The thought of becoming an entrepreneur is appealing to many people, but dreams are often put on ice due to misconceptions and myths. Poor advice from unqualified individuals, outright assumptions and inaccuracies in the media may all prevent someone from jumping into the entrepreneurial fray.

When hiking through an aging natural forest, did you ever accidentally burst your foot through an old log and see the wood fibers crumble while bugs and worms scuttle away into the moss or wiggle around your hiking boot? That is a moment to not only gaze at the young shoots, but also appreciate the secrets of an ecosystem’s functionality. Effective decomposition is vital, contradictory as this may sound, to every functioning ecosystem. It liberates resources for re-composition into new uses and, eventually, new structures.

Eric Ward, a graduate student at MIT, has always wanted to work in the aerospace industry. "It's a field full of people who are both very passionate about space and also excited about tackling very hard problems," he says.

After earning a degree in mechanical engineering, Ward landed coveted internships at NASA and Lockheed Martin Aeronautics, expecting that he would spend his entire career at a big, established space company. But over the last decade, he's watched a new generation of companies like Virgin Galactic, Blue Origin, and SpaceX enter the space game.

Image: Flickr user NASA, Bill Ingalls

What do you think happens to your productivity when your boss butts in to ask you questions, or when a coworker needs a file? Many people assume interruptions slow them down and hurt the quality of their work. But research shows it's just not true.

Little interruptions actually cause people to work faster. More importantly, the quality of their work remains uncompromised.

LYDIA DISHMAN 04.20.16 5:18 AM Minority businesses could boost the economy by as much as $300 billion.

How? A new study from the Center for Global Policy Solutions titled, "The Color of Entrepreneurship: Why the Racial Gap Among Firms Costs the U.S. Billions," analyzed business owners by race from 2007-2012 and found that firms owned by people of color have contributed to the economic recovery. The research was based on the U.S. Census Bureau’s Survey of Business Owners (SBO), which comes out every five years.

Image: Flickr user MIKI Yoshihito

As nations continue to emerge from the Great Recession, they face similar challenges in the effort to rebuild and strengthen their economies. But successful transformation does not come without growing pains: As they look to what worked in the past, businesses and governments face the future knowing that some things must change — whether that means embracing new technologies, shoring up inadequate infrastructure or borrowing ideas from different cultures.

In this special report, students from the Joseph H. Lauder Institute of Management & International Studies offer unique perspectives gleaned from interviews, observations and research into the struggle for self-improvement by nations.

Image: http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu

If you consider yourself to be ambitious, this has happened to you. Your alarm goes off, and you’re ambushed by thoughts of the grind ahead; finding that needle in a haystack; denting the universe; the roller coaster that never ends — and many more horrible but unfortunately apt cliches. Today, the groupthink in tech largely believes that you have to suffer and barely survive to succeed. But this is a trap, says sought-after executive coach Katia Verresen, who counsels leaders at Facebook, Stanford, Airbnb, Twitter, and a number of prominent startups.

I am frequently asked to give advice about networking.  And if you’re taking advice from me on this, then you’re probably going to the wrong place. That’s because I totally stink at networking.  And admit it: you do too, don’t you?  There’s something a little smarmy about being a good “networker.”  It conjures up an image of the travelling salesman with the big yellow tie and the loud sport jacket, shaking hands, winking, waving at people across the room.  Insincere. A bit…dodgy.  So if you’re bad at networking, like me, don’t get bummed. It’s probably for these three reasons. And although I’m not great at it, I’ve learned a few ways to handle these issues.

The U.S. Small Business Administration (“SBA”) recently issued a notice detailing proposed amendments to the policy directives governing the Small Business Innovation Research (“SBIR”) and Small Business Technology Transfer (“STTR”) programs.  The notice indicates that the SBA intends to implement significant changes to the current data rights provided under SBIR/STTR awards, as well as the method by which program participants—or their successors in interest—receive preferences in the third phase of efforts to develop technologies under either program.

The proposed changes open up new possibilities for a company’s competitors to benefit from its participation in the SBIR/STTR programs. However, the changes also provide additional certainty that may encourage increased participation by small research and development companies and investors that are currently unsure as to whether SBIR/STTR awards can effectively be used to commercialize new technologies.

GWEN MORAN 04.19.16 5:53 AM The number of women-owned firms increased by one-and-a-half times the national average between 1997 and 2015—74% versus 51%, according to The 2015 State of Women-Owned Businesses Report by American Express OPEN.

And other research tells us that those women are crushing it. Seed-stage venture capital firm First Round Capital found that its investments in companies with women founders performed 63% better than those with management teams that were all men. A September 2014 study by Babson College found that businesses with a woman on the executive team are more likely to have higher valuations at both first (64% higher) and last (49% higher) funding rounds.

You’ve come up with a great business idea, and after plenty of due diligence and sleepless nights, you’re ready to turn it into something big. Naturally, your first order of business is money. There are a number of ways to raise early capital for your business, and understanding your options will set you up for the best chance of success.

What we hear about all the time in the media is generally the Series A to D rounds of fundraising, where a business has shown traction, received market validation for which they can justify significant valuations, bringing in funding in the single to triple digit millions of dollars from venture capital or private equity.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has released the Department of Commerce's (DOC) 2015 Technology Transfer Report. The annual report provides comprehensive statistics on the technology transfer activities of the three Department of Commerce (DOC) laboratories: NIST, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and the Institute for Telecommunication Sciences (ITS) of the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA).

Image: http://www.nist.gov

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) recently highlighted eight new cybersecurity technologies that may have potential as commercial products.

According to Networkworld, the DHS’s fourth Cyber Security Division Transition to Practice Technology Guide provides an overview of federally funded security research projects that are ready for commercial testing, licensing or investment. The DHS effort has seen some success since its inception in 2012 — as of January, four of 24 technologies in the program have been licensed, one has been open-sourced and numerous others are in various stages of the licensing process.

Image: Jeff Bertolucci

A good network keeps you informed. Teaches you new things. Makes you more innovative. Gives you a sounding board to flesh out your ideas. Helps you get things done when you’re in a hurry. And, much more (see my recent Lean In video on how networks augment your impact).

But, for every person who sees the value of maintaining a far-reaching and diverse set of professional connections, many more struggle to overcome innate resistance to, if not distaste for, networking. In my 20 years of teaching about how to build and use networks more effectively, I have found that the biggest barriers people typically face are not a matter of skill but mind-set.

If you don’t measure your small business’s performance, you won’t be able to improve it. There are a range of indicators that you can use to measure your company’s growth and help you to determine whether your business is on track, as well as help you to meet your business goals.

Here are a few indicators to determine how well your business is doing, as well as some tools that you can use to help.

In 2015, VICE Media, the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism, and the Knight Foundation teamed up to create a new innovation fund that provides seed money for journalists with big ideas. Starting today, the Knight-Vice Innovation Fund is open again for new applicants.

How will the world be consuming news in the next five, 10, or 20 years? This is a key question that applicants will need to ask themselves while developing specific story pitches with clear goals and deliverables. If chosen, journalists will receive a share of the $500,000 fund to bring their idea to life.

A few weeks ago we ran an article on the benefits of accelerator programs. While I agreed with almost everything in it, the article still bothered me, and I wanted to start a discussion about when an accelerator is not appropriate. So many startups are regularly asked “have you thought about Kickstarter? Shark Tank? Are you raising money? YCombinator?” These questions are constantly ingrained into people’s brains and they come to think those are the only options.

The reality is that there are lots of ways to build a company, and Kickstarter, Shark Tank, angel investors, and accelerators are all new within the last few years, and they aren’t right for many people. So let’s look at when an accelerator is right for you.

Image: http://hackaday.com

This presidential election has the country captivated. As many commentators have pointed out, the primaries are more focused on personalities than policy. While the parties focus on who is going to represent them in the fall, I want to make the case for something that I hope every candidate will agree on in November: America’s unparalleled capacity for innovation. When the United States invests in innovation, it creates companies and jobs at home, makes Americans healthier and safer, and saves lives and fights poverty in the world’s poorest countries. It offers the next president a tremendous opportunity to help people in America and around the world.

SHANE SNOW 04.18.16 5:00 AM On a trip to Spain when he was about 31, Julius Caesar came across a statue of Alexander the Great—and started to cry.

This was shortly after the death of Caesar’s wife, many years before he would transform the Roman Empire. A low-level public auditor at the time, Caesar purportedly told his companions, "Do you think I have not just cause to weep, when I consider that Alexander at my age had conquered so many nations, and I have all this time done nothing that is memorable?"

Image: Albert Einstein via Wikimedia Commons

Given that I’m a happiness researcher, you might think I’d strive to help people eliminate unhappiness in their careers. But unhappiness actually serves a crucial function, signaling the need for change, prompting us to switch companies or fields, or even just motivating us to secretly update our resume at home (just in case). Unhappiness is what motivated me to jump from computer engineer to national CBS news anchor to now, happily, a positive psychology researcher.