Too many of us are self-doubters.

And that's keeping us from thinking creatively, according to a round-up of The Seven Deadly Sins that Prevent Creative Thinking in Psychology Today.

Sins one and two are "We do not believe we are creative" and "We believe the myths about creativity." We believe that we are a product of our environment — and thus, if we come from a non-creative background we cannot be creative.

Plus, we put too much stock into the myths of creativity: that it's an "aha!" moment, or that it comes naturally to some and is impossible for others. Unlike for other attributes, we rarely think of creativity as a skill developed over time, which of course it is.

Entrepreneurship isn't solely about selling things. It's also about creating something useful that people need, and executing it to its full potential.

That was what Gary Levitt did when he founded his startup Mad Mimi, a bootstrapped email marketing startup that he says now hauls in between $4-8 million in revenue each year.

But it was a strange, long road to get there. Born and raised in South Africa, Levitt was a pro skateboarder and musician before becoming an entrepreneur. He went to Boston when he was 19 to study bass guitar, where he would stay to play jazz for the next five years. His first foray into business reflected that background.

New Healthymagination initiative enlists imaging, mobility and HIE in battle against breast cancer

NEW YORK – When you're one of the largest and most profitable companies in the world, you can afford to make big statements – pitting big money and big know-how against big problems.

That's just what GE is doing with a new multi-pronged, five-year, $1 billion initiative meant to speed breast cancer innovation, improving diagnostics and care for 10 million people worldwide.

"We envision a day when cancer is no longer a deadly disease," said Jeff Immelt, GE’s chairman and CEO. "When you add our cutting edge cancer detection technologies to the innovative ideas of our new partners, it's a powerful formula for tackling cancer and helping doctors and researchers improve care."

Trends come and go. Some turn into everyday practices under a new name while others fade away because they prove to be non-productive. Given all the attention to social media one wonders whether it will turn into a everyday practice under a new name or simply fade away.

Just consider how fast social media has transformed mainstream media. Five years ago main stream media wasn’t paying much attention to this thing called “social media but today it permeates all media and no main stream media wants to be left out of “social media circles”.  The irony is that social media has turned into just another marketing channel and as such everyone is using it whether it is effective or not. However some people and organizations are moving beyond marketing towards understanding that the fundamental dynamics of communications has changed, whether called social media or not.

Calculus has been called the greatest achievement of the human mind.  Yes, it is a little difficult to understand … until one day it becomes the simplest, most obvious, and glorious form of expression ever imagined.  Like a musical instrument, there is a point where all the symbols and lines can disappear and the artist can express himself or herself in the medium of the art – leading to many moregreat achievements of human mind.

The Science of Change Calculus is amazing because it can make the invisible visible.  From sub-atomic particles, gravity, silicon circuits, diffusion of medicine through cell walls, to the discovery of new planets in distant solar systems – none of which are directly visible to the observer, yet their existence enables human imagination, innovation, cooperation, and social development at the most fundamental form.

Universities' activity in commercializing academic research continued to increase in the 2010 fiscal year, despite the sour economy. Institutions completed more licensing deals with companies than in the previous year while also forming more start-up companies and filing for more patents, according to newly released data from the Association of University Technology Managers.

Early-stage life science companies have long grumbled about the ability to secure financing and those grumbles have only grown louder given the market conditions that have dried up many financing options.

The state of North Carolina will now provide another way for life science companies to slake their thirst for capital. State Treasurer Janet Cowell will invest up to $35 million from the state’s pension fund to support early-stage life science companies in the state. Cowell formally announced the “Accelerator” at the Southeast BIO Investor Forum in Durham, North Carolina today.

Case Western Reserve University and the Wallace H. Coulter Foundation have created a $20 million endowment that’s aimed at translating biomedical research into commercial products and clinical practices.

The creation of the endowment will allow Case’s translational research program funded by the Coulter Foundation to continue in perpetuity. The program was created in 2006 with a $4.8 million grant from the Coulter Foundation to Case, according to a statement from the university.

Here's a look at the changing landscape of startup funding. As you can see, incubator Y Combinator is graduating more and more companies into the world, but the funds for VC firms are slipping.

Many of these new startups don't need the traditional VC model as cheaper startup costs, angel investment, and incubators like Y Combinator, transform the industry.

Eliminating “deadbeat” cells that accumulate with age could prevent or delay the onset of age-related disorders and disabilities, Mayo Clinic researchers have shown.

The researchers genetically engineered mice so their senescent cells harbored a molecule called caspase 8 that was only turned on in the presence of a drug with no effect on normal cells. When the transgenic mice were exposed to this drug, caspase 8 was activated and killed the senescent cells.

In today’s marketplace there are very few business strategies that do not include technology transfer as part of the competitive landscape. Whether driven through consolidation, in/out-licensing or outsourcing, the ability to effectively transfer and commercialize a product can mean the difference between keeping or taking marketshare. Legacy products in particular represent significant technical challenges in technology transfer because historical development data may not be adequate to support the new Stage 1 process validation requirements and must be integrated as part of the technology transfer plan.

Gov. Bill Haslam and Bill Hagerty, state commissioner of Economic and Community Development, on Thursday announced plans to establish nine business accelerators to spur entrepreneurship in the state, including one at Memphis Bioworks at 20 S. Dudley.

The "Regional Entrepreneurial Accelerators" will offer mentoring, education and training, strategic and technical support, and assistance identifying sources of capital for Tennessee entrepreneurs.

The accelerators will be located in each of the Jobs4TN Jobs Base Camp regions to help entrepreneurs develop business plans and launch companies that have the potential to create new jobs.

The federal government is moving swiftly (by government standards) to make it easier for small businesses to raise capital in ways that haven’t been possible before.

Less than two months since the White House included the idea in its jobs package, the House is voting on bills this week to lift restrictions on crowdfunding and increase the amount of money companies can raise before having to register with the SEC. These proposals have the backing of House Republicans and the Obama Administration, camps that don’t agree on much legislation these days.

Securities laws designed to protect investors limit how much money businesses can raise, who they can raise it from, and how they can raise it, without going through the costly and cumbersome process of registering a public offering with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Those laws are part of the reason that businesses raising money on crowdfunding sites such as Kickstarter can’t sell equity.

One of the biggest fears about participating in sports that involve swimming in the open water is the chance of being attacked by one of the sea’s dangerous creatures–with the most common one being a shark. As for one surfer and two kayakers from California, they should consider themselves lucky after they were just a few feet away from being swallowed by a humpback whale.

The video above shows a whale appearing above the surface of the water near Santa Cruz, California and putting the lives of the surfer and kayakers in danger. One man happened to be recording the group on camera and caught the entire incident on tape–which was pretty crazy to watch considering it looked like the whale actually swallowed them at first.

Thousands of health and medical apps can be had for a minute or less of download time, and sometimes a dollar or two. Because choosing among mobile applications can be an overwhelming experience, Scientific American has put together a list—based on functionality, content and customer reviews—of ones you may find useful.

Nowadays, an app exists for tracking most of your routine health needs, whether it be recording distance on a treadmill or finding a clinical trial for a recently diagnosed disease. These tools undoubtedly could help you take care of yourself better, yet there are some caveats that also need to be heeded. Most applications, including the ones in this article, are not regulated by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

Boston's Innovation District will get a new building next year — the Boston Innovation Center — that could become the neighborhood's hub. It'll be built on land across Northern Avenue from the Institute of Contemporary Art, and not far from the MassChallenge's digs at One Marina Park Drive, the mostly-empty high-rise on Fan Pier. And the city officials nudging the project along seem to hope it will develop into something like Microsoft's NERD Center, which hosts dozens of community events each week in Kendall Square.

"We're not quite ready to talk about it," says real estate developer John Hynes of Boston Global Investors; his firm is building the Seaport Square project that the Boston Innovation Center would be part of. "But the primary purpose will be meeting room and conference and networking space for the younger workforce. It'll be geared to new businesses in innovative industries."

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and entrepreneur, not known for shyness, recently proclaimed New York City as America’s new entrepreneurship capital, roaring past Boston in venture capital and soon to leave Silicon Valley in the dust as the “go to” destination for entrepreneurs. Indeed, the world media are awash with proposals to kick start entrepreneurship as a strategy for economic revival, with support for venture finance at the heart of many programs. Yet the title of Harvard’s Josh Lerner’s recent book, “Boulevard of Broken Dreams,” is no coincidence, because proclamations are one thing, actual success is quite another.

They say that starting a business with a partner is like a marriage. What they don’t tell you is that if your marriage does really well it’s like having a few hundred kids too. When things go wrong they can go really wrong, so here are ten tips for picking the right startup co-founder.

1) Do not marry Lorena Bobbit - The first and probably most obvious part of the selection process is to try avoid starting a tech company with a psychopath or someone who acts rashly and against the best interests of the people around them. You will know this person because their projects never gain momentum and are constantly punctuated by angry closures.

Venture Capitalists who are serious about turning their firms into more than one-fund wonders may want to have their associates actually start and run a company for a year.  Running a company is distinctly different from simply having operating experience – (working in bus dev, sales or marketing.) None of that can compare with being the CEO of a startup facing a rapidly diminishing bank account, your best engineer quitting, working until 10pm and rushing to the airport and catching a redeye for a “Hail Mary” close of a customer, with your board demanding you do it faster.

A company called Nth Degree Technologies hopes to replace light bulbs with what look like glowing sheets of paper. The company's first commercial product is a two-by-four-foot-square light, which it plans to start shipping to select customers for evaluation by the end of the year.

The technology could allow for novel lighting designs at costs comparable to the fluorescent light bulbs and fixtures used now, says Neil Shotton, Nth Degree's president and CEO. Light could be emitted over large areas from curved surfaces of unusual shapes. The printing processes used to make the lights also make it easy to vary the color and brightness of the light emitted by a fixture. "It's a new kind of lighting," Shotton says.