Why have you been so successful in reaching some of your goals, but not others? If you aren't sure, you are far from alone in your confusion.

It turns out that even brilliant, highly accomplished people are pretty lousy when it comes to understanding why they succeed or fail. The intuitive answer — that you are born predisposed to certain talents and lacking in others — is really just one small piece of the puzzle.

In fact, decades of research on achievement suggests that successful people reach their goals not simply because of who they are, but more often because of what they do.

In 2009, the Irish economy underwent one of the deepest recessions in the EU, with its economy shrinking by as much as 10%. Late in 2010, Ireland received an €85bn financial rescue package. Clearly, the winner of Ireland´s general elections held on Sunday (according to polls so far Fine Gael leader Enda Kenny) will have a lot on his shoulders. However, if the past is any indication, Ireland has the potential to resurge economically.

The country changed from a largely agricultural society in the early 70s into a modern, high-technology economy. By the final decade of the 20th century, Ireland had become one of Europe's economic success stories. Rapid entrepreneurial advancement helped the Irish make this turn. But “the Irish Miracle,” as it became known, was actually the product of purposeful reforms to create favourable conditions for entrepreneurs, including the privatization of state-owned companies, freer labor markets, lower tax rates and direct equity investment to encourage Irish people to set up their own businesses. The result: Ireland’s economy grew at a much faster pace than any continental counterpart over the next quarter century. By 2004, Ireland’s per capita income was only 10 percent below that of the United States.

The board game Monopoly was originally a round oilcloth 33 inches in diameter. The earliest ever version of the board game Monopoly has sold for almost $150,000 in the UK. The game is the only one of 5,000 made by Monopoly inventor Charles Darrow in 1933 to survive to present day.

Heating engineer Darrow drew and coloured in the playing surface using pen and ink and made the little hotels and houses from strips of pine wood moulding.

He also devised and wrote the rules of the game – a carbon typescript of which was included in the auctioned set.
Despite its round shape, the design and format is almost identical to the 275 million Monopoly games that have subsequently sold around the globe.

It has 28 properties, including four train stations and two utility companies, three chance and three community chest spaces, two tax squares, and spaces for go, free parking, jail and the dreaded ‘go to jail’.

Kevin Efrusy will one day go down in the history books as the venture capitalist smart enough to recognize Facebook for what it was--not just a childish diversion, but a potential business powerhouse. As a member of vaunted Silicon Valley firm Accel Partners, Efrusy has gone on to make other bets on social companies, and in 2009, he co-authored a white paper on the rise of the social web, stating that Facebook and Twitter were presaging “a fundamental disruption” in many other categories of Internet-based businesses.

Today, Efrusy, whom Fortune dubbed one of “8 Rising VC Stars,” calls the social web the “substrate” on which a slew of new businesses will be built--and which will prompt existing businesses to retool, just as legacy businesses retooled to take advantage of the Web. Fast Company caught up with Efrusy to find out more.

Advanced technology today can sometimes seem so far fetched it might sound like it is science fiction when it’s actually science fact. Like the concept of driving a car with your brain power for example.

Yes, you read that right, the technology to do just that already exists and it really does work.

German scientists have been developing “BrainDriver” which allows the driver to operate a car using only the mind to control it. If you want to turn left or right, go faster or slower or stop, all you have to do is think it. Imagine that!

BrainDriver is part of the AutoNOMOS project at the Freie Universität in Berlin and is being led by professor Raul Rojas.

The German scientists recently demonstrated the BrainDriver in action in a wide open space at a disused airport in Berlin and it really works, they have the video to prove it.

The NZ Venture Investment Fund has invested $123 million into 100 seed and start-up companies since its establishment in 2002. Combining private investment, those 100 companies have received $308 million of venture and angel investment capital.

Of the 100 companies:

79 are exporting.

29 have received investment from offshore investors.

23 emerged from either universities or Crown Research Institutes, and 19 have been part of business incubators.

Auckland is home to 53 of the companies, with Christchurch hosting 16.

9 have been sold and 7 have been written off or liquidated.

28 of the investments were into seed stage enterprises, 56 were into start-up companies, 15 into early expansion companies, and 1 company at the expansion stage.

NZVIF chief executive Franceska Banga said that it is pleasing to have partnered with the private sector in providing over $300 million of investment capital to promising young technology companies, but considerable work is required to establish a vibrant and sustainable venture capital industry.

When it comes to being healthy and living a vibrant and energy filled life, sleep seems to be one of the most elusive aspects to conquer. Certainly we know that getting a good night’s sleep is important - crucial, even, to good health. But it’s not as simple as just deciding that you are now going to start sleeping better. At least that’s how it often seems.

Want to eat healthier or with more variety? All it takes is some planning and follow-through. Want to exercise more? It’s just a matter of making time for even 10 minutes a day, and scheduling it in.

Good thing nobody takes movies seriously – well, besides studio executives, SAG, the Oscars Selection Committee, tens of thousands of employees who make their living in the industry, and the millions of shareholders who invest in studios’ stock (and even they couldn’t take “Yogi Bear” seriously).

Of course, “serious” isn’t what all movies are about. For every “Gone With The Wind” there are at least ten in the “Fast Times at Ridgemont High” and “Hangover” genre. And for every depressing frame of “Sophie’s Choice” there are 100 inspiring scenes like those from “Rocky” or “Field of Dreams”.

Millions of dollars have been raised for projects ranging from films to world records on crowd funding platforms such as Indiegogo and Kickstarter. We wanted to discuss this phenomenon, so during Social Media Week, here in San Francisco we hosted a panel on how to use social media to crowd fund an idea. You can read Read, Write Web’s great write-up on the panel here, but here is the video of the session recorded in full.

Tech Coast Angels (TCA), the nation's largest angel investment network, today announced it funded 31 investments, including 12 new deals and 19 follow-on investments in a broad range of start-up businesses, demonstrating its angel investment leadership. TCA raised over $40 million of total investment for its entrepreneurial companies, including over $6 million through direct TCA investment and approximately $33.9 million through other sources of venture and angel capital. The total number of investments is up significantly from 2009 when 24 deals were completed. In addition, 2010 marked a year of profitable exits for TCA portfolio companies, including an IPO for Green Dot Corporation that yielded over 100x return for early investors, the acquisition of Language Weaver Inc. by SDL for $42.5 million, and an IPO for Trius Therapeutics.

"This past year was a dynamic time in our history. Coming out of an economic recession, we turned the tide and invested in more innovative, game-changing entrepreneurial companies and experienced several profitable exits. This is the result of our commitment to making the angel funding process faster, easier and more accessible to entrepreneurs to generate more investment. We've streamlined the process and added new events and opportunities for entrepreneurs to connect with our members," said Mike Napoli, Chairman, Tech Coast Angels. "The entrepreneurial community in Southern California is growing dramatically and Tech Coast Angels is committed to identifying the brightest, most innovative new companies and fostering their growth through both capital investment and mentoring leadership. Already, 2011 is shaping up to continue on this upward trend."

Electric bicycles are almost looking like they might make it to everyday markets instead of just being science fair projects or proof of concept only. The Shadow eBike has solved a few of the nagging features that have made other varieties less than realistically usable. The eBike encloses all of its dynamo, battery and electronics within the closed shell front wheel. The only exposed components are the controls mounted on the handlebars. These simple levers control breaking and speed wirelessly, using 2.4GHz RF signals. No dangling wires and no easy to strip parts accessible for damage or stealing. A full battery charge takes only around 5 hours.

It's a dirty little secret that every year companies waste billions of dollars building products that never get to market. In most large consumer product companies, only about one in three products that are developed ever gets launched. Companies routinely spend $5 million to $10 million or more per product, keeping alive ideas that have no market potential.

Procter & Gamble (PG), for example, spent more than $500 million developing and building a manufacturing plant for Olestra, a new fat substitute designed to help people lose weight. Only after P&G made these investments did it test the product and discover that there wasn't a meaningful market for Olestra. In 2002, P&G sold its Olestra plant to Twin Rivers Technology at a substantial loss.

Scores of angels are descending on India’s booming entrepreneurial sector as risk capital for very early stage firms emerges as a profitable investment category.

In Mumbai, early stage investment firm Seedfund has set up Seed Farm, a dedicated facility to incubate business ideas that will be funded by a sub-$7-million corpus. Sasha Mirchandani, one among India’s successful angel investors and founder of the Mumbai Angels network, is setting up Kae Capital, a seed fund that will help germinate high-risk high-reward business ideas.

Although the region is radically different today than the landscape that greeted Andrew Carnegie and George Westinghouse in the 19th century or Jonas Salk in the 20th century, the same synergy that worked then drives job creation today, experts say.

Indeed, many of today's innovators can trace their roots to the universities, companies and research institutes that those early innovators left behind.

"We have one of the most vibrant innovation systems anywhere in the country," said Richard Lunak, CEO of Innovation Works, a Pittsburgh nonprofit that provides early-stage seed money investments and business resources to technical start-up companies.

Natalie Sweeney is one of those people who does more in the standard day than most. (I get accused of that too, and believe me, it’s often an accusation, not a compliment, as if I have some magic time machine in my middle desk drawer.)

People call it ‘time management’, as if time doesn’t have any qualities that one might consider before trying to push it around or demanding it move in the direction that satisfies your momentary desire.

Natalie specializes in getting people ‘unstuck’. I like that idea better than trying to turn the tides.

If you are an entrepreneur starting a business for the first time, I recommend that you find a product concept that is already accepted and improve on it, rather than tackling that ultimate disruptive technology. Notice that I’m not suggesting that you steal someone else’s idea, but simply limit your risk by adding innovation to a proven entity.

Evidence of success using this approach is all around us. Look how the Japanese entered the auto industry, or how McDonalds imitated White Castle, or how Wal-Mart “perfected” the low-price high-volume approach. Once you have experience in running a successful startup this way, you may decide that the disruptive technology of your dreams was a bad idea in the first place.

CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Why Cleveland?

It's a question local economic development officials have been asked -- and answered -- a lot in the days following President Barack Obama's recent visit to Cleveland with top Cabinet members.

Ray Leach, chief executive of the nonprofit JumpStart Inc., said he has fielded dozens of calls from investors, national foundations and the national media since Obama held the first of several of his "Winning the Future Forums on Small Business" at Cleveland State University on Tuesday.

To me, one thing seems pretty clear: the changes wrought over the coming 10 years by mobile devices are going to be even more far-reaching than those we’ve seen over the past 20 years from desktop and laptop PCs. The shifts in the ways we communicate, learn, shop, travel, and do business might not be as starkly noticeable as the last time around, since the Internet, which was insignificant before the PC era, is now an important constant tying together PCs and mobile devices. Even so, we’re talking about order-of-magnitude increases in the number of people affected, the new capabilities afforded, and the amount of money to be made.

To grapple with those changes and their implications, Xconomy pauses every spring for a half-day conference on mobile technology. The third edition, Mobile Madness 2011, is coming up on March 9. I’ll be emceeing much of the program, and as part of my prep work I started a two-part column last week on seven of the key unanswered questions about where the changes will be most dramatic and about the kinds of opportunities that are being created for mobile innovators and entrepreneurs. Today it’s time for Part 2.