For medical device companies, the Chinese market is an obvious and inviting target.

Growth in China’s economy, in general, and its healthcare sector, in particular, has been well documented, but it’s worth taking a look at a few numbers again.

The medical device market in China is currently valued at $14 billion, and it’s expected to reach $50 billion by 2020. By that year, the Chinese middle class is expected to number 600 million, according to Damon Canfield, a principal with Columbus, Ohio-based consulting firm NPI. (Canfield, along with members of law firm Squire Sanders and trade groups BioEnterprise and BioOhio spoke Tuesday morning at an event called “Winning commercialization strategies: Paths to China.”)

Along with a half dozen Boston area startups, prestigious accelerator TechStars Boston this year will include two companies currently based in France, one from Canada and four others from around the U.S. The program announced the 13 companies chosen for this year's class on Tuesday night.

The group of Boston area startups chosen for the program includes private equity marketplace site BISON (currently located across the hall from TechStars, at Dogpatch Labs) and two startups that took part in last year's MassChallenge accelerator, sports training app maker UberSense and social publishing site Libboo.

Libboo CEO and co-founder Chris Howard said in an e-mail that TechStars "will help us rock!"

Based on lean startup methodology, Lean Startup Machine is a weekend-long startup competition, as well as a workshop for educating entrepreneurs on lean startup best practices. Founded by NYU business school drop out Trevor Owens, Lean Startup Machine plays host to a list of tech royalty, who come in to advise participants and teach teams how to understand their customers, quickly build, validate or invalidate their initial assumptions and then persevere or pivot, based on that feedback.

Everyone wants great team players. What can you do to be a better one? Try answering these questions and you’ll generate your own personalized tips:

• Think back over all your job experiences – both paid and volunteer work. What kinds of things really made you feel good? Make a list. Can you find some similarities between them? There’s an excellent chance that you will ‘team best’ when doing work that involve the same types of tasks, responsibilities, and/or work environments.  Consider asking for the opportunity to add or ‘swap’ some of the listed items into your current job.

Governments, development banks and investors poured billions of dollars to finance entrepreneurs in the ‘Valley of Death.’ Add in the millions of hours of human energy and thought devoted to creating solutions too, and the investment is truly staggering. Yet the Valley of Death still exists.

Conventional thought defines the Valley of Death as a market failure. But is it? Or is the Valley simply the rational behavior of investors to risk? If the Valley is a reaction to risk and not a market failure, then perhaps we need to reframe the discussion: what initiatives might influence investor behavior to close the gap that separates entrepreneurs and investment in this critical stage of SME development?

When conceptualizing a new idea, it is essential to direct the thinking to specific dimensions and search answers to certain questions to help evolve the idea from the initial thought through the various stages of innovation. This article suggests a framework for conceptualizing an idea and helps develop an understanding of the dimensions and questions that you need to consider.

Apple launched its Macintosh personal computer in 1984 with its much published TV campaign “Why 1984 will not be like 1984″. The campaign used an unnamed heroine to represent the coming of the Macintosh as a means of saving humanity from conformity. The slogan played to ones emotions of standing up against ‘Big Brother’, IBM at the time, by buying a Mac. More importantly it served to announce the fact that after the arrival of the Apple Macintosh that 1984 would, not be as you would expect “1984″ to be.

Yes, 2012 is already in full swing but are there already some trends from 2011 and before that mean “2012 could not be like 2012″. As a consumer this could change the way you go about your daily life while for a startup or business owner it might be worth asking yourself if you are positioned to benefit from these shifts.

Receiving venture capital (VC) funding is a significant accomplishment for any entrepreneur as it takes months of hard work and negotiation. Some entrepreneurs believe that once they have secured a funding commitment from an investor, they will have carte blanche with the cash and can report back to their investors as and when it suits them.

Nothing could be further from reality. A VC will not write you a cheque for the full amount allowing you to spend it as you please.

An early-stage funder will typically fund your business in stages. This means is that you will get funding for a period of time e.g. six months, which you will need to use to achieve specific objectives for the business. VCs do this because they want to know whether you can actually execute on the plan. You’ve talked the talk, now can you walk the walk? This is why you should know what you want to achieve and how much money you need to do this, before you even talk to a potential funder. Your funder, once they have approved and agreed with the plan, will expect you to deliver on it.

Things are looking up for college graduates. The average salary for 2011 grads was $41,701, a 2.3% increase from 2010 (via Bryce Christiansen).

According to the most recent Nace survey — which compiles data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the Census Bureau, and Job Search Intelligence — computer science majors experienced the biggest increase in salary at 2.5 %, from $68,700 to $70,400. Some other interesting findings:

• Economics major (securities, commodities, funds, trusts, and financial investments) saw the highest starting average salary in the business sector at $77,640
• Retail companies are the lowest-paying employers with an average starting salary of $35,190

Maryland’s business and economic development arm has begun to publish an online database of the financial incentives that the state provides to companies when they promise to create jobs, open new facilities or otherwise contribute to the economy.

The database is one of several Web-based tools that the agency has created of late as it aims to increase transparency, in part because a government watchdog criticized its disclosure practices, said Andrea Vernot, assistant secretary for marketing and communications.

Historic Hurd Hall on Johns Hopkins’ East Baltimore campus was filled to capacity on Jan. 13 with students, faculty and staff waiting to hear five scientists—all in the early part of their careers—describe their novel ideas on how to cure metastatic cancer. The five were finalists, chosen from among 44 entrants, in a competition on creative thinking named for John Rangos Sr., chairman of the Rangos Family Foundation, who funded the awards. Each scientist had 10 minutes to present his or her idea and answer questions from a panel of faculty judges, who would select the winners based on the novelty and scientific merit of their ideas, as well as the feasibility of future clinical applications of their proposals.

Donald Coffey, whose theory on killing cancer by weakening its DNA scaffolding continues to spur innovative research, opened the event, describing it as the “Olympics” of research competitions at Johns Hopkins.

A Montgomery County Council committee recommended on Monday to contribute $250,000 this fiscal year to a public-private partnership — BioHealth Innovation — that is trying to boost the life sciences industry.

The county’s biosciences task force recommended forming the local nonprofit public-private partnership, among other suggestions, three years ago. Besides the $250,000 supplemental increase by the county in fiscal 2012, the partnership seeks $1.25 million from the county during the following three fiscal years.

The expenditure still needs the approval of the full council — which could come as soon as next week — after the Planning, Housing and Economic Development Committee lent its approval.

What a difference a year makes!  In 2011, the Pipeline Fellowship  began as a single program in New York to train ten women to become angel investors and support women social entrepreneurs.  In 2012, the Pipeline Fellowship is expanding to include two locations, four programs, and will train forty women.  How many organizations can say they are experiencing a 400% increase in their first year!

According to founder Natalia Oberti Noguerra, “The Pipeline Fellowship is committed to increasing diversity in the angel investing community and training a new generation of angels to invest for good.  The Pipeline Fellowship is hoping to have an impact on the enormous disconnect between the number of businesses being started by women and the number of women receiving venture capital – a vital source of funding for start-up businesses.

When it comes to capitalizing on potential, Kansas State University is sealing the deal with big names in and around Kansas.

Wichita State University and Kansas City, Mo.-based MRIGlobal, formerly the Midwest Research Institute, have partnered with the Kansas State University Institute for Commercialization, a marketing arm of the university that specializes in the monetization of both capabilities and intellectual property. These partnerships explore research opportunities in aerospace, renewable energy and technology.

After learning of the institute's ongoing successes, Wichita State approached the institute about marketing its intellectual property portfolio. In January 2010 the institute formally committed to a working relationship with Wichita State. This commitment allowed the institute to market Wichita State's technology, giving the university the ability to lean on the institute for advice and direction while developing internal policies and procedures.

Motivation is a hot topic year round, but particularly in January, the month of fresh starts, checklists, and lofty goals. It's the time of year we try to figure out how to prod our employees to excel, to hit and surpass ambitious targets.  Happy, motivated employees are, simply, good for business. "Research shows that when people work with a positive mind-set, performance on nearly every level—productivity, creativity, engagement—improves," Harvard Business Review reported in its January/February 2012 story "Positive Intelligence." "Happy employees have, on average, 31% higher productivity; their sales are 37% higher; their creativity is three times higher." --Harvard Business Review

So what's the best way to get it done?

Pay up.  Money, of course, is a key motivator for many employees. And financial incentives do work to motivate employees--but only to a point. After employees reach a place where they feel secure in their compensation, the real motivators are "learning and growing, recognizing them for their results, and giving them the space to fulfill some of their entrepreneurial visions."

The advent of new technologies often begets the decline of established crafts. But sometimes, to quote the cliché, when innovation closes one door, it opens another. When we started DodoCase--which makes iPad cases using bookbinding techniques--on paper we were doing lots of things “wrong.”

We had decided to manufacture our products in one of the most expensive cities in the world using techniques that were hundreds of years old. We operated without an office, meaning we had no permanent production facility, and we had just a small core team. No one had seen the iPad at this point, so we designed a case for a product we’d never laid eyes on or used. As it turns out, each of these seemingly questionable, and certainly not advisable, decisions turned out to be keys in building a profitable business that encourages sustainable products and creates local jobs.

When you hear about venture capital activity in Boston these days, it's probably just as likely the news is about a company in the city itself as about a firm on the Route 128 tech belt.

Last year, Boston proper had roughly the same number of venture capital deals as Waltham, Lexington, Burlington and Woburn combined — and with the deals have come plenty of hiring and other investments in the city.

As Penn Medicine expands digital health across its health system with the continued implementation of electronic medical records for inpatients and improves patient-monitoring for patients at risk for readmission, it is striking a balance between the need for change and the need for carrying it out at a manageable pace.

Bill Hanson was appointed chief medical information officer in 2010, when the hospital was laying down the infrastructure for many of its healthcare IT programs. Among the projects he is overseeing are the rollout of the electronic medical records system. Last year saw the implementation of EMR for outpatients and the first stage of its EMR for inpatients that included nurses’ observations along with occupational therapists’ and physical therapists’.

Recruiting startup talent can be a daunting task, especially if you have no idea where to look. You might be on a budget, but you want to make sure you have a qualified pool from which to choose. So where do you start? There are a few members of the YEC community well versed in such matters.

We asked members of the Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC), an invitation-only nonprofit organization comprised of the country’s most promising young entrepreneurs, this question:

“What online communities, job sites or networks do you use to find the best startup talent for your company?”

Portugal currently faces economic challenges that require a boost in productive activity to generate the outcomes its people deserve.

“Access to finance is essential to enhance the competitiveness and growth potential of small and medium enterprises,” said European Commission Vice President Antonio Tajani, responsible for industry and entrepreneurship, in December 2011. “In the context of the current crisis, marked by a fall in lending to the real economy, it is increasingly difficult for such companies to access loans.”

Portugal has experienced the fastest growth in innovation performance among EU member states as per the European Union’s 2010 Innovation Scorecard, and now requires innovative alternatives to funding mechanisms and sources to potentiate its innovation capability.