Summary: This week’s top articles focus on 20 great ideas to steal this year, the coming cloud-fueled disruption of business analytics, the benefits of hybrid apps, and the confusion surrounding PaaS.

What is Platform-as-a-Service? Experts disagree
No one agrees on the definition of PaaS, but a few things are certain: PaaS solutions are helping companies create and deploy applications quickly. Who doesn’t want that?

20 great ideas to steal in 2014
Here’s a list of 20 companies whose IT projects have transformed their businesses. The overriding theme in many of these projects: mobile and data analytics. More and more companies are finding new ways mobile can apply to the business world–and this list is just the tip of the iceberg. Here’s another great example that I love: It’s about a company that’s using mobile devices to automate their receiving process.

The cloud-fueled disruption of business analytics is coming
Business analytics (BA) is ripe for transformation, yet the field as a whole has yet to realize the full benefits of cloud, and enterprise agility is suffering as result. The key: If you want your employees thinking strategically, empower them with access to data. Make data analysis intuitive; yet feature-rich, flexible and relevant.

Hybrid mobile apps: The best of both worlds?
With the ever-changing mobile landscape, how can you create mobile apps that offer power and flexibility? This article explains why anyone considering native mobile apps should look instead at a hybrid approach. What’s the difference? Here’s a paper that outlines the pros and cons of each mobile app method.