There are many reasons to be an entrepreneur. Owning a business can be joyful or a pain in the you-know-what. Chances are you’ll experience both ends of the spectrum at times. It’s not easy to grow a business, and in frustration, entrepreneurs decide to quit.

Any successful entrepreneur or business leader will be able to share numerous stories of prior mistakes and missteps that paved the way for their success. The importance of mistakes can be so powerful that venture capitalist Chris Lynch says he prefers to invest in founders who have failed (and become stronger and wiser as a result).

Did you know that the way you stand, the position of your hands and even how you hold your head could be hurting your business? Many entrepreneurs inadvertently use body language poses that spell the opposite of success. If you’re not being taken as seriously as you’d like or landing the business you want, it may be time to take a close look at your nonverbal communication.

When it comes to crowdsourcing and open innovation, we only ever seem to hear success stories. To be sure, the statistics can be impressive: Dell, for example, claims its IdeaStorm community website has fielded nearly 24,000 ideas since its 2007 launch, more than 550 of which were deemed good enough to act upon. Numbers like these would seem to indicate that there’s a world of innovative ideas out there for just about any company to tap into.

Researchers at Babson and Baruch Colleges count 24 million American Entrepreneurs – among the highest level in the developed world; job creation and optimism rise; fear of failure declines Twenty-four million U.S. entrepreneurs, or 14 percent of the population, are invigorating the American economy according to the 2014 Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) U.S. Report issued today by Babson College and Baruch College. This is the highest rate ever recorded in the United States.

Job creation outlook rose eight percentage points from 2013, with 24 percent of U.S. entrepreneurs projecting to hire 20 or more people in the next five years. Optimism about entrepreneurship is stronger than ever as more than half the U.S. population (51 percent) reported seeing good opportunities for starting businesses.

Fear of failure, which measures one’s willingness to take risks in starting a business, decreased to 30 percent from a high of 32 percent in 2012.

“The results show a high level of current activity accompanied with high optimism about the future,” commented Babson College Professor of Entrepreneurship Donna Kelley, the GEM Report’s lead author. “Entrepreneurial growth depends on people who see opportunities and have intentions to get started. The greater optimism we see in the U.S. signals high support for entrepreneurs, and the increase in job ambitions clearly indicates the potential for entrepreneurship to make major contributions to the U.S. economy.”

On 27 August the third session in a series of Angel Investor Bootcamps leading up to the ABAN Investor Summit at DEMO Africa was hosted in Cape Town. The Bootcamps are organised by the African Business Angel Network (ABAN) in partnership with VC4Africa, Intercontinental Trust and the LIONS Africa Partnership. The Cape Town edition was hosted together with the Silicon Cape Initiative.

Image: http://ventureburn.com

The grand old restaurant Commander's Palace, in New Orleans, is hidden among multicolored mansions in the city's smartest neighborhood, not far from where Sandra Bullock owned a house.

To get in, you have to pass muster: no jeans, no shorts, nothing that would detract from the genteel luxury where the city's old guard drink scandalously cheap 25-cent martinis along with their turtle soup, gumbo and bread pudding. It's a place that, implicitly at least, is dedicated to one of the city's oldest society rituals: keeping up the illusion of wealth from the city's distant past as a fast-growing center of commerce.

Professors, administrators, and ed-tech vendors don’t always speak the same language when it comes to talking about experimental approaches to teaching and research. Terms like “flipped classroom” and “digital humanities” get thrown around a lot these days, but different people often mean different things by them. And some people still don’t know what they mean, despite their buzzword status.

Everybody hates passwords. Between coming up with them, remembering them, and finally resetting them when we sheepishly admit we can’t remember them, they’re a total pain.

But technology known as biometrics is slowly but surely replacing memorized passwords. With biometrics, your smartphone, computer, or even ATM could scan your fingerprint, eyes or entire face to recognize you’re who you say you are, granting you password-free access to your devices or bank accounts.

Jennifer is fresh out of high school and itching to backpack across Europe.

Amanda is a 30-year-old with cystic fibrosis who needs a double lung transplant.

John wants to have his book made into a movie.

Victims of fire, grieving widows, Little League teams headed for championships. Lots of people need to raise funds fast these days and lots of people are turning to the web to do it, hoping crowdfunding will answer their prayers. But even the most charitable among us can't give to everyone, so who gets the money?

The best way to study the subatomic particles that make up the most fundamental building blocks of our universe is, of course, to smash them into each other with as much energy as possible. And now physicists at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory say they’ve found a better way to do that.

Image: http://gizmodo.com

On the surface of a living cell at any given time, hundreds of tiny bubbles are popping into existence, surrounding and incorporating proteins, hormones, fats, and the occasional bacteria or virus. But until now the details of this activity were inferred – you couldn’t actually see it. The problem wasn’t just that the structures taking part in this bustling activity are too small, but that our bodies work on an invisibly fast time scale—important changes are taking place over fractions of a second.

Image: http://www.technologyreview.com

There’s more than one way to read these stories. Sure, the subjects are inspiring and creative people. But these are not merely personality profiles. They also illustrate the most important emerging technologies of the moment. In biomedicine, for example, we feature several people who are figuring out in detail how the brain works and how we might stave off mental disorders. Others are unearthing knowledge about cancer that might open new avenues for treatment. Meanwhile, as robotics and artificial intelligence make astonishing progress, innovators in those fields are showcased here. So are people who are cleverly taking advantage of the falling cost of sensors and bandwidth.

IT’S strange to think that a computing concept could last more than 50 years, but Moore’s Law is proving to be such a stalwart.In its simplest form, the law states that the processing power of computers will double every two years. It was first expounded by Gordon Moore (pic) – who else? – while he was still working at Fairchild Semiconductor, in an article in Electronics magazine in 1965.

As we approach the August bank holiday and a three-day weekend, it is worth reassessing the amount of time we devote to work. What if all weekends could last for three or even four days? What if the majority of the week could be given over to activities other than work? What if most of our time could be devoted to non-work activities of our own choosing?

Image: http://www.techcentral.co.za

You run your own business. How do you describe yourself to others when talking about what you do? Are you a small business owner? An entrepreneur? Or something else? And more importantly, is there really a difference between these terms?

Imagine you’re testing a new innovation to see if it can work for your business. You’ve been told by experts that there’s only a 20% chance that it’ll work in your situation. But, something inside tells you it might work. You say, hey, it’s worth a try. Let’s go ahead.

1. "Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things." - Peter F. Drucker

2. "If you don't understand that you work for your mislabeled 'subordinates,' then you know nothing of leadership. You know only tyranny." - Dee Hock

3. "A leader is best when people barely know he exists. When his work is done, his aim fulfilled, they will say 'we did it ourselves.'" - Lao Tzu

Today’s customers are much more in control of their buying decision, as they have more choices and more information than ever before. Almost instantly, via the Internet or on their smartphone in the store, they can find the lowest price alternative or their favorite features, without waiting for push marketing or listening to your best sales person.

Image: From Wikipedia