In the fast-evolving advertising arena, Spongecell is a prime example of how a hard pivot with different technology in place can transform a company’s fortunes.

On Tuesday the New York company, which adds interactive functions such as video and Twitter feeds to banner ads, announced it raised $10 million in a Series B round led by Safeguard Scientifics. Spongecell CEO Ben Kartzman says the new funding will go towards product development and other needs. More importantly, though, Kartzman also says Spongecell more than doubled its revenue last year compared with 2010, as he previously expected.

As Spongecell fills its coffers, grows its staff, and expands into new territory, it is hard to imagine that four years ago the company was running out of cash, letting employees go, and searching for a new direction.

Spongecell’s current technology transforms static banner ads into more interactive tools to engage consumers. In addition to Twitter and other social feeds, Spongecell can insert video, maps, coupons, and other features in the ads to grab attention. For example, when users mouse over banner ads for the Mini Cooper the ad plays a video clip that promotes the car. “Video is the fastest-growing segment of the online ad space,” Kartzman says.

Including the latest funding, Spongecell has raised about $14 million in total from backers that include Google executive chairman Eric Schmidt. In 2010, Spongecell generated $3.8 million in revenue and Kartzman says the company more than doubled that figure in 2011, though he declined to give specific numbers.

That is a much different tale compared with Spongecell’s early history. The company, founded in 2006, initially offered a widget platform for ad agencies to use for online promotions. When that did not bring in enough business and Spongecell’s cash ran … Next Page »

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Everyone wants to recapture pieces of the past these days. Facebook for example changed all profiles to the timeline format this year, and others in the social media space are pursuing ways of tracking the past. New York-based Timehop has developed its own technology to let individuals recall content from their personal histories, via once-day e-mails. Jonathan Wegener, CEO and co-founder of Timehop, believes the e-mails offer deeper looks into the past than its rivals in the market.

For the team behind Timehop, the technology also marks a major change from where they were one year ago. Back then, they were also working on a startup called FriendsList as part of TechStars’s inaugural NYC class. FriendsList is now defunct. And the tale of how the team scrapped FriendList and moved forward with Timehop provides an interesting case study on startup strategizing—with a dash of nimbleness.

Timehop sends its users e-mails each day that tell them what they were doing exactly one year ago, based on information gathered from their Twitter, Foursquare, Facebook, and Instagram profiles. These personal newsletters, Wegener says, offer more context than what the sources offer individually. “There’s a big opportunity in history, and no one is doing it well,” he says. Wegener says Timehop gives its users a picture of how they spent their time, whom they spent it with, and what they were thinking across the social sphere. “Effectively you’re writing a diary without really doing anything,” he says.

One-year-old Timehop raised $1.1 million in seed funding in January from OATV, Spark Capital, and individual investors who include Foursquare co-founders Dennis Crowley and Naveen Selvadurai. Wegener says the seed funding will go towards … Next Page »

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Boston startups should be focusing more on creating strategic partnerships with big companies.

An “if we build it, they will come” mindset appears to dominate the Boston startup scene. Too many startups also rely mostly on a pricing and plans revenue model combined with implementing the latest inside sales and marketing 2.0 tools to “get found” while driving demand. A complementary and proactive approach in targeting big companies for strategic partnerships is needed.

Wake up… Most big companies have realized that their current set of technology providers lack the innovation and speed to deliver new competitive solutions. There are new sets of problems that need to be solved that may not have existed even a few years ago. As a result, new innovation programs and budgets have been established, led by senior executives. Their motivation is to fund pilots with emerging technology providers that most times lead to a much larger transaction and partnership strategy. Interesting areas include mobility, social, analytics, and cloud computing.

Take advantage of these customer-funded opportunities as these dollars may also complement your angel and VC funding efforts. Plus, for those leveraging lean startup principles, incorporating a big company “voice” to validate your product development roadmap may commit them to buy additional products and enhancements in the future.

If big companies are approached correctly, senior executives leading innovation programs will make swift decisions. Unfortunately, there are major challenges I see within the startup community to take advantage of these budgets. These include:

• Little focus on proactively targeting big companies. Also, the startup team and their mentors may not possess the sales skills or experience to effectively connect with and relate to big-company senior executives.

• Boston startups are too focused on the product and technology. Big companies are also evaluating their ability to work and collaborate with the startup team. Chemistry is important to these executives.

• You are not the center of the universe. There may be additional value in extending and leveraging existing ecosystem investments.

What I am describing here is not an outdated sales process where the cost to acquire a customer is high and the sales cycles are very long.

Keep in mind that big companies would rather … Next Page »

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Much like the New York Giants charging onto the football field, companies such as bitly, BarkBox, and Gilt Groupe—along with their backers—have upped the caliber of innovation expected from startups in New York. In response to this upswell of activity, Xconomy brought some 250 members of the local investor and entrepreneurial community together Wednesday to catch a glimpse of the city’s potential as a venture hub. (And to debate the merits of the Giants vs. the Patriots.)

Fred Wilson, managing partner of Union Square Ventures, and Todd Dagres, general partner and founder of Spark Capital, discussed the role media hype plays with some startups and the rise of social media, during a keynote chat moderated by David Rosenblatt, CEO of 1stdibs.

Admittedly, the media is notorious for picking its darlings when discussing innovation while barely mentioning some growing companies. Though Instagram, for example, makes headlines when it lands funding, Wilson said, Union Square Ventures has companies in its portfolio quickly building their businesses under the radar. “They don’t get caught up in a bunch of nonsense,” he said. “We have companies like Indeed.com and Return Path that will be public companies in three or four years—maybe less.” The management teams at those companies, Wilson said, are more focused on developing their products than building their media following.

Dagres said that some companies simply do not talk up their plans. He compared Twitter, a usual suspect on many blogs and news sites, with Tumblr, which until recently was not as vocal. “Tumblr couldn’t get arrested even though it was growing like crazy and was very substantial,” he said. “You didn’t hear anything about it. Now it’s starting to catch on.”

New York’s Tumblr could be on to something by shrugging at hype in order to endure in the social media arena, Wilson said. He noted that early players such GeoCities gave way to MySpace, Facebook, and now Foursquare and Pinterest. “People are figuring out how to make these services more useful and how to also make them businesses,” he said.

The trouble with GeoCities, Wilson said, was in spite of the high hit counts on those … Next Page »

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New York is known as the home to some of the world’s biggest education publishers, such as Pearson and McGraw-Hill. Even Apple came to New York to make its big iPad textbook announcement two weeks ago. But what’s not as well known is that the city is also teeming with education technology startups—companies leveraging the Web, the cloud, social media, and other tools to help people keep learning even outside the classroom. The founders of two of those startups, Examville and Coursekit, gave me a peek into their notebooks for a look at the technologies they’re offering to help connect students with educational content and services.

Both companies are growing—Coursekit in particular expects to more than quadruple its staff this year—and they’ll be getting even more company if an education-focused Startup Weekend event this weekend comes off as planned. Sponsored by San Francisco-based test prep startup Grockit, the intense event at the Mandell School on the Upper West Side is designed to help teams build a credible Web or mobile app for education in just 54 hours.

The demand for new ways to access educational content is only growing, says Examville’s founder and CEO Nilanjan Sen. Education is approaching a moment of disruption and fragmentation comparable to the one Apple’s iPod and iTunes caused in the music industry, he says. “In the 1970s you had to buy a whole album when you really wanted one song,” he says. “Most people don’t need help with everything [in education].”

Examville is a Web-based marketplace that aggregates and sells digitized material from educators, textbook publishers such as Milliken Publishing, and other students. Examville’s website offers live online classes, tutor searching, video lectures, e-books, study guides, and practice versions of standardized tests such as the LSAT and GMAT. The content is geared for elementary school through higher education students. Examville takes a cut from the fees charged when users pay for certain content and services, though some material is also available free. Sen says his company is generating revenue, and he is also exploring a Series A funding round, which would help the company hire more engineering and marketing staff ideally in the next six months. Examville currently has a staff of seven regular employees augmented by additional personnel as needed.

Sen worked in the education industry as a course developer and test preparation instructor for companies such as Kaplan and The Princeton Review before founding his previous company, Test Prep International, in 1997. With the evolution of the Web, Sen saw an opportunity to shift his business to an online platform, and started … Next Page »

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Rising stars in the local startup community BarkBox, HackNY, and Gotham Greens will be on hand at Xconomy Forum: New York’s Venture Emergence event on Feb. 1. They will enlighten the crowd with “burst” presentations, during which they’ll describe their companies and their growth plans. It’s all part of an exciting half-day event that will also feature speakers such as Fred Wilson, managing partner of Union Square Ventures, and Alexandra Wilkis Wilson, founder of fashion e-commerce website Gilt Groupe.

Here’s our lineup of up-and-coming companies:

BarkBox: Since its launch last November, BarkBox has been shipping boxes of hand-picked dog treats and toys to pet owners. Carly Strife, Matt Meeker, and Henrik Werdlin co-founded the company, which sends each subscriber four to five items per month based on the size of their dogs. Strife was New York operations manager for Uber, a San Francisco-based startup that created an app to connect passengers with on-demand car services. Meeker is a co-founder of Meetup.com, and Werdlin is managing partner of product incubator Prehype and previously entrepreneur in residence at Index Ventures.

HackNY: This program was co-founded by Evan Korth, faculty liaison for technology entrepreneurship at NYU, and Chris Wiggins, associate professor in the department of applied physics and applied mathematics at Columbia University. HackNY invites college students from across the country to work with New York startups. The program’s objective is to nurture a network of young innovators with its epicenter in New York. HackNY also hosts weekend hackathons to encourage the creation of new technology.

Gotham Greens: This startup brings a touch of cleantech to the New York landscape. Gotham Greens, co-founded by Viraj Puri and Eric Haley, established its first rooftop greenhouse in the Greenpoint section of Brooklyn as part of a plan to grow fresh produce for retailers and restaurants in the city. Jennifer Nelkin heads up greenhouse operations. Gotham Greens operates year round, growing its crops through the winter, as well. The first harvest began last June, with basil and lettuce the main crops.

The New York Venture Emergence forum starts at 2 p.m. and runs through 6:30 p.m. on February 1 at the Apella Event Space at Alexandria Center for Life Science. A networking reception will follow. Registration and other details can be found here. And if you’re a startup currently in one of New York’s many incubators, check with your program’s manager to find out if you can get a free ticket. There are 50 free slots up for grabs courtesy of the New York Angels.

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With a kind of candor that speaks of the motivation in the startup and investment communities, angel investor Jerry Neumann talked bluntly Tuesday evening about the companies he backs. “All of my entrepreneurs are irritating,” he said jokingly during a panel discussion at the Digital Media Center event held at Times Square in New York. “They need to be smarter than me, they need to be more driven than me, they need to be people who can go the distance,” he said.

Neumann took the stage with Benjamin Wolin, CEO and co-founder of Everyday Health in New York, and moderator Dennis Kneale, senior media and technology correspondent for FOX Business Network. Wolin and Neumann spoke about the startup and investment scene during the third and final panel of Tuesday’s event, hosted at the Nasdaq Marketsite by Digital Media Center, a New York group formed in late 2011 that brings together investors, digital media startups, and other industry players.

Digital Media Center was formed by Cooley, CTPartners, Deloitte, Nasdaq, and Silicon Valley Bank.

The night kicked off with representatives from Facebook, Samsung, and EMC’s data storage division Isilon Systems discussing trends in social, local, and mobile technology—then continued with a look at the future of digital content through the eyes of Verizon and Heart Television. Wolin and Neumann later engaged in a lively conversation about funding and building up startups in the current clime.

“It’s a lot easier to raise small amounts of capital,” Wolin said, “certainly to get started it’s a lot easier than it was ten years ago.” Everyday Health operates websites for brands such as South Beach Diet.

“It’s a great time to be an entrepreneur,” said Neumann. He has been investing in … Next Page »

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We’re just a week away from Xconomy’s first big New York City event, Xconomy Forum: New York’s Venture Emergence. And the New York Angels have stepped up to sponsor admissions for 50 NYC startups. Most of these free tickets will be distributed through the city’s startup incubators, but we have 10 to hand out ourselves to entrepreneurs who’d like to attend this exciting afternoon conference, which will be held at the Alexandria Center’s Apella Event Space on February 1.

Brian Cohen, chairman of the New York Angels, says his group was inspired by the great lineup we have planned for this event. We’ll have a keynote chat on the future of venture capital in New York with Fred Wilson of Union Square Ventures and Todd Dagres of Spark Capital: their interviewer will be former DoubleClick CEO David Rosenblatt, who is now CEO of Istdibs. The startup teams from bitly, Gilt, Simulmedia, and Armgo will share their experiences, and there will be demos from three of the newest members of the New York startup community: HackNY, Gotham Greens, and BarkBox. ”We have an absolute responsibility to help entrepreneurs be as smart as possible, and this is a great opportunity to do that,” Cohen says. New York Angels was launched in 1997 and has since invested $45 million in 70 companies. “As much as we give back to the startup community, we get back far more from the entrepreneurs,” Cohen says.

If you work at a startup and would like a shot at one of the free tickets sponsored by the New York Angels, just write to us at events@xconomy.com and tell us a bit about your company. (Our apologies, if you have already bought a ticket, you cannot substitute it for a free one.) If you don’t work for a startup but would still like to benefit from the wisdom of our great speakers, you can buy your ticket here. We look forward to seeing you soon at New York’s Venture Emergence.

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New York’s Producteev released on Tuesday the first Windows desktop version of its task management software in an effort to become more ubiquitous than its rivals. Producteev’s software lets users who work collaboratively organize, update, and see who is responsible for getting specific jobs done. The platform can be accessed via mobile apps, the Web, a native Mac desktop app, and now Windows. Producteev has raised close to $2 million since its founding in 2008 from investors that include angels and Palm Ventures.

Comparable to project collaboration software Basecamp, Producteev lets users communicate with each other about their shared tasks. The software gathers updates on tasks from e-mails, instant messages, and shared calendars. However, CEO and co-founder Ilan Abehassera says Producteev aims to be more streamlined than Basecamp by focusing on specific tasks rather than managing overall projects.

The Producteev platform is free for up to two people to use per organization. Producteev charges licensing fees for larger groups to use its software, which also connects with services such as Google Calendar, Google Apps, and Google Tasks. “We’re trying to consumerize productivity apps,” Abehassera says.

With the new Windows desktop app, he says, Producteev hopes to greatly increase adoption of its software. “Very few competitors have developed something for the Windows platform,” Abehassera says, “which is way bigger than the Mac platform.” He points to file hosting services Evernote and Dropbox as models he tries to emulate. “We’re trying to build the same kind of platform for tasks,” he says.

Also on Tuesday, Producteev introduced an Android version of its app. An iPhone app, which was already available, was updated as well. And a new feature is available across the various versions of Producteev: integration with San Francisco-based TaskRabbit, which hosts a marketplace for users to find people to complete … Next Page »

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Finland’s Playmysong said in a press release it raised a seed round, $350,000 according to a spokesman, led by startup accelerator Lifeline Ventures and opened a New York office this month. The company plans to also set up shop in San Francisco in February. Playmysong’s Apple iOS and Web app lets users request songs to play at participating bars, nightclubs, hotels, and cafés, and simultaneously checks in their locations via Facebook and Twitter. The venues let the app’s users connect over WiFi or 3G wireless with the in-house iTunes playlists to make their choices.

Playmysong charges venues for premium services, which include the option to send messages with discount deals to users of the app after they request songs. Playmysong says its New York office will handle business development and marketing in the region.

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A flotilla of fifteen startups from Atlanta presented their ideas in New York on Wednesday for a demo day at the offices of Union Square Ventures. Merrick Furst, director of the Flashpoint accelerator at the Georgia Institute of Technology, said the program helps entrepreneurs develop their concepts beyond their startup phase. “They are trying to figure out what the business opportunity is,” he said.

Flashpoint offers entrepreneurial education to startups, access to mentors, and opportunities for early-stage funding through the Flashpoint Investment Fund, angel investors, and other sources. Furst said the startups that presented at demo day are backed by the Flashpoint Investment Fund, which typically invests $15,000 to $25,000 at a time. The Atlanta startups presented ideas ranging from improving corporate data security in the cloud, to preventing phone scams that spoof caller ID systems, to a 3D scanning technology that runs on iPhones.

Furst said the Flashpoint startups visit cities to seek potential backers. Wednesday’s demo day was sponsored in conjunction with the Harvard Business School Angel Alumni Association and ff Venture Capital. Union Square Ventures provided space for the event. Flashpoint takes some of its inspiration from the Y Combinator accelerator program and plans to bring its startups to visit venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz in Menlo Park, CA next.

Social Fortress, the first startup to present on Wednesday, offers technology to help companies in regulated industries such as financial services and health care use the cloud more securely. Adam Ghetti, co-founder of Social Fortress, said such companies view the cloud as a major security risk. “They have data that’s very important to them,” he said. “They have laws and regulations that say they can only do certain things with that data in certain places.”

Ghetti said Social Fortress’s technology abates some of that risk by encrypting data before it is shared on the cloud. Social Fortress’s technology can also track how data is used after it’s shared with a third party such as Salesforce.com. Ghetti says angel investors have committed about $1.5 million to back Social Fortress and the startup is talks to raise another $500,000.

Trimensional, another startup presenting at demo day, already has a bit of New York connection. Grant Schindler, founder of Trimensional, developed an iPhone app that captures objects and people in 3D. After his presentation, Schindler told Xconomy he connected with MakerBot, a Brooklyn-based maker of 3D printers, in January 2011 shortly after Trimensional’s app went live. “The day I released the app, Bre Pettis [CEO of MakerBot] emailed me,” Schindler says. The companies developed a way for users to export 3D images captured by Trimensional’s app for use with MakerBot 3D printers, which print objects layer-by-layer using thermoplastics.

Schindler says his technology gives consumers access to scanning technology that might otherwise require expensive equipment. It may not be on par with the gear and … Next Page »

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Two trends are driving the current job market: globalization, where everybody is becoming part of the economy, and innovation, which increases productivity and allows fewer people to do the same jobs. These two trends will not slow down during the next few decades. How should students train in college to build careers under these conditions?

The situation is similar to 150 years ago, when 98 perecent of people farmed. Now we need only 2 percent of the population to look after the farms. The other 96 percent are engaged in businesses that did not exist 150 years ago. Similarly, the globalization of the workforce and the concurrent productivity gains will take care of people’s current needs. New graduates over the next decades will be part of businesses that don’t exist today.

What are these new businesses? We know that the world faces several big challenges such as energy, sustainability, poverty, education and healthcare. We need to solve these problems, but no one is sure how they will lead to specific businesses. This is the challenge and the opportunity for new graduates.

New graduates who want to be players in the new economy will need a strong work ethic, rigor in their thought process, and entrepreneurial energy. In the old economy, individuals mastered a specific skill and practiced it over the course of a 50-year career. In the next 50 years, new graduates will probably change their field of practice every 10 years. They need a good work ethic to be able to learn new things. They need rigor in their thought process to learn to learn. They need to be flexible and be entrepreneurial to adapt to new businesses.

No matter what students study, whether it is technology, journalism, art, medicine, business, or law, they will have to be entrepreneurial to survive and prosper in the next 50 years. In universities they learn to solve problems. In addition to solving problems posed by others, students need to learn how to pick problems that they are passionate about solving. A big part of being an entrepreneur is to learn to pick problems that you want to solve.

I am a big believer that students should create experiential learning opportunities during their university years. They should treat the whole world and its problems as their laboratory, as opposed to confining themselves to their campuses. Picking a problem that they feel passionate about and finding a way to solve it builds confidence and gives students a taste of taking charge. New graduates have to be entrepreneurial and innovative in creating opportunities for themselves as opposed to waiting for others to do it for them.

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If luck favors the prepared mind, as Louis Pasteur is credited with saying, we’re in danger of becoming a very unlucky nation. Little of the material taught in schools today is relevant to the future. Consider all the science and economics that has been updated, the shifting theories of psychology, the programming languages, political theories, and even how many planets our solar system has. Much, like literature and history, should be evaluated against updated, relevant priorities in the 21st century. So, what can we “teach” our students to prepare them for the future?

1. The fundamental tools of learning and analysis, as well as basic concepts

2. Knowledge of a few generally applicable topics

3. The skills to “dig deep” into their areas of interest in order to understand how these tools can be applied to one domain and to be equipped to change domains every so often

4. Preparation for jobs in a competitive and evolving global economy

5. Preparation to continuously evolve and stay current as informed and intelligent citizens of a democracy

To me, the fundamental tools of learning stem (no pun intended) from science, technology, engineering, and math. This updated curriculum should eclipse the archaic view of liberal education still favored by institutions like Harvard and Yale based on a worldview from the 1800s. Critical subject matter should include economics, statistics, mathematics, logic and systems modeling, current (not historical) cultural evolution, psychology, and computer programming. Furthermore, certain humanities disciplines such as literature and history should become optional subjects, in much the same way as physics is today (and, of course, I advocate mandatory physics study).

Finally, English and social studies should be replaced with the scientific process, critical thinking, rhetoric, and analysis of current news—imagine a required course each semester where every student is asked to analyze and debate topics from every issue of a broad publication such as The Economist, Scientific American, or Technology Review. Such a curriculum would not only provide a platform for understanding in a more relevant context how the physical, political, cultural and technical worlds function, but would also impart instincts for interpreting the world, and prepare students to become active participants in the economy. After all, what is the job of education?

Should we teach our students what we already know, or prepare them to discover more? Memorizing the Gettysburg address is admirable but ultimately worthless; understanding history is interesting, but not as relevant as topics from the Economist; a student who can apply the scientific process or employ critical thinking skills to solve a big problem has the potential to change the world or at least get a better-paying job. No wonder half the college graduates who fill jobs actually fill jobs that don’t need a college degree! Their degree is not relevant to adding value to an employer. Often, in my view, it is even less relevant to being an intelligent voter in a democratic economy. Most graduates cannot read the Economist and separate “facts,” “assumptions by the writer,” “biases,” “projections,” or “conclusions and their validity” in a critical way.

I’d also suggest tackling several general and currently relevant topic areas such as genetics, computer science, systems modeling, econometrics, linguistics modeling, traditional and behavioral economics, and bioinformatics (not an exhaustive list). Not only do these topics expose students to a lot of useful and current information, theories, and algorithms, they may in fact become platforms to teach the scientific process—a process that applies to (and is desperately needed for) logical discourse as much as it applies to science, and of much future learning in general. Even if the specific information becomes irrelevant within a decade (who knows where technology will head next; Facebook, Twitter, and the iPhone didn’t exist in 2004, after all), it’s incredibly useful to understand the current frontiers of science and technology as building blocks for the future, more so than understanding history or Kafka.

If we had enough time in school, I would suggest we do everything. Sadly that is not realistic, so we need a prioritized list of basic requirements because every subject we do cover excludes some other subject given the fixed time we have available. We must decide what is better taught during the limited teaching time we have, and what subjects are easier learnt during personal time or as post-education pursuits. For instance, passions like music and its history may be best left to self-pursuit, while exploring the structure and theory of music may be a way to teach critical tools!

For some small subset of the student body, pursuing passions and developing skills in subjects such as music or sports can be valuable, and I am a fan of schools like Juilliard, but in my view this must be in addition to a required general education. It’s the lack of balance in general education which I am suggesting needs to be addressed. Setting music and sports aside, with the critical thinking tools and exposure to the up-and-coming areas mentioned above, students should be positioned to discover their first passion and begin to understand themselves, or at the least be able to keep up with the changes to come, get (and maintain) productive jobs, and be intelligent citizens.

After grasping the fundamental tools of learning and some broad topical exposure, it’s valuable to “dig deep” in one or two topic areas of interest. For this, I prefer some subject in science or engineering rather than literature or history (bear with me; I’ll explain in a minute). Obviously, it’s best if students are passionate about a specific topic, but it’s not critical as the passion may develop as they dig in (some students will have passions, but many won’t have any at all). The real value for digging deep is to learn how to dig in; it serves a person for the duration of their life: in school, work, and leisure.

If students choose options from traditional liberal-education subjects, they should be taught in the context of the critical tools mentioned above. If students want jobs, they should be taught skills where future jobs will exist. If we want them as intelligent citizens, we need to have them understand critical thinking, statistics, economics, how to interpret technology and science developments, and how global game theory applies to local interests. Traditional international relations and political science are passé as base skills and can easily be acquired once a student has the basic tools of understanding.

Back to history and literature for a moment; these are great to wrestle with once a student has learned to think critically. My contention is not that these subjects are unimportant, but rather that they are not basic or broad enough “tools for developing learning skills” as they were in the 1800s, because the set of skills needed today has changed. Furthermore, they are topics easily learned by someone trained in the basic disciplines of thinking and learning that I’ve defined above: this isn’t as easy the other way around. A scientist can more easily become a philosopher or writer than a writer can become a scientist.

Besides, physics is a much more important tool to understand the science and technology that drives modern life than history is, not to mention that it’s far more useful in helping someone understand how her car or refrigerator works. This makes it all the more concerning that many states don’t require physics to graduate from high school but do require many years of history classes—a lopsided and poor use of student time. University education continues this tradition, especially as students flock to the “easier/less work” courses. If subjects like history and literature are focused on too early, it is easy for someone not to learn to think for themselves and not to question assumptions, conclusions, and expert philosophies—this can actually do a lot of damage. On the other hand, with the right critical lens, history, philosophy, and literature can help creativity and breadth by opening the mind to new perspectives and ideas. Still, learning about them is secondary to learning the tools of learning.

In the end, school is a place where every kid should have the opportunity to become a potential participant in whatever they might want to tackle in the future, with an appropriate focus not only on what they want to pursue but also, pragmatically, what they will need to do to be productively employed. By embracing thinking and learning skills, and adding a dash of irreverence and confidence that comes from being able to tackle new arenas (creative writing may have a role here, but Jane Austen does not make my priority list), hopefully they will be lucky enough to help shape the next few decades or at least be intelligent voters in a democracy and productive participants in their jobs. At the very least they should be able to evaluate how much confidence to place in a New York Times study of 11 patients on a new cancer treatment from Mexico or a health supplement from China and to assess the study’s statistical validity and whether the treatment’s economics make sense. And they should understand the relationship between taxes, spending, balanced budgets, and growth better than they understand 15th century English history.

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From cloudy Seattle to the vast suburbs of Silicon Valley, we covered a lot of ground on MIT Sloan’s recent technology trek, which concluded with a leg in Boston.

The first stop was Seattle where it was predictably raining. Visiting Amazon, Microsoft, and Adobe, we came away with an appreciation for how much tech activity is actually going on in that city.

At Microsoft, we got to talk to alumni about what it’s like to work there. Yes, it’s a large company and therefore bureaucratic, they confessed. But, the huge plus is that they have the resources to work on some very innovative projects. Amazon also was big, but the theme there was its quirkiness. In addition to all of the desks being made out of doors, they also have whiteboards everywhere, even in the elevators. I made sure to leave an “MIT Sloan was here” tag in one of the elevators!

Adobe seemed like a more typical office where they provide a pleasant work environment with lots of exposed brick and wood. Overall, I could really see myself enjoying working in Seattle.

Moving on to Silicon Valley, it was noticeably sunnier and warmer. It was also a lot bigger. In Seattle, you could probably get by with just a bike and public transit, but good luck to anyone who tries that in Silicon Valley. Here, you definitely need a car. Being settled with a family might help too, as the area is comprised of endless suburbs punctuated by large office parks where the tech companies are located.

If you want to live where the action is, you’d need to get a job in San Francisco or do the 40-minute commute each way and hope for no traffic. I guess I should point out that Palo Alto does have a downtown, but it’s just two or three streets and most people would still have to drive there.

As for the tech companies, most of the ones we visited were in Silicon Valley and all offered quite a lot of amenities compared to what we saw in Seattle. Free food, gyms, yoga classes, dry cleaners, and acupuncture were just some of the perks you get at most of these companies. I guess they need these things to entice people not only to live away from the city, but also to work some pretty long hours.

For example, the employees at Facebook—who all seemed to be in their 20s—joked that working at some firms in the Valley is like working in a sweatshop. Employees are expected to work extremely hard, but they also provide an endless amount of food that includes a rotating candy of the week. Facebook keeps its employees well fed, caffeinated, and hydrated with the largest cafeteria of all the tech companies we visited.

Google had a similar environment with lots of … Next Page »

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First of all, students should be studying what they are passionate about. Clearly, computer science will continue to spread into all aspects of human life. Within computer science, I believe machine learning and AI are perhaps the biggest study opportunity today. Biology and medicine are also undergoing vast changes. Personalized medicine will become a big issue; the understanding of the human genome and cell chemistry will open up entire new opportunities for innovation. So any study in the area of life sciences that connects to those new opportunities will be important. The will be amazing bioengineering opportunities, e.g., by developing materials and systems that connect with human tissue. Nanotechnology will become a major driver of new technologies in the future, with tons of great things to study at the intersection of new materials and human life.

I also believe some of the mundane aspects are ripe for overhaul, such as transportation and manufacturing. Studying robotics, rapid prototyping, autonomy in fields such as Aero-Astro, mechanical engineering, or computer science, should position students today to become the technology leaders of tomorrow. For students studying in humanities, I urge them to connect to the digital revolution that is unfolding right now. I am less excited about studying finance, since too many of us are already too creative in inventing new financial instruments that make society less stable.

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The Who once sang, “I hope I die before I get old.” Despite their best efforts to exit the planet early, most of them didn’t. They and their fellow Baby Boomers represent the greatest technology and business opportunity of the 21st Century.

It is typical for each of us to be drawn to areas for which we feel the most affinity. For that reason, most students looking forward see themselves surrounded by people of a similar age while they conjure up products and services attractive to their peers. I teach an MBA class at the Haas School at U.C. Berkeley and so many of the students have great ideas on how to innovate in areas deeply relevant to their day-to-day worlds. The problem is: that is not where the action is. If you are a student today preparing to be the Steve Jobs or Oprah of the next generation, you should be thinking a lot more about what your parents and grandparents need than what would interest your friends.

There are approximately 76 million baby boomers (people born during the years 1945 and 1964). The first of the boomers turns 65 years old in 2011 at a rate of approximately 10,000 people per day, and that trend will continue for the next 20 years. According to the Census Bureau, an estimated 72 million people, or 19.3 percent of the population, will be 65 and older by 2030, compared with 40 million, or 13 percent last year. By 2030, people aged 18 to 24 will represent 9.1 percent of the population, down from 9.9 percent in 2010, according to the Census Bureau. The share of people aged 25 to 44 will drop to 25.5 percent from 26.8 percent. Young people: it is time to start thinking old-you are outnumbered. The best thing you could possibly study is how to conceive of technologies, products, and services that would appeal to the aging demographic—that is where the spending and trending power will reside. “No other force is likely to shape the future of national economic health, public finances and policy making,” analysts at Standard & Poor’s wrote in a recent report, “as the irreversible rate at which the world’s population is aging.”

According to various reports, Boomers already control over 80 percent of personal financial assets and more than 50 percent of U.S. discretionary spending power. A MetLife study shows Boomers stand to inherit over $11.6 trillion in their lifetime in addition to the incomes they make, and the vast majority of Boomers expect to work through their retirement. Boomers already comprise over half of all consumer spending and yes, while they account for over 75 percent of all purchases of prescription drugs and a whole lot of chronic illness (itself a stunningly large business opportunity), they also account for about 80 percent of all travel purchases.

For those of you who think of the Boomers as old and out of touch, note that retirees age 65 and older are the fastest-growing group of social networking site users, according to the Pew Research Center, which adds that over half of baby boomers use social networking sites. If you think that the latest and greatest technology doesn’t apply to the older crowd, you are wrong. New technology is essential to finding ways for Boomers to maintain their vibrancy and independence, as well as ways for us to reduce the skyrocketing costs in our current healthcare system, something that all economists agree is essential to maintaining our national economic viability.

Accordingly, students today would be best served by studying the fields that swirl around and intersect with the fields of gerontology and geriatrics. This means everything from the study of aging in medicine to the study of architecture, engineering and finance as it applies to the Boomer opportunity.

The future of caring for older Americans lays in technology, with vast green field opportunities available in the design of technologies and services that enable extending health and psychiatric well-being. Just one area, Alzheimers’, today costs the U.S. $172 billion annually; by 2020 this cost will be $2 trillion and by 2050, $20 trillion according to recent reports, and that is just one disease that needs innovation, both in treatment and in patient management.

Beyond healthcare, there is a screaming demand for technologies that ensure mobility, enable physical and financial autonomy, provide for social connectivity, and deliver education and work-place skills to those who are looking to their second or third career. People of a certain age don’t want and often can’t use the same products and services that appeal to the young, but also don’t want to buy things that make them feel old. Striking that balance is the innovation opportunity of the next several decades.

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Liberal science and technology. We need a new major that prepares the future workforce for constant change by teaching broad-based knowledge in many disciplines. This major would consist of, among other disciplines, the basics of engineering, biology, chemistry, physics, law, business, humanities and communications. This curriculum should be group-based, where students teach each other, which is how the most successful corporate teams function—from design to product launch. The rate of change will demand workers who can easily recognize and accept the rapid evolution of science and technology.

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Themselves.

Technology, markets, financial vehicles, business methodology, government regulations, entertainment, media, and so on, all aspects of our professions and our entire lives will change at a continuously increasing rate in perpetuity. Which technology, market, industry should I commit to? I don’t believe this is the most relevant question for a student. More relevant questions are: What do I want in my life? Who do I want to help? In what ways? Who needs my help? What positive changes can I contribute to? How can I learn, and continue to learn, and advance my pace of learning? What activities truly engage my passions, and my abilities? What goals can I set for myself which will drive me to excel, and to maximize my potential?…and many others.

Individuals learn, professions learn, societies learn. Young individuals who truly recognize the importance of the art of learning will place their attention on that throughout their years, and they will not only be better able to manage their futures, they will be able to contribute much more. Being prepared for the future is about accelerated learning more than picking the right path at each future fork in the road. Butcher, baker, candlestick maker, it doesn’t really matter.

One of the twentieth century’s greatest entrepreneurs, Dr. Kazuo Inamori, the founder of Kyocera Corporation, has committed throughout his professional life to technological innovation, but always towards a specific positive societal outcome. He is a student of life, and his business commitment, inseparable from his life commitment is to contribute to “the material and spiritual happiness of humanity and society.” Dr. Inamori is a stellar example of someone who first studied themselves, which prepared him and his company each step of the way, resulting in extraordinary evolution and success of their enterprise, according to their standards.

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New York’s ShopKeep.com says it raised $2.2 million in a Series A funding round led by Tribeca Venture Partners and TTV Capital. Contour Venture Partners also participated in the round. ShopKeep developed a point-of-sale platform that retailers can use on the Apple iPad as well as with Mac-powered registers. The company also provides Web-based software, which can run in any browser, for inventory management and customer tracking. ShopKeep charges retailers fees to use its software.

David Olk, ShopKeep co-founder and chief operating officer, says via e-mail the new funding will go towards new hires and technology development. The company plans to hire 10 new employees over the next six months. ShopKeep, founded in 2010, currently has a staff of 15. Olk says ShopKeep has raised $3 million in total funding to date.

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Three-year old MakerBot Industries in Brooklyn unveiled its new Replicator 3D printers at the International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas this week, demonstrating how its technology can be used to create most anything users want to design—within a certain size, that is.

A wide range of objects can be produced through 3D printing, which uses thermoplastic material to fabricate products from the ground up. “We make machines that make things,” says Bre Pettis, CEO and co-founder of MakerBot.

The company sells its software and 3D printers to consumers who want to make their own objects such as spaceships, business card holders, and kittens. Pettis says MakerBot raised $75,000 in a seed round in 2009 shortly after the company was founded. A $1 million angel round followed in 2010, and last August the company raised $10 million in a Series B round that included Foundry Group, RRE, Bezos Expeditions, True Ventures, and angel investors. “That’s letting us hire the people we need,” Pettis says.

MakerBot wants to add some 30 new employees to its ranks in the next month, he says. The company currently has a staff of 75, and it occupies some 5,000 square feet for production and assembly and another 5,000 square feet for offices and workshops. Pettis says the company is looking for more space as it grows. “We’re on the hunt,” he says. “Whenever anything comes up for rent on our block, we rent it.”

MakerBot’s printers offer a novel way of letting people produce items they want—and Pettis says the process is getting easier. He says the company’s newest printer, the Replicator, lets users create larger objects up to the size of a loaf of bread. “Up until now it’s been things like the size of an apple,” Pettis says. MakerBot’s Replicator can also print objects with two different colors compared with the earlier monochromatic printers.

Prior to Replicator, Pettis says his company’s printers required some sweat equity by users to assemble. “You got a kit and had to put it together bolt-by-bolt,” he says. “It was like more than 1,000 pieces.” The Replicator printer, Pettis says, assembles much faster.

The company’s Thingiverse.com website lets users share their 3D product designs with each other. Pettis says MakerBot printers give customers the opportunity to fabricate items that may not be available through stores or other sources. “When you want things instead of shopping for them, you check online to see if someone has made them before,” he says.

The 3D printing industry is brimming with players that include New York’s Quirky, which creates consumer products selected from ideas posted on its website, and Shapeways, which plans to open a production facility in February in New York. In addition to its New York headquarters, Shapeways has offices in Seattle as well as Eindhoven in The Netherlands.

Pettis says a focus for his company in 2012 will be a push into the education market with pilot programs that bring MakerBot printers to schools in Manhattan and Brooklyn. “We’ll branch out to other cities,” he says. “My goal is to get one MakerBot per child.”

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