I was reminded this week (while at the NSA) of a common mistake often made by entrepreneurs in the DoD and IC market. It is tempting to claim that your firm is an expert at two dozen areas of focus. On one level, I understand this because the same personality and intellect that would launch a new business tends to see more, do more and want more… than the average professional. So, I understand (if you're guilty of this tendency) your "reach-of-the starts" mentality. It runs in your blood.

Until very recently, intelligence was a small, deeply secret aspect of public affairs. Terms like black chamber and secret service described functions that demanded to be performed but with little or no public notice. The name of the head of Britain's MI-6 was, as a remarkable reminder of this era, secret until very recent times. In the United States, the existence of the National Reconnaissance Office was classified until the 1990s, and we all know that the National Security Agency was often described, in jest but perhaps not fully in jest, as "No Such Agency."

An exercise in leveraging social media for humanitarian assistance and disaster response fostered global participation last month, with more than 39,000 people from 94 nations tuning in to a simulation of two seismic events and a tsunami set in the Adriatic Sea. Participants in the exercise used tools such as Twitter and Facebook to create a rich, real-time environment for crowd-sourcing solutions and other collaborative activities.

For a few moments during the Super Bowl, viewers caught a glimpse of U.S. Marines at Camp Leatherneck, Afghanistan, ready for the game. The clip marked only the second high-definition shot broadcast out of the country.

Thanks to search engine overload, the answer to any question is seemingly never more than a mouse click away. But a new eye-controlled laptop could ensure that information is literally available in the blink of an eye.