Is there a mindful approach to failure? You may reject the question on its face. After all, if you were mindful in the first place, wouldn’t you succeed rather than fail? You might if you had perfect knowledge or controlled all the variables, but, of course, none of us do.

The World Bank's Doing Business 2016 report is just out — it's the most authoritative source in the world for which countries are most friendly to entrepreneurs, and where's it's least onerous to keep an enterprise running.

We've laid out which countries are in the very upper end of the ranks. We also looked at where they were last year, and where they were five years ago, in the 2011 index.

If you thought standing desks were extreme, you are in for a treat, my friend.

Sonoma Valley, Calif. based startup Altwork has announced its first product, the Altwork Station, a workstation allowing users to sit and stand in all manner of positions. The Station, which the company says is designed for "high-intensity" computer users costs $5,900, but the company is selling its first run for $3,900.

Image: MASHABLE, LILI SAMS 

Nearly everyone dreams of quitting his or her day job, whether it's tomorrow, next year or in the next decade. However, there is a wide chasm between "dreams" and "action" that many people never seem to cross -- and it's usually due to finances.

Stress is one of the most common problems that is relevant amongst virtually all entrepreneurs and founders. Without a doubt, starting and growing a new company can be emotionally brutal in the beginning, and even after you’ve become established, there will always be stresses that a CEO has to deal with.

Gone are the days when firms could afford to think of innovation as an external process, in which participation was an option. As discussed in my forthcoming book Making Innovation Last (co-authored with David Gotteland and Christophe Haon of Grenoble Ecole de Management, France), companies that are to survive over the long term need to keep growing continually, which means their innovation engines need to be firing on all cylinders, at all times.

Image: http://knowledge.insead.edu/ 

Open Innovation, the Year of Innovation, Young Innovative Enterprises, etc. we cannot stop talking about innovation. But we also should acknowledge that innovation comes with certain demands.

For example, innovation requires flexibility. For companies to be innovative, they must be agile. Lack of agility is one of the reasons large established firms are caught flat-footed when the market shifts.

The shape of your logo affects how consumers perceive your organisation, its products and even its behaviour.

While they’re commonly called “intangible assets”, logos matter. GAP learned this lesson when it attempted to change its logo, but quickly abandoned the endeavor after it met with a furious backlash from followers on Twitter and Facebook. The fact that GAP had suddenly decided to update its iconic and classic logo without consulting its loyal fans was just one reason for its failure.

Investment in education technology is at a new high.

In the first half of 2015, venture-capital funding in ed tech totaled well over $1 billion. CB Insights, which tracks investments in private companies, puts the number at $1.4 billion. EdSurge, an education-technology reporting website, estimates that the investments total $1.6 billion. 

Running your business from anywhere while traveling the world is no myth. Drew Gerber, founder and CEO of Wasabi Publicity, has done it for a good portion of his career. Growing up in Utah, the travel bug bit him early. Over the past 10 years, he has grown and run his fledgling company from Atlanta, Budapest and eventually Stara Moravica, Serbia. For other entrepreneurs looking to do the same, take a look at the tips below.

So you wrote that great article, shot that video, and designed that “sure-to-be-viral” infographic. Congrats! Content such as articles, videos and infographics are a great way to attract your targeted online prospects, convert them into leads and ultimately nurture them into sales. But here’s the thing — creating unique online content only gets you half of the way to those sales. The rest of the work is all about getting noticed and the best way to do that is by finding the best places to spread content.

MADV client companies – predominantly information technology, physical technology or life science – are characterized by proven technologies, large potential markets, capacity for explosive growth, actionable and smart go-to-market strategies, well-structured revenue streams, defensible intellectual properties and proven management teams/advisory boards. Our companies are based in the Mid-Atlantic region and come from the Greater NYC area, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, Washington D.C. and Maryland. In a typical year, MADV provides services to 36-40 emerging companies in information technology, making it the largest Venture Forum program in the region based on clients served annually. At a typical Forum, we present eight to ten emerging companies.

Innovative early stage ventures that have the potential to yield high social impact, but require less than US$1-million in capital, are the most difficult segment of the small business pipeline to reach. Often times they have a minimal track record and lack the collateral needed to secure capital from a local bank.

Moreover, local banks and traditional financiers too often do not appreciate the dynamics of the entrepreneur’s specific business and therefore cannot add necessary value beyond capital. It is exactly through direct equity participation that entrepreneurs learn from angel investors, often experienced entrepreneurs themselves with domain specific expertise.

Image: http://ventureburn.com 

The are many ways we can add value to information and knowledge. I have described 14 ways of sense-making as part of personal knowledge mastery. One of these is the use of infographics, such as one on PKM published here. Recently, Tanmay Vora created a visual description of learning and leadership, based on an article by Kenneth Mikkelsen and me.

Image: http://jarche.com 

A partnership of UK universities which contributes billions to the economy has today (27 October) been named the best in Europe at helping new businesses. The University Business Incubator (UBI) Index has ranked SETsquared, a partnership of the Universities of Bath, Bristol, Exeter, Southampton and Surrey, as number one for the third year running.

Image: Nick Sturge, Director of the Bristol SETsquared Centre. - http://www.bristol.ac.uk

Your ideas may not be as valuable as you think.

They can be extremely powerful, of course, but not at the initial ideation stage. When the metaphorical light bulb goes on above your head — when you have that “Eureka!” moment —it’s very exciting. But the idea itself only gains wattage once it’s prototyped or executed.

For the last 5,000 years, humans have communicated with each other in two major ways: speaking and writing. As an English speaker in particular, you might think that speaking and writing are pretty similar—like different sides of the same coin. But in reality, they're like two different coins altogether. In fact, a 2015 study from Johns Hopkins showed that speaking and writing actually utilize two distinct areas of the brain.

If you’ve ever worked an entire day in sweatpants, chances are you don’t need to be sold on the virtues of working remotely. Neither do the growing number of companies that now offer flexible work arrangements—which, by one recent estimate, around two-thirds of employers at least occasionally do.

Recently, at the annual Dreamforce Conference in San Francisco, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella declared a new era in computing defined by wearable devices. “People keep asking the question what’s next after the smartphone? There are early signs of it, things you wear on your wrists, in your ear and on your eyes,” he said. 

Data scientists are in high demand.  McKinsey predicts a need for 1.5 million new data professionals in the U.S. alone. As these droves of analysts join organizations, it’s critical that they know how to talk with managers about their findings. But the burden for good communication doesn’t just fall on them. For their part, managers–the consumers of the analysis–need to ask the right questions to be sure they understand the key concepts behind data analysis.