A business plan is almost essential for entrepreneurs who are seeking to raise money to help fund their companies. In fact, business plans are so closely tied to fundraising that many entrepreneurs look at them as suited only for presenting to investors and overlook the management benefits of planning.

San Francisco’s “Twitter Town” is a four-block stretch along Market Street from Seventh to 11th streets that is now considered ground zero for the “digerati” venture capital crowd. Trendy restaurants, murals on the walls and lots of coffee shops power millennial tech workers’ 24-hours-a-day hum. But Twitter Town is also reportedly one of the filthiest sectors of the town.

Image: http://www.breitbart.com

Canada is set to announce a new program that would enable some prospective immigrants to acquire residency visas by investing at least 1 million Canadian dollars ($890,000) in a venture-capital fund, a scheme some other western countries have used to attract wealthy, mainly Chinese, newcomers.

Image: Free Digital Photos

The city of Xi’an, Shaanxi province has set up an investment fund of around 100 million yuan ($16.3 million) this past March, to help high-tech start-ups deal with their financing problems, with 10 enterprises qualifying for nearly 30 million yuan this November.

Around the world, cities are refocusing on supporting — not leading — startup community building initiatives. They’re realizing that if you want more elite players, you need a deep farm system led by entrepreneurs.

Oak Ridge-based Tech 2020 is searching for an Interim Executive Director to lead a reassessment of its operations, structure and business model ahead of hiring a permanent top executive.

“We need the right person with proven change management and process leadership skills to consult with our key stakeholders and refine a sustainable business model for the future,” said Teri Brahams, Chair-elect of Tech 2020, who is leading the search process.

It's 2019, and Rosa steps into the law firm she worked at five years ago as a paralegal. It's a far smaller company than the one she remembers—just a few partners and a small amount of support staff.

Back then, she saw the writing on the wall: Her employer had started using computer programs to automate the grinding work of reviewing documents she and her colleagues had been hired to do.

Image: https://www.flickr.com/photos/22937701@N00/3161505670

SUMMERLAND KEY, Fla. — David Vaughan plunges his right arm down to his elbow into one of nine elevated tanks where thousands of tiny colonies of coral are growing at an astonishing rate in shaded seclusion next to the Mote Tropical Research Laboratory.

“Now this is the exciting part. You ready for this?” he asks, straining to be heard over the relentless hiss of filtered saltwater squirting from a maze of pipes and plastic tubing into the shallow fiberglass tank, the size of a dining-room table.

Image: A mountainous star coral colony that was grown from an inch-square fragment cut a year earlier off of a parent colony. Credit Richard Morin

The world's countries need to add a collective 600 million new jobs in the next 15 years to maintain current employment rates, according to a 2013 World Bank report. That means getting entrepreneurship right is more important than ever. In America alone, small companies create 64% of new private-sector jobs, the U.S. Small Business Administration reports, and a study from the National Bureau of Economic Research found that 20% of gross job creation comes from startups.

If you’re a manager, you’re no doubt more than familiar with the sweaty palms and butterflies that come with having to deliver bad news. From a poor performance review to firing an employee, the most stressful conversations are those where you’re sure tears or anger will ensue.

Graduation is a time for reflection. After four years of Wharton classes and three years at the Wharton Small Business Development Center working with dozens of businesses, I’ve thought back on my time in business school to try to articulate a few fundamental lessons about “business” that I’ve experienced through the years. I hope they might be useful to both current and aspiring entrepreneurs:

1) Develop the infrastructure to collect data. Not only does this make you more disciplined about how you organize your business, it is nearly impossible to consistently make good decisions without data.

Image: Free Digital Photos

Partnering with another company can be great for both parties involved—or it can end in disaster. Collaboration can be tempting for a quick sales fix, but do your due diligence first.

To learn more, we polled eight members of Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC) on the questions you should ask before saying yes to collaboration, and the red flags to look out for during early discussions. Their best answers are below.

Qatar Business Incubation Centre (QBIC) CEO, Aysha Al Mudakha, talks in an exclusive interview about the benefits of operating an SME and the programs available to entrepreneurs.

What are the benefits of operating an SME here in Qatar, and where do you perhaps see opportunities for improved regulation?

The benefit of operating an SME in Qatar is that there is a lot of support available to help you get started and grow in the early “make or break” stages of a business. Qatar Business Incubation Centre (QBIC) supports entrepreneurs through its flagship LeanStartup Program turning innovative ideas into startup businesses and Lean Scaleup Program turning existing young businesses into scalable companies. QBIC alone doesn’t empower SMEs in Qatar, as we have the support of Qatar Development Bank and the Social Development Center, and QBIC in turn supports these organisations.

Image: Aysha Al Mudakha, CEO of Qatar Business Incubation Centre (QBIC) 

“Mankind are so much the same, in all times and places, that history informs us of nothing new or strange in this particular. Its chief use is only to discover the constant and universal principles of human nature.” - David Hume

If there is an industry that is in desperate need of innovation and innovative leadership, look no further than the healthcare field. From functional payment systems, to new technologies, to ethics, to distribution and delivery, virtually every feature of the healthcare system needs substantial change and improvement.   Nowhere is this more dramatically apparent than in the arena of payment systems and delivery.

In my first #BeenThere post I gave you a real time look at the most difficult decision I’ve had to make as a Startup CEO. I shared it while it was very fresh — so much so that we were still experiencing the aftershocks as a team. The response was intense. Many of you reached out with similar stories and I thank you all for the empathy. Some found it a bit controversial for me to share — and to do so in real time — but I made a commitment and I’m sticking to it.

Image: Free Digital Photos

It was big news when the public found out that Silicon Valley interns make about twice as much as the average San Franciscan ($6,000/month vs. $3,000/month). It turns out that we may have missed a few sizable bonuses that salary site Glassdoor didn’t take into account.

This week, a young Bay Area resident, Tiffany Zhong, tweeted a list of top offers made to interns at the major tech companies, compiled by a source close to her. Zhong’s tweet put these salaries in the news again, showing that top paid interns make a lot more money than most of the country. What’s interesting about the list isn’t the base salary but the perks: $1,500/month for housing, a free laptop, and spending stipends.

Image: http://venturebeat.com

When most Americans think of Pilgrims, they think of Plymouth Rock, and the founding of the colony that became America. Those Pilgrims came in a search of religious freedom. But the word has an older and deeper meaning — shown here below in “The Pilgrim’s Way,” a presentation that Sister Rose Pacette, the Director at the Pauline Center for Media Studies, gave at St. Margaret Mary Parish in Lower Burrell, PA, on March 22, 2014 during a weekend retreat. Sister Pacatte used the 2012 film “The Way” starring Martin Sheen and directed by his son Emilio Estevez. In her own words:

Image: Free Digital Photos

A new study from the University of Michigan has yielded more evidence that getting a flu shot 2 years in a row may result in lower vaccine effectiveness (VE) in the second year, and also that the effects of a flu shot may last more than one season.

The researchers, who followed 321 households through the 2012-13 flu season, found that individuals who were vaccinated only in that season enjoyed better protection than those who were vaccinated in both the 2011-12 and 2012-13 seasons, according to their report in the Journal of Infectious Diseases.

Shared value is about reconceiving the intersection between society and corporate performance, seeking win–win outcomes, and being profitable through solving big problems.

Intel Corporation’s vision is an example of shared value—“This decade Intel will create and extend computing technology to connect and enrich the lives of everyone on the planet”. Intel believes it has both a responsibility and opportunity to connect and enrich the lives of everyone on the planet.