While mere mortals stumble groggily out of the bed in the morning -- or, worse, lay prostrate before the irresistible lure of the snooze button -- the world’s most successful business leaders have mastered routines to kick off their days with productive vigor.

All in all, entrepreneurs tend to be early risers, according to the below infographic, courtesy of British bed maker Dreams. Jack Dorsey, Lord Alan Sugar, Tory Burch, Tim Armstrong and Indra Nooyi, for instance, all typically wake up before 6 a.m.

On Wednesday, May 27, the National Association of Development Organizations (NADO) will host a webinar about the Partnership for Opportunity and Workforce and Economic Revitalization (POWER) initiative. The webinar will take a closer look at the competitive grant opportunities available through the POWER Initiative. On Thursday, May 28, SSTI will host a webinar about the application and selection process for the EDA Regional Innovation Strategies (RIS) Program. If your organization applied for the first round of RIS awards, or you are interested in applying in the future, attend this webinar to learn more about the selection process, how to prepare a successful application, and other funding opportunities for regional initiatives.

Many of us spend our 20s having fun and living in the moment, but that carefree attitude can sometimes lead to poor money decisions.

Unfortunately, the mistakes we make in our younger years can affect our financial future, so it's never too soon to recognize the importance of saving, making smart investments and keeping good credit.

At the crossroads of discovery and commercialization, The Future of Urban Innovation: Startups Summit is a one-day event focused on the various channels that comprise the innovation ecosystem. The summit brings together entrepreneurs, industry, universities, Federal, State and local government, investors and thought leaders to engage on the future state of innovation and how they can work together spurring economic growth. The event includes panels on the evolving role of urban innovation in the American economy, the role of government and universities in technology development, and discussions on what investors and startups want to see in developing policy around innovation.

It’s a world of sensors, folks, or it’s quickly becoming one. Even the tiniest gadgets will someday get an IP address. A common platform is needed to collect and make sense of all of the data those devices gather, and a lot of companies are already getting in line to take the job — maybe too many.

Just the other day, I had the somewhat unpleasant job of presiding over the shutdown of one of our investee companies. Not that it was a first—I’ve “lost” a dozen or so companies in the last 15 years of investing, out of 50-odd companies that time and money has gone into, and I’m reliably informed it’s a good ratio.

Image: The venture capital fund structure simply isn’t good for startups.(Reuters/Sivaram V)

A version of this article previously appeared in Forbes.

When joining a startup, there are seven important questions you should ask in order to answer the question: “What the heck are my stock options worth?”

You just received a job offer from a startup which includes 50,000 stock options. That is wonderful…or is it?

Low unemployment coupled with the capability to search and apply for jobs online and via mobile is giving candidates more control than ever.

Tara Sinclair, PhD and chief economist with Indeed, believes the war for talent is on. Driven by the aggregated data from Indeed users and from the Bureau of Labor statistics in her latest research for Indeed’s Hiring Lab, Sinclair's latest report shows there are several dominant trends based on what job seekers are searching.

Image: http://www.fastcompany.com

Anybody who reads the blog regularly will know that I’m long video. I’ve made 5 investments in the sector and I hope to make 5 more. Between the US & Europe alone the video sector is worth around $500 billion. And TV / Film / Video Games / Virtual Reality / Augmented Reality and frankly the Internet will all merge. Western countries watch > 5 hours of TV per day. Why? Because we’re visual storytellers. We simply can’t escape our history as hunters & gatherers sitting around a fire and explaining the world to our community.

Even when my New York Rangers or San Jose Sharks don't make the cut, I love the Stanley Cup playoffs. As I watch things heat up this year, I keep fixating on the legacy of Steve Yzerman — it's one that business leaders should study and emulate.

"Stevie Y," as he's commonly known, became captain of the Original Six Detroit Red Wings at age 19 and was the team's captain for 20-plus years. Eventually, he retired as the longest-serving captain in the history of major North American sports.

The new, EU funded, Open Data Incubator for Europe (ODInE), which involves academics from Electronics and Computer Science at the University of Southampton, is today calling out to startups across the UK and Europe, to apply for a place on its new programme with the chance to secure up to €100k grant funding.

Image: http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk

National and local governments around the world often struggle to design and implement new policies to foster the creation of new firms. The rationale is that small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are engines of labor creation. For example, in the U.S., according to the Census Bureau, SMEs employ about half of the labor force. This share is typically higher in developing nations.

Innovating should be a priority for all businesses, yet too often, businesses approach innovation with a traditional mindset: they write a business plan, secure investment capital, and then spend months or years developing the idea without knowing if it will work.

This approach hardly worked in the past, but in today’s fast-paced business environment, its shortcomings are laid bare more quickly and brutally than ever before, with market share being snapped up by more agile competitors. Businesses have come to realise that, if they want to be successful, they need a new approach.

A man got the scare of his life when a curious killer whale swam up to his paddle board and had a nibble. The board fortunately didn't taste like food and the man did not have the appearance of a Sea World handler, so the whale let it slide.

Getting things done effectively in a startup requires total individual and team accountability. You can’t afford excuses and multiple people doing the same job. In my view, “taking responsibility” is the core element behind accountability. Many people hear responsibility as an obligation, but I hear it as “the ability to respond.”

In 2004, I moved to India to help found a new research lab for Microsoft. Based in Bangalore, it quickly became a hub for cutting-edge computer science. My own focus shifted with the move, and I began to explore applications of digital technologies for the socioeconomic growth of poor communities. India struggles to educate its billion-plus population, so during the five years that I was there, my team considered how computers, mobile phones, and other devices could aid learning.

America’s medical technology industry creates life-saving and life-enhancing treatments and cures that drive efficiencies and cost savings in the health care system, improve the quality of patient care, and generate high-quality jobs that contribute to economic growth. But today, the innovation ecosystem that supports medical technology development is severely stressed. The U.S. has historically been the world leader in medical technology, but our leadership is eroding. To respond to these challenges, AdvaMed has proposed a new Innovation Agenda.

Image: http://www.meddeviceonline.com

I'm never happy when we have to "take on" one of our SBIR agencies for what could be viewed as a deceitful practice to cover up their pitiful support of the SBIR/STTR programs. However, such appears to be the case as we look into the Office of the Secretary of Defense, Office of Small Business Programs (OSBP) as to their seriously degraded support for small businesses as well as underserving the DoD agency components trying to support the SBIR/STTR programs.

One the other hand we have positive news as many of you are looking forward to the HHS/NIH release of their Omnibus SBIR/STTR solicitation which will hit the streets in early June, and we look forward to the National SBIR/STTR meeting coming up June 15-17 in DC.  

The statistics are staggering: 1 in 2 women and 1 in 3 men will be diagnosed with cancer in their lifetime. This means that cancer will very likely affect each and every one of us at some point in our lives -- whether it is through our own personal diagnosis or through that of someone we love. In light of this, I'd like share eight things that we as survivors and potential targets of this disease need to know.

Are institutes of higher education adequately preparing graduates for the business world? As nearly 2 million students in the U.S.¹ get ready to turn their tassels, this question persists. And judging by the responses of nearly 8,000 millennials surveyed on behalf of Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Ltd. (Deloitte Global)² regarding the skills needed for work, the answer appears to be no.