In developing countries, there’s something known as the “pioneer gap”. Usually it refers to a shortage of financing for early-stage startups, after friends, family and angels and before VCs get in on the act. But  the term also can allude to a shortage of capital for impact funds seeking to invest in those companies.

Web-based startups can offer phenomenal returns on investment without the need for a large staff or expansive physical infrastructures to make them happen.

A few years ago, a friend told me he’d found a website that generated US$50 000 in annual revenue. He claimed no more than 10 hours of work a week were needed to operate it; he landed the site for a steal. He was excited for its potential — and excited he’d made a solid investment.

To fire a government employee, all you need is the will and the skill. This may sound simplistic given all the protections granted to civil servants and the complexities of federal human resources case law, but it’s true.          

What does it mean to have the will? It means having the strength to remove a poor employee when it is the right thing to do. It means being willing to deal with an employee who exercises his right to grieve, appeal or file a complaint against you, not taking the easy way out by reassigning him or caving in to his demands.

As excitement continues to permeate around regional economic development, now more than ever running an effective organization at the industry or regional level requires coordination, creativity, and collaboration for success.

At SSTI’s 2015 Annual Conference, a track of sessions specifically tailored to sectors, clusters, and innovation initiatives offers a stimulating mix of speakers.

I am often asked “What is the secret to being a successful entrepreneur?” To which I answer: “Success is for those who want it the most.” This must be true as many entrepreneurs were definitely driven to become successful since the beginning. Their passionate approach towards their goals has turned into a fruitful journey.

From 2005 up until today, we have shared countless inspiring stories from all kinds of entrepreneurs. From micro to icon entrepreneurs, their entrepreneurial journey reminded us how challenges are evident, but can be overcome and succeeded.

Merriam-Webster defines “entrepreneur” as “a person who starts a business and is willing to risk loss in order to make money.” In a broad sense, that might include every small business owner and perhaps even those who are self-employed, or roughly a third of our workforce. Fair enough.

WELLESLEY, Mass., Sept. 9, 2015 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- U.S. News & World Report has ranked Babson College No. 1 in entrepreneurship for an unprecedented 19th time. MIT, University of Southern California, UC Berkeley, and University of Pennsylvania round out the top five colleges for entrepreneurship.

Babson ranks 29th overall for its business program, equal to last year's position. This year Babson is tied with Arizona State University, Texas A&M University, University of Florida, and University of Georgia.

City leaders across America understand that entrepreneurship is key to the success of their economies. That is the message from the 2015 Local Economic Conditions Survey conducted by the National League of Cities.

In that survey, 47 percent of cities said the “number of new business starts” was a positive driver of local economic conditions. New business creation was viewed by more city leaders as source of local economic improvement than any other factor.

An open-source digital tool for crisis responders, a state-of-the-art relaunch of a health data repository and a security-vetting tool for the Defense Department following the horrific Washington Navy Yard shooting.

These were only a handful of the many talented federal and industry innovators recognized Wednesday at the third annual Nextgov Bold Awards.

Image: http://www.nextgov.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.”

A dearth of capital, a substandard education system and the absence of a government-supported innovation system are making it twice as hard for Australians to succeed as technology entrepreneurs when compared to their counterparts in the US and Israel.

That is the sobering message from a panel of entrepreneurs, investors and engineers in The Australian’s Cracking the Code series, in partnership with GE.

Image: http://www.theaustralian.com.au

NEW DELHI: Lending agencies need to bring down the cost of capital for renewable energy projects after the government created conditions for the purpose, New and Renewable Energy Secretary Upendra Tripathy has said.

"The government has put in place an elaborate ecosystem to support green projects and it is now up to lending agencies to help bring down the cost of capital and technology to realize the target of generating 170,000 MW of renewable energy," Tripathy said while addressing a

WAYNE, Pennsylvania, September 9, 2015 /PRNewswire/ --

BizEquity, the world's leading online provider of business valuation knowledge and big data, today announced that it has signed a contract with Security Mutual Life Insurance Company of New York, a U.S.-based life insurance company with a long history of protecting business owners and their families.

BizEquity will provide Security Mutual Life Insurance Company of New York with a private label version of BizEquity's patented "Advisor Office" business valuation service. The arrangement will allow certain Security Mutual life insurance advisors to access BizEquity's powerful database-driven business valuation service.

Biotech has been on a tear over the past few years supported by a combination of scientific advances, great IPO and M&A exit environments, and robust capital markets for fundraising. Watching the public indices gives a good indicator of broader returns in the public equity ecosystem, but getting a handle on private venture capital returns is much harder.

The number of mobile Internet startups with valuations crossing $1 billion has jumped by a third in just eight months and that’s spelling trouble for some venture capitalists looking to cash in on their investments. Invoice2go CEO Greg Waldorf and Bloomberg's Cory Johnson speak on "Bloomberg Markets." (Source: Bloomberg)

$18 billion dollars. That’s about how much angel investors provide in investment per year in Canada, according to Allan Riding, a leading Canadian expert on angel investing and professor at Carleton University, which is three times the investment rate of institutional venture capital. The total angel investment per year in the United States is estimated at about $40 – $100 billion, about twice the rate of venture capital investment there.

It can often feel like time has accelerated and your career is running on autopilot. Whether you're going back to the classroom or not, the end of summer and the start of the school year are a good time to take a step back, consider where you are, where you want to go, and how exactly you can go about getting there.

Image: http://www.fastcompany.com

Laying claim to almost half of all 4G LTE connections in the world, the U.S. is the global leader in the advancement of cutting-edge, next-generation wireless technology, harnessing the power of these networks to meet skyrocketing demand for connectivity and fuel our nation's thriving mobile economy. But, while record investment and innovation has positioned the U.S. atop the global mobile leaderboard, we will soon be catapulted into a completely new and groundbreaking frontier in wireless: 5G.

Our perceptions of the world are built on multiple senses. They interact to help us make sense of our surroundings, so a car will seem to be traveling faster if it makes a lot of noise. And whether we want to buy a sports car, or a vacuum cleaner, it’s our multi-sensory impression of a product or service that dictates how we feel about it. And why companies need to learn the skills to design for all five senses.

Image: http://www.fastcodesign.com

A few years ago, I noticed around half a dozen courageous companies beginning experiments to remove ratings from their performance management systems. Companies such as Juniper and Adobe stopped giving people a one-to-five rating or evaluating employees on a “performance curve,” also known as the “forced ranking” approach. They were still differentiating performance in various ways, and still using a pay-for-performance approach, just not through a simple rating system.