Corporate workplace these days is experiencing an interesting change in culture. There was a time when thinking out of the box was the right of a select few. But this bureaucratic workplace culture is now giving way to an environment that encourages innovation across all levels.

Talking about the key driver of this trend, Shiva Sundar, HR director-India, Akamai Technologies, in a interview to TimesJobs.com, said, "Today, the markets are characterised by rapid change, fierce competition and a perpetual quest to out-do themselves. Thus, it has become imperative for organisations to innovate at every stage."

Like most high-profile CEOs, Elon Musk closes himself off from the outside world for the most part.

While the public is familiar with the serial entrepreneur's professional life, we rarely get to see what he's really like.

“Solopreneur” isn’t a brand-new term but it has definitely become more relevant in recent years. The word is easily interchanged with the word “entrepreneur,” but there are distinct differences. As an increasing number of professionals choose to start a business with no intention of ever adding staff, solopreneur is likely a term that will only grow in popularity.

With Uber raising $2 billion at a reported $50 billion valuation and hundreds of startups announcing $1 million seed rounds, you might start to experience the paranoid feeling that everyone except you is in on some fundraising secret. In fact, the amount of money venture-capital firms invest has reached a 15-year high, making this the easiest time since the dot-com bubble to fund your startup. So what have successful startups figured out that has been obfuscated from your view? The secret to fundraising comes down to three magic words: before, more and strategic.

Image: http://blogs.wsj.com

Starting an Ecommerce business can be difficult and the demands from consumers add to the challenge. If you are looking to jump-start your Ecommerce business, you will need a few tools to help ease the process. The following are five tools that help with business building.

PrestaShop

If you want to jump-start a business that offers customers the ability to shop online, you will need a fully functioning online store. PrestaShop gives you the ability to create a fully functional online store within a matter of minutes. They have designed their site so people who have programming experience can fully customize the site, while beginners can use templates.

If you thought texting while driving was bad, that's only the start.

AT&T commissioned a poll of people aged 16 to 65 who have smartphones and drive at least once a day. They found a whopping 70% of them regularly use their phones while driving. Texting is by far the most common activity, but emailing, web surfing, and posting on social media are all surprisingly common as well.

Image: http://www.businessinsider.com/

BENGALURU: So what did you think being an entrepreneur was about? Playing boss? Startup entrepreneurs handle sundry mundane tasks the world is oblivious to, the small stuff that make businesses tick, and petty jobs that make the big achievements all the more worthwhile.

ET spoke with a number of successful entrepreneurs who let in on a few, not-so-pretty daily tasks they had never imagined they would have to do as a founder, but are happy doing them.

Innovation is touted as the cure-all for business and economic problems but it isn’t a magic potion.

It’s a tricky, sticky process that many organizations never master. Becoming innovative requires companies to overcome their own inertia to win the goodwill of customers and front-line employees, develop robust communication processes so that good ideas bubble up, and enthusiastically execute on new ideas even when they know the failure rate will be high.

One of the most appealing benefits of becoming an entrepreneur is gaining control over your professional life. As an entrepreneur, you are singularly responsible for making all decisions about the business, and while others might be able to give you advice and point you in a certain direction, ultimately you have the final say.

New entrepreneurs routinely jump into a startup with a full charge of passion and energy, but often find themselves drained of both after a few months by the workload and challenges. As a result, burnout and loss of passion are consistently listed among the top causes of startup failure, according to many studies. The challenge is find ways to continually recharge along the way.

The Connecticut Retirement Plans and Trust Funds plans to commit to up to $145 million to back midmarket companies focused on Connecticut through three separate accounts.

The state, which oversees some $30 billion in pension and trust assets, intends to pledge up to $75 million to Balance Point Capital Partners for Connecticut Growth Capital LLC, a separate account focused on direct debt investments.

Everyday the crowdfunding industry is gaining more and more popularity worldwide. Through crowdfunding, individuals can utilize the power of the crowd to start a business, bring a product to market, produce a record, and even fundraise for amazing causes. Millennials in particular have embraced crowdfunding as a way to donate to important causes. Below are three crowdfunding campaigns for amazing causes.

Despite the fact that hiring managers now ask for a variety of application materials, resumes are still an extremely important part of the process. And because they're so important, people usually feel the need to use old-fashioned, stilted, and even cliché language when writing them.

While this might not sound like a huge issue, take a moment to remember that your resume is just one of many that are being reviewed for the position, often times, by just one person. If the person reading it can't understand what you're trying to get across, or is mildly annoyed by your fluffy word choices, or is getting déjà vu from a similar resume, you have a problem.

For decades, the U.S. Bureau of Labor’s Economic and Employment Projections have been the bellwether for predicting what the hottest jobs up to a decade out would be. But with the rapid pace of technological change disrupting industries faster than ever before (think: robotics, 3-D printing, the sharing economy), it’s becoming obvious to many futurists that past trends may no longer be a reliable indicator of future job prospects.

SAN FRANCISCO — It is a wild time in Silicon Valley. Two-year-old companies are valued in the billions, ramshackle homes are worth millions and hubris has reached the point where otherwise sane businesspeople muse about seceding from the United States.

But the tech industry’s venture capitalists — the financiers who bet on companies when they are little more than an idea — are going out of their way to avoid the one word that could describe what is happening around them.

So you’ve made it past all the VC grilling and received a term sheet. Congratulations! But don’t celebrate just yet. Term sheets are non-binding, and even though they should signify a VC has conviction in investing in you and is ready to move towards closing, they fall through more often than most founders may expect.

Here are the three most common reasons why receiving a term sheet may not result in an investment by a VC and what you can do about it.

The entrepreneurs I see are always talking about “disruptive innovation” ideas, but the plans I read are more often linear extensions of a current hot offering, like one more social network with the best of Facebook and Twitter, one more dating site dimension, or another “must-have” accessory for smartphones. Perhaps hard questions need to come before ideas, rather than after.

“Crowdfunding” is one of the real financial buzzwords of 2015 so far. Craft beer punks BrewDog have done much to publicise the relatively new approach to raising capital; even though its £25mln attempt to break funding records may not strictest sense be crowdfunding at all. Now listed companies such as Kea Petroleum (LON:KEA) and Ascent Resources (LON:AST) have also sought to raise funds from the crowd. Here, we look at some of the key issues surrounding this form of alternative financing and examine more closely what it all means for investors.

Image: http://www.proactiveinvestors.co.uk

Every founder dreams of the day his or her startup experiences runaway success, but the reality of massive growth can be terrifying. Recently, my company experienced four of the best sales months we’ve ever had, and it seemed like we were hiring a new employee every week.

Most CEOs would’ve been breaking out the champagne, but I found myself overcome with stress. I feel a responsibility for all my employees, and when they’re overwhelmed with work, I tend to absorb some of that stress.

During a debate over what to do next about Wisconsin’s lead economic development agency, a Republican member of the Legislature’s budget-writing committee took an openly skeptical stance. “I don’t really agree with the main mission of (the Wisconsin Economic Development Corp.),” said Rep. Dean Knudson, R-Hudson. “I never did. It’s really not a proper role of government to be doing this.”

“This” to Knudson apparently means all state economic development programs run through WEDC. Those programs include business grants, loans and other initiatives aimed at encouraging startup companies, attracting new businesses, retaining companies already here or generally working to improve Wisconsin’s business climate.