When Piece & Co. founder Kathleen Wright graduated from the University of Illinois with a business degree, she knew she wanted to work with women in developing countries, but what that looked like wasn’t exactly clear.

Fast-forward nine years (after a five-year stint in the private sector and four years with a nonprofit), and Kathleen found her calling. In 2012, Wright launched Piece & Co., a Chicago-based company that connects global artisans with brands that source socially responsible products.

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This morning I saw a great short clip from the Today Show that got forwarded around on the US becoming a no vacation nation. They include an interview with Bart Lorang discussing FullContact’s Paid PAID vacation policy. It also shows an iconic picture of what stimulated this, which was Bart checking his email on his iPhone while riding on a camel with his then girlfriend / now wife in front of some pyramids.

Sometimes, inspiration comes from unlikely places.

Rainer Maria Rilke is a favorite well-known poet of the early 20th century. One of the great legacies he left behind is a volume entitled Letters to a Young Poet which was published posthumously by the young man whom he generously corresponded with for nearly five years.

Image: Gene Han/Flickr

Every business owner knows the acute pain of losing a talented employee. Anticipated or abrupt, it never feels good and it can disrupt the flow and focus of the entire company. It shouldn't though.    Instead of looking at departures as an arrow in the heart of a company's culture, a sudden change in the line up can be a source of momentum and inspiration. It's important for business owners to seize the opportunity to make improvements, rather than dwell on it as a failure.

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The United States lost jobs between 2000 and 2010, the first loss between census years that has been recorded in the nation's history. The decline was attributable to two economic shocks, the contraction following the 9/11 attacks and the Great Recession, the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. Yet, even in this moribund job market, employment continued to disperse in the nation's major metropolitan areas.

The interest in using health IT tools as a way to improve healthcare delivery and efficiency has produced many rapidly growing healthcare companies, many of which can trace their origins within one or two years of Obamacare’s passage. These companies have reached a stage of their development to accelerate growth and that has coincided with a readiness by healthcare providers and payers to adopt or ramp up their technology.

With a nod to the top healthcare company on Inc’s 5,000 Fastest Growing Companies, molecular diagnostic companies with smartphone-enabled technology have also become more attractive as investment and acquisition targets.

We all kind of get uncomfortable when we think about doing something new for the first time. 

A lot of that discomfort really comes from fear of failure and the fear of the unknown.  We think we will suck at it.  We don’t know how it will go and those kinds of thoughts can be really paralyzing.

In fact, that’s the reason that most people never even try to do something for the first time, even if they know that, eventually, they might love it and it could change their life for the better and forever.  Isn’t that nuts?

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In the Dallas area, causes ranging from nonprofit Cafe Momentum to North TX Giving Day are registering the growth wrought by crowdfunding.

"Through Kickstarter and other crowdfunding campaigns, the nonprofit sector is increasingly raising small amounts of money online from many people. A crowdfunding campaign can attract new donors, increase awareness and improve a nonprofit’s social media marketing. While large organizations and universities have raised money online for various projects, it’s still a relatively new — and sometimes misunderstood — concept for many nonprofits." -- Hanah Cho, the Dallas Morning News

Recently, life science companies have faced serious challenges raising financing. While overall venture capital financing in Canada is on the rise compared to past years (though still nowhere near the amounts seen in the early 2000s), life science start-ups are not experiencing the same increase. According to the Industry Canada "Venture Capital Monitor", investment in life sciences companies totalled $40 million during the third quarter of 2013, a decrease of about 56% compared to the same period in 2012.

The Long Now Foundation supports a 10,000-year clock project, a digital library of human languages, and research to bring back species from extinction. It's not exactly your typical foundation. Since setting up shop at its current location in San Francisco's Fort Mason Center in 2006, Long Now has offered visitors a peek at its work in a small on-site museum. But the office/museum space was kind of boring. It certainly wasn't representative of Long Now's focus on futurism and long-term thinking.

Image: http://www.fastcoexist.com

Classes are starting again and you’re probably getting ready to take on another year of college. Time to make friends with new roommates, figure out what textbooks to buy, and get the scoop on where all the hot parties are (among other related things that PR won’t let me talk about). If your college experience was like mine, one question will come up more often than others when you’re back at school: “Where did you intern over the summer?” Or, more worryingly, “Did you intern over the summer?”

Venture capital funding is often seen as a prerequisite for startup success, especially for entrepreneurs who aspire to quickly grow their companies. But venture capital also comes with some significant drawbacks--downsides that have serious consequences for your startup.

When she started her child-support tracking business SupportPay, Sheri Atwood expected all kinds of suggestions - but not the tip she got from a female investor who suggested she dye her blonde hair darker to be taken more seriously by venture capitalists.

To Atwood, who eventually won her funding from other backers, the recommendation underscored an attitude in Silicon Valley that women make second-class entrepreneurs. If more women held the purse strings at venture capital firms, the attitude would change, she said.

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Research suggests that the risk and uncertainty associated with entrepreneurial activity deters entry and contributes to the high rates of new business failure. In this study we examine how the ability to reduce these risks by means of hybrid entrepreneurship—the process of starting a business while retaining a "day job" in an existing organization—influences entrepreneurial entry and survival. Integrating insights from real options theory with logic from the individual differences literature, findings from survival analysis suggest individuals who are risk-averse and have low core self-evaluation are more likely to enter hybrid entrepreneurship relative to full-time self-employment. In turn, we find that hybrid entrepreneurs who subsequently enter full-time self-employment (i.e., quit their day job) have much higher rates of survival relative to individuals who enter full-time self-employment directly from paid-employment. Adding support to our theory that the survival advantage is driven by a learning effect which takes place during hybrid entrepreneurship, we find the survival advantage to be stronger for individuals with entrepreneurial experience. The implications of these findings for theories of entrepreneurship and real options are discussed.

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It’s not every entrepreneur that hatches an idea for a business with their mother, let alone when they’re hiking up Mount Kilimanjaro. But away from daily distractions like email and a functioning smartphone, that’s where Cancer IQ co-founder and CEO Feyi Olopade was vacationing with her mom, Dr. Olufunmilayo (Funmi) Olopade — the director of the Center for Clinical Cancer Genetics at the University of Chicago School of Medicine. They developed an idea for how to create a clinical decision support tool based on a technology platform her mother helped develop to make personalized cancer care more accessible and more efficient.

This summer, Wharton’s 2401 Walnut Street building opened up to student and alumni entrepreneurs as summer office space for the second year.  A number of current and alumni MBA students converted the individual study rooms into their startup homes by writing long lists of to-dos on the glass doors and windows, decorating (including a pinned-up proof of “first sale” in one office), and hauling in prototypes and inventory.  My company, Pragma, which aims to revolutionize travel apparel with stylish, wrinkle-resistant, and portable clothes, was one of them.

Image: http://beacon.wharton.upenn.edu

It’s popular these days for startup founders to operate in stealth mode, meaning no details about the idea or progress are shared with anyone until the big reveal and rollout. The common reason given is that this prevents any competitor from stealing their idea and beating them to market. In my view, this paranoid approach costs them much more than the risk of being open.

Designing a textbook or lecture with the average student in mind may sound logical. But L. Todd Rose, who teaches educational neuroscience at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Education, argues that doing so means that the lesson is designed for nobody.

In a TEDx talk last summer, the professor explained that most learners have a “jagged profile” of traits when it comes to learning. One student might have an affinity for science but have below-average reading skills. Yet standard teaching practice assumes at least average skills across the board.

Inventing is a wonderful pastime, unless your invention also ends your life. Business Insider has pulled together a list of ten inventors and their inventions that killed them. Here are five of those stories.

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There was once a time when it was just me. I was providing computer services. I was working a lot of hours. But I wasn’t making any money at it.

Today, I’m making money. Why? Because I’m supervising 10 people who are providing computer services for me. I’m making money off of them.

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