In small business, careers and life, we are marathoners not a sprinters. Big differences in each process and commitment. Most long distance runners pace themselves and know that it is the second half of the race that allows them to finish strong. They know how to conserve energy, deal with lows and not get too high, which are all important cycles that they must learn to go through. Sprinters train for a quick short, burst of energy.

These rare pictures reveal an insight into the daily lives of Steve Jobs and other leading innovators during the digital revolution in Silicon Valley in the 1980s that changed the world.

Documentary photographer Doug Menuez was granted three years of unprecedented access to Steve Jobs and his team as he built a new company from the ground up after being forced to leave Apple in 1985.

After photographing the famine and conflict in Eithiopia, Menuez had returned to San Francisco searching for a more hopeful story for the human race.

He found it in his own backyard and between 1985 and 2000, Menuez recorded the struggles and successes of the creative minds working in the Valley, who were determined to change every aspect of our lives through technology.

Image: Steve Jobs photographed by Doug Menuez - http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3225425/Back-start-Rare-photographs-offer-glimpse-lives-Steve-Jobs-innovators-Silicon-Valley-s-golden-age.html

After working with more than 100 organizations – from leading nonprofits to Fortune 500 companies – this hard-earned mantra about innovation has emerged: Concepts and culture are two critical factors necessary for successful innovation.

Culture is the hard part. Like the muscle memory of 2,000-plus people, culture can keep doing what it always does, never implement concepts, or reject them stillborn. Training a culture to embrace innovation takes commitment, courage and a willingness to change.

Image: Michael Graber

Every entrepreneur I know wants to improve in some way. They want to create successful companies. They want to scale those companies. They want to enjoy life.

What’s does it take to achieve these admittedly vague objectives? The simple answer is self improvement.

What are some practical things that will make you a better entrepreneur — things you can start today?

The time before going to bed is critical to ensure that one closes out the day that has passed, plans for the day ahead, but it is also critical that the mind is calmed so that one has a restful sleep. Too many successful executives get this wrong.  One can only burn the candle at both ends for so long before it will mean that they are not as productive as they should be at work, and not as happy as they should be overall.  Based on research and conversation with successful executives on the topic, here are the five things that successful people do before they go to sleep:

Mark Cuban, the billionaire “Shark Tank” investor and owner of the Dallas Mavericks, is known among NBA fans for racking up fines for misconduct at Mavs games he gets a bit too excited about. But nothing, he writes in his book “How to Win at the Sport of Business,” makes him more competitive than business.

Cuban includes a checklist in his book of what it means to have “the edge,” the necessary drive to forego the confines of a comfortable job, triumph over setbacks, and build a successful company.

In poverty-stricken rural India, lack of access to clean drinking water is a serious problem. It affects an estimated 99 million Indians, causing 37.7 million incidences of water-borne diseases every year. In 2009, the Tata Group introduced its answer to the crisis, the Tata Swach (“clean” in Hindi), known at the time as the world’s most affordable water purifier. The Swach initially retailed for Rs. 999 (USD $15), half the cost of its cheapest competitor. Notably, the device’s award-winning technology and design resulted from years of collaboration between three vastly different companies within the Tata Group: software maker Tata Consultancy Services, watchmaker Titan, and Tata Chemicals.

Image: http://knowledge.insead.edu

Open innovation (or "OI") didn't used to be the way the most successful companies did business. It's the process of searching outside a company’s walls—and even its own industry—for technology and solutions to keep it at the cutting edge. For obvious reasons, then, many businesses still find OI risky, since it means exposing their goals and projects to public view, including competitors. But more companies now believe those risks are worth taking, and open innovation has emerged as a best practice when it comes innovation. We here at NineSigma sponsored a Harris Interactive survey late last year that found 79% of executives believed their companies were effectively drawing on innovations from other industries. And 71% said they expected their companies' investment in projects with outside innovation firms to rise in 2015.

Sprint (NYSE: S) has a clear message for wireless startups: work with us. The carrier said that in 2016, the Sprint Accelerator, powered by Techstars, will expand its scope from just mobile healthcare to all kinds of mobile technologies as Sprint looks to provide funding for startups. The carrier and Techstars said that startups from around the United States and the world are welcome to apply to the 2016 program and the carrier plans to pick 10 startups to back. Sprint said it welcomes startups in a wide variety of categories to apply, including wearables, mobile advertising, digital services, mobile commerce, enterprise services, in-home convergence, government solutions and analytics.

Sometimes entrepreneurs are so focused on making change happen for others, that they forget that continually changing themselves and their company is equally important. Some get stuck in a rut and get run over by competitors with new technology, like Eastman Kodak, and others get pushed into a crisis, like Apple did, before they reinvent themselves into a new market.

We’ve been told that the modern, connected life is taking a toll on our sleep. Compared to previous generations, studies report, we’ve been sleeping less and less every year. And that is making us “more likely to suffer from chronic diseases such as hypertension, diabetes, depression, and obesity, as well as from cancer, increased mortality, and reduced quality of life and productivity.”

People who leave jobs without another one lined up may not realize what a disadvantaged position it puts them in, according to an analysis by the New York Federal Reserve posted on its Liberty Street Economics blog.

The Fed researchers looked at 426 people who participated in its Survey of Consumer Expectations in Oct. 2013.

IF YOU have a brilliant idea but need money to get it off the ground, there’s never been a better time to find it. Entrepreneur and technology lawyer Nick Abrahams believes that there’s never been more wealthy individuals and companies willing to invest in risky new projects in the technology sector. “If you have a decent idea, you can get $500,000 to $1 million quite easily from high net worth people,” Abrahams said.

Business problems today are too big for any one person to solve. Agile teams are much more effective at solving problems than are lone geniuses. So why do we still reward the smartest people in the room more so than those who excel at working with others? You know who I’m talking about: the people who brazenly take over meetings by showing off how much they know or how witty they can be at the expense of any other voice in the room—and who often end up getting all of the boss’s attention.

The contact lens Google and Novartis are developing together will hit human eyes next year, according to a report this weekend.

It won’t be tested on diabetics – which has been the sexiest potential application. Instead, the human trials will focus on the treatment of presbyopia, which is essentially far-sightedness caused by old age. According to Reuters:

Image: http://medcitynews.com

Techstars Boulder Demo Day is this week. It always marks the true end of summer for me and it’s a reminder that I stalled out on my Techstars Mentor Manifesto series of blog posts. The last one I wrote was #11: Clearly Commit To Mentor Or Do Not. Either Is Fine. It’s an important life rule – either commit or don’t commit – but choose! Mentor Manifesto #12 is also a good life rule: Know What You Don’t Know. Say I Don’t Know When You Don’t Know.

Instead of sunbathing and building sandcastles, holidaymakers on Cape Cod on Sunday spent one of the last days of summer trying to rescue a beached great white shark.

After the 14-foot shark became stranded on the shore of Whitecrest Beach, crowds poured water on the creature and began digging a trench in an attempt to free it, spectator Robyn Schnaible wrote on Vimeo. Estimated to weigh around 2,000 pounds, the shark was eventually pulled back out to sea with the help of rope, people power and a boat, but sadly, it did not swim off.

Image: http://mashable.com

The average person checks their phone 27 times a day, according to a new study. Where do you sit in the spectrum of mobile checkers?

Nearly all new C-level executives find that they will likely have to replace some people on their team and recruit new leaders. As you rebuild your team, what traits and qualities will you look for? What indicators might help you identify higher-potential staff and likely “A” players?

Several years ago, I had the privilege of interviewing a number of leading women CFOs on their journey to leadership (see The journey to CFO: Perspectives from women leaders). Across our interviews, these women identified key traits underlying their success as CFOs. By “trait,” I mean a natural or cultivated characteristic or propensity toward a specific form of behavior.

Image: http://deloitte.wsj.com

I recently received a note from a reader who asked for my three top books or other sources for leadership insights. That should be an easy question to answer for someone who writes about leadership as much as I do. And three worthy selections did indeed come to mind: The Essential Bennis, Jim Collins’s Good to Great, and Bill George’s True North. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that while everyone should read these books, they’re no longer in my top three — reading them is like betting the ante at the poker table.