what we love because we were born to do so because that’s all we know. We are not elitists. We are passionate. And we will continue to wake up the next day to do it all over again. 

Restrictive covenants are standard features of venture capital, growth equity and private equity transactions although each investor type has its own standards. Restrictive covenants are the actions a company cannot take without investor approval. A short list of typical restrictive covenants includes:

• A sale of a Company or sale of a majority of the Company’s assets; 
• Sales of new securities; 
• Changes to Articles or Incorporation that change the rights and preferences of existing securities; 
• Changes in Board Composition; 
• Payment of dividends or any kind of not previously agreed to distributions; 
• Changes to the size of option and other incentive plans; Incurrence of indebtedness above a certain dollar threshold; 
• and Transactions with affiliates.

Image: http://www.cloudave.com

It is pretty easy to identify an entrepreneur, because the prevailing wisdom is that anyone who starts a business is an entrepreneur.   But this is the narrowest definition since it rides on the notion of “starting” something.  Starting something doesn’t always guarantee success, as many businesses quit, discontinue or even fail within the first five years of operations for a variety of reasons including lack of financing, profitability or personal reasons (see for instance, the US Global Entrepreneurship Monitor –GEM Report) 

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It’s no surprise that California dominates when it comes to US venture capital investment. More interesting is that startups based in 46 out of 50 American states received venture capital funding last year, according to analysis released today by CB Insights (p. 11, subscription required).

Image: http://qz.com 

In Q3 2013, venture capital investors poured $1.12 billion across 150 deals into U.S. mobile & telecom companies, marking the largest financing quarter to the mobile sector ever. And as companies both large and small continue to emphasize the platform shift to mobile, Q4 saw no letdown in mobile VC momentum as both quarterly deal and funding levels remained at or near historical highs.

Image: http://www.cbinsights.com 

We could all use a little break sometimes. The hustle and bustle of the 9-to-5 life can be exhausting.

We fill our days with routines and deadlines. It's a never-ending grind that could bring anyone to tears. But this little blue planet has a lot more to offer besides shared cubicles and interoffice memos. From sandy beaches to icy mountains, there are plenty of amazing places waiting to be explored.

Image: FLICKR, SMALLTOWNVAGABOND 

The “creative economy” has many facets, and only some of them are what we traditionally consider arts jobs.

Sure, there are painters and sculptors and actors and the others around those industries who make their livings directly from creative works. But there are also a series of concentric circles around those industries, and the jobs within those rings ought to be considered part of the creative economy, too. Graphic designers are artists; so are architects, web designers, marketing professionals and more.

Image: Dan Young/Daily Herald Media 

The infamous polar vortex has put the U.S. and Canada in a deep freeze several times already this winter. Alarmed weather forecasters are now routinely displaying big maps that show the extremely low wind chill values: –34 degrees Fahrenheit in Minneapolis, –36 degrees F in Chicago, –39 degrees F in Fargo, N.D., last night alone. But if the air temperature is, say, 15 degrees F, and a 20–mile per hour wind makes the wind chill –2 degrees F, would the temperature of your exposed skin drop to that temperature?

Image: http://www.scientificamerican.com