Funding of £3.6m will help Oxford University researchers bridge the so-called 'valley of death' – the gap between having an idea for an invention and it being developed enough for others to want to invest in it.

The money will go towards initiatives such as secondments that take researchers into industry and follow-on grants that help them to develop proof-of-concept technology and demonstrators to show how an invention would work. The investment builds on Oxford's existing schemes to boost innovation and entrepreneurship but will offer support that is more flexible and will enable researchers to engage with companies at an even earlier stage.

If you’re looking to establish yourself as an expert in your field, there are few strategies that work better than writing a book. They’re a big deal to most people, and we all read them to find out about topics we’re interested in.

But don’t expect that you’ll make it to the top of the New York Times Bestseller list simply because you’ve written a book. Most authors, especially in the fiercely competitive business book field, won’t make a living writing books. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t consider writing one.

Behind most great startup success stories is a long list of mistakes! Unfortunately, for every success story you see, there is an even longer list of failure stories with mistakes that you don’t see. But rather than dwell on the failures, I’ve tried to extract from them a list of practical action items that will improve your survival probability.

Every startup mentor has his favorite list of basic strategies to avoid pitfalls, and I’m no exception. If my experience and insights can save just one founder from the stress, lost time, and lost money associated with a startup misstep, then I’m a happy man. I offer these pragmatic recommendations:

A lot of people try to pitch Robert Scoble. As an influential blogger and technology pundit, a nod from Scoble can mean huge publicity (and VC attention) for startups. But he’s been frustrated of late by the slew of copycat startups seeking to be the Uber of Tanzania or Facebook for veterinarians. It’s cheap to start a company these days, so the money – and high-quality development talent – is spread out. “How many companies have a kickass iOS developer on them?” he asks. “Not many, and that’s causing some of this small thinking.”

Scoble’s looking for something else: “I want to see people who are trying to change the world and bring something new.” Fortunately, he believes a new wave of innovation may be ready to hit.

Knowledge@Wharton: You have interviewed more than 200 CEOs for your New York Times "Corner Office" column, and you drew on 70 interviews with CEOs and top executives for your book, The Corner Office. Through these conversations, you have distilled five qualities of successful leaders. Tell us about those.

Adam Bryant: What I really tried to do is understand what it is about these people that explains ... why they kept getting promoted. The first (quality) is passion and curiosity. That really refers to a deep sense of engagement with the world -- a questioning mind. (People who exhibit this quality)are interested in people, interested in things. When they go into a situation, they try to figure out, "How does this work and how can it be made to work better?" The second one is battle-hardened confidence, which really refers to having a track record of facing down adversity and knowing what you're capable of, because at all points in our lives we get put on the hot seat in stressful situations. These CEOs had faced down that adversity, and there was that quiet confidence. They knew what they were capable of. The third one is team smarts, which is the organizational equivalent of street smarts.... You have a good antenna for meeting dynamics and a good sense of how to bring people together. The fourth one is what I call a simple mindset, and that really refers to the ability to distill a lot of information down into the one or two or three things that matter. When you stand up in front of a group of employees, you don't want to say to them, "These are the 12 things I want you to think about this year." You really want to give them one, two or three because that's what people can remember. On those days, CEOs really earn their paycheck if they can take a very complicated portfolio company and say, "These are the three things that matter." The last one is fearlessness, which is really just a bias toward action -- not recklessness, but a willingness to take risks and to see things that need to be turned upside down or inside out to be improved. The CEOs that I've interviewed had reverence in their voices when they talk about this quality of fearlessness.

Startup Chile (@startupchile) is a program created by the Chilean government, executed by Corfo via InnovaChile, that seeks to attract early stage, high-potential entrepreneurs to bootstrap their startups in Chile.

Companies must be less than two years old to be eligible for the program, and it requires that at least one of the original founders represent the company for the duration of the program, which consists of a minimum of six-months spent in country over a one-year visa period.

Startups receive $40,000US in equity-free capital to spend during the time spent in Chile, as well as access to a national network of support institutions including the Ministry of Economy, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and the Ministry of Internal Affairs.

As 2012 comes to a close, we asked several venture capital investors to reflect on the past year and give us their outlook for 2013. Continuing our series is Dennis Dougherty, founding partner at Intersouth Partners.

Dougherty talks about the past year of contraction and a move toward late-stage investing in the venture industry, and his view about long-term capital gains treatment for angels who invest in startups.

Whether one has a small, cozy group of friends or a larger, more boisterous gaggle may depend on individual personalities and circumstances, but new research suggests when deciding which type is best, socioeconomic conditions are key.

"In the age of Facebook, many Americans seem to opt for a broad, shallow networking strategy," write Shigehiro Oishi of the University of Virginia and Selin Kesebir of the London Business School last week in the journal Psychological Science. "Yet, cross-cultural research has shown that having many friends is not always viewed positively outside the United States." (For instance, in Ghana, they noted, an individual who claimed to have more than 50 friends was considered "naïve" and "foolish.")

CEOs that freeze in decision making quickly cause politics in their teams, says venture capitalist Peter Fenton. Here Fenton talks with Polyvore CEO Jess Lee about the need for leaders to make timely decisions to provide necessary direction and the dangers of CEO inaction.

Does the success of any community rest solely on the shoulders of one group in society? In Startup Communities: Building an Entrepreneurial Ecosystem in Your City, author Brad Feld presents his formula as an investor and entrepreneur in the Boulder community on why entrepreneurs and high-growth companies are the most critical element for creating a successful startup community. Throughout the book, he intertwines his view of Boulder's evolution into a thriving startup community with a narrative of his own journey from MIT to Colorado. He then presents his answers to common questions many ask about startup communities: What are the key principles of a successful community? What are some of the problems they face? What are the roles of the participants in these communities?

Feld begins by briefly presenting three significant historical frameworks that explore economic clustering, including collaborative economies of scale, the role of horizontal networks in entrepreneurial cultures, and attraction and support of the creative class. These frameworks are concerned with why location is important for sustained entrepreneurial activity, but he asserts that none explain how startup cultures arise and are maintained over time.

I’ve always wondered why every executive meeting has to be one hour in length, or longer. That’s probably a tenth of your day spent on one issue. It better be a critical one, because you have a hundred others waiting. I believe you can be much more productive, as well as a more effective leader, if you approach most meetings as mentoring opportunities, and limit them to five minutes.

In a traditional meeting, another person presents you with multiple options, and you make the decision. With the five-minute mentoring approach, the mentee asks for your support in their decision, or asks for your insight on the considerations for them making a future decision. Which approach do you think is more fulfilling for them, and best for your company in the long run?

In stark contrast to the previous regime, the new Parti Québécois government is pulling out all the stops to entice companies into locating their cloud-computing and data operations in the province.

The policy flip-flop represents a change of heart from the stance of the former Liberal government, which looked askance at the prospect of giving tax breaks or cheap electricity to sprawling data centres that are not exactly known as bounteous job creators.

In an online marketplace like Flippa, we’ve seen buyers and sellers try out the full gamut of approaches for valuing websites — some more creative than others.

Once you decide to get your site in shape for a sale, it’s important to value it properly. Over the last six years, we’ve sold more than $100 million worth of sites on Flippa. That’s given us insight into which valuation methods are good, helping site owners clinch that all-important deal, and which fall short, leaving sites unsold and their owners disappointed.

As student loan debt reaches unprecedented highs, UND’s new Financial Wellness program is using students to teach students ways to manage that debt.

Starting Feb. 1, students can be matched with peers who help them create spending plans, learn about their credit scores and find ways to pay for college.

“There are some sound, savvy students on this campus that have investment portfolios that would make 50-year-olds blush,” said Laurie Betting, associate vice president for health and wellness. “We want to share that knowledge with all students.”

The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development has just issued a 96-page report on the Russian economy. The report takes a detailed look at policies that can help achieve the country’s economic diversification.

“Ending (the Russian economy's) heavy reliance on exports of oil, gas and minerals, (is) a very specific and difficult challenge,” the report states, with two chapters dedicated to the development of innovation and related issues.

Harvard might have been the first University to surpass one million fans on Facebook, but The Social Network isn’t the school’s only claim to social media fame. The Ivy League institute has also started to master the Twitterverse—at least entrepreneurially.

Harvard’s social media dashboard is a sheer sign the University is paving the way in digital communication. Through the dashboard, visitors can browse the school’s latest tweets, posts and videos, as well as find a broader selection of Harvard-affiliated accounts.

At the Global Entrepreneurial Summit (GES) in Dubai last week, it was clear to me that there is a new level of engagement in developing more entrepreneurial economies at the highest levels of government in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. The summit, a collaboration between the U.A.E. Prime Minister’s office and the Obama Administration, was an effort to leverage U.S. strengths in high growth entrepreneurship. Now that the summit is over, we take a look at the challenges before policymakers in the region in making the path easier for even more nascent entrepreneurs to succeed in the future.

It was encouraging as I walked around the Dubai World Trade Center last week to see so much activity already underway in the MENA countries to advance entrepreneurship. U.S. Government-led programs such as Partners For a New Beginning (PNB), the State Department’s Global Entrepreneurship Program, and the Global Innovation in Science and Technology (GIST) projects were very visible. So too were many of the flagship entities from the region including the Higher Colleges of Technology, Khalifa Fund and Dubai SME, all active players in financing and encouraging start-ups in the region.

The US Small Business Administration is seeking nominations for awards honoring the critical economic role small businesses play in federally funded research and development through SBA’s Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) and Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) programs. 

Two awards will be given: the “Hall of Fame” award recognizing companies that have an extended period of extraordinary success of research, innovation, and product commercialization; and another, the “Tibbetts Award” with two categories, one for companies that have participated in the SBIR/STTR programs, and another for individuals who advocate on behalf of the programs. 

The American science programs that landed the first man on the moon, found cures for deadly diseases and bred crops that feed the world now face the possibility of becoming relics in the story of human progress.

American scientific research and development stands to lose thousands of jobs and face a starvation diet of reduced funding if politicians fail to compromise and halt the United States’ march towards the fiscal cliff’s sequestration of federal funds.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported 1,082,370 U.S. citizens employed in the life sciences, such as biology and genetics, as well as physical and social sciences. Of these, approximately 31,000 stand to lose their jobs if sequestration takes place, according to a study conducted for the Aerospace Industries Association by Steve Fuller, director of the Center for Regional Analysis and professor of public policy at George Mason University.

LEXINGTON, Ky. — The rivalry between Kentucky’s two best college basketball teams, which will face off in the N.C.A.A. semifinals on Saturday night, is nothing short of a state civil war. Team flags are flying from car windows, mayors have wagered, and a brawl between two fans, one of them hooked up to a dialysis machine, had to be stopped by the police.

But behind the competition on the court, there is a new collaboration in the economy. The mayors of the teams’ cities — Jim Gray in Lexington and Greg Fischer in Louisville — are using their positions to persuade their cities, long at odds, to cooperate.