Working for a startup has become the new hip thing to do; working a corporate job just doesn't have the same appeal these days. Fortunately, 65% of respondents in a recent HireArt survey of 147 startups agree that recruiting is one of their top three priorities right now. However, the survey also revealed that 50% of candidates don't know what it means to actually work for a startup.

Co-founder of HireArt Elli Sharef commented on the disparity between expectations and reality for candidates applying to startups: "People think these days they want to work at a startup. It's a new hot thing. There is an ethos, like 'Oh startups are so sexy,' but people don't really understand what it means. It's a ton of grunt work, the pay is really low, a lot of startups are pressure cookers and you have to achieve results quickly. Yeah, there are some really fun parts to it, but one of the things we found is that people aren't realistic about what working for a startup really is."

Young graduates are in debt, out of work and on their parents’ couches. People in their 30s and 40s can’t afford to buy homes or have children. Retirees are earning near-zero interest on their savings.

In the current listless economy, every generation has a claim to having been most injured. But the Labor Department’s latest jobs snapshot and other recent data reports present a strong case for crowning baby boomers as the greatest victims of the recession and its grim aftermath.

These Americans in their 50s and early 60s — those near retirement age who do not yet have access to Medicare and Social Security — have lost the most earnings power of any age group, with their household incomes 10 percent below what they made when the recovery began three years ago, according to Sentier Research, a data analysis company.

Professional educator, Jonathan Woods, takes a closer look at the crowdfunding scene in Taiwan.

FlyingV is a crowdfunding platform in Taiwan that enables creative people to raise money to fund projects from individuals online. Inspired by Kickstarter and Indiegogo in the United States, the founders saw crowdfunding as an idea that could flourish in Taiwan, and launched the platform in April of 2012.

I caught up with founders Light Lin and Tim Cheng to discuss FlyingV and what to expect from crowdfunding in Taiwan.

At The Root, we believe that Black History Month is not just a time to reflect on the past; it's also a time to look forward. There's no better way to honor our ancestors than to highlight the success their hard work has wrought -- embodied in the accomplishments of our young people.

That's why every year, The Root embarks on a nationwide search for 25 of the brightest African-American innovators between the ages of 16 and 22 for our annual Young Futurists list. We look for students and recent graduates who are making waves in the fields of business, green innovation, social activism, science and the arts and who use their talents to make the world a better place.

"We're helping to shape a change in culture about what young people can and cannot do," explains Charles Orgbon, a 16-year-old futurist from Dacula, Ga., who founded the environmental organization Greening Forward. "With the right support, young people can do anything." 

The following is a rather popular cartoon.

On first read, I think anyone whose been involved in the development of a new product would chuckle with a sense of familiarity.

But the last frame is wrong.

The reality is that customers want a product which will make them money (or have a lot of fun, or eat a great meal, or whatever)......for free (or better yet, get money)......It's not enough to ask customers what they want, because that will always be what they want.

New Jersey has jumped on the angel investor tax break bandwagon this week after the state’s governor reversed his position on the tax break in an effort to spur job creation in the state.

Gov. Chris Christie signed the bill into law this week, which gives angel investors a tax credit of up to 10 percent of their investment. The $25 million program limits tax credits to $500,000 per investment. Among the stipulations of the bill are that companies have under 225 employees, and that they do research, manufacturing or technology commercialization within the state.

David Warschawski has a better perspective than most when it comes to Super Bowl advertising. Warschawski, CEO of the eponymous Baltimore marketing firm, has been one of the top advertising executives in Baltimore since 1996. He has worked with brands such as Adidas, Microsoft, Black & Decker, Under Armour and Verizon Wireles. Fans often think the funniest or sexiest ads are the most effective on Super Bowl Sunday, Warschawski said. But those ads sometimes fail to make an emotional connection with the viewer or change how a product is perceived, he said.

A failed congressional campaign inspired attorney Reshma Saujani to start Girls Who Code, a non-profit in New York that seeks to address the gender gap in technology.

Saujani, an Indian-American child of political refugees, launched her underdog campaign in 2010, motivated by Hillary Rodham Clinton’s presidential run. While she didn't win, the support she received from other women pushed her to "pay it forward." During her campaign, she’d learned that job growth came from technology – but only a small, mostly male fraction of the U.S. work force could fill those jobs. "As a nation, we're missing out not just on innovation, but the innovation of an entire gender," she says. "Our country depends on teaching girls to get into these fields."

We want people with entrepreneurial spirit on our team, and actively seek it out. These are the people that challenge the norm, have original opinions that move a discussion forward, and act with tenacity and determination.

But too often employers hire entrepreneurs, not entrepreneurial spirit. Big mistake.

I've worked with a wide range of clients as a consultant and have seen too many companies hire employees they thought were top talent, only to watch them spend company time on personal passions and then walk out the door when their side projects were ready to launch. The ticking sound the employer thought was entrepreneurial spirit was actually just an entrepreneur doing lower quality work on the company's clock while directing his best efforts toward his own interests.

People often ask me for advice about public speaking, since I do a lot of it. Of course, it's often reported that people are more afraid of public speaking than death (which is not exactly empirically accurate, but it is close). In my experience, becoming a good public speaker is not a natural skill for anyone. While I now speak professionally about once a week, for sums I could never have imagined just a few years ago, I have had to learn through many difficult and painful experiences and a great deal of feedback how to basically just be myself on stage.

The reality for any creative process, from public speaking to innovation to playing the piano, is that we must be able to go from "suck to non-suck," as Ed Catmull describes the reality of Pixar's creative process, something he has observed and understood for over 30 years as the company's cofounder and president. That takes hours of practice — and a lot of easy-to-ask for, hard-to-implement advice.

Social entrepreneurs often grapple with the decision of whether to establish their organizations as nonprofit or for-profit in order to reach their goals. But what if you don't know which model to use, or which would best suit your mission? I've stood at this crossroads myself, and share my own experience here in the hopes that it will help inform other social entrepreneurs facing the same decision.

When I was a graduate student at Stanford University in 2007, a team of students and I first conceptualized the Embrace Infant Warmer — a low cost way to regulate the temperature of vulnerable newborns, without the need for constant electricity, and at a fraction of the cost of existing solutions. We were eager to take this product to the disadvantaged communities who desperately needed it. We needed to build an organization by which we could carry out this vision, and inevitably, the question arose: Should we be a for-profit or a nonprofit entity?

An effective team is a powerful thing. Many of us have participated on teams where the members complement each other, trust each other and find ways of working that are not only effective, but also enjoyable. For teams like this, performance is typically much higher than might be expected of the sum of individuals.

And yet while teams often are where the real work gets done, most businesses don't value or manage them well. Many businesses aren't skilled in talent management or team nurturing. Team management, in particular, is often a scarcely recognized activity.

Joshua is an active agent with Biomimicry for Creative Innovation (BCI), an international network of creative innovators, professional change agents, biologists and design professionals who work in creative collaboration with each other to apply ecological thinking for radical transformation.  At the heart of their work is a shared passion for creating brilliant, resilient, values-led human systems that are aligned with nature’s ecosystems.  It’s what the group calls Business Inspired by Nature.

It took me a while to figure out why Danish companies are so slow at embracing open innovation and I found the answer in an unlikely place. German and Chinese people working with innovation in Denmark told me that they had a hard time getting to know Danes.

As the societal culture spills over to the corporate culture in Danish companies, it became quite clear to me why Danes are slow at embracing open innovation. Danes are world class at collaboration – as long as they collaborate with partners they already know and trust.

Okay, things are starting to get out of hand with Gangnam Style… it’s everywhere! The insanely popular South Korean dance tune has quite literally enveloped the world. But let’s face it, you haven’t truly taken over unless there is a flipbook animation version of your work, right? Well it seems this guy, who only goes by the name, etoilec1 over at YouTube, completely agrees with you. He has created a rather detailed version of the music video flipbook animation style. I mean every single bit of it.

State officials are seeking some changes in the $84 million InvestMaryland program, including allowing the Department of Business and Economic Development to acquire a greater ownership interest when investing in a venture firm.

Current law prohibits DBED from acquiring an ownership interest of more than 25 percent in a business in which it invests. Legislation filed by Sen. Edward J. Kasemeyer (D-Dist. 12) of Columbia on behalf of DBED would allow the state to acquire a larger interest if the investment is in a venture or private equity firm.

From 1790 to 1853, the rate of invention was very low, as the U.S. economy was dominated by agriculture. Yet, patenting exploded in the Industrial Revolution starting in the mid 19th Century and lasting through the 1920s—a period characterized as the "golden age" of invention. With the onset of the Great Depression, the rate of invention plummeted from the 1930s to 1955, but there was a noticeable post-war rebound after major research breakthroughs in modern information technology were first made. The decade from 1974 to 1984 saw a precipitous decline in patenting, but since then, a post-industrial era of invention has begun and patent rates have steadily increased and remained near historic highs. Growth in patenting slowed immediately after the two most recent recessions but recovered thereafter; 2010 and 2011 saw large increases in both applications and grants.

When you think about the most innovative countries, the U.S. and South Korea often come to mind. But what about Iceland or Iran? How do they compare?

Bloomberg Rankings recently examined more than 200 countries and sovereign regions to determine their innovation quotient. The final universe was narrowed down to 96. What follows is the top 50.

Innovation was measured by seven factors, including R&D intensity, productivity, high-tech density, researcher concentration, manufacturing capability, education levels and patent activity. The methodology, definitions and weightings are explained in the last slide.

Between their many universities, research centers and publishing companies, New York and Boston are already considered leaders in education, but two new startup accelerators want to make their cities as prominent in education technology.

On Friday, Boston-based LearnLaunchX made its debut, announcing that it would kick off its first session in June. And, next week, Socratic Labs, an accelerator program in New York, will officially launch with its inaugural class of startups. Along the lines of other incubators, the two programs each give accepted startups a small amount of capital ($15,000 to $25,000 at Socratic Labs and $18,000 at LearnLaunchX) in exchange for some equity, as well as mentorship, guidance, space and other benefits.

So it is official: I have banned the term 'lifestyle entrepreneur' from ASU SkySong, where we currently support over 35 high potential startup companies. Why ban this expression? Well there are a variety of reasons. Firstly, I think that there are no real entrepreneurs out there who are doing this as a 'lifestyle.' Whether you are running a venture-backed startup or a corner shop, the hours and commitment are punishing. A 'lifestyle' job is going in at 8 am and leaving at 5 pm and not thinking about your job until the next morning. So why have I enforced this ban so vehemently? Because I think it is really a dismissive and often derisory term, something that no one should be allowed to use.

I overheard some of our young entrepreneur’s last year talk about how their businesses were 'high potential' and not a 'lifestyle' business. Therefore they were real entrepreneurs but not people who ran small businesses or franchises....they went through a list of people they saw as not being 'real entrepreneurs.' It was a long list. Frankly I was outraged; who were these kids to dismiss so many hard working entrepreneurs out of hand? I wouldn't mind it but none of these so-called entrepreneurs had actually achieved very much at the time of this discussion.