Many people view the terms “boss” and “leader” as interchangeable -- but they are vastly different. To determine which one you are, I encourage you to honestly answer this question: Do you: a) see your team members as an aggravating necessity that you have to put up with in order to accomplish day-to-day activities and achieve goals? Or, do you: b) truly enjoy working with people on your team to meet your goals and deliverables?

Image: credit: Apple | Enhanced by Entrepreneur

Being able to work with others is an important part of being an entrepreneur.

In fact, business leaders, academics and researchers who study entrepreneurship recognize collaboration and information sharing as important as more obvious skills such as opportunity recognition and determination.

A few weeks ago, I wrote a personal rant about the pressures and stresses that I find myself drowning in because of all the important choices I have to make about the future of myself and my companies. I wish I could say that this type of breakdown happens only once in a blue moon. But the truth is, it happens quite often on the path to entrepreneurial success. Even after achieving success, the headache of making choices usually doesn’t disappear. It’s the price of being an entrepreneur that you have to live with.

LinkedIn and Google showed up Tuesday in front of Mountain View's city council with plans for a combined 4.1 million square feet of office space to accommodate their expanding workforce. But attached to their corporate blueprints came a stack of community benefits, and a key bargaining chip: housing. 

Nestled in between two of the country's most expensive housing markets, the city of Mountain View, California has seen not only extraordinary growth, but also the strain of Google's "appetite" (as one city council member called it) for real estate and the effect of tech wages on the affordability of housing.

Have you ever wondered if your city is one that’s friendly to small businesses, that attracts small businesses and has a thriving small business scene? Well, here is a list of the 25 Best Small Business Cities as determined by Biz2Credit’s third annual analysis of The Best Small Business Cities in America:

Image: http://smallbiztrends.com

Cooking can be a struggle, particularly when you’re tired after a long day working or studying; somehow cooking just doesn’t fit into our daily schedules anymore. The temptation to turn to unhealthy ready meals or takeaways can sometimes be all too much.

A study of 30,000 British households in 2013 showed that spending on frozen foods was up by 11%, and spending on chilled ready meals was up by 19%. Also, the report showed that the time families have to spend in the kitchen preparing meals is now almost half of what it was in the 1990s. Despite these figures, the kitchen still remains the heart of the home, for socialising rather than cooking it seems.

“Culture eats strategy for breakfast” warns a popular quote. Just like company culture isn’t a force to be reckoned with, the cultural differences across tech communities can be striking.

For anyone considering where to start or move your company, these takeaways come from deciding where to launch my telehealth startup, Well Connected Now, after sponsoring entrepreneurial community events like Tech in Motion as a Microsoft Product Marketing Manager and Tech Evangelist.

Every startup needs a “no assholes” policy – a commitment to fire (or not hire) anyone who is disruptive, acts like a diva, and clashes with the culture. You’d think this would be obvious, but it’s not – we make excuses for these people because they are often so good at what they do.

Care.com (along with many other startups) has an explicit “no assholes” policy, believing that their team should be made up of “plow horses” rather than “show horses.” Cindy Gallop of MakeLoveNotPorn hires people who are “great and nice.”

While we’ve seen a lot of coverage on Millennial entrepreneurs more broadly, we’ve seen much less on student entrepreneurs who are starting their entrepreneur journeys while at school. Two days ago, we revisited the story of Ameer Sami, a high school student who not only invented an energy-saving, home automation device, but started an entire company around his idea.

 

The European Innovation Scoreboards provide a comparative assessment of research and innovation performance in Europe. The scoreboards help countries and regions identify the areas they need to address. Innovation Union Scoreboard 2015 Sweden has confirmed its innovation leadership. It is followed by Denmark, Finland, and Germany as European Innovation Leaders. Compared to 2014, innovation performance has increased in 15 EU countries, while it declined in 13 others.

Tipsy Elves cofounder Nick Morton went through 10 years of higher education so that he could become a dental specialist.

So when he and his cofounder Evan Mendelsohn made a deal with "Shark Tank" investor Robert Herjavec and sales of the company's holiday sweaters starting taking off, Morton was confronted with a difficult decision.

Image: "Beyond the Tank"/ABC "Shark Tank" investor Robert Herjavec. 

Everyone loves to speculate on what will attract and retain millennial employees. Foosball? Free snacks? A new survey from tax and professional services firm EY reveals that it's not just weekly happy hours or Bring Your Dog to Work Day that keep 20- and 30-something workers happy. The majority wants the ability to work flexibly — without stigma and without being passed over for promotions. And they're prepared to make serious sacrifices for better work-life balance: 38% of American millennials say they would leave the country for better paid parental leave benefits. Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/millennials-want-better-parental-leave-2015-5#ixzz3Za8Qg3bS

U.S. laws over intellectual property give companies the incentive to invest billions in research and development of new products and services.

“Never let the facts get in the way of a good story.” The old saying, often attributed to Mark Twain, is as applicable today as in his time. And in the intellectual property arena, a “good story” has been going around recounting the death of American innovation at the hands of an outmoded and obstructive patent system. But, again to paraphrase Twain, rumors of innovation’s death have been greatly exaggerated. In fact, American innovation is thriving—and not in spite of patents but because of them.

Fitbit filed for an IPO Thursday and the numbers were pretty impressive. The fitness tracking company earned $38.5 million on revenue of $745 million last year. Revenue grew almost 10X in the past two years.

What’s more impressive is its staggering growth in paid active users and devices sold, as seen in the chart below by BI Intelligence. Last year, it saw 6.7 million paid active users (members of its premium $49.99/year package), while selling a total of 10.9 million devices. Both of those numbers are almost 10 times what they were three years ago.

Image: http://www.businessinsider.com

There’s been a lot of digital ink spilled around the various types of capital available to startups today. At NextView, for instance, one of our more popular posts centers on atypical seed rounds to know. Today, we wanted to share some basics of another source of capital: venture debt. What is it, and how should founders think about it?

saStudy after study shows that Antarctica isn't in great shape. Its ice shelves are disappearing and its ice sheets are collapsing, hastening swiftly rising sea levels. Sounds terrible.

But just in case you wanted a second opinion, a new study out of Princeton University takes a look at a decade's worth of satellite data. Their results, published in Earth and Planetary Science Letters, show that not only is Antarctica melting, it's melting faster than ever before.

Georgia lawmakers have approved a $40 billion FY16 state budget (HB 76), which is now awaiting the signature of Gov. Nathan Deal. The governor has line-item veto authority over the final document, but most appropriations related to innovation and economic development are consistent with the governor's proposed levels.

by Dr. Ellen Brandt

There have been several books, articles, and academic papers recently on the subject of The American Dream.

Most, we believe, have filtered the topic through one of two lenses of perspective which have prevailed in the politically chaotic landscape of the past couple of decades, sanctioned by an extraordinarily concentrated and narrow "Mainstream Media."

BY FAISAL HOQUE

We often speak of entrepreneurship within a tech or startup space, though surely the family running your neighborhood market is also entrepreneurial, and the individuals in the corporate setting practicing intrapreneurship are entrepreneurial as well.

While U.S. manufacturing is experiencing a renaissance of sorts, employers are facing a new challenge — a shortage of qualified job applicants. The skills gap cannot be bridged overnight. We must align education, economic development, workforce, and business agendas to develop the talent necessary for success in a global economy.