As an innovation leader, you know how important a culture of sustained innovation is to the survival of your organization. However, there are many factors that can challenge the innovation process. These issues may come from team members, executives, or the general culture of the organization. Here some common challenges that companies deal with, and solutions for overcoming them.

1. The culture of the company is to keep doing things the way they’ve been done in the past - there is a lack of curiosity and eagerness to change.

Sharks with brown skin with pale spots and the size of a typical housecat are trolling the deep waters surrounding the Galapagos Islands, scientists have learned. Measuring just 1.3 feet long, the newly discovered species belongs to the catshark, or dogfish, family—one of the largest shark families, Wired Science reported.

Named Bythaelurus giddingsi, and possibly Galapagos Catshark as its common name (to be determined), the new species was found during two submersible treks to depths of 1,400 to 1,900 feet around the Galapagos, which collected seven specimens that were then examined by researchers at the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco. The species was described earlier this week (March 5) in Zootaxa.

“Crowdfunding and Startup Investing”
Wednesday, February 29, 2012, 1:00-2:30pm ET Presenters:
Jason Best, Co-Founder, Startup Exemption
Sherwood Neiss, Startup Exemption

A rare glimpse of Crowdfund Investing.  This free webinar will focus on different aspects on what Crowdfunding is, to what it looks like today, how it differs from Crowdfund Investing, what framework for Crowdfund Investing is to the legislative process in Washington DC, the hurdles to becoming law and dealing with everyone from leading Representatives and Senators all the way up to the White House.

Ahh! Every day, 4.7 billion minutes are spent on Facebook? 35 million apps are downloaded? 294 billion emails are sent? My brain cannot begin to comprehend those figures. This infographic by MBA online tries to make them easier to understand… or maybe it’s just trying to overwhelm you.

Yes, the internet is big. Just how big? Well, for example, there are more devices connected to the internet than there are people on earth. So it’s pretty big. And it’s growing rapidly – at the end of last year it took just 20 typical households to generate the same amount of traffic that the entire internet did back in 2008.

Coller Capital partner Jon Freeman shed some light Thursday on why global investors such as pension funds sometimes balk at writing checks when Australian private equity groups fundraise.

Speaking at the Asia Venture Capital Journal Private Equity & Venture Forum in Sydney, Mr. Freeman cited a survey conducted last year by Coller, an investment fund active in the secondary private equity market.

Of respondents to the survey, 52% said the key barrier was increasing competition for deals, while 30% said they were concerned about the difficult regulatory and tax environment.

Maryland has chosen a London firm to oversee the selection of venture capital firms interested in making investments in young state companies through the InvestMaryland program.

Altius Associates was tapped to ensure the process is open and transparent and not influenced by the state, the Maryland Department of Business and Economic Development said in a statement.

Doctors love the iPad? Not so fast. It looks as if most doctors and nurses would rather not touch the iPad at work (or deal with any other kind of tablet computing). They certainly won’t be making it their go-to device any time soon.

“We had some instances where physicians wanted iPads – thought they wanted them – borrowed them, used them for a few days and returned them,” said Kirk Larson, a vice president and chief information officer at Children’s Hospital Central California.

The Knight Foundation announced it has teamed with CEOs for Cities to fund nine projects designed to encourage civic engagement, for a total grant amount of $65,000. Xconomist Rishi Jaitly, Knight’s program director in Detroit, says the awards build on the existing momentum in the city.

“We see a lot of people here leading enterprises that make it easier for citizens to participate in public discourse,” Jaitly explains. “A lot of people are blending social entrepreneurship, creativity, and civic action, and our mission is to make it easy for more institutions and individuals to share in this momentum.”

A new study contrasting ocean temperature readings of the 1870s with temperatures of the modern seas reveals an upward trend of global ocean warming spanning at least 100 years.

The research led by Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego physical oceanographer Dean Roemmich shows a .33-degree Celsius (.59-degree Fahrenheit) average increase in the upper portions of the ocean to 700 meters (2,300 feet) depth. The increase was largest at the ocean surface, .59-degree Celsius (1.1-degree Fahrenheit), decreasing to .12-degree Celsius (.22-degree Fahrenheit) at 900 meters (2,950 feet) depth.

Ohio State University is opening a $2 million center on High Street where researchers and students can meet with entrepreneurs to come up with ways to turn their research into moneymaking products and jobs.

Like the campuses of Apple, Google and Microsoft, the new headquarters of OSU’s Office of Technology Commercialization and Knowledge Transfer, set to open Thursday, is designed to foster a culture of people working hard — and having fun — together.

Ten thoughts for the budding entrepreneur: some obvious, few provocative, and a couple that are controversial. But whether you agree or disagree with them, they are all worth mulling over.

Note: the word 'product' is used in a generic manner to include any market offering, including services.

If you live by the sword, get ready to die by bullets.

Focus on addressing unmet customer needs, not simply providing "improved" versions of existing products.

The latter approach will likely kill your venture, because products die, but customer needs persist. The point is not to make a better mousetrap, but to find the best way to get rid of the mouse.

All across the country, there are young men and women dreaming of opening their own business. Some are looking to start the next social media phenomenon, while others are focused on a business idea that fills an important niche on their campuses and in their communities.

At the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA), we know that young entrepreneurs are a valuable source of American innovation which is why we launched our Young Entrepreneur Series (YES). The SBA has the tools and resources to help these entrepreneurs succeed.

Cloud computing, mobile devices, social networks and other hot Internet technologies are producing waves of new start-ups, but for many of these young companies, venture capital is the wrong answer, at least in the beginning.

Reuters So said a panel of investors and entrepreneurs who spoke last week at Microsoft in Silicon Valley at an event sponsored by the Churchill Club.

In a provocative post at Forbes.com, contributor Steve Denning, a leadership and innovation expert, writes, “The Creative Economy is a huge opportunity that awaits us.”

Denning contends that the creative economy is “one in which the driving force is innovation.” His abundant ideas—a call to action to leaders in business and government—inspired me on many levels, similarly to Richard Florida’s classic book The Rise of the Creative Class (Basic Books, 2003).

Elite American universities maintain their prestige by turning away a huge percentage of applicants every year. And the education entrepreneur Ben Nelson sees an opportunity in this demand for top-flight education: He wants to reach talented students across the world and to build a new university that could remake the image of Ivy League education.

Mr. Nelson, founder of a start-up called the Minerva Project, believes the minuscule acceptance rates at prestigious institutions leave some college-bound students without a place where they can pursue a blue-ribbon degree. So his for-profit enterprise seeks to satisfy that demand by offering a rigorous online education to the brightest students around the world who slip through the cracks of highly selective admissions cycles.

Where and when do you do your best thinking? For me, it's in the pool. As I power up and down the lanes, I rethink what I’ve learned. I now have the time and space to solve whatever problems have arisen. It’s an important meeting with myself, and I keep it religiously. Because the day I lose it, I’ve lost myself.

Quick: Survey your friends, your family, and colleagues and ask them when it is that they get their best and brightest ideas. How do they come to solve insurmountable challenges? And when despairing over the unsolvable, how does their breakthrough moment occur?

Don’t be surprised if many of those you ask say something like: "I sleep on it. Then as soon as I get in the shower in the morning… voila!"

If your startup desperately needs an investor, you may not care if the investor is a so-called “angel” investor, or a venture capitalist (VC). The money is the same color in either case. But I have found that making the right choice at the right time can have a major impact on your long-term valuation, and the decision process is complex.

The basics are simple. Angels are typically high net-worth individuals, investing their own money, interested more in early or “seed” financing of amounts starting as low as $25K. Venture capitalists are professionals, investing other people’s money from a fund, interested mostly in later rounds, in chunks of money from $2M up. Between these extremes is a large overlap.

That’s the dominant note sounded by commenters at this week’s Mobile Summit, an invitation-only conclave of mobile-industry executives and investors sponsored by VentureBeat.

It’s polite frustration, to be sure. But again and again, I’ve heard on-stage speakers or members of the audience in various discussions allude to their difficulties working with carriers, with Apple, with Google, or with the vast profusion of platforms out there.

Stretching along the peninsula southwest of San Francisco Bay, Silicon Valley is a breeding ground for high-tech startups. But in its early years, the area was nurtured by something relatively new: venture capital. A look at the innovators and key moments that shaped Silicon Valley.

Periodically and cyclically, the economy will stink, even more so for people who are less experienced, educated or trained, the youngest members of the work force.

The Depression walloped one generation. The recession, oil shortage, and stagflation whipped mine. Many classmates avoided the job market, or the pronounced lack thereof, by diving into grad school and further debt, which drove them toward more lucrative professional if not necessarily innovative endeavors.

As The Inquirer's special report "Struggling for Work" makes clear, these are days of diminishing economic returns for the "millennial generation," adults 18 to 34, entering a challenging and rapidly changing marketplace.