Entrepreneurs are, by nature, risk-takers. This quality can serve as an advantage during a startup pitch competition, but it can also go terribly wrong.

Curious about what kinds of risks pay off — especially when funding is at stake — I asked 10 entrepreneurs from the Young Entrepreneur Council about the craziest things they have done to get investors' attention. 

Image: http://mashable.com

Few issues have received more attention this election cycle than immigration, as Republican nominee Donald Trump has accused immigrants of taking jobs away from Americans and generally draining the economy.

But a new study proves the opposite point, and adds some important context to the vital role immigrants play in keeping American business dynamic and competitive.

One of the simplest questions I get from aspiring entrepreneurs, and ironically one of the hardest, is “How do I start?” I want to tell them to just start anywhere, but I realize that most have no idea where anywhere is. They just aren’t prepared for the life they want, and are really asking me how to learn to be an entrepreneur. It takes more than passion and a course on business basics.

Here’s a surprisingly large number.

The 270 startups who responded to a survey conducted by JumpStart spent $777 million on labor and other goods and services in Ohio last year — nearly triple the $279 million figure from the 2014 survey.

Whoa.

Those companies, who work with JumpStart and 14 other local organizations that receive state funding, also employed 2,313 Ohioans in 2015, up from 1,490 last year, according to economic impact reports based on those surveys.

Image: http://www.crainscleveland.com 

Finding your way around a new city can be exasperating: juggling maps and guidebooks, trying to figure out where you are on roads with no street signs, talking with locals who give directions by referring to unfamiliar landmarks. If you’re driving, a car with a GPS navigation system can make things easier, but it still won’t help you decide, say, which restaurant suits both your palate and your budget. Engineers at the Nokia Research Center in Helsinki, Finland , hope that a project called Mobile Augmented Reality Applications will help you get where you’re going–and decide what to do once you’re there.

Venture capital investments in startups rebounded in the second quarter, as a general stock market recovery helped restore confidence, according to a new report published on Friday.

Investors plowed $15.3 billion into venture-backed startups in the second quarter of this year, a 20.5 percent increase over the $12.7 billion invested in the first quarter, according to the MoneyTree Report by PricewaterhouseCoopers and the National Venture Capital Association. The report's conclusions are based on data from Thomson Reuters.

Over the course of an hour, our guests covered an array of questions ranging from how to boost self-confidence when overcoming a challenge at work, to how to cultivate growth and push past fear as a professional. 

Several motivational speakers and career coaches took part in the conversation including: Chandresh Bhardwaj, storyteller & spiritual advisor; Chelsea Krost, millennial spokesperson, brand consultant & keynote speaker; Chuck Gallagher, CEO of the Ethics Resource Group; and Marianne Williamson, internationally acclaimed spiritual author and lecturer.

Movies depict a grand view of an entrepreneur, a view of a life that’s filled with bright ideas and enthusiastic men and women. The dedication to their dream unrelenting and somewhat childlike in a sense that they show the world anything is possible. The true grit and sacrifice of an entrepreneur cannot really be summed up in an hour and forty minutes.

Pertinent observations arose in a 2015 Barclays study on the psychology of entrepreneurs, conducted in partnership with The Psychometrics Centre at the University of Cambridge.

Image: http://ventureburn.com

Although digital investment is almost unquestionably the right course of action for most firms, organizations still struggle to create the desired results. Estimates of digital transformation failures range from 66% to 84%. Such a high failure rate isn’t surprising, as leaders are trying to create entirely new competencies and wedge them into an organization with strong legacy cultures and operating models.

Latvia has become the fastest growing country in the EU as regards innovation, the European Commission Representation in Latvia told LETA.

Today the European Commission released the 2016 results of the European Innovation Scoreboard, the Regional Innovation Scoreboard and the Innobarometer.   The main findings are that EU innovation is catching up with Japan and the US, Sweden is once again the innovation leader, and Latvia has become the fastest growing innovator.

Late in June, presidential candidate Hillary Clinton surprised business leaders by issuing a detailed technology and innovation platform. Tech and business leaders should be taking note. The next person to win the White House will inevitably face a slew of important decisions about the future of the tech and startup sectors.

Clinton’s plan may have been designed to deflect growing concern here in California (where I work) and other innovation hubs about criticism of the tech economy from the Obama administration and other Democrats on the left.

We score all 50 states on more than 60 measures of competitiveness, developed with input from a broad and diverse array of business and policy experts, official government sources, the CNBC Global CFO Council and the states themselves. States receive points based on their rankings in each metric. Then we separate those metrics into 10 broad categories, weighted based on how frequently each is used as a selling point in state economic development marketing materials. That way, our study ranks the states based on the criteria they use to sell themselves. This year some states were tied. Learn more about our categories and methodology.

The U.S. Small Business Administration will award up to $125,000 in grants to 16 Federal and State Technology (FAST) Partnership Program recipients including state and local economic development agencies, business development centers, colleges and universities and up to $200,000 in grants to 5 Small Business Technology Development Centers to support programs for innovative, technology-driven small businesses.

"We're excited about partnering with these organizations to help entrepreneurs around the country learn about and compete for SBIR/STTR awards," said John Williams, SBA Director of Innovation.  "The main goal of FAST is to provide more boots on the ground in local communities through our partner organizations to increase awareness about SBIR/STTR's early stage funding and level the playing field for entrepreneurs, especially those in underrepresented communities."

More Twin Cities suburbs are adding economic development directors to lure industries, boost growth and shake off their labels as bedroom communities.

The trend isn’t a new one — some larger suburbs have had the post for years — but in the postrecession economy, cities that have gone without are now hiring for the task once relegated to city managers and planners.

For decades, American hard work and ingenuity has driven our country’s unprecedented economic prosperity. Our scientific curiosity and entrepreneurial spirit led to innovative discoveries that helped establish the United States as the world’s largest economy and premier thought leader in the scientific arena. But as other nations increasingly invest in science and innovation to help grow their economies, we must recommit to promoting our own national science policy and maintaining American competitiveness around the world. Our success in this global economy will depend on our ability to compete in a fast-paced, high-tech and knowledge-based 21st century marketplace.

Anyone can be a venture capitalist. At least that’s a common take on new SEC regulations removing the “accredited investor” requirement for taking equity shares in private companies. More than a dozen crowdfunding sites are scrambling to connect would-be VCs with startups seeking capital, according to the New York Times. The change may democratize finance, but there are no guarantees of that. The Times article points out that “the most promising companies—the high-growth ventures delivering the monster returns that keep the entire venture-capital industry afloat—may also be the ones least likely to bother raising money in small dribs from the crowd.”

Image: http://insights.som.yale.edu

ST. PAUL, Va. -- The University of Virginia's College at Wise announced plans to establish a cyber security accelerator and ecological education center in the Oxbow Center in St. Paul, Virginia. The announcement came during a press statement Thursday morning at the center where the Oxbow Foundation officially handed the keys of the building over to the UVa-Wise Foundation.

Your career isn’t static—or at least it shouldn’t be. In order to get ahead, some things have to change. What worked at one stage of your professional life won’t work at another. Your skills should evolve, and you should check periodically to make sure they’re keeping you competitive. Even the way you use social media to find jobs and get your name out there should also change over time.

But what about people? We often think of our professional network as a continuously expanding thing. Meet someone new, add them to the list. The list gets longer, your opportunities get ever wider.

Image: Flickr user Josh Michael G. Belarmino

If you learned that you could increase your productivity by almost 50% by making one near-effortless change, you'd probably try it. But at what point would you question whether the advice was too good to be true?

A recent study from Texas A&M University found that employees who used sit-stand desks were 46% more productive than those at traditional desks. Major news media ran with the eye-catching stat, and readers gobbled up the information, believing they, too, could be wildly more productive if only they had the right desk. Who wouldn't want to be more productive by putting in so little extra effort?

Image: Flickr user Mapbox