The Large Hadron Collider is the most expensive and complex scientific experiment ever built. This video shows how the contraption accelerates and slams together subatomic particles and what comes out of the collision.

Innovation drives income growth and determines global military and diplomatic leadership. China lacks the kind of inclusive political institutions like those in the US that promote innovation. But inequality and money's influence on political power threaten American innovation.

Learn by doing. Constantly test new ideas. Learn, share and repeat. The world is ever changing — stay ahead of the curve. Embrace the art of discovery.

We need to try more stuff. Innovation is never about silver bullets. It’s about experimentation and doing whatever it takes, even if it means trying 1,000 things, to deliver value. Business model innovation requires a lot more experimentation than we are comfortable with today. Tweaking existing business models won’t work. Technology as a sustaining innovation may improve the efficiency of current business models but will not result in the transformation that we all want and need. We need to learn how to leverage technology for disruptive innovation and to experiment with new business models.

I played softball last night with a team I've been on for over 6 years.  Most of the core of our team has been together for at least 3 seasons now and we're one of the top teams in Zogsports.

One of our guys went the other way on a tough pitch and drove a line drive to right field and I commented to Jeremy that this was the best I've ever seen our team hit.  The funny thing was that the score was only 8-5 at that point and we had just racked up 19 runs the game before.

Will scored on the play and immediately came up to me, saying "This is the best we've ever hit."

The Health IT Accelerator (H.I.T. Accelerator), designed to grow health care IT companies in the Cleveland region, is being launched today by BioEnterprise in partnership with a number of Cleveland region health care, research, and medical payer organizations.  The novel platform for emerging companies recognizes the growing interest in and opportunities for IT entrepreneurs in the health arena.

"The H.I.T. Accelerator is a new approach to growing the region's health IT companies.  It harnesses the expertise of the region's health care leadership to assist emerging companies," said Baiju R. Shah, President & CEO of BioEnterprise.  "The focus is on assisting companies by providing them access to customers and business advice, putting them in a better position to continue to grow their ventures."

Entrepreneurs who think they have promising ideas for information technology companies should hit up Cleveland-area incubator LaunchHouse.

The incubator plans to invest $25,000 each in 10 IT and web-based startups as part of a 12-week entrepreneurial boot-camp program that it’s dubbed “LaunchHouse Accelerator.”

In addition to providing lifesaving medication, The Lilly MDR-TB Partnership has transferred technology so medicines can be produced locally, where they are needed, building local economic benefits and healthcare system capacity.

In a 120,000 square foot manufacturing facility in Detroit where the first Corvette was built, a new type of innovation is being hatched.

TechTown, an entrepreneurial incubator run by Wayne State University, launched in 2007 and, according to its founders, has since created more than 650 companies—hoping to turnaround one of the hardest–hit cities in America post-recession. In 2011 alone its companies generated $52 million in revenue.

Your favorite bar band wants to make a new CD; contribute to the project and, if it succeeds, you get a copy. Or your favorite bartender wants to buy the bar, which might otherwise go under; kick in to the cause and, if he raises the cash to succeed, you get half-priced beers for a year.

Your local coffee bar serves some really good snacks. The company that makes them needs cash. Invest in them, and you might get to share in the profits as they go from supplying stores in your area to signing contracts with big national grocery chains.

The world of technology is in a constant state of evolution; the legal rules are no exception.  The European Commission is currently considering public comments as part of consultations leading up to a possible revision of the competition law rules for technology transfer agreements.

With the odd notable exception, most innovators do not take on the responsibility for manufacturing and distributing all the products which will incorporate their technology.  For those that do, legal life may be (slightly) more straightforward; the remainder must enter into agreements to license out their technology.

The universal challenge of every startup founder is to get everything done that needs to get done, and still have a life. Even outside of business, everyone wants to accomplish more, while working less. I’ve been a student of these techniques for some time, but recently I saw a great summary that seems to pull all the key principles together.

Stever Robbins, known on the Internet as the Get-It-Done Guy, outlines his strategies in his book “9 Steps to Work Less and Do More.” These are not aimed specifically at entrepreneurs, but I see how they can be applied there as follows:

It’s simple. Any brand or business that has previously made use of traditional marketing techniques needs to make the transition into the social media space.

People now have the control over how, when and where they make purchase decisions, how they communicate and engage with brands as well as how they influence others’ feelings or perceptions about a brand.

Social media plays a pinnacle role in terms of helping companies get into their consumer’s mindset, understand how they want to be communicated with and actively engage with them.

How do women business owners feel about the economy in general, their business outlook in particular, and the role of government in business? The Hartford surveyed women entrepreneurs in honor of Women’s History Month last month to learn the answers to these and other questions in its Small Business Pulse survey.

Here’s some of what they found:

They feel optimistic about their businesses. Women overall were more optimistic than men about their businesses and more likely to feel successful. Ninety-one percent of women describe their businesses as successful, compared to 80 percent of men.

There's a new accelerator in a town. This one wants to transform the $172 billion government IT market into something less bureaucratic.

It's called the Code For America Accelerator and it opened for applications on Tuesday. It will offer the startups it accepts four months of mentoring and a $25K grant, no strings attached. Plus office space in San Francisco -- which is a real find these days.

The folks in Boulder call it Niwot's Curse. Step one foot into this gorgeous Colorado town and you'll never leave again.

That's why the organizers of Boulder Startup Week are offering to fly 10 out-of-towners in. They hope to find people for the long list of open jobs in the Boulder startup community.

Though, maybe, calling all the companies there "startups" isn't accurate. Google, Living Social, and Microsoft are in town and hiring too.

Everyone knows who the most famous and influential people in Silicon Valley are: Mark Zuckerberg, Marc Andreessen. Ron Conway, Jack Dorsey, etc.

But who are the people that can introduce you to them? Who are the connectors, the master networkers, the people who can open doors?

As director of the Stanford Technology Ventures Program, Tina Seelig has devoted herself to shaping--and sometimes breaking--young entrepreneurs' ways of thinking. Her new book, InGenius: A Crash Course in Creativity, maps the staggering array of factors involved in the creative process (you can read an excerpt here).

Seelig recently spoke with Fast Company about how to cultivate a creative ecosystem at work, why building a better mousetrap stops short of true invention, and how to finally start brainstorming effectively.

NBCUNIVERSAL is forming a unit called Curve Films, but there is no intention for it to compete with siblings at the company like Universal Pictures or Universal Television.

Unlike those units, whose output is meant for millions of moviegoers and video viewers, Curve Films has a far more defined target audience: Madison Avenue.

Curve is the brainchild of the NBCUniversal integrated media group, which helps sales executives at NBCUniversal peddle commercial time and ad space on their myriad broadcast, cable and online properties that extend from Bravo and iVillage to NBC and the Weather Channel.

The University Of Virginia is bringing some deep pockets to grounds in hopes of starting up more companies in Charlottesville.  It's all part of the fourth annual Venture Summit at UVA.

The summit features two days of talking to investors about where they might want to put their money now and in the future. The way UVA innovators see it, a lot of research plus a lot of capital could equal big business booms that benefit everyone involved.

HemoShear co-founder Brian Wamhoff knows that firsthand. His scientists are busy testing drugs with a process thought up in a lab at UVA.

This might just be the year Silicon Valley infiltrates Capitol Hill.

First, start-ups and tech-company founders fought successfully to prevent SOPA, which some argued would expanded the government's ability to police the Internet, from becoming law. Then came the JOBS Act—which was largely aimed at lubricating the start-up process for the smallest companies—which seemed a sure sign of congressional interest in entrepreneurship.

Now, the Senate Small Business Committee, chaired by Senator Mary Landrieu, a Democrat from Louisiana, is working on the early iterations of what may become a landmark bill for entrepreneurs, poised to hit Congress some time this summer. Wednesday, the Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship held a roundtable discussion on the matter, called Perspectives from the Entrepreneurial Ecosystem: Creating Jobs and Growing Businesses Through Entrepreneurship.