The end of the calendar year means a lot of things for small businesses. It's time to start thinking about what you want to achieve next year and work on your formal goal setting process. Your are probably in the midst of holiday shopping for your employees, vendors, clients and colleagues. And, of course, it's time to start closing out your books for this calendar year.

The year 2015 was a pivotal time when humanity turned more decisively toward building a thriving and sustainable world. On our largest shared challenge, climate change, most of the major hurdles to action — both imagined and real – started to crumble. And an unlikely group of new voices joined the fight. From the Pope to global CEOs to almost all the world’s political leaders, the most powerful people got on board.

One of the key rules in business is to develop performance measures to understand your progress and learn from successes and failures.  Most angel investors insist that the entrepreneurs they invest in have a vibrant set of metrics from the get-go.  Isn’t it funny that most of us angels don’t demand the same standards of ourselves? Why don’t more angels create metrics on their own investing?

The Office for Investment and Innovation, a division of the Small Business Administration (SBA), is a federal organization that receives little press, but I imagine that could soon change if my interview with its new leader Mark Walsh is any indication. The office, which holds a $4 billion reserve, will soon emphasize connections to seed-stage investors so as to push more money into potentially disruptive startups, among other things, Walsh told DC Inno. But that's just the beginning.

Scientists tackled many daunting challenges this year, from fighting climate change to brokering the Iran weapons deal. Here, Nature highlights the people, events and discoveries in science that made a difference in 2015.

Whether we’re conscious of it or not, every management decision is motivated by a desire to find universal answers to very specific questions. People who succeed in organizations tend to be pragmatic problem solvers. They have to be, because of the myriad challenges they face. How to grow the enterprise. How to get work done. How to find customers. How to be themselves in the workplace.

A few years ago James Manning, a Brit who runs a cleaning company, decided to get into the movie business.

The 50-year-old went online and bought a stake in cinema-technology startup Kinopto Ltd., which was selling shares via a website. But Kinopto soon folded and Mr. Manning lost his money. “It was always going to be a high-risk investment,” says Mr. Manning, who put several thousand dollars into the venture.

You graduated college, you got a job, and you moved to the big city. You're an adult now.

It's time your apartment reflected that.

There's a lot of angst brewing among startup types over Katie Benner's excellent story on Good Technology in the New York Times today.

Good was about 15 years old. In its most recent incarnation, Good specialized in software for managing mobile devices. It had a variety of owners over the years, but in the last few years it raised a lot of venture capital and it filed to go public in 2014.

Here are some common mistakes typically made in the first year of a business by most entrepreneurs:

Not doing adequate research: There is no dearth of ideas; the tough part is converting it into a viable business model though market research. It not only reveals the potential, but also the limitations of the idea.

You may know him as Santa, Saint Nick, or Kris Kringle. Whatever the moniker, the jolly man in red is undoubtedly one of the most recognized (and beloved) cultural icons of all time.

Share this on Facebook12 Tweet this on Twitter Share this on Google Plus Share this on LinkedIn13 Print this article Email this article Increase size From DevOps to Cloud computing, the speed at which the technology sphere is currently evolving is only going to increase in the coming year. It is important for agencies to accept this and welcome it into their daily work.

That's according to Joel Dolisy, chief information officer and chief technology officer for technology company SolarWinds. Dolisy's advice for federal agencies navigating the IT space in 2016? Embrace the change.

As we look back and try to make sense of all the new developments in the world of technology this year, it helps to start with a few notable numbers. Here are some crucial digits behind some of the most compelling technology-related storylines of 2015.

Hungarian artist Dudolf created the panda/snowman illustration that had half the Internet pulling their hair out in frustration. And now, Dudolf is back with a puzzle that might just stump the other half.

Kai Stinchcombe’s grandmother Ruth got swindled out of $40,000 of her savings through credit card scams.

Ruth, a retired schoolteacher who suffered from dementia, was preyed upon by telemarketers and salespeople in the last decade of her life. Stinchcombe inherited the job of calling up her grandmother's banks to try to retrieve some of the funds. After several years of this, Stinchcombe, a San Francisco-based serial entrepreneur, decided to set up a credit card company of his own, one geared toward senior citizens's needs, called True Link Financial.

You’ve made it this far, but there are still a couple more days of gatherings and get-togethers before January gets here in all its promise and austerity. Between now and then, you likely have family gatherings, reunions, and cocktail parties. And while that all seems merry and bright, very often these gatherings—coupled with holiday stress, family dynamics, and perhaps a few cocktails—end up tense and awkward.

What is a key relationship or turning point that helped you get to where you are today?

This is a great question. I suspect because it comes up so often in interviews, we tend to underplay the importance of the topic. We get familiar with the answer and over time, lose the tacit feel for exactly why we answered the question the way we did in the first place!

From mind-calming yoga classes to delicious homemade meals, gift ideas for everybody on your list

One minute it seems like the holidays will never get here and the next thing you know they’re right around the corner. But there’s no need to panic. If you procrastinated on your holiday shopping this year, check out this list of last-minute gift ideas that not only don’t require you to get up from your computer to purchase, but also that no one will know you bought on the fly.

The magic happens at this high-tech warehouse

At first, walking into Amazon’s new midtown Manhattan building feels just like entering any slick corporate office in the neighborhood. But pass the glowing marble-lined lobby and take the elevator to the fifth floor, and you suddenly find yourself surrounded by a bustling warehouse.

In the words of Pitbull, “Ask for money, get advice. Ask for advice, get money twice.” When you’re shopping for a VC, you might want to take Pitbull at least a little seriously, because he seems to know what he’s talking about. If you think VCs are just a source of money, you’re sorely mistaken.

Entrepreneurs looking only for money might get just that — and nothing else. Most startup founders fail to recognize that the best venture capitalists offer so much more.