The Start-Up Visa program will be expanded to include a new visa stream to attract more overseas entrepreneurs to Canada, Citizenship and Immigration Minister Chris Alexander announced on 21 October.

According to the announcement, the new Business Incubator stream under the Start-up Visa (SUV) Program is designed to partner Canada's world class business incubators with immigrant entrepreneurs to drive economic growth. By recruiting dynamic foreign entrepreneurs, the new stream will complement existing venture capital and angel investor streams.

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Crowdfunding—already well established in our lexicon—is the way to raise capital for hip new projects. From 3D doodlers to flying cars, it’s disrupting the way enterprises, entrepreneurs, non-profits, and individuals raise capital – enabling large numbers of individuals to fund a project or company, with each backer contributing a small percentage of the total investment.

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SparkLabs, which first brought the Silicon Valley-style startup accelerator to Korea last year, is taking another page out of the U.S. technology playbook.

Later today, SparkLabs’ founders will announce plans to raise a $30 million fund to invest in early-stage software companies, together with a former Facebook Inc. executive and a former investor for billionaire Hong Kong tycoon Li Ka-shing.

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Not every accelerator is right for your startup. For example, most accelerators require you to set up shop in their space. You want to be sure you and your partners like the vibe and can gain value from the space itself in addition to the program.

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The University of South Florida Research Foundation has created a Seed Capital Accelerator Program for companies affiliated with the Tampa Bay Technology Incubator. The program aims to fund and support companies that got their start based on licensing USF technologies. It may provide as much as $50,000 in funding to TBTI-affiliated startups.

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Rob Zombie poses in front of House of 1,000 Corpses, one of the three “sick, twisted” haunted houses based on his movies that are part of Great American Nightmare in Pomona, Calif. He collaborated on the project with Steve Kopelman, a professional haunted house producer and designer.

Image: Laure Joliet for The New York Times

People are buzzing over this video by uber-successful hedge fund manager Ray Dalio of Connecticut-based Bridgewater Associates LP. In the 31-minute video, enhanced by animated storytelling, Dalio attempts to offer a comprehensive explanation of how the economy works. And many economic experts say he's succeeded, calling it a must-watch video. The New York Times reports former Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. has been sending it to friends.

View the Video on the IA Website

Every country, every government, every population is a participant in a global trial and error. Each one faces different circumstances and, therefore, approaches healthcare differently.  But, as world health leaders see it, everyone can learn from others' struggles and successes to improve and simplify their respective strategies. Health information technology is at the core.

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I’m a teen living in New York. All of my friends have social networks — Instagram, Vine, Snapchat, etc. Facebook used to be all I could talk about when I was younger. “Mom, I want a Facebook!” and other whining only a mother could put up with.

But now, at 13, I’ve been noticing something different. Facebook is losing teens lately, and I think I know why.

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There is a plethora of startup advice out there: find your market need, get an MVP (minimal viable product), find funding, expand, go global, rinse, repeat. However, most advice (and I say most, not all) seems to ignore a fundamental aspect of not only where business is heading, but also the internet — to the more personal and human.

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The government announced this week it’s bringing in some health-care technology big guns to help fix ObamaCare.

On Sunday, Health and Human Services published a blog post detailing the challenges faced by Americans who have attempted to use the federal insurance exchange since it went live on October 1.

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Innovation and entrepreneurship is discussed frequently in boardrooms, start-ups and coffee houses around the globe. Books, blogs and even movies are produced about both of these topics that drive business ideas. What exactly does it mean to be innovative? As a corporate employee, your job description won't have the words innovation or entrepreneurship written anywhere, and it won't be documented in human resources as part of your key result area either. So, why is it an unwritten expectation? How do you prepare yourself so that you are fully equipped when you really need to be, in the corporate world, or in a start-up?

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Entrepreneurs are interesting creatures: we believe in the impossible, inspire others to follow our vision, and often have to overcome overwhelming odds to succeed. I spend a lot of time with other entrepreneurs and have noticed four key traits:

1) Persistence

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As young entrepreneurs, we are creators. Visionaries, if you will. As we dream up and build our businesses and startups entirely from scratch, we rarely (if ever) factor in the inevitability of failure at some point along the way. Why would you? In the beginning, it feels like nothing can stand in your way of success. During the countless hours of blood, sweat and tears you pour into your business, there’s typically a voice in the back of your mind that repeats “failure is not an option, failure is not an option…” which becomes the driving force behind all your efforts, especially when times are tough.

Last year Dina, a CEO I’d been working with, felt that leaders on her team were playing it too safe.  They weren’t finding and pursuing new growth opportunities and it was crippling the organization.  She kicked off her October management team meeting, which I was attending, by reading the following passage from my book:

The dangers of taking too much risk are very clear. We’re reminded of them in the news every day. Businesses, families, and individuals are ruined in shocking fashion—“150-year-old bank and pillar of Wall Street is gone in the blink of an eye”; “Major oil company loses $90 billion in market value in three months”; “Kite surfer tries his luck in a hurricane and slams into a building.” Astounding lapses in judgment are everywhere. The warnings of overambitious risks are clear—watch yourself and don’t do anything stupid.

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If you’re leading a startup business with potential for high growth, one of the most valuable things you should do early on is to set up an advisory board. Scaling an enterprise is hard work, and you only stand to benefit from drawing on perspectives, experience, and networks that augment your own. A group of advisors committed to your success not only provides a sounding board to test and strengthen your ideas, it gives you access to important competencies and resources.

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What are we choosing not to spend time on to make room for the hours we all spend each week on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and the like? While numerous articles have worried that such screen time might be coming at the expense of face-to-face socializing, a new paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research suggests, happily, that that is a relatively small part of the tradeoff. But managers won’t find much comfort in the study’s conclusions. More than anything else, the leisure time we spend online comes at the expense of work.

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In the past five years, women in business have become a hot topic. There are organizations, publications, events, and even brands dedicated to helping this demographic thrive. In general, this is a good thing. The past decade has revealed a major shift in the distribution of wealth and significant changes in the types of careers women pursue. According to Media Post, the average American woman is expected to earn more than the average American male by 2028. Women are controlling private wealth and owning stock at record rates.

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PwC US today released U.S. findings of Breakthrough Innovation and Growth, a global survey which explores the huge shifts in how companies approach innovation.  As more companies around the world push the traditional boundaries of innovation, PwC found U.S. companies are tracking with the shift in innovation strategy, yet most pioneers in the study are not U.S. companies.

According to the survey, 82 percent of the most aggressive innovators surveyed were based outside the U.S. Among top innovators, 79 percent agree their company has a well-defined innovation strategy compared with 67 percent of U.S. companies. PwC found that top innovators plan to grow by more than 60 percent over the next five years and create more than $250 billion in new revenue.