CEOs like to say that their employees are the business, but a healthy business actually adds up to more than the sum of the skills and talents of each individual it hires. Underlying the success (or failure) of the business is the culture that determines how the people in the team interact with each other, clients, and other stakeholders, as well as how they behave and perform in the workplace.

Whether the leadership team tries to actively shape the culture or not, each organisation develops a set of values, beliefs, attitudes and behaviours shared among most people in its extended workforce. Culture isn’t synonymous with the rules, policies, values, vision statements and procedures in your employee handbook and contracts, but it will be influenced by them.

Venture capitalist Boris Wertz got the investing bug as a teenager growing up in Germany when he entered the local bank’s stock-picking contest. He didn’t make much virtual money, but the wins and losses were intriguing enough for him to start following the stock listings in the local newspaper.

After earning degrees in business and logistics at the WHU – Otto Beisheim School of Management, Mr. Wertz decided to skip the corporate world and pursue entrepreneurship. In 1999, he started his first business: JustBooks, an online marketplace for used and out-of-print books. It was bought by Victoria-based AbeBooks two years later. Mr. Wertz and his co-founder Hannes Blum stayed on and moved to British Columbia from Germany to run it. In 2008, they sold it to Amazon. Mr. Wertz used the proceeds to become a full-time investor. In 2012, he started Version One Ventures, an early-stage venture capital fund that invests in technology startups across North America. He spoke to the Globe recently about the difference between being an investor and an entrepreneur:

We live in exciting times of disruptive change, with innovations that are a mix of digital and physical, global and local. Leading innovators don’t just make things possible but profitable – and change the game in an exponential manner for organisations and entire industries. “Gamechangers are disruptive and innovative, startups and corporate, in every sector and region, reshaping our world,” begins bestselling author Peter Fisk in his new book, Gamechangers: Are you ready to change the world? He heads the company GeniusWorks, and his earlier books include Creative Genius, Customer Genius and People, Planet, Profit.

Image: http://yourstory.com

Just as writers need editors, software developers need testers to ensure their applications are bug-free and work as they should. This applies whether applications are bought off the shelf or developed in-house.

Not finding a potentially damaging software glitch is what keeps IT managers awake at night, mainly because existing testing systems are not as efficient as they could be, says Praveen Madire, founder of independent software testing company, Test Triangle. It is this gap in efficiency that Madire’s company is addressing through its innovative Test Outsourcing Dashboard (TOD) platform launched last June.

Image: Praveen Madire: “There are other testing companies out there, but none of them have a smart platform like TOD”  - http://www.irishtimes.com

The United States spends over $130 billion each year on research and development (R&D), for everything from understanding disease to increasing cybersecurity. In addition to improving health, safety and quality of life, that investment can provide significant economic benefit from results that become commercial products.

But making that transition from “lab to market” is not easy. Often at federal agencies, these efforts are mandated, but not funded. In fiscal year 2015, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) received a rare opportunity to improve efforts to move the results of federal R&D from the lab to the market with $6 million in appropriated funds.

Everyone loves the backup quarterback because they’ve never played a down. But once those backups play, the sports analogy goes, and they are almost always worse than the starter.

Are digital health VCs the backup quarterbacks of healthcare investing? Rightfully, there’s a lot of excitement about corporate venture’s increasing prominence in healthcare. But don’t get overexcited.

From the junior physician attempting to start a pilot study to the seasoned researcher in the final years of an academic grant, the harsh reality of medical research funding constantly looms. Young researchers have faced the worst funding in half a century. The competition for public research grants has intensified to the point where less than 15% of proposals obtain funding. The $1.55 billion budget cut to the National Institute of Health (NIH) in 2013 alone resulted in an estimated 640 fewer research studies receiving funding. Researchers are now encouraged to prepare for grant applications years in advance and to expect several rounds of rejection before a project may receive funding. When a project does finally succeed in obtaining a grant, the amount may be less than the proposed budget, resulting in study modifications that may not be able to answer the original question.

A few years ago an enterprising programmer dug through Kickstarter’s data to figure out how many failed projects there really were. Thanks to a trick in the coding, however, none showed up. This system, which was described as an effort to bring the best projects to the fore, worked well for Kickstarter when it was small and the projects were usually tiny. Now, however, the failures are big and the potential for backer disaster is only getting bigger.

Where to relocate, where to relocate? And where will you see steady pay increases? As part of our What People Earn series, we recently dug into our meaty database to find the 20 worst cities for buying power. This time around, let's play nice: We're looking at the top 30 cities that saw the best pay growth.

As University City continues to grow its reputation as a destination for up-and-coming entrepreneurs, Drexel University announced two initiatives on Thursday that will amp up its support of start-ups.

The university is starting a $10 million seed fund for Drexel-affiliated entrepreneurs, with half the money coming from Ben Franklin Technology Partners. On top of that, it’s partnering with Ben Franklin and another major venture capital firm to bolster services at the school’s Innovation Center.

Image: The Drexel Dragon on Drexel University's campus in Philadelphia.  - THOM CARROLL/FOR PHILLYVOICE

A recent report from the National Institute of Standards and Technology on the technology transfer activities of federal laboratories reveals some encouraging statistics. From fiscal 2009 to fiscal 2013, federal invention disclosures increased 19 percent, patenting applications increased 20 percent and patents issued increased by 42 percent, according to the report (pdf).

Seven years ago, I began discussing an idea for a book with Rachel Connelly, a labor economist, on the topic of work-family balance in academia. Our conversation predated Sheryl Sandberg’s spirited admonition for women to “lean in,” and also came before Anne-Marie Slaughter published her now-famous article about “Why Women Still Can’t Have It All” in The Atlantic.

After 20 years of regulatory scrutiny and political wrangling, the Food and Drug Administration finally approved a genetically modified salmon, one scientists say delivers large environmental benefits over existing farmed salmon.

Ironically, the salmon, known as AquAdvantage, was hotly opposed by environmental groups.

Image: (Photo: AquaBounty Technologies)

The entrepreneurial world has always been about challenging the status quo and questioning conventional wisdom in search of new and better ways of doing things. That’s what gave rise, in one way or another, to every great American company. After all, if you’re just going to follow the pack and do what everyone else is doing, you may as well just go out and get a job working for someone else.

"Bootstrapped” is code word for “dirt poor.” But, since ”bootstrapping” sounds sexier, that’s what entrepreneurs call it.

Bootstrapping is the process of launching a business using only your existing resources.

In other words, nothing.

Radical growth might call for radical action in the beginning. You will have to do some crazy things in order to pull this off.

Everyone wants to be an entrepreneur, but do you really have what it takes?

In this next installment of AskJZ, Zimmerman Advertising founder Jordan Zimmerman discusses what you need to be a successful entrepreneur. Sure there are a lot of esoteric qualities you should possess – commitment, perseverance, open-mindedness. But more importantly, do you have a viable idea for your business? And have you tested it? 

The hardest thing about realizing a dream is getting there. As a female entrepreneur, you know how to dream. But maintaining your drive through the finish line can take monumental tenacity.

Elsie Escobar is no stranger to the entrepreneurial dream. After landing one of three spots at the prestigious National Theater Conservatory at the Denver Center Theater Company, Escobar earned her masters of fine arts convinced of her future in theater. But after supporting herself for 10 years, Escobar decided to blend her interests in yoga and storytelling into an emerging art form -- podcasting.

Over the years, Draper Fisher Jurvetson, the 30-year-old Silicon Valley venture firm, famously created a partner network of independent but DFJ-branded venture firms around the world. It was one of the first and only venture firms that have attempted such a program, in fact.

Then, two years ago, it said it was shifting gears. The branding was growing confusing for the firms’ separate investors, it said. It also argued that its affiliates were maturing and ready to operate under their own names.

Image: http://techcrunch.com/

This week, PricewaterhouseCoopers came out with a report on remaking primary care for what the consulting form called “the New Health Economy.” We would have covered it straight up on Wednesday, but a certain provider-focused health IT reporter at MedCity News was busy at the American Medical Informatics Association conference.

Since it’s not breaking news anymore, we have to take a different angle. A major component of the future of primary care, according to PwC, will be digital health.

With millennials making their way through the leadership ranks, a growing number find themselves in the predicament of managing employees who have been in the field since they were in diapers.

Millennial media executive Nicole Laraurri manages 65 full-time employees at The EGC Group, a digital marketing agency. Many of her staff have more years of service than she does. Facing down skepticism among older employees that she has the right stuff to do the job simply because of her age, Laraurri offers up a few of her tips for millennial managers to gain respect and cooperation from a more seasoned workforce.