Connectivity changes everything. That’s the credo driving just about every corner of our day-to-day lives. As human beings, we are now connected to one another through not just our social networks but also our cars, the books we read, the albums we download and even our own health and wellness habits (to name just a few areas). With that in mind, GigaOM Pro has singled out certain areas in the technology industry where we see this shift to constant connectivity taking place most drastically.

You know Chutes and Ladders–the board game (Snakes and Ladders to those of you from the British Commonwealth). It’s popular among the younger set since the game is simple and requires no skill. In fact luck is a major component of success with the game. The goal is to be the first to move through the 100 spaces of the board. If you land on a ladder, you get to go up the ladder and advance a number of spaces equal to the length of the ladder. If you land on a chute, you slide down a number of spaces. Careful observers will note that landing on a ladder and advancing is the result of performing some virtuous task like baking cookies. And going backward down a chute is the punishment for a vice like breaking a window.

Jellyfishes rely on drifting to eat. They take their luck with currents, and create tiny eddies to guide food toward their tendrils. Yet in waters from the Sea of Japan to the Black Sea, jellies today are thriving as many of their marine vertebrate and invertebrate competitors are eliminated by overfishing, dead zones and other human impacts. How have these drifters of the sea reversed millions of years of fish dominance, seemingly overnight?

Biologist José Luis Acuña of the University of Oviedo in Spain and his colleagues now suggest that jellyfishes are just as effective at mealtime as fishes when judged by the right measures. "Jellyfishes are ancient organisms, which use a primitive predation mechanism based on generating feeding currents to bring the prey into contact with their bodies," Acuña explains. "In spite of this primitivism, jellies are as effective as fishes in catching prey and in transforming the energy acquired (into) body growth and reproduction."

The provincial government will spend $450 million over three years to promote entrepreneurship among young people in the province, Premier Jean Charest said Tuesday.

The multi-pronged strategy is a bid to reverse a waning interest in business creation by implanting a “culture of entrepreneurship” and nurturing it, he told a Montreal audience.

Add support from the private sector along with existing investment funds and the strategy’s dollar value reaches $2.6 billion, Charest said.

Two months ago, a "next generation" IT startup launched in India, Happiest Minds.

Happiest Minds offers a suite of services that help IT departments keep up to speed with all of the new tech innovations that pop up.

Today, it's announcing a whopping $45 million Series A round Ied by Canaan Partners, Intel Capital and Ashok Soota.

Few things kindle the holiday spirit in a store or business like a decorated tree. But if you’re an eco-minded business owner, you might wonder: What’s the greener option – real or fake? The answer is not very clear-cut.

On one hand, fake trees are typically produced in factories in Asia and usually contain oil-derived, pollution-causing polyvinyl chloride (PVC) plastic. Plus, fake trees may contain unsafe levels of lead, and will ultimately end up in landfills, since they’re not biodegradable. Retailers and distributors use lots of fuel transporting them thousands of miles over the ocean and then on trucks to the stores where they’re bought.

London: Thomson Reuters released its list of the 100 most innovative organisations in the world. The list dominated by technology companies includes the likes of Apple, Microsoft, Intel, LG and Motorola. The struggling Finnish mobile phone giant Nokia is not amongst the top 100.

"Innovation is a means of growth and prosperity for companies and nations seeking to overcome sluggish economies and achieve competitive advantage," said David Brown, president of the IP Solutions business of Thomson Reuters.

You sent me an email and didn’t hear back?  This might explain it:

OK so it’s not a serious decision chart.  But it’s beginning to look increasingly attractive!

Name: Identified

Quick Pitch: Identified is a professional marketplace that helps users improve their professional marketability.

Genius Idea: Provides users with real-time, interactive feedback on how companies evaluate your professional information online.

What do companies find when they search for you? Do they like what they find?

People naturally want to know what companies think about them and how they compare to other professionals in the job market. The problem is most resume databases and job sites don’t provide any feedback or responses.

Ever heard of Harvard Business School? Odds are that you have, since brand awareness has never been a Harvard problem. What was a Harvard problem was the perception of the school as a stuffy, arrogant, blue-blood playground. And so, back in 2008, Harvard Business School hired Brian Kenny to be its first chief marketing and communications officer and to help tell the Harvard story to alumni and prospective students.

Kenny’s background is in marketing — he spearheaded U.S. marketing for Genuity, Inc. and oversaw global marketing at The Monitor Group before moving to academia — and was the VP of marketing at Northeastern University prior to moving to HBS. As CMO, Kenny and the interactive marketing team are tasked with telling the Harvard story and providing information to the 70,000+ HBS alumni and anyone who’s learning about HBS, 70% of whom are getting information through digital means.

Over the course of a given quarter I will actively engage with a long list of entrepreneurs to discuss their business and fundraising objectives. These initial conversations are, in many instances, OpenView’s first touch point with some of the most exciting, high-growth startups in the software and tech world. A lot can be learned from these early interactions that will greatly shape the state of the relationship moving forward. Here are a few thoughts on how both parties can be sure they are sending the right signals on their “first date.”

Ask good questions

IMAGE CREDIT: KOREANBEACON.COM Asking the right questions is definitely a two-way street. I always stress to CEOs and founders that, just as I am looking to learn more about their business,  it is equally important they get to know their potential funding partners. (us) When an entrepreneur is asking the right questions in return, it is a very encouraging sign…whether it be trying to find out how we can help them execute against their go-to market strategy, or what relationships and doors we can open for them moving forward. These questions are equally as helpful for us as they help paint a clearer picture of the company’s vision and strategy. I try to be an open book when it comes to chatting about OpenView’s value-added proposition, and I find that by doing so it becomes far easier for these entrepreneurs to chat more openly about their business.

Driven in part by the explosion of vibrant social-networking media, the crowdfunding sensation now stretches to the far reaches of the globe. Fostering creativity, philanthropy, and growth, crowdfunding sites have fundamental social and economic impact, and are altering the allocation of capital.

Every generation rebels against their parents. When parents approve, their offspring disapproves. Parent says black, adolescent teen says white. Psychologists who are expert in these matters explain that rebellion is a factor in establishing identity. It’s part of the journey of growing up -- personalities are taking shape and a sense of self is being nurtured. Even if you haven’t quite worked out what you want, it helps to know what you don’t want.

But the times seem to be a-changing, yet again. Today’s teens are surprisingly in harmony with their parents. They wear the same branded jeans, have similar music in their iTunes library, are happy to accompany one another to a U2 concert, and if you ask them, many will talk about their friendly, supportive relationship.

How do you transform an opportunity into an idea? Well, the first thing is to get comfortable with the belief that any old ideas won’t do. What we’re interested in are disruptive ideas; that is, ideas with the power for great impact and influence. Ideas that challenge assumed boundaries and inspire a sense of what’s possible. In my experience, however, most ideas never get anywhere near this level. There are three major stumbling blocks:

1: Feeling overwhelmed, directionless, and without focus

In my experience, this is the direct result of relying on traditional brainstorming approaches, which, by the way, have been around since the 1930s, when ad-man Alex Faickney Osborn first popularized them in his book, Applied Imagination. But the problem is that traditional brainstorming has ignored the huge difference between generating lots of ideas and capturing quality ideas. As a result, brainstorming sessions often leave organizations and teams feeling overwhelmed and directionless—a state Beth Comstock at GE insightfully calls, “paralyzed by possibility.” Simply put, if your ideas are going to have any disruptive impact, you need to move beyond a shotgun approach to brainstorming and start pursuing creative effort with a laser-sharp focus.

This Friday the Washington Biotechnology & Biomedical Association (WBBA) will release findings from its 2010 Economic Impact Report at their Governor’s Life Sciences Summit and WBBA Annual Meeting. With the sometimes volatile ups and downs of our industry, these findings have the potential to propel WBBA forward in both current and new initiatives and strategies to build Washington state’s life sciences sector.

Google is setting up an “incubator” for technology start-ups in Israel, one of several ways the California-based Internet giant is trying to get an early look at innovations.

Reuters The Google logo is seen on a door at the company’s office in Tel Aviv. A Google research director made the announcement Sunday at the company’s annual conference for developers in Israel, saying that the incubator will open in August of next year in the same building as Google’s office in Tel Aviv.

New investments help Eastern Ontario entrepreneurs grow emerging companies in Information Communication Technology (ICT), life sciences, clean technology and digital media sectors

The demand for commercialization support is at an all-time high in Ontario.  Since beginning operations in 2007 as the OCRI Investment and Commercialization Group, then expanded with an Eastern Ontario mandate in 2010 as the Regional Innovation Centre for Ottawa and Eastern Ontario, the Centre’s team has provided services to more than 750 companies, and helped to leverage more than $100 million of investments into portfolio companies.

“Our regional innovation centre is a tremendous asset to all of Eastern Ontario,” says Bruce Lazenby, President and CEO of OCRI. “I also see it as a catalyst to attract more and varied funding sources. The fact is Ottawa’s got the highest concentration of knowledge-based talent in Canada, and that’s a tremendous draw for the wider entrepreneurial community.”

Organized by: The National Council of Entrepreneurial Tech Transfer (NCET2) Association of Public Lang-grant Universities (APLU) Association of American Universities (AAU)

Sponsored by: The National Venture Capital Association (NVCA), the National Association of Seed and Venture Funds (NASVF) and the University-Industry Demonstration Partnership (UIDP) representing the venture capitalists (VCs), angel investors and Global 1000 private funders of research commercialization

About this Series: On September 16, 2011, President Obama announced new steps that will help America's universities and research labs convert ideas into new products, expand the economy and create 21st century jobs. In coordination with the Administration, 135 university presidents committed to working more closely with industry, investors, and agencies to bolster entrepreneurship, encourage university-industry collaboration, and advance the nation’s social and economic interests. The commitments are aimed at helping achieve the President’s goal of strengthening commercialization of the nearly $148 billion in annual federally-funded research and development.

The top talent in countries around the world have a new suitor: the Chinese government.

China has a severe shortage of skilled talent and, in a policy reversal, has decided to open its doors to talent from around the world. This could mean that the brilliant NASA scientists the U.S. laid off, could find new employment — and a new home — in Shanghai or Beijing.

Chinese research labs have long had difficulty recruiting qualified workers to perform necessary research and development, and its corporations struggle to find competent managers. The situation will likely get worse as China’s high-tech industries grow and it increases its national R&D spending from the present 1.62 percent of GDP, according to the Chinese government, to the planned 2.5 percent by 2020. China’s President Hu Jintao, in May 2010, declared talent development a national priority in order to fill the void. The goal is to dramatically increase the education level of China’s workforce and to build an innovation economy.

Before we get too far into the new fiscal year, we thought we’d go back and look at how the IBED world fared in the last round of state budgets. Tax credits continue to be a favored tool to spur growth and investment in the IBED world. Even though budgets are tight, many states have maintained or increased funding for IBED-related tax credits, and a few, such as Nebraska and Virginia have introduced new ones. Supporting commercialization efforts was also high on the list this legislative season. Ohio’s Third Frontier, for instance, has a new Commercial Acceleration Loan Fund worth $25 million. With waning investment from traditional venture capital firms, several states are stepping in to fill the gap. Maryland’s new InvestMaryland program allocates $70 million for venture capital in the innovation economy sector. And though it was developed back in 1989, Economic Gardening has only recently started to catch hold on the regional and state level. Nebraska, Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Michigan have all introduced new initiatives this year. The trend of the year, though, seems to be the restructuring of state-level economic development efforts, with a particular emphasis on engaging the private sector. Many of these efforts are currently facing some controversy, but we wouldn’t be surprised if once the wrinkles get ironed out, this is a trend that’s here to stay.