The performance review of the future will include services like Salesforce.com's Chatter and its Influencers feature, which measures how much weight you carry among your peers.

Today, your performance review is based on things like sales numbers or number of goals met. Tomorrow, though, it could be based on something that until now has remained ephemeral: organizational influence.

The BIO Convention in China brings together executives from biotechnology, pharmaceutical companies and investment firms from North America, Europe and Asia to meet and explore business opportunities with China's emerging biotech sector.

BIO is renowned for its successful business development, partnering and investor meetings in North America, Europe and Asia. Partnering at this conference will be powered by BIO One-on-One PartneringTM, an interactive environment to intelligently search, contact and schedule private meetings with potential partners and investors.

The Global Innovation Efficiency Index shows which countries are best in transforming given innovation inputs into outstanding outputs.

Countries which are strong in producing innovation outputs despite a weaker innovation environment and innovation inputs are poised to rank high in this "efficiency" index.

Over the past few decades we’ve seen time and again how energy prices will move – up or down – seemingly on a whim.   This volatility of energy prices has served only to intensify our need to find viable, reliable, cost-efficient energy solutions.

There are many potential solutions on the horizon.  But these days many seem to think the light at the end of the energy tunnel is natural gas.

Astronomers are finding lots of exoplanets that are orbiting stars like the sun, significantly raising the odds that we will find a similar world. But if we do, the chance that the surface of that planet will look like ours is very small, thanks to an unlikely culprit: plants.

We all know how Earth's landscape came about, right? Oceans and land masses formed, mountains rose, and precipitation washed over its surface; rivers weathered bare rock to create soil and plants took root. Well, new research indicates that the last stage of this scenario is not right. Vascular plants—those with structures such as xylem and phloem that can conduct water—are what created the rivers and muds that built the soils that led to forests and farmland.

One thing people don’t tell you when you start a business is how emotionally attached you become to it.

The ability to change some part of the world with your team, product, and customers ties your mind and soul to the startup you’re building.

We started Manymoon with simple goal to improve how people get work done. Our waking hours were spent trying to make our segment of the market — Google Apps customers — be more productive and fantastically happy with the product.

If you’re looking for a job in technology, get out of New Jersey, fast. Get out of Birmingham, Alabama. Cross the river to New York, or the country to San Francisco. Even better, fly to Baltimore, Detroit, or Pittsburgh.

Yes, you heard me right. Baltimore, Detroit, or Pittsburgh.

Simply Hired just released its July 2012 employment outlook. And some of the results are more than a little surprising.

Download the PDF

Today’s moisturisers may make skin look and feel better, but tomorrow’s products may be able to switch off the genes that underlie many skin diseases. Researchers at Northwestern University have created small nanoparticles that can silence disease-related genes in skin cells after being applied via a cream or ointment.

Described today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the particles consist of small strands of RNA, densely packed around a gold core. They were 100 times more effective at shutting down a target gene than an alternative method using lipids to carry RNA into cells, and showed no harmful effects after weeks of use. With further testing and development, they could provide new ways of treating skin cancer, psoriasis, and other skin disorders caused by faulty or overactive genes.

Knowledge@Wharton: In your 2008 book, The Global Achievement Gap, you identified seven survival skills children need to succeed. In your new book, you add to those skills. You write: "Only one set of skills can ensure this generation's economic future: the capacity for innovation." What has changed since that book came out, and why do you think innovation is now so critical to America's future?

Tony Wagner: What changed is the global meltdown in 2008. My book came out then, and I got tremendous validation about the seven survival skills and how important they were. But then I saw college students coming home with a BA degree, seemingly having mastered some of those skills, but in fact, not having a job. Right now, 53% of all college students under the age of 25 are either un- or underemployed. A third of them are living at home. I began asking myself if these skills were enough, and the more I studied the problem, the more I realized the economic collapse in this country is driven by the fact that we have a consumer-driven economy. I concluded that that economy is, in turn, driven by debt. We have created an economy based on people spending money they do not have to buy things they may not need, threatening the planet in the process. As I really studied and tried to understand what the alternative is, and what's going to be the engine of the American economy going forward if this consumer-driven economy is not sustainable, I came to understand the importance of innovation and then became interested in the question of how, in fact, do you grow an innovator? What must we do differently as parents, teachers, mentors and employers?

A ‘hive’ of entrepreneurial activity: MIT’s new startup accelerator gives early-stage companies the opportunity to grow in a dynamic and supportive environment

The Beehive houses 40 companies, from hi-tech businesses to makers of consumer goods

Cambridge, Mass., July 3, 2012—A fair trade cosmetics company that makes organic anti-aging skin cream; an energy business that increases the longevity of rechargeable lithium batteries; and a digital gift-wrapping service that lets customers personalize electronic gift certificates are just a few of the companies that have set up shop at Beehive Cooperative, MIT’s newest and largest startup accelerator.

Vanity Fair has an article in its August issue that tells the story of how Microsoft “since 2000 . . . has fallen flat in every area it entered: e-books, music, search, social networking, etc., etc.” According to a summary available online, the article finds a devastatingly destructive management technique at the heart of Microsoft’s problems.

Author Kurt Eichenwald interviewed employees and found that

. . . a management system known as “stack ranking”—a program that forces every unit to declare a certain percentage of employees as top performers, good performers, average, and poor—effectively crippled Microsoft’s ability to innovate. “Every current and former Microsoft employee I interviewed—every one—cited stack ranking as the most destructive process inside of Microsoft, something that drove out untold numbers of employees,” Eichenwald writes. “If you were on a team of 10 people, you walked in the first day knowing that, no matter how good everyone was, 2 people were going to get a great review, 7 were going to get mediocre reviews, and 1 was going to get a terrible review,” says a former software developer. “It leads to employees focusing on competing with each other rather than competing with other companies.”

Mark Murphy is the author Hiring for Attitude, as well as the bestsellers Hundred Percenters and HARD Goals. The founder and CEO of Leadership IQ, a top-rated provider of cutting-edge research and leadership training, Mark has personally provided guidance to more than 100,000 leaders from virtually every industry and half the Fortune 500. His public leadership seminars, custom corporate training, and online training programs have yielded remarkable results for companies including Microsoft, IBM, GE, MasterCard, Merck, AstraZeneca, MD Anderson Cancer Center, and Johns Hopkins.

In this interview, Mark talks about why so many new hires fail so quickly, why soft skills are so important now, how the hiring landscape is changing, and more.

Savvy executives know the part, act the part and look the part. That's because they exude "executive presence," a broad term used to describe the aura of leadership.

For Janie Sharritt, now a vice president at Sara Lee Corp., an image makeover helped her gain the managerial gravitas that she needed to advance further up the ladder.

In 2005, Ms. Sharritt was a newly promoted middle manager for another consumer-products manufacturer. She preferred to wear a ponytail, scant makeup, khakis, sweaters and loafers. But by taking a "Power of Image" workshop led by image coach Jonna Martin, she got an expert makeover. Her revamped look included a sophisticated hairstyle, dressy slacks and jackets, pumps, colorful necklaces and extra makeup.

Many entrepreneurs believe their success is in part due to a little bit of luck-- that chance meeting with a potential investor or that dinner conversation that sparks a new idea. In fact, a new study by networking site LinkedIn found that 84 percent of 7,000 professionals they surveyed say they believe in career luck. 

But let's face it: There isn't an exact science to luck. You can't predict it. However, there have been plenty of successful entrepreneurs, authors, and even researchers who've tried to map out just what makes someone lucky.

Here are a few of the top tips for cultivating your own luck. 

Recently, I had lunch with an accomplished and slightly older CEO who had served as board chair of the corporation at which I had my first senior position. Not having seen him in years, I was delighted to catch up. But I was exhilarated when he expressed personal interest in my career, observed my success and challenged me to reach higher. Upon parting, I blurted out an awkward gratitude: “Thank you so much for your advice. It was so great to get, as all my mentors have died.”

Upon reflection later, it hit me that it was true. I have had a phenomenally successful and blessed career. Recently, I have written a successful book and feel I have made a difference on some big national issues. I still push myself harder than anyone else can – with one exception: My wife, a surgeon, pushes harder and lives by the mantra, “you can sleep when you die.” Unlike her, I need sleep.

Technology startups, especially those in Silicon Valley, love to talk about innovation. But how good are they at actually inventing and commercializing important technologies? Not as good as they should be, says Max Levchin, a computer scientist who cofounded PayPal (earning him TR's "Innovator of the Year" award in 2002) and is now an angel investor. Levchin, along with fellow PayPal founder Peter Thiel and former chess champion Garry Kasparov, is completing a book called The Blueprint, which will outline how and why startups should tackle much harder problems. Levchin, 36, says too many of the country's best programmers are working for companies that have little prospect of doing anything ­transformative.

Levchin's own startup record is mixed. Although building PayPal's online payments technology into a trustworthy system was a technically difficult and risky project that ultimately prospered, he later founded Slide.com, which was best known for creating a somewhat silly series of Facebook applications such as Superpoke! Pets. Google bought Slide in 2010 for about $200 million but shut down most of its services last year.

In any business relationship there exists the possibility for conflict. It’s like Yin and Yang – there’s good and there’s bad.

Many years ago I worked for a company where everyone knew the CEO was non-confrontational. There were people who took advantage of that. They knew he wasn’t going to say anything; he was just going to get mad. The interesting thing is that most people are non-confrontational. And those same people end up in conflict.

Ernest Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea is a timeless, Pulitzer Prize winning novel, both rich in symbolism and conspicuously relevant in its contemporary application. As a parable for entrepreneurs, it is practically without parallel. A simple tale that sees a man set out to achieve a goal, and tackle the challenges that befall him and his determination to realise his ambition.

The Old Man and the Sea‘s succinct, powerful grit registers as a fundamental guide to business. It’s a book I have read many times, and with each new reading I feel a stronger kinship with the book’s protagonist, Santiago. Here are the parallels I’ve drawn between his resolve and my experience as it relates to business and entrepreneurship: