We all know that one friend or coworker who is super-organized. The person who is punctual, finishes projects with time to spare, and always knows exactly where to find what they need when they need it.

Instead of hating that person, why not figure out how they do it?

"Organized people are not born; they’re built," says John Trosko, founder of OrganizingLA, a Los Angeles-based organizing firm. "The people who emerge as ‘organized’ use a variety of tools and methods to accomplish their goals and priorities in life."

Many of us pay a great deal of attention to being effective communicators. Still, one little word, firmly planted in the middle of many sentences, could be negating what we say and turning people off to our messages: But.

"It acts like a mental eraser and it often buries whatever you’ve said before it," says Colleyville, Texas communications consultant Dianna Booher, author of What More Can I Say: Why Communication Fails and What to Do About It. "It makes communication spiral down instead of spin up."

If you’re spending a lot of time sifting through resumes looking for the perfect candidate, you might be spinning your wheels.

Resumes provide hiring managers with two pieces of information—education and experience—but Tim Stevens, author of Fairness Is Overrated: And 51 Other Leadership Principles to Revolutionize Your Workplace, says those are two things a company should care about least.

The following answers are provided by Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC), an invite-only organization comprised of the world’s most promising young entrepreneurs. In partnership with Citi, YEC recently launched StartupCollective, a free virtual mentorship program that helps millions of entrepreneurs start and grow businesses.

1. Legal Measures

Too often, entrepreneurs wait too long to seek legal advice. I always advise entrepreneurs to seek legal advice very early in theacquisition process for two reasons: lawyers can help you frame very preliminary conversations in the most favorable light; and especially in the startup world, your lawyer might be repeat players with buyers or banks and can shed light on their approach/style. – Basha Rubin, Priori Legal

Walk down the halls of the Slush startup conference and it's hard not to notice that there's a lot of health tech coming out of Finland. With GE Healthcare already bumping up against startups at their co-working space at their Helsinki campus, they'll be battling for startup affection with Vertical Health Accelerator, a new Helsinki-based accelerator that has partnered with Samsung Electronics.

Image: http://www.arcticstartup.com

In the old days, every entrepreneur dreamed of easily taking their startup public, and making it big. Today the rate of startups going public (IPO – Initial Public Offering) is up from the dead zone, but is still less than half the rate of 15 years ago. Smart entrepreneurs now avoid this option like the plague, due to its unpredictability and the challenges of running a public company.

After five continents, 13 countries, and hundreds of cervezas, we found the world's 15 best beach towns, places where locals share their secret break, lunch comes straight from the sea, and you fantasize about staying for good. Whether you want an escape from winter's cold gloom or a hot summer break in the northern hemisphere, there's a beach town that's warm in every season. 

Throughout history, economic growth has been fueled by two factors: the expanding pool of workers and their rising productivity. From the perspective of rising prosperity, however, it is productivity that makes all the difference. Disparities in GDP per capita among countries—or between the past and the present in the same country—primarily reflect differences in labor productivity. That in turn is the result of production and operational factors, technological advances, and managerial skills. As managers improve efficiency, invest, and innovate to be competitive, their collective actions expand the global economy.

 Image: http://www.mckinsey.com

With its recent investment in Stack Exchange Inc., venture firm Andreessen Horowitz now counts three significant companies in its portfolio that serve the broad and active community of software developers.

Some 18 million programmers, together with another 18 million information technology professionals around the world are creating the technology that is transforming all kinds of industries, according to figures from International Data Corp.

Innovation as a cure for societal ills is overrated. This is a controversial claim, but one we encourage our colleagues in higher education to ponder as our institutions seek to solve some of the world’s most pressing social problems through research, teaching, and service. The emphasis on social innovation in higher education and the social sector is ascendant; however, this current collective obsession can be an obstacle to real social change and should not be treated as a substitute for it.

What is the role of a VC for entrepreneurs? I suppose it can be different for every founder and for different VCs but I’d like to offer you some context on what I think it is and it isn’t. I was recently contacted by an entrepreneur who was consider a few different business models for his company. I barely know the guy (or his markets) but he wanted me to weigh in one “which market I thought he should pursue.” I responded

Even though they're nearing retirement age, a large number of baby boomers are looking for an "encore" career as entrepreneurs.

Adults over the age of 50 comprise one of the fastest-growing groups of entrepreneurs in the United States, according to a new Gallup study. Among those people who don't currently own a business, baby boomers are twice as likely as millennials to say they plan to start a business in the next year.

Believing that more is always more is a dangerous assumption.

There’s a cost to complexity. Every time you commit to something new, you not only commit to doing the work itself, but also remembering to do the work, dealing with the administrative overhead, and to getting it all done in the time constraints involved.

Groundhog Day brings the idea of forecasting to the front and center.

Some say that forecasting is the art of saying what will happen, and then explaining why it didn’t. Others say there are two types of forecasts — lucky or wrong!

Either way, my forecast is that 2015 will see the launch and expansion of technology companies across the state.

Last week TechConnect-West Virginia and Industries of the Future-West Virginia sponsored Innovation and Entrepreneurship Day at the State Capitol to shine a light on activity underway in the innovation economy in the state.

Many people talk to me about the stress that email causes them. Often we think about email stress as caused by sheer quantity: many professionals receive 50–200 emails a day which can easily pile up and cause stress if they’re not efficiently handled.

But email itself is not the problem.  Email is just the communication tool we happen to currently use.

The growth of the U.S. economy relies on the protection of new ideas and investment in the creativity of inventors. The Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) plays a crucial role in setting American innovation policy. Every year, the USPTO reviews hundreds of thousands of applications for inventors, engineers, and others who seek intellectual property (IP) protection for their innovations.

On January 22, Governance Studies at Brookings hosted Michelle K. Lee, the Deputy Director of USPTO President Obama recently nominated to lead the office. Lee discussed efforts underway at the USPTO to continue building up an IP system that encourages and promotes innovation. Over the last few years, the USPTO has implemented a number of initiatives to improve the existing system like the America Invents Act, post grant proceedings, and the Patent Trial and Appeal Board. Deputy Director Lee highlighted several policies as priorities for the office.

Image: http://www.brookings.edu

(Monterrey, Mexico) High levels of entrepreneurial optimism, ambition and innovation are vital to advancing economies according to The Global Entrepreneurship Monitor 2014 Global Report which also found that entrepreneurship worldwide has recovered from The Great Recession.

African economies showed the highest ability to perceive and pursue entrepreneurial opportunities with little fear of failure. In contrast, European Union nations are less optimistic, see fewer opportunities and are more uncertain about their skills in acting entrepreneurially.

“Ambitious Entrepreneurship has a powerful impact on economic development through job creation and its incentive to innovate and build international marketplaces,” said Slavica Singer, GEM’s lead author from J.J. Strossmayer University, Osijek, Croatia.

The GEM report’s special topic, Youth and Entrepreneurship in Sub-Saharan Africa, also found that Africa’s boom in youth entrepreneurship is expanding globally. GEM’s full special topic report will be available this April.

U.S. Entrepreneurship Recovers

Entrepreneurship rates in the United States rose to nearly 14 percent in 2014 from a post-recession low of 7.6 percent in 2010. “We are highly optimistic because for the first time, more than half of American adults see good opportunities for starting businesses,” said lead U.S. researcher and Babson College Entrepreneurship Professor Donna Kelley. “Youth entrepreneurship is also growing. In 2014, 18 percent of 25-34 year-olds were starting or running new businesses compared to just 15 percent in 2013. This is good news because when young entrepreneurs build and practice the skills needed for entrepreneurship, they equip themselves with the capacity for pursuing opportunities throughout their careers.”

Any entrepreneur will tell you that startup life is not for the easily daunted. Rejection, product failures, and isolation are just a few of the tests that many entrepreneurs are put through on a routine basis. Add youth and inexperience to the list of things working against you—and you can see how a startup can seem like nothing but a harsh, uphill endeavor. Luckily, entrepreneurs tend to be more optimistic than other workers, a factor that keeps them pitching to prospects and looking for ways to prove their value.

Image: http://www.forbes.com/  - Photo Credit: Nguyen Vu Hung

If you’re a woman trying to raise venture capital, you might start to feel like you're living in a man’s world. Research shows women investors only make up 4.4% of the industry, which may be partly to explain why women-led businesses only get 4.2% of venture capital funding. But research also shows that male entrepreneurs are 40% more likely to get VC funding than female founders.

Image: Photo: via Vixxenn

A property developer, a retailer, an oil and gas firm and a marketing company: what do they have in common?

Over the last few years, they've all won the Saskatchewan category of Business Development Canada's annual young entrepreneur competition.

BDC, a federal Crown corporation with the job of encouraging and supporting economic development, is now taking applications for this year's competition. First prize gets $100,000; second prize is $25,000 worth of BDC consulting services.