Sens. David Farnsworth (R-Chandler) and Steve Farley (D-Tucson) stand on the political spectrum about as far from each other as the spectrum stretches in Arizona. Today, they’ll be standing together, along with Arizona Corporation Commissioner Tom Forese (R) to start the process of changing Arizona law to make it easier to form small cap private equity funds in Arizona.

MINNEAPOLIS - The crowded field of crowdfunding is filled with many voices asking and begging for the most you can give online.

"How many people will roll down their window and give a dollar to the guy at the street corner and the next person will say go get a job! So I think that same kind of psychology is at work in this kind of giving," Kevin Sauter, an expert on social behavior, at the University of St. Thomas said.

The hottest hashtag in the higher-ed Twittersphere right now is #collegein5words, an admirable undertaking to boil down the college experience to just five words. Everybody’s getting in on the action, from the White House …

Think about a time you were weighing an important decision at work or considering a big expense such as a buying a house, making a hefty financial investment, or a starting a new business. Such decisions are inherently complex, and — no matter how much experience we have making them — working through the pros and cons of each choice can be overwhelming. Our emotional reactions to these choices may be useful in directing our attention and energy toward what we feel are the most important aspects of the decision. Yet intense emotions may lead us to make misguided decisions or outright disastrous ones.

Site Selection is pleased to present its seventh annual Global Best to Invest rankings for success in attracting capital investment projects in 2014. This year’s rankings feature a second set for each region that reflect per capita success using the same criteria used in the standard rankings. This way, smaller markets are recognized for the same degree of effectiveness in attracting investment as their larger counterparts.

Since it seems that 1776 can’t go a week without making news, they just announced an Innovation Opportunity Program that they are launching with General Assembly. DC’s Mayor Muriel Bowser along with representatives from TDF Foundation, THEARC, Capital One, MedStar Health, and Microsoft were also on hand for the announcement.

The goal of the program is to connect talented, low-income students from underserved neighborhoods with resources, skills, and support to prepare them for careers in technology and innovation.

Leaders who engage positively on employee social networks improve their firms’ communication effectiveness. But it’s no substitute for appearing in front of employees when issuing directives and giving bad news.

Keeping relationships with employees who leave is a small investment companies should be making. They should start by rethinking how they manage exits.

Peter (not his real name) is a salesperson.  He had four jobs in six years.  His salary has been multiplied by two and half times over the same period.  The way he sees it, employers come and go.  “We are like medieval knights.  We bring our own armoury and we work for whomever needs us.”  His true loyalty is not to his employers but to his network whose members will support him in times of need. 

If you think your apartment is the size of a closet, raise your hand.

We see you, San Francisco and Los Angeles. Since the median rental price for a studio or one-bedroom in the United States is $769, according to Apartment Guide, some high-demand cities can only offer meek square footage. But for others, like Portland, that gives you (or a dog!) lots of space to run around.

Image: http://mashable.com

When you are interviewing for a job at a startup, the final round will often involve a one-on-one with the CEO.

As companies grow, this may be a right of passage reserved exclusively for executive hires, but at DoubleDutch, I've made it a point to interview every candidate that we’ve extended an offer to.

With the fourth edition of the Innovation Prize for Africa (IPA) around the corner, I am eagerly waiting to meet the creators of the latest innovations that were shortlisted for the Award. I find myself preoccupied with a subject that both excites me and exasperates me in equal measures… building African innovation ecosystems.

Image: Jean Claude Bastos de Morais, Founder of African Innovation Foundation.

There is a shrine inside Hewlett-Packard’s headquarters in Palo Alto, in the heart of Silicon Valley. At one edge of HP’s research building, two interconnected rooms with worn midcentury furniture, vacant for decades, are carefully preserved. From these offices, William Hewlett and David Packard led HP’s engineers to invent breakthrough products, like the 40-pound, typewriter-size programmable calculator launched in 1968.

If you think the largest demographic in the entrepreneurial world is millennials, think again. Baby boomers are actually the most powerful entrepreneurial group, giving up retirement for Career Number Two (or three, four and so on.) The idea of retirement isn’t what it used to be, whether by need or by choice.

Perhaps sparked by the recession recovery, I’m seeing a new era of the entrepreneur, with startups springing up all around. Based on my own mentoring and investing experience, the best entrepreneurs are pragmatic problem solvers. They have an uncanny ability to find elegant, easy, and fast solutions to pain points in the marketplace, as well as their own challenges.

An executive stepping into a new role tends to have two top priorities: how best to allocate financial resources and how best to allocate human resources. And while that may seem like a logical way for new leaders to make their mark, Mindy Hall says that mind-set is problematic.

Hall, author of Leading with Intention: Every Moment Is a Choice, has spent more than 25 years working with executives and organizations on leadership and team development, so her views are rooted in extensive experience. Executives coming into a new role often focus intently on achieving immediate operational results, she told me in a recent interview, because tangible past performance is what got them the job.

Your next dinner plate could tell you to lay off those mashed potatoes.

Philadelphia-based startup Fitly has launched a new Kickstarter campaign for the SmartPlate, a plate that analyzes what you're about to eat.

The SmartPlate, which comes with three digital cameras and image recognition tech, identifies what's sitting on the surface and transmits that data, along with the weight, to a corresponding iOS or Android app.

Image: http://mashable.com

Recently I had the privilege of meeting with Mr. Wonderful, Kevin O'Leary, from Shark Tank. Shark Tank is the #1 show in America. For those of you who are not familiar with the show, it's where entrepreneurs come to pitch their business to a panel of investors to take them to the next level. Kevin O'Leary is one of those investors. Kevin is an extremely successful entrepreneur himself and he shared his success thoughts.

Image: http://www.democratandchronicle.com

Like so many other products of the UK education system, I went into business without any entrepreneurial experience or training. Nothing I learned during my schooling prepared me in any meaningful way for the realities of running a company. Nor did I have the natural genius of a Steve Jobs or a Richard Branson; the ability to say “screw it, let’s do it” and damn the consequences.

CNN)Big, loud and in-your-face, Lagos is a packed megacity where the streets are teeming with life and the buzz of innovation. Home to nearly 20 million people, Nigeria's economic nerve center constantly attracts big numbers of people pursuing fortunes and dreams.

For entrepreneurs here, starting and growing a business can be fairly tricky work. It can also be exhilarating and full of opportunities.

Once you have analyzed your employee’s perfor mance, record your feedback in a way that can be shared and saved. When preparing a formal written assessment, refer back to your company’s guidelines so you’re adhering to the appropriate format. If your company does not have a standard form, create one.

Your organization may require you to provide a general rating of the employee’s performance, indi vidual ratings of specific aspects of their performance, or a combination of ratings and qualitative informa tion. Follow the instructions given to you, but don’t be constrained by the format of the form.