“The new growth model we need to create will be much more sober, fairer and greener,” said Internal Market Commissioner Michel Barnier, addressing a conference on social entrepreneurship on Friday (18 November).

The EU executive unveiled the Social Business Initiative last month, trying to promote a highly competitive social market economy, which is at the heart of its 'Europe 2020' strategy for growth.

Trecently migrated laptops.

Alarming how simple that sentence looks. I mean, migrations are long and hard, and things die. They have an alarming inevitability. Everything in their path gets trampled. Being able to express that in a single tiny sentence seems unfair.

Unfortunately there’s little that can be done about the endless hours and megabytes you will spend on downloading Windows updates, and there’s no relief for us Windows XP diehards who now have to come to grips with Windows 7 (having gleefully avoided the Vista bullet). And for some reason, Windows makes it as difficult as technologically possible to set up networks between computers running different operating systems. But having survived, and being now in a position where I only slightly view my new laptop as an alien invader, I thought I’d offer a few suggestions that might help other intrepid adventurers/desperadoes mourning the loss of their most loyal computing companion.

This fall Stanford University took a step forward in the open-education movement by offering three free online courses, following in the footsteps of several other elite colleges like Yale University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

The three classes being offered—”Machine Learning,” “Introduction to Artificial Intelligence,” and “Introduction to Databases“—are among some of the university’s most popular computer-science courses, according to a blog post on the Open Culture Web site. Enrollment figures for the courses seemingly back up this claim: Andrew Ng, the professor for the machine-learning course, has approximately 94,000 students enrolled in his class alone, he told The Chronicle.

The buzz from startup executives, especially high-tech ones, has long been that startups are no place for Baby-Boomers (1946-1964) – you must have the high energy and crazy determination to work 20-hour days to succeed. Only the under-35 age group need apply.

I will argue that times have changed, and you better take another look. First of all, the Boomer demographic is currently the single largest, mainstream pool of experienced talent in the market today (76 million people strong). They have worked with high technology and computers for at least 20 years, are highly educated, and highly motivated. Last year about 40% of the total workforce was Boomers.

Most surprisingly, according to a report from the Kauffman Foundation, the highest rate of entrepreneurship in America has already shifted to the 55–64 age group, with people over 55 almost twice as likely to found successful companies than those between 20 and 34.

According to a new study by University of Notre Dame economist Kasey Buckles and graduate student Elizabeth Munnich, siblings spaced more than two years apart have higher reading and math scores than children born closer together. The positive academic effects of greater spacing between children were seen in older siblings, but not in younger ones, according to Buckles.

The study will be published in an upcoming issue of the Journal of Human Resources.

A pacemaker that regulates the heart by wirelessly zapping it with pulses of ultrasound from outside the organ is currently undergoing human trials in Europe.

Conventional pacemakers stimulate the heart tissue via electrical leads that are fed into the heart through a vein. But leads can fail, requiring additional surgery to remove and replace them. The conventional approach also restricts where the therapeutic shock can be delivered.

At the end of every job interview, you’ll encounter the inevitable question, “Do you have any questions for me?”

While it’s an oh-so-predictable event, many job candidates aren’t prepared to shine when they reach this final test in the interview. Failing to ask any questions or asking the wrong questions can send the wrong signals.

Stephanie Daniel, senior vice president of career management company Keystone Associates, spoke with us about her thoughts on how job interviewees can take control of their next job interview by asking the right questions. Read on for her thoughts on what to ask and which questions to avoid when it’s your turn to interrogate.

This post showcases some funny, crazy, weird, creative and wacky inventions introduced to markets and submitted to patent offices around the world in 2011. Most of these highly unusual gadgets and gizmos will make you laugh but still serve really useful purposes. Typically, it’s some of the most absurd patents and inventions that successfully land on the shelves of Brookstone, in pages of Sky Mall Magazine, and other fun gadget stores. Some of these designs are pretty hilarious, I hope you can enjoy.

The auto industry has a lot of problems. It has to worry about workers’ pension and health care costs, too-frequent recalls and the rising cost of gas. I think there is something else that should concern the automakers.

It’s the iPhone.

Teenagers love smartphones, and getting one has become a rite of passage. A driver’s license? Like, whatever.

It seems unlikely, but at least one auto company is paying attention.

“The car used to be the signal of adulthood, of freedom,” Sheryl Connelly, the Ford Motor Company’s manager of global consumer trends and futuring, said in a recent phone interview. (The title sounds strange, but many big companies now have executives focused on discerning the future.) “It was the signal into being a grown-up. Now, the signal into adulthood for teenagers is the smartphone.”

Though business has evolved since the dawn of time, one thing remains the same: entrepreneurs need money to succeed. But in this economy, getting your hands on cash can be tough—we know this firsthand (read about how we raised $1 million). And it’s even harder for tech startups searching for capital in a market flooded by dime-a-dozen tech companies, all boasting a world-changing idea. So how does a tech-industry startup find financial backing? Enter the angel investor. Angel investors are independently wealthy individuals who put money into startups (amounts vary from $10,000 to $1 million), often in exchange for convertible debt or ownership equity. In 2008, angel investors contributed $19.2 billion to 55,480 startups, according to the University of New Hampshire‘s Center for Venture Research. While that may not sound like much, the majority of investors preferred to invest in tech-industry areas such as software, IT, and biotech. That makes angel investing a great tool for tech startups in need of cash. But how do you woo angels to fund your business? Follow these tips to secure angel funding.

Most people are surprised to hear that five simple patterns explain the majority of innovative products and services.  Jacob Goldenberg and his colleagues discovered this surprising insight.  It is similar to the notion of TRIZ which is a set of patterns for solving problems.  Innovative products share common patterns because their inventors unknowingly followed them when generating new product ideas.  These patterns become the DNA of products.  You can extract the DNA and implant it into other products and services to create new innovations.  We call it The Voice of the Product.

Are there more than five patterns?  Most certainly.  Highly creative people like musicians and artists use templates in their creations.  Even products invented serendipitously have a pattern embedded in them.  Many products are invented accidentally.  Serendipity led to the microwave oven, corn flakes, Teflon®, penicillin, fireworks, Viagra®, chocolate chip cookies, and the most famous of all accidents...the Post-it® note.  The problem with serendipity is it's not predictable.  It is not an innovation method one would count on for corporate growth.  But there is value in serendipity if you can unlock its hidden secrets.  Every serendipitous invention can be reduced to a heuristic and ultimately to an algorithm or pattern.  We call it The Voice of Serendipity.

“You will have meltdowns on a regular basis. You will have those moments. Make sure you have people you can talk to when you have those moments.”

That was Brad Feld, the tech entrepreneur-turned-venture-capitalist, on Friday afternoon, speaking to a room of Boston and New York entrepreneurs and angel investors, at an event organized by Silicon Valley Bank. The setting was the Microsoft NERD center in Kendall Square, Cambridge, MA. Feld was talking about the experiences that all founders (especially CEOs) go through with their companies.

The city of Providence will partner with local angel and venture investors Betaspring, Slater Technology Fund and Cherrystone Angel Group to create one-of-a-kind public investment initiative it believes can put the city on the map as a “startup incubator.”

The Innovation Investment Program (IIP) will be managed by the city and funded under the US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). Believed to be the first equity investment program under HUD nationwide, the IIP fund uses federal dollars to provide capital to innovation-based, knowledge-driven companies to stimulate growth and job creation.

Microsoft and TechStars just announced what could be the coolest startup incubator program ever: the Kinect Accelerator.

If you're accepted into the program, you get $20,000, three months of free office space, all the technical tools you need to build Kinect apps, and a chance to present your creation at a demo day for investors and Microsoft execs.

TechStars is funding and running the program, and Microsoft is providing office space and technical tools. Developers will have to move to Seattle and work there for the duration of the program.

Lifelong dedication to medical equality For 50 years, Dr. Elijah Saunders has battled a condition that kills more African-Americans than whites. Hypertension, the “silent killer,” kills one victim every hour, many not knowing they are sick until it is too late. He has taken the fight to the streets by launching a program to train barbers and beauticians in Baltimore to take customers’ blood pressure measurements. During a time when medicine lacked strong African-American leadership, Saunders became the first African-American resident in internal medicine at the University of Maryland in 1960 and the first African-American cardiologist in Maryland in 1965. After operating a successful practice for 20 years, Saunders joined the faculty at the University of Maryland School of Medicine and became an international expert on hypertension in African-Americans. Last year he was awarded the 2011 Herbert W. Nickens Award from the Association of American Medical Colleges.

Provisional results from the 2011 census of India show a diminishing population, the lowest since independence in 1947. From 2001 to 2007, India's population grew 17.6%, compared to a 20% to 25% growth rate in previous periods since the 1951 census. Even so, India is expected to virtually catch up with China in population by 2020, with United Nations forecasts showing a less than 1 million advantage for China. By 2025, the UN forecasts that India will lead China by more than 50 million people. Nonetheless, like many other developing nations, falling birth rates are substantially reducing population growth in India.

Every small business owner has to address this question: How do you want to live?

For some, it’s enough to own your own jobs. But for others, freedom means passive income and creating something they can pass on to their children (without making the children pass out from overwhelm and exhaustion). And for another set of small business owners, the preferred lifestyle is working in a business that they love and having a reliable team that allows them to take one or two worry-free vacations a year.

It is a tribute to Eugene Garfield’s vision and insight that The Scientist is still, after 25 years, a flourishing magazine “for the science professional,” as he put it in his inaugural editorial. The magazine’s primary focus is no longer on the political and economic affairs surrounding science, however, but on the heart of the matter: the rapid advances in methodology and the consequent torrent of new findings in the life sciences, lucidly explained both to the broader professional community and to the scientifically literate public. This special anniversary issue features six topics, including several areas of research that did not exist when The Scientist first went to press: omics, neuroscience, nanomedicine, synthetic biology, biodiversity and conservation biology, and science funding. I contributed an opinion article to the first issue of the magazine advocating that the human genome be sequenced. At the invitation of the editors, I now reflect on the huge strides made in the life sciences in the last quarter century and offer some thoughts about how to conquer some of the outstanding problems in the future.

Ownership of intellectual property (IP) rights has become central to the strategies of innovative companies worldwide, with increasing investment in R&D and the development of global markets driving demand for patents from 800,000 applications in the early 1980s to 1.8 million in 2009, according to the World Intellectual Property Organisation.

As a result, IP policy has moved to the forefront of innovation policy. The increased focus on knowledge, the focus given to innovation in emerging economies, and the desire to protect inventions abroad are generating a growing demand for IP protection. As a result IP has moved from being a technical topic tended to by small, specialised communities and now plays a central role in corporate strategies and innovation policies.

Andrew Yang wants to create jobs. Specifically, 100,000 U.S. jobs by 2025. It’s an ambitious goal, but one that Yang believes is completely attainable just by getting recent college graduates to work at startups rather than take positions in finance, consulting, and law. But not just any startups: Yang wants to recruit young talent to ignite entrepreneurial sparks in such economically depressed areas as Detroit; Providence, Rhode Island; and New Orleans. So who is this one-man economic stimulus package? Yang is a 37-year-old serial entrepreneur with experience in just about every industry sector, from health care to fashion retail. This August he founded Venture for America (VFA), a wildly ambitious nonprofit based in New York City that is recruiting its first class of fellows.