An effort is underway to maximize the economic potential of arts and culture in Cape Breton.

The sector plays a role in attracting people, businesses and investment to an area, said Joella Foulds, chair of Cape Breton Regional Municipality Mayor Cecil Clarke’s roundtable on the creative economy. It distinguishes the province as a dynamic place to live and work.

The secret of effective feedback is making it feel like the message is coming from an ally, not an adversary. Unfortunately, in my 17 years as an advisor to executive teams, I find that most managers’ anxiety and discomfort about delivering a difficult message inadvertently makes it come off as antagonistic, rather than supportive. A 2014 Zenger/Folkman study confirmed this problem when 43% of managers reported that giving corrective feedback is a “stressful and difficult experience.”

Our nation is trending backward in the innovation arena. The rate of startups has dropped steadily over the past 30 years, and deaths of American businesses first outnumbered births in 2008, according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s Business Dynamics Statistics.

Historically, many of the country’s most successful startups — examples include Dell, Microsoft, Facebook, Napster, FedEx and Apple — have been launched by college students. So it is imperative that we encourage our students to step up and venture into business on their own.

If you think black tie means Chucks with a tux, you’re doing it all wrong. Or are you? Deciding what to wear when to which event -- so you don’t end up looking clueless -- can be overwhelming for the fashion-challenged. But, with a little help, it’s not so bad.  

Seed funding, typically the earliest investment in a startup, is no longer the territory of angel investors and dedicated seed funds. Stealthily, big-ticket venture capital funds that normally make large bets in startups are writing smaller cheques to younger companies as well, marking a tectonic shift in investment dynamics.

"Investors are playing across the entire funding continuum because nobody wants to miss outthe FOMO (fear of missing out) effect," said Sanjay Anandaram, venture partner at Seedfund and an adviser at software product think-tank iSPIRT. "These firms are able to seed the seedlings as they grow and cherry pick the ones that they really want to back with big bucks."

From joining an angel network that focuses on social change to asking wealth managers to find impact investments across a whole portfolio, impact investors (those who look for financial return alongside social and/or environmental impact) come in many different shapes.

Jean Case recently wrote an article for entrepreneurs on the six questions to ask before you start a social enterprise. It’s an ideal introduction for those innovators who want to tackle social change through business. But the people who are going to fund those enterprises need to make sure they're asking the right questions, too.

VC funding.

Our perspectives on the topic wax and wane with market cycles. We love capital efficiency until we love land grabs until we abhor “over funding” until we get huge distribution & ring the bell for more funding until we attract every non-VC on the planet to invest in startups until it crashes and we start the cycle all over again none the wiser. Amnesia sets in and we get back on the merry-go-round for the next cycle.

When compared to office-dwelling counterparts, managing a remote team has always been a challenge. But at least these days, modern technology helps the cause more than ever. Today's tools enable communication and work in ways previously thought unimaginable.

That doesn’t mean challenges don’t persist. Over the past 10 years, I have built many remote teams for our software customers, and I've established my own offices in India and Ukraine. As most entrepreneurs, I started without any experience at this. My generic management style was "laissez faire”—and I have learned the hard way that remote teams and a hands-off or laid-back approach are a tough combination.

Infinity pools are lame. Sky pools that stretch between buildings like transparent overpasses of water? Infinitely cooler.

The developers at the Embassy Gardens, a new luxury apartment complex opening in London, have just announced what they claim is the world's first sky pool. It's 82 feet long, and its killer feature is that it stretches between the complex's two towers, allowing residents to swim between the rooftop bar, spa, and orangery. Meanwhile, pedestrians below will actually be able to look up through the bottom of the pool to see people swimming above them.

Private equity has injected more than $100 billion of capital into India in the past 13 years, providing scores of companies with a vital new funding source. Yet the sector continues to be considered a mixed success. Has private-equity capital helped bring new skills and capabilities to investee companies? Or has it simply pushed companies to sweat assets, take on excessive leverage, and strip nonessential components to benefit a few?

In Silicon Valley, a handshake deal can make or break a startup. Things move too fast, so investments and companies can fall apart if the funding doesn't come through.

It's especially hard when investors are listening to pitches from as many as 100 startups over two days and making decisions on the spot. That's why many Silicon Valley investment deals start out as handshakes.

In September 2013, Jamie Siminoff went on ABC's "Shark Tank" in hopes of raising $700,000 for his company, DoorBot. He thought it was worth $7 million.

His company made a video doorbell that connected to your smartphone, so you could remotely see and talk to the person at the door through your mobile device.

Image: Ring CEO Jamie Siminoff.

Over the past decade, countries such as South Africa, Kenya, and Seychelles have emerged as Africa’s tech hubs. Kenya is increasingly touted as the Silicon Savannah, owing its position to technologies like M-Pesa and Ushahidi being exported worldwide.

Image: http://ventureburn.com

The entrepreneurially inclined often idolize Silicon Valley as the startup destination, a market ripe with opportunities for disruption, innovation and a plethora of other buzzwords that have wannabe CEOs chomping at the bit.

In a corporate environment, the focus of a job interview has long been demonstrating your match to the skills and experience outlined in the job description. In my experience with startups, that is still necessary, but not sufficient. Today’s business world has become totally customer driven, so customer-centric and people abilities really make the difference between winners and losers.

Crowdfunding has helped people raise thousands of dollars for their causes.

A crowdfunding expert, Brandon T Adams with the University of Young Entrepreneurs, stopped by FOX Sunrise this morning to talk about what you need to do to have a successful campaign. 

Has social media usage almost peaked in the US?

The latest stats from the Pew Research Center released today suggest maybe so. The percentage of US users who said they used each social network grew much more slowly between fall 2014 and spring 2015 than it did between previous years since Pew started asking the question.

Image: http://www.businessinsider.com

“By and large, visual art has always been defined as static,” the abstract artist Frank Stella observed to me in 1998, “but the tradition has always been to use illusion to create a sense of motion.” He was quite correct, historically speaking. From the days of the cave artists of the Cro-Magnon era, tens of thousands of years ago, artists have attempted to make images of a world that is constantly rushing, drifting, rippling, and shifting. Or as Stella put it: “If something moves, that’s how you can tell it’s alive.”

Image: RMB City, by Cao Fei, exists only in the online virtual world Second Life

In the SEAL Teams, there were fundamentals we practiced on a daily, weekly or quarterly basis: shooting, jumping out of perfectly good airplanes, small-unit tactics, looking good in Speedos (that’s a joke -- the Speedos part, at least). When there are tangible items to focus on, it’s easy to put a plan together and design the accompanying strategies to realize success.

Most aspiring entrepreneurs feel it in their bones — they were born to be an entrepreneur, to the point where nothing else in life could satisfy them.

They’re dissatisfied as employees, followers or consumers.

They want to create, build and grow their own enterprises, and they’re filled with the passion of their own ingenuity.

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