While traveling between India and the U.S. these past few months, I spent some of the long hours in the air looking back at my professional life and the lessons I learned along the way.  Each phase of my career offered different challenges, successes, and lessons, but my most exhilarating moments were undoubtedly during the start-up phases.

As some of you will remember, I headed a start-up called HCL Comnet in 1993, which incubated the idea of remote infrastructure management services.  It’s a $1.4 billion business today, with 20,000 employees, and boasts some of the best people I’ve ever worked with.

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We all know that when we give a presentation or speak in front of a group, not only are our words important, but the body language that accompanies them.

Your words may give the audience one message while your body sends quite another.

As if getting the words out wasn't hard enough, right?

An infographic from SOAP Presentations lists 10 body language tips to employ during your next presentation. These tips range from how to get the audience to like you, to how to make sure the audience remembers your key points.

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Whether you're launching a product for the first time or revealing a new collection, the process of getting the word out and driving conversion can be intimidating and overwhelming. Once you consider naming your product, financing, manufacturing and marketing, the prospect of launching a new product can create stress for even the most level-headed and accomplished entrepreneur.

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A few weeks ago, a new ranking was published measuring “opportunity” on a state-by-state basis. Vermont came out on top as the friendliest state for upward mobility, scoring well on both the Community and Education metrics.

Someone from Vermont e-mailed us here at the Kauffman Foundation, wondering how this could be in light of Vermont’s demographics. And indeed, the state’s demographic direction does not scream opportunity. By median age, Vermont is four years older than the nation as a whole. Today, residents over the age of 65 comprise 15 percent of the population—by 2030, it will be 20 percent and rising

Image: http://www.xconomy.com 

Organized angel investor networks in India largely work in isolation but that seems to be changing. Some of the country’s top angel networks have come together to form an association dubbed the Angel Association of India (AAI). The outfit was formally instituted on November 21 in a closed door meeting on the sidelines of the recently concluded Asian Business Angel Forum in Mumbai. The leading members of the association include Indian Angel Network (IAN), Mumbai Angels, Chennai Angels, Hyderabad Angels and Harvard Business Angels, among others.

“We’re still early into articulating the operating guidelines for the association. However, this association gives us a country-level platform to address some of the key issues that affect angel investments,” IAN president Padmaja Ruparel toldStartupCentral.

California-based venture capitalists keep telling Nick Cromydas the same thing is wrong with his startup TapFit, which bundles unsold gym classes and sells them at a discount. The problem is not his background or business model, but his location — Cincinnati, Ohio.

“It’s harder here,” Cromydas said. “I’ve had investors and funds say they’d be willing to continue the next level of conversations if we moved out west.”

Ekaterina (Katia) Carra is an eMBA Student at Télécom School of Management following the eMBA program: “Leading Innovation in a Digital World”. With a her classmates, she completed a study trip in Finland, reviewing creative approaches that Finland develop to nurture innovation. She presented an executive briefing on November, out of which she shared with us some astonishing innovation take-aways from Finland.

Being able to learn marketable digital skills is sluggish and difficult — or so they say.

Adda Birnir noticed a gender divide between a media company's business and technical side (read: men) versus the editorial side (read: women). She created online tech education platform Skillcrush to give women a way to learn marketable skills that could lead to steady, high-paying jobs and relevant, satisfying work.

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More than one person told Chris Romer that his vision of creating a national network of high-quality community college programs and selective four-year colleges committed to enrolling their graduates was folly. It's hard enough to get community colleges and elite public and private colleges in a given area to articulate transfer agreements, let alone create something on a national scale, he was told.

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A communication and cooperation channel of, by and for Crowdfunding investors wholly and exclusively, applying the tried and true lessons from Angel investing to the more democratic and accessible Crowdfunding investment enterprise. Angels (as opposed to Venture Capitalists) are those who invest their own money, and are far more successful when doing this in groups of peers rather than going it alone.

Pacemaker surgery typically requires a doctor to make an incision above a patient’s heart, dig a cavity into which they can implant the heartbeat-regulating device, and then connect the pulse generator to wires delivered through a vein near the collarbone. Such surgery could soon be completely unnecessary. Instead, doctors could employ miniaturized wireless pacemakers that can be delivered into the heart through a major vein in the thigh.

Image: http://www.technologyreview.com 

We can’t go a day without posting on Facebook. Twitter is omnipresent. Going an hour without looking at our phone? Forget it. Despite our current digestion of digital input, however, most of us were essentially raised on TV.

Today, we consume television very differently — DVR, Hulu, Netflix… (can you say binge watching?). We are, however, just as loyal to our favorite shows as we always were.

Dell Ventures is launching a new $300 million venture fund that will broaden its investments beyond storage into several other types of startups, including cloud computing, big data, security, mobility and next-generation data center companies, Managing Director Jim Lussier told Venture Capital Dispatch.

Ernesto Benavides/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images The fund, called the Strategic Innovation Venture Fund, will be announced Thursday at Dell World–Dell Inc.’s annual customer conference–and increases the amount Dell Inc. has committed to its venture arm by five times. The company announced a $60 million Dell Fluid Data Storage Fund in 2012, which is being folded into this one.

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When are people the most creative? Is there an age where you "peak"? Or does discipline at any age determine how much you'll create?

As with most things, there are a few sides to the argument:

WHEN YOU'RE YOUNG When Orson Welles was the ripe old age of 26, he made a movie about the news business called Citizen Kane.

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From the early 1990s until the onset of the global financial crisis, in 2008, the economies of Central and Eastern Europe established a record of growth and economic progress that few regions have matched. Emerging from decades of socialism, Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia became standout performers in the global economy. Their inherent strengths were unleashed as state-owned industries were privatized and labor reforms implemented, attracting a flood of capital and foreign direct investment that drove productivity improvements and per capita GDP growth.

The United States, a wealthy and technologically advanced country, has divided into two camps: Androids and Dinosaurs. The Androids live in California, New York, and Boston, and in a handful of bubble communities such as Austin and Seattle. They use smartphones with the latest apps, drive Teslas, eat “ethnic” food and think they’re pretty smart. In fact, life in Androidville is brutally meritocratic: the better solution always wins because, well, it’s better, right? So why not?

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I recently spent more than nine weeks of constant traveling along the global innovation superhighway, focusing on learning, making distinctions, developing The Start-Up Game™ business, catching up with long time clients, colleagues, associates and friends and networking profusely.

What no-one, was aware of, or knew, was that, at the same time, I was also riding out my own” set of unique “Valley of Death” and “Emotional Rollercoaster” death defying challenges, in the chasm that exists between an invention and its execution!

Image: http://www.innovationexcellence.com 

Working from home has a lot of upsides-- better work-life balance, no commute, but the ability to design an office you love is an upside too. We reached out to Linda Varone, author of The Smarter Home Office, and Michael Chauliac, VP of Marketing at Poppin, the online office supply and furniture retailer, for advice on creating the ultimate home office: one that makes you crazy productive, and happy too.

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You can't see it, but our entire cellular network is constantly bathing us in radiation. Better hope it's really harmless.

If you’re reading this, you’re likely bathed in several channels of cell phone radiation at once. But while we can spot cell phone towers and antennae, the waves themselves remain invisible. Following up on a project to visualize what Wi-Fi might look like in cities, artist-researcher Nickolay Lamm has imagined what cell phone radiation would look like if emitted as waves of light.

Image: http://www.fastcoexist.com 

Not long ago, I attended the “Forever Green Leadership Gala” in Menlo Park, a fundraiser for The Girl Scouts of Northern California.  The event honored two women with impressive accomplishments: Noosheen Hashemi, who earlier in her career spent a decade at Oracle and was instrumental in its 1991 financial turnaround, and who has spent the past decade leading The HAND Foundation; and Cisco Systems‘ Chief Technology & Strategy Officer Padmasree Warrior, one of the most powerful engineers in Silicon Valley, often included in lists of the most powerful women in business, and a persistent advocate for bringing more women into science and technology.  The keynote speaker  was  Sheryl Sandberg,  famous both for her role as Facebook COO and for her advice to girls and women to “Lean In.”

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