After a dozen years developing new products for large companies and running business units, I knew how to write a business plan. I even knew how to follow the plan. So it was natural when I threw myself into the world of start-ups that I thought the business plan was important.

I was wrong…..well, actually I was right, but for entirely the wrong reason.

Are companies creating their own skills gap? While much of the skills deficit in the U.S. is fueled by a sheer lack of high skill labor for in-demand occupations, a recent CareerBuilder study of more than 2,000 companies suggests that employers may unwittingly be playing a part. Half of hiring managers said that they were concerned about the expanding skills gap, and around the same amount say they limit their candidate pools by only looking at applicants with specific job titles.

Small businesses looking for a windfall of investor money from crowdfunding may find that it's more of a bust.

President Barack Obama and members of Congress have touted a law that makes crowdfunding, a method of soliciting money over the Internet, as a way for startups and other small companies to raise money and create jobs. A year after the law was passed as part of the Jumpstart Our Business Startups, or JOBS, Act, entrepreneurs wanting to raise as much as $1 million annually from online investors are still waiting to get going. The Securities and Exchange Commission is in the process of writing rules to regulate the process.

The history of invoice factoring goes way back to the times of King Hammurabi of Mesopotamia, over 4000 years ago. It has been playing an active role in business finance since then.  From medieval businessmen to English colonists  – and from garment textile industries to transportation industries  –  invoice factoring has a long history.

Today, with some banks limiting loans to small businesses, invoice factoring has emerged as an increasingly  popular means of alternative finance. Since factoring advances money on invoices owed to a company, it’s not technically “credit.”   So businesses can get their hands on much needed cash flow quickly, without going through some of the traditional bank loan underwriting activities.

Vivek Wadhwa: It wasn't long ago that age was equated with knowledge. The apprentice learned from the master and the disciple from the guru. Older workers earned higher salaries because of their experience.

Even today, we feel more comfortable with doctors, airline pilots, and Presidents who have grey hair. Yet older workers in many industries can't even get interviews. When they do get job offers, these are often at lower salaries. In Silicon Valley, investors openly talk about their bias towards younger entrepreneurs -- some argue that Internet entrepreneurs peak at the age of 25.

Youth unemployment is at crisis levels in the EU - averaging 22% and in some member states, it's at 50% or more. In the opinion of European liberals, Europe should put more focus on empowering youth in pursuing entrepreneurship, which in return will create more jobs. In comparison with entrepreneurship in the USA, Europe is lagging behind: about half as many engage in starting businesses and public view of entrepreneurs is negative.

Typing is still the chief tool of the digital age. You can ask your iPhone little questions, or dictate emails to your tablet, if you speak like a nervous, semi-sedated translator. But getting your spoken thoughts, interviews, and meetings into text still requires transcription work. Now, however, the web has made affordable, fast, and easy to use transcription a rather convenient thing to obtain.

Rev, an audio transcription and translation service founded by early employees of online work marketplace oDesk, hits all those qualifying marks, and provides some assurances about its workforce, too. Getting your voice files to Rev is easy through its website, and nearly effortless if you use their recently launched iPhone/iPad recording app. Record through the app itself, fling the files to Rev with the speaker names attached, and the guaranteed turnaround for an hour of non-complex audio, with 98 percent accuracy, is 48 hours, for about $1 per minute. The results are mailed to you as a clean Word document.

The global bioinformatics market, valued at nearly $3.2 billion in 2012, is forecast to grow to nearly $7.5 billion by 2017, according to Wellesley, Mass.-based BCC Research.

The market attracts considerable funding from central governments and is driven by applications across a variety of sectors, including biotechnology, pharmaceutical research and development, agriculture, food safety, chemicals, manufacturing, and more recently, clinical genomics, according to the research.

With 500 Startups Accelerator’s new class introduction video and its notorious chant, you can’t help but wonder if the current system for funding startups is really the best route to building lasting companies. Some even believe that the funding-centric mindset of startups in Silicon Valley is toxic.

I couldn’t agree more. Which is why, other than some modest help, we opted to not pursue investors for our company and go it alone instead. I’m convinced that for a lot of startups (though certainly not all) choosing to bootstrap instead of  searching out VC money is the better strategy for a number of reasons.

What does every single business ever created have in common? The answer is they all started out as an idea; one person’s fantasy as to how their vision can make a difference to the world.

From the minute an organization is born, a company culture is installed within it. For those start ups that cannot afford to hire employees at the inception point, the culture is enshrined within the values and beliefs of the founding members and so culture will play a smaller role limited to these individuals at this stage.

How did you get you first job? Did you just apply to a news ad, or did you make it to that interview because someone referred you? I am sure that most of us chose the latter. And you will agree that we all had a connection inside that company.

When starting a business this scenario does not change at all. Creating connections will allow your project to get the right tools to start on the right foot, and therefore, help you to learn from their mistakes. Connecting with the right people from the beginning will have a great impact on what the future holds; you will be more confident on your decisions, you will make less mistakes and people will remember you with ease.  But how to know who is a good fit for us?

This year’s International Exchange (IE) at the ACA Summit, was comprised of 120 leading angels from around the world to exchange ideas, discuss challenges, and broaden their global networks. The 100%+ growth in attendance year over year and participation from 25 countries on 6 continents demonstrates a growing appetite for cross-border collaboration.

Below are highlights on some of the key topics from the sessions:

A major sticking point in progress of Cedar Valley TechWorks --- money --- may have been addressed.

The goal is to create a 30-acre advanced manufacturing and biotechnology research, development and education center and business and manufacturing cluster near downtown Waterloo. Leaders of the project announced Friday nearly $4 million was included in Iowa Economic Development Authority appropriations.

“Notice that the stiffest tree is most easily cracked, while the bamboo or willow survives by bending with the wind.”

While starting a business, your endeavors may not go always according to plan. Even though an entrepreneur is a good planner, he cannot change plans according to market trends or business needs if he has a rigid work style. A “flexible” entrepreneur who is able to switch gears and “go with the flow” has a greater success rate.

The happiest people in the world are flexible. They do not have rigid beliefs neither try to control and manipulate their surroundings to make themselves happy. Hence, entrepreneurs need to be flexible. They need to accept the things how they are. If you want to have a successful venture, be flexible and accept things as they are.

Chinese Premier Li Keqiang on Saturday stressed the significance of innovation and called for more technological cooperation between enterprises.

Innovation can create immeasurable wealth, Li said during a visit to the Einstein House museum in the Swiss capital of Bern, the residence of Albert Einstein from 1903 to 1905.

Protection of intellectual property rights must be stepped up so as to rev up the passion of innovators and make sure that they receive merited returns, added the premier.

Entrepreneur: It's a word that elicits images of hipster 20- and 30-somethings inventing apps or gathering at TedX conferences for inspiration.

Sure, there are plenty of young people starting their own businesses, but entrepreneurs over 50 have launched their own ventures at a higher rate than 20-34-year-olds every year since at least 1996.

Multinational technology companies such as Apple, Google and Amazon were a key focus of EU leaders' attempt to clamp down on aggressive tax avoidance at their summit on Wednesday (22 May). The broad European initiative against tax fraud arising from the summit – a push to create global bank information sharing – is modelled closely on the US Fair and Accurate Credit Transactions Act, which requires American taxpayers to report their foreign financial interests, and has galvanised EU countries to act.

The action also reflects US concerns that digital multinational companies are in the vanguard of corporations failing to shoulder their fair burden of tax.

Xerox is screening tens of thousands of applicants for low-wage jobs in its call centers using software from a startup company called Evolv that automatically compares job seekers against a computer profile of the ideal candidate.

According to these data, culled from studying job records of many similar workers, past experience working in call centers isn’t a good predictor of success. Instead, a person should be a “creative” type, though not too inquisitive. Participating in one social network like Facebook is a plus, but involvement in too many is a negative. A short commute is a must—that means a person is less likely to quit before Xerox can recoup its cost to train them.

Innovation is key to driving business development, kick-starting growth and boosting economic recovery. However the prospect of disrupting traditional markets and competing with multinational businesses can be challenging.

Enter the Open Innovation 2.0 Conference, a gathering of business people, academics, politicians and citizens held in Dublin Castle last week. The two-day programme included talks from leading thinkers who have embraced innovative techniques and business models, awards recognising leading innovators and a free technology showcase at Mansion House.

Startups are hives of creativity. In their early days, the creativity of their founders and new hires mainly permeate the innovative products or services that are to disrupt industries. Those that succeed in uprooting their markets however, follow a trajectory which puts them in a position to further manifest their creativity. With a wad of cash and an expanding workforce, a new work environment is often both a necessity and a compelling blank canvas for its creatively-driven founders.

It’s interesting to watch how the most successful startups often end up in the most creative spaces. Whether that’s by means of its founders’ vision, or by having the means to hire award-winning interior designers, we’ve found common design threads that are likely not just design-muscle at full flex, but actual conduits of creativity.