The ability to think critically is of the utmost importance when you’re running a business or an organization. Although it's rarely given the attention it deserves, the food choices that you make every day affect your critical thinking skills, and determine whether you can make important decisions when it really counts.

There’s no magic pill that will make you a great critical thinker. However, you can make some easy diet changes that can improve your brain health and optimize your ability to think critically.

Maryland could establish a $5 million fund to put toward tax credits for individuals and firms who invest in startup companies. Startup and investor advocates, including the Greater Baltimore Committee, have said they will push for the state to create a new tax credit specifically for angel investors who give money to companies at their earliest stages, when they often struggle to bring in needed cash. A bill introduced by Baltimore City Democrat Sen. Catherine Pugh earlier this month details how the tax credit would work and who could qualify as an investor and startup recipient.

One question that social scientists and economists have long puzzled over is how corruption arises in different cultures and why it is more prevalent in some countries than others. But it has always been difficult to find correlations between corruption and other measures of economic or social activity.

Michal Paulus and Ladislav Kristoufek at Charles University in Prague, Czech Republic, have for the first time found a correlation between the perception of corruption in different countries and their economic development.

Image: http://www.technologyreview.com

To be successful, entrepreneurs have to stay on top of their mental game. Every day gives each entrepreneur to take a step towards success, but not if they let negative attitudes creep in.

It’s crucial that entrepreneurs and top-performers seek to cultivate the attitudes that will push them closer to their goals. In my entrepreneurial experiences, these are the four attitudes that I’ve learned will destroy business, a career, or a dream.

So many people in the world have jobs that are undervalued: teachers, nurses, stay-at-home moms and dads.

But not until recently did I really appreciate how undervalued is the entrepreneur's spouse, boyfriend, girlfriend or partner. Entrepreneurship is absolutely impossible without help, love and support. 

For most of the postwar era, the United States has enjoyed superior leadership in innovation, whether measured by student skills, research and development spending, patents, or high-technology industry output. As Western European economies caught up with the global innovation frontier and Japan followed, this superiority began to erode. The U.S.-led IT revolution of the 1990s seemed to slow down this innovation convergence, but only until the bubble burt in the early 2000s.

MassChallenge, a leading startup accelerator, has officially opened applications for its first annual programme in London, MassChallenge UK.

Hundreds of entrepreneurs, business leaders and government officials gathered to celebrate the programme’s launch at the programmes’ new home at Tobacco Dock in East London.

Image: http://www.techworld.com

Legislators have high hopes for a crowdfunding bill currently making its way through the General Assembly. Currently being reviewed by the committee on commerce and job development, House Bill 14 is the latest push by state representatives to open the investment window in North Carolina.

Some days we just feel off, or overwhelmed. These negative feelings can affect our work and the work of those around us. Sometimes it’s best to just take a minute to turn lemons into lemonade. Here are a few quick tricks to turn a bad business day into a good one when your day seems like it’s going south.

Innovation is sweeping the world of higher education, but not all faculty members are embracing it in their classrooms.

A new survey from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has found that 40 percent of the professors surveyed use or are interested in using innovative techniques and technologies. But of that 40 percent, only half—or 20 percent of the overall survey sample—have actually used them.

A new review argues that there was no evidence to support the low-fat message that has been the mantra for good health since the 1970s

A little fat may not be harmful, while too much of it can be unhealthy, and even fatal. But in the latest review of studies that investigated the link between dietary fat and causes of death, researchers say the guidelines got it all wrong. In fact, recommendations to reduce the amount of fat we eat every day should never have been made.

If you start a crowdfunding campaign, don’t be surprised when you start getting solicited by email from people who want to help you crowdfund successfully. Are these potential donors? Fans of your project who want to help you spread the word because they love what you are doing? Writers or bloggers who could take your campaign to viral status through their vast readership?

An entrepreneur is literally “one who creates a new business.” The best new businesses are ones that have never been done before, so mastering creativity and recognizing creativity are key skills and mind-sets. But how does one recognize and nurture creativity in a person or team?

SAN MATEO, CA--(Marketwired - Feb 11, 2015) - Emergence Capital Partners (http://www.emcap.com), the leading venture capital firm focused on enterprise cloud companies, announced that it has closed its fourth fund, Emergence Capital Partners IV. The fund was immediately oversubscribed and ultimately capped at $335 million, a step-up from Emergence Capital's Fund III raised in 2012. Emergence now has nearly $1 billion under management across four funds.

Limited partners in the fund include a select group of highly respected university endowments, national foundations and pension funds that have a deep history of successful investing in venture capital. Emergence Capital is pleased to include a few new premier university endowments and foundations in ECP IV, along with 100% return of its current institutional investors.

Forming a board...  It's what the best performing companies do once they take on outside investors.  Board members can provide useful feedback, help to focus the founding team, and provide a network of contacts.  

Unfortunately, many companies don't get financing--because they don't get any of the above.  They don't get the feedback they need, especially around priorities.

Sometimes, the founders lack focus to the point where they don't even get to the point of company formation.  They get caught in a sea of too many problems, too many opportunities, without a good idea of what to do first to coalese their ideas into a single vision.  

You can’t be a good leader without self-awareness.

It lies at the root of strong character, giving us the ability to lead with a sense of purpose, authenticity, openness, and trust. It explains our successes and our failures. And by giving us a better understanding of who we are, self-awareness lets us better understand what we need most from other people, to complement our own deficiencies in leadership.

My neck is killing me. Isn’t yours? My shoulder hurts, too. Not always the same one, but always in the morning. Herniated disks, spinal stenosis, bone spurs: It’s a mess in there. As for the shoulders, one gave out with a horrible popping noise in a yoga class a few years ago; the cause of the other’s decay remains a (very dull) mystery.

A great idea can lead to a successful business. But it often takes a lot more than that. And it definitely takes more than a good idea to convince investors to take a chance on you.

No matter how great your idea is, you still need a comprehensive and well-written business plan to get investors on your side. Startup mentor and angel investor Martin Zwilling recently explained the importance of a good business plan in a post for Entrepreneur.

Remember when you were a child and wanting to be this or that when you grew up? It may have been a fireman or a scientist or (fill in your own blank here). What often happens when we do grow up is that those initial career choices are altered depending on changes in interests, influence of parents, and even life’s circumstances. With so many jobs to choose from, it can be challenging to know which path to pick. What job provides the best pay? Which one is the most stressful? How much competition is there? Or even which career will offer the most satisfaction?

Fourteen years ago, during the darkest moments of the “stem-cell wars” pitting American scientists against the White House of George W. Bush, one group of advocates could be counted on to urge research using cells from human embryos: parents of children with type 1 diabetes. Motivated by scientists who told them these cells would lead to amazing cures, they spent millions on TV ads, lobbying, and countless phone calls to Congress.+