Executives who see the world in stark contrasts miss the nuances of situations and are less able to compromise to meet common interests.

Joan, a senior executive, wasn’t the easiest person to deal with. Although she had many excellent qualities - she was creative, had a great capacity for work and was extremely knowledgeable about the industry - she also had the tendency to engage in drama and in doing so rapidly got on people’s nerves. Joan was rigid in her outlook, had angry outbursts, was manipulative and constantly criticised everything. She seemed to always be involved in some kind of vendetta, forcing people to choose sides. In Joan’s world there was no such thing as a middle ground, her thinking was exclusively black and white.

Every time we turn on the news, we hear another story of business failure. We understand how the economy is recovering, and it’s eating businesses for breakfast. Entrepreneurs look at those stories and shrug it out.

We can look around and see more opportunity than any time in history. The Internet alone has given access to 2.5 billion leads that are online every day. That’s not to say we’ll reach all of them, but the opportunity is mind-blogging.

You may be the head honcho at your company, and it might have even been your ideas that led to the establishment of the business, but this certainly doesn’t mean other people can’t come up with better ideas than you. In fact, they probably will.

Like almost all companies, you have the power to tap into one of the most inexpensive resources for innovative ideas — your employees.

Three years ago, Congress changed American patent law from a “first to discover” to a “first to file” system. Now, without waiting for these changes to be fully absorbed, some members of Congress are proposing additional changes that would impair the culture of innovation that makes America the place where someone is always trying to build a better mousetrap.

Young researcher Vitria Adisetiyo wants to study attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, or ADHD, and the effects and therapeutic limitations of prescribing psychostimulants drugs, such as Ritalin and Adderall.

To do so, she wants to employ an advanced MRI imaging method for brain scans of 20 healthy adolescent and young adult males, ages 14-25, who illicitly use the drugs for recreational or performance enhancement purposes.

Image: Donors Cure marketing director Courtney Wagoner (from left), co-founder and Vice President Joseph Helpern and Managing Director Tara Sokolowski talk about the nonprofit’s official launch in Helpern’s office. DAVID QUICK/STAFF

“If you can’t measure it, it doesn’t exist,” iconic entrepreneur Bill Gates has famously said.

But, when it comes to creating the conditions that allow entrepreneurs to thrive — that is, well-functioning entrepreneurial ecosystems — policymakers often wonder whether what they are seeking can be quantified.

Today I start a series of discussions around how policymakers can better measure the impact of new policies and programs on their entrepreneurship ecosystems.

Image: http://www.kauffman.org

Earning a Ph.D. in a STEM field is meant to be challenging, but data has shown it can be especially so for minority students. While universities have had some success in diversifying their STEM graduate ranks in recent years, completion rates for Ph.D. candidates who are African-American, Latino, Native American, or Alaska Native have lagged behind those of their white, Asian-American, and foreign counterparts.

Image: Natalie Battaglia -Samuel Attoh, dean of the Graduate School at Loyola U. Chicago, created dissertation boot camps for Ph.D. candidates and set aside grant funds specifically for students who are close to completing their degrees but who are running out of money.

Angel investors and venture capitalists are looking for startups with real products and a proven business model, ready to scale. Yet I still get too many business plans that clearly are looking for money to do research and development (R&D) on a new and unproven technology. If you need funding for these early stage activities, I have some suggestions on better strategies to follow.

Just when you thought math couldn't get any harder.

A TV presenter in Singapore recently brought up a math problem that has been driving the Internet crazy. SEE ALSO: In Defense of Math: 7 Reasons Numbers Rule

At first, the problem seems impossible to solve. But once you use some logic, the solution is actually rather simple. Rattle your brain — or phone a friend —before you look at the solution below the picture.

Image: http://mashable.com

In a tiny, windowless conference room at the R&D headquarters of Intel, the world's dominant microprocessor and semiconductor manufacturer, Mark Bohr, the company's director of process architecture and integration, is coolly explaining how Moore's law, as it is commonly understood, is dead—and has been for some time. This might seem surprising, given that Bohr is literally in the Moore's law business: his job is to figure out how to make Intel's current 14-nanometer-wide transistors twice as small within the decade. But behind his round-rimmed glasses, Bohr does not even blink: “You have to understand that the era of traditional transistor scaling, where you take the same basic structure and materials and make it smaller—that ended about 10 years ago.”

As the race for global innovation advantage accelerates, a growing number of countries are doing all they can to maximize innovation-based economic growth. In fact, at least 50 have now articulated national innovation strategies and have created special agencies or foundations to maximize the innovation output of their countries’ enterprises and organizations. This report assesses the roles these entities play and some of their successes to date.

"Silicon Valley is coming," JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon warned in his annual letter to shareholders.

Dimon says startups are coming for Wall Street, innovating and creating efficiency in areas that are important to companies like JPMorgan, particularly in the lending and payments space.

We’ve all heard how few women study science, technology, engineering and math and how under-represented they are in the STEM workforce.

A quick snapshot shows that, while girls and boys in elementary and high school do not significantly differ in their abilities in science and math, boys are more than three times likely to be interested in pursuing STEM majors.

Image: http://www.fastcompany.com

Many of you will know that Twitter unexpectedly cancelled it’s contract to allow DataSift to resell Twitter data to 3rd parties. I read the declarations by industry analysts on Twitter that this was “proof that you can’t build a business on somebody else’s platform” and perhaps DataSift should have known better. This misunderstands the situation so I want to clarify things a bit. DataSift was never built on a single platform and never desired or expected to be Twitter’s re-syndication provider as its sole business.

My partner and I launched Objective Logistics in New Bedford in 2009, which, in hindsight, maybe wasn’t the best time to start a company that develops management software for restaurants and retailers, then getting hit hard by the economic downturn.

But we made it through the recession, and today we’re growing. We moved to Boston in 2011 when we raised money from Atlas Venture, Google Ventures, and NextView.

Image: http://www.bostonglobe.com

For Americans living in both cities and the suburbs, the options for working close to home are getting slimmer.

The Brookings Institution, looking at U.S. Census Bureau data from 2000 to 2012 for the country’s largest 96 metropolitan areas, found that the number of jobs within a typical commuting distance for suburban residents dropped by 7 percent. For city residents, the drop was only 3 percent.

Image: Workers in the Atlanta metro area commute further to work than almost anywhere else in the United States. (David Kidd)

We spend a lot of time working with new companies. Throughout Tennessee’s statewide accelerator network and in our direct interactions, we’re talking with entrepreneurs who are at every stage of development, so that we can support them all along the way.

For the earliest visionaries, that means help with crafting a business plan, introductions to potential co-founders and pilot customers, or some space to set up shop. As these companies grow, our network of mentors and business partners works with them on everything from patents to sales strategies to how to attract and retain employees.

After more than a decade of private and public investments, the growth in Michigan’s venture capital industry has created a large demand for further investments to increase the available funds and support previously funded startups.

After more than a decade of private and public investments, the growth in Michigan’s venture capital industry has created a large demand for further investments to increase the available funds and support previously funded startups.

Image: http://mibiz.com

Most of us begin a new position with energy and a desire to impress. Our effort is high. Our passion is infectious. Our enthusiasm helps us to excel quickly.

But for some, work becomes mundane and repetitive. They lose some of their passion, and their work can begin to feel like a chore. Eventually some of those executives who had initially loved their careers enter the dimension we call the “day prison.” As they enter their workspace, they feel the metaphorical bars close around them in a zone where they are unmotivated, dissatisfied, and much less productive than they could be.

Image: https://hbr.org

When you’re a business owner, especially at a small business or startup, you get to know your employees extremely well. That’s obviously a good thing, because it allows you to become familiar with their strengths and weaknesses. But it also makes it incredibly tempting and easy for you to micromanage their work.