Some students know they want to build a startup from the first moment they set foot on campus. I wasn't one of them. When I started as an Environmental Studies student at USC, I envisioned forging my path as a marine biologist or scientist. Startup CEO wasn't a title I forecasted for my professional future, but falling into the role over the last few years has been an organic and exciting adventure.

Mark Cuban says 16-year-old Benjamin Stern is his “Mini-Me.”

Stern, who hails from Melbourne, Florida, is the CEO and founder of Nohbo. On a mission to reduce plastic and waste, Stern invented the “world’s first eco-friendly shampoo ball” in Nohbo, which is waste-free, paraben-free and sulfate-free. He was recently featured in the second episode of Shark Tank’s seventh season, where he made a favorable impression on the judges.

Image: Ben Stern

In the five weeks that I’ve been a father, it’s dawned on me that parenting is exactly the same as running a business. If you want to be a better businessperson, I’d highly recommend becoming a parent. Both are exhausting, all-consuming and a financial pit but already I realise how parenting can make you better at business.

I’ve noticed a great tendency among startup founders to ignore the essentials of business accounting in the early stages of their startup. Just because you are not profitable yet, doesn’t mean you can skip the record keeping.

In fact, just the opposite is true. When you anticipate losses for the first year or two, it is more important to properly document all expenses, including tricky ones like business travel, business meals, and your home office. Sloppy documentation and reporting of these expenses is an open invitation to an IRS audit, which is the last thing you need or can afford during the busy startup period.

Image: Flickr: 

It’s tempting when you think of crowdfunding to think purely in terms of Kickstarter-like projects whereby participants only get a freebie or two from the entrepreneurs they’re backing, plus the buzz from seeing a project they believe in make it to market.

There has however been a groundswell of crowd-investment platforms in recent years, and in particular since President Obama passed the JOBS Act in 2012.

WASHINGTON -- President Barack Obama picked Kansas to win the NCAA title, with the hopes of correctly selecting college basketball's national champion in the first and last years of his presidency.

Obama will leave office in January 2017. He correctly picked North Carolina in his first year in office in 2009, but he hasn't selected the winner in the past six brackets.

Image: President Barack Obama fills out his NCAA bracket in the Map Room at the White House. Official White House Photo by Chuck Kennedy

No industry has a greater commitment to the future of American innovation than the U.S. semiconductor industry. Our industry employs some of the world’s top scientific minds and invests a greater share of revenue in R&D than any other industry. It’s no surprise, then, that the semiconductor industry is America’s most innovative manufacturing industry, one of America’s top exporting industries, and a key driver of America’s economic strength, national security, and global competitiveness.

For many an ambitious worker, the measure of success lies just ahead in a path toward management. Career arcs in a wide variety of sectors are simply built that way, and sooner or later the serious-minded employee finds him or herself champing at the bit to be a leader. “For those who are front-line employees thinking about a long-term future, the question of whether to go into management, whether it is good for you and for others, and figuring out whether you have the temperament to master it, is a career issue that many people are trying to answer,” says Michael Useem, Wharton management professor and director of Wharton’s Center for Leadership and Change Management.

The whole premise behind a Chief Innovation Officer goes beyond useless to completely and utterly counterproductive. If one person is in charge of innovation, everyone else are not. And they must be. Anyone not innovating is falling behind those that are. Darwin taught us that that is a bad thing. So: No Chief Innovative Officers. No distinctions between scientific, artistic and interpersonal leaders. Everyone is responsible for innovating, creating and leading.

 Johnson & Johnson Innovation is expanding its innovation strategy with the opening of a new bioincubator in Europe, designed to identify and nurture early-stage companies.

The initiative called JLINX, will be based at the Janssen campus in Beerse, Belgium, and aims to catalyse innovation by offering start-ups flexible ways to grow and collaborate across the European life science ecosystem.

JLINX will be located in a dedicated facility and will be managed by a third party, Bioqube Ventures, which will provide independent oversight for venture funding and company selection.

The recession turned out to be a boom time for starting new businesses. That’s when the U.S. economy lost more than 8 million jobs starting in late 2007, and the convergence of unemployed workers with no alternative job offerings created the most fertile environment for entrepreneurship in more than a decade, according to analysis of Census and Bureau of Labor Statistics data published in the Journal of Economics and Management Strategy.

Properly choosing your investors is one of the most important, but often overlooked, aspects of building a tech company. As an early-stage entrepreneur, you’re constantly dealing with so many major existential questions (“Will our company exist next week?”, “Why can’t we convince a single person to invest any money in us?”), that the matter of deciding between multiple investors seems like a real first-world problem. I had many friends volunteer the advice that “beggars can’t be choosers” in those early-stages; they figured we should just take money wherever we could find it. Boy, am I’m glad I didn’t listen to them!

Have you ever been surprised to see a huge and seemingly sturdy tree lying on its side on the ground after a big storm? Then you took a closer look and noticed it was hollow inside. No wonder it fell.

If your organization has a rotten core, eventually it will fall too. And whoever is in the path of the fall will be crushed whether they share responsibility for the corruption within or are just innocent bystanders.

Innovation is one of those words that means something different to each person that hears it. When you describe the whole framework as an innovation process, the confusion compounds exponentially. The word process is more misleading than the word innovation. 

Here’s why. The word process connotes a linear form of systemization and optimization, given the many processes that were formed under the banner of industrialization and the scientific management worldview. 

Japanese flashlight maker MBI (Matchbox Industries) is currently crowdfunding its smallest product to date: The MBI Matchbook. As the name implies, the MBI Matchbook is a set of 8 miniature LED flashlights whose marquee feature is their size. The flashlight company is designing the LED matches so that they're small enough to fit in your pocket in addition to being waterproof and capable of withstanding any weather condition.

Image: http://www.businessinsider.com 

The Federal Government has called for comment on a new $8m initiative aimed to boost Australia’s next generation of startups.

On 10 March, Minister for Industry, Innovation and Science Christopher Pyne and Assistant Minister for Innovation Wyatt Roy encouraged ecosystem stakeholders – such as business incubators and accelerators – to have their say on the government’s planned Incubator Support Programme.

Image: https://delimiter.com.au 

When tasked with coming up with an innovative idea, people often think long and hard about what will blow their boss's socks off. Some look at what their competitors are doing, while others start moving to get the creative juices flowing. But people often try too hard to come up with the next big thing. Inspiration most often strikes when you let your thoughts drift.

No matter what people may proclaim, everyone in business is looking to achieve the highest possible level of satisfaction and financial success in their career. For best results, my advice is to think like an entrepreneur, even if you are a corporate employee. According to many studies, entrepreneurs tend to be happier, and 80 percent of self-made millionaires are entrepreneurs.

The Ontarian Government is taking some serious initiatives to attract Indian businesses. In an interaction with Entrepreneur, Brad Duguid, Minister of Economic Development, Employment and Infrastructure, Ontario, Canada, shares the same.

Leaving other countries, why would an Indian entrepreneur take its business to Canada?

We have the lowest effective corporate tax rates in North America to do business. We have tax credits for companies that invest in R&D in Ontario.

Image: Entrepreneur India 

How do original thinkers and innovators view the world and take action on it? How different are they from ‘normal’ people? Can these insights be applied and implemented by others as well? The bestselling book Originals: How non-conformists change the world, by Adam Grant, offers a range of innovation tips and thought-provoking stories. The material in the 322-page book spans startups, big business, politics and entertainment.

Image: http://yourstory.com