The new year is just around the corner and with that investors are looking ahead to where they should place their bets in 2014. While it's impossible to predict the future, there are some technology trends that saw momentum this year and are poised to take off in the coming year, experts say. (Read more: Top 3 tech stock picks for 2014: Pro) Here are five tech trends that investors should be keeping an eye on.

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Having just returned from an eye-opening trip to Israel and the West Bank with a mixed group of Jewish and Christian ministers and community leaders, I have had my own epiphany. Palestine is a start-up nation. And, perhaps more significantly, Israel is its incubator.

What do I mean? Well, in a Venture Capital-smart world, we’re all au fait with the concept of incubators.

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Looking ahead to 2014, one of the most urgent issues will be a new war for talent: not yesteryear’s broad-based need for all top talent but an increasing demand for the right kind of talent. For leaders, this means a new urgency in targeting, nurturing, and advancing top talent in their organization. Leaders have long recognized that an inherently diverse workforce – one that’s inclusive of women, people of color, and gay individuals – confers a competitive edge in selling products and services to diverse end users. But recent research from the Center for Talent Innovation (PDF) shows that an inherently diverse workforce can be a potent source of innovation, as diverse individuals are better attuned to the unmet needs of consumers or clients like themselves. How can leaders leverage and develop diverse talent in 2014? CTI research spotlights five ways:

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During the past 12 months your desk or home office has probably seen new piles of papers simply stacked everywhere. With the new year approaching, it is time to start a new tradition. Before you welcome 2014, USA Today recommends you take a moment to clear out the clutter and start afresh in the new year.

In a small business or when you’re self-employed, you gather a lot of clutter during the course of a year. When I worked by myself, all this stuff could become paralyzing. I learned I had to make sure that at least once a year — at the beginning of the year — I felt organized.

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Richard Bendis Nominated Again!

Each year, Speakers Platform recognizes five speakers within ten popular topic areas. Excellence in speaking is based on: expertise, professionalism, innovation within the topic area, client testimonials & references, presentation skills, original contribution to the field and votes. The only substantive requirement is that the candidates' keynote presentation fee must be under $30,000USD. 

NOTE: clicking on the VOTE button above will navigate you to the page to vote for Rich.  Instructions on how to vote are found there.  Merely clicking on the VOTE button above will NOT register a vote.  We appreciate your support!

If an entrepreneur doesn’t find themselves in over their head at least 20% of the time, they are probably not pushing the limits, not taking enough risk, and probably not working on an idea that’s worth doing. The challenge in to know when and how to ask for help, and not let bravado and ego mask anxieties. The best people know when they don’t know, and know how to find the right help.

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One can naturally debate any system that seeks to crown the world’s most innovative companies. Boston Consulting Group’s list, which relies heavily on surveys asking senior executives to name the companies they perceive to be innovative, risks succumbing to the halo effect, where generally successful companies are assumed to be good at everything. Forbes’s mathematical approach, which calculates an “Innovation Premium” baked into a stock price, suffers from market capriciousness. Editorial driven approaches at MIT Technology Review and Fast Company can trip over hype (recall how Fast Company in 2009 named “Team Obama” its most innovative company?).

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No one likes to move beyond his or her comfort zone, but that’s really where the magic happens. It’s where we can grow, learn, and develop in a way that expands our horizons beyond what we thought was possible.

Also, it’s terrifying.

For me, operating beyond my comfort zone was participating in classroom discussions in college. Early in my career, it was public lecturing and participating in departmental meetings. I knew I had things to say, but was very unsure if they were worth saying.

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Global business is currently undergoing one of the most significant changes seen in the last thirty years. What commenced as a computer hardware revolution in the 1980s has now given way to a software revolution that is impacting every organisation, a revolution which is accelerating at such a rate that many businesses are having difficulty keeping pace.

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New Year’s resolutions tend to be big, impressive promises that we adhere to for short periods of time — that blissful stretch of January when we are starving ourselves, exercising daily and reading Proust. But, and you know this, rather than making extreme changes that last for days or weeks, we are better off with tiny ones lasting more or less forever.

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The euro not only survived 2013, it thrived. And, at the stroke of midnight in Eastern Europe on Tuesday, the currency even added a new member.

Latvia is the 18th nation to adopt the euro, a development that might have seemed unlikely only two years ago, when many wondered if the euro would even survive.

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It was the market rally that defied gravity and left many with a case of vertigo.

Despite turbulence in Washington, China and Europe, which threatened at several points to pull the world into another recession, stock prices just kept rising in 2013. The benchmark Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index led the way, ending the year almost 30 percent higher than it began, or 32.4 percent higher with dividends counted in. That’s the biggest jump since 1997, when the technology bubble was inflating. Even the returns from the heady years of the real estate boom were left in the dust.

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When New York City hosted The World’s Fair in 1964, Isaac Asimov, the prolific sci-fi author and professor of biochemistry at Boston University, took the opportunity to wonder what the world would look like 50 years hence — assuming the world survived the nuclear threats of the Cold War. Writing in The New York Times, Asimov imagined a world that you might partly recognize today, a world where:

“Gadgetry will continue to relieve mankind of tedious jobs. Kitchen units will be devised that will prepare ‘automeals,’ heating water and converting it to coffee; toasting bread; frying, poaching or scrambling eggs, grilling bacon, and so on. Breakfasts will be ‘ordered’ the night before to be ready by a specified hour the next morning.”

 

The tech industry can seem pretty appealing to job seekers. Job growth in tech is consistently stronger than in other sectors, and startups are a key engine of job growth in the United States. 

From the outside it all looks pretty appealing — daring, boundary-pushing entrepreneurs wearing hoodies as they raise millions from venture capitalists, cushy jobs at Facebook and Google with high salaries, unlimited snacks, and on-premises laundry.

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Common sense is no replacement for science; plenty of "everyone knows" knowledge has had its legs cut out from under it by a well-designed study. Nevertheless, some research turns up results that don't exactly shock and awe.

Such no-duh research usually has a serious underlying purpose, from the study of why people cheat to the roots of racism. Researchers have to understand the basics of everyday phenomena in order to understand them, after all.

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MADISON – There may be as many ways to get a company up-and-running as there are startups.

The lean startup methodology works for some, especially if the goal is to produce a “minimum viable product” that allows entrepreneurs to learn from potential customers before they build something the market doesn’t really want.

For others who operate in regulated environments, the pathway to a commercially appealing product may be more methodical and require step-by-step validation.

Some ‘treps prefer to go-it-alone, others prefer working in a team, and still others think the only way to innovate is to find a cool co-working space with a ping-pong table.

It all starts with an idea, however, and a plan to take it from cocktail napkin notes to reality.

The Internet of Things was all the rage in 2013, so it should be even bigger in 2014, right?

If you're talking hype, then there is little doubt that the Internet of Things will continue to vie for the center of everyone's attention. In terms of actual forward progress, don't hold your breath for a big event.

As the explosive trajectory of smartphones adoption approaches an asymptote, mobile apps are riding high. Once an unassuming term for a curious, smallish sort of phone program, the app is now king. It’s almost impossible to now imagine otherwise.

In this mobile-first era, apps make headlines, precipitate stock slumps and altogether define an industry that didn’t see them coming a mere six years ago when Apple released the App Store. Here is our list of the most important apps of 2013. These are not necessarily the fan favorites, but they were the headline drivers, movers and shakers that helped define the app economy in 2013 and beyond.

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Researchers from Aalto University have revealed how emotions are experienced in the body.

Emotions adjust our mental and also bodily states to cope with the challenges detected in the environment. These sensations arising from the bodily changes are an important feature of our emotional experiences. For example, anxiety may be experienced as pain in the chest, whereas falling in love may trigger warm, pleasurable sensations all over the body. New research from Aalto University reveals, how emotions are literally experienced through the body.

Image: http://scienceblog.com