You don’t have to look far to finance your growth ambitions.

To drive growth, you first have to find the fuel—and for many companies, that’s not so straightforward. Internal and external obstacles, including onerous approval processes, borrowing costs, and short-term stock-market impact, can make it hard to fund promising ventures. But it doesn’t have to be that way.

Image: https://www.mckinsey.com

A crowd of more than 100 representatives from Princeton University, the town of Plainsboro, local industries and the center’s first tenant companies attended the event at the Forrestal Center in Plainsboro.

Princeton Innovation Center BioLabs offers co-working lab and office space for high-tech startup companies formed by Princeton University faculty, students and alumni as well as members of the wider New Jersey community.

Image: https://www.princeton.edu

MassChallenge, a Boston-founded startup accelerator, is expanding globally. Since its first program in 2010, MassChallenge has accelerated over 1,500 startups that have raised over $3 billion in funding. Bloomberg Technology visits its flagship offices in Boston. (Source: Bloomberg)

As a company executive, or a business advisor, we have to always be on the alert for indications that your business, while looking calm on the surface, has strong undercurrents starting that can lead to disaster. You don’t want to be in one of those high-flying companies, like Webvan, Pets.com, and eToys, that almost made it to the big time, before fading or crashing into oblivion.

Questions are powerful tools -- as essential to investors and venture capitalists researching opportunities as they are to entrepreneurs seeking the best ways to innovate and thrive in their startups. But, as I've seen in 25 years of consulting to large corporations, questions can derail, sucking the energy out of a room, or they can be empowering, bringing new life to ideas.

Venture development organizations (VDO), nonprofit organizations across the country investing in innovation startups to help grow their regional economies as well as earn a respectable return, saw at least 20 exits in the first quarter of 2018, based on data entered on Pitchbook.com. Here are some examples from the quarter:

A spinout of the Carnegie Mellon University Endowment, Pittsburgh-based Wombat Security Technologies has been acquired for the sum of $225 million to become an operating subsidiary of Proofpoint. Among the nine exiting investors, who injected a combined total of $11 million into the firm since 2011, are Idea Foundry, Innovation Works and Riverfront Ventures. Idea Foundry also was an exiting investor during the quarter resulting from the acquisition of Zulama by EMC Publishing.

The question “Is college worth it?” is a favorite of op-ed writers. Its latest iteration, published in The New York Times this week, argues firmly that it’s not.

In that op-ed, Ellen Ruppel Shell, a journalism professor at Boston University, contends that college is not as effective a catapult for social mobility as students, families, and policy makers think, especially where low-income students are concerned. “It’s a cruel irony that a college degree is worth less to people who most need a boost: those born poor,” she writes.

When Silicon Valley Forum informed me I was to be a recipient of its 21st visionary awards, I was in disbelief. I have long been a critic of the ways of Silicon Valley and am clearly not in the same league as the 100 or so past recipients, who include Bill Gates, Elon Musk, Andy Grove, and Gordon Moore. But the Valley makes its own rules.

I came to Silicon Valley in 2009 to research its competitive advantages. In particular, I was trying to understand why foreign-born people such as I had achieved so much success. My research team at Duke University had worked with UC Berkeley’s AnnaLee Saxenian in documenting the role of immigrants in founding more than half of Silicon Valley’s startups from 1995 to 2005.

The saying “people don’t leave jobs, they leave managers” may have some truth behind it. A 2015 Gallup Poll of 7,272 U.S. adults found that at some point in their career, one in two had left their job to get away from their manager. Only one in three people are engaged at work, and managers account for at least 70 percent of the variance in employee engagement scores.

Venture capitalists are heading to Washington on a mission to save their lucrative relationships with Chinese investors.

Proposed legislation in Congress, which would give the government greater oversight of deals involving foreign investors, is a central issue at an annual summit for VCs that kicked off Wednesday.

The meeting is well-timed. Next week, the Senate Banking Committee will consider the bill, which could make it harder for foreign firms to make investments in U.S. technology companies and slow down or block potential deals, including venture capital funding rounds.

After the stock market’s rocky ride in recent months, some analysts are wondering whether a new economic crisis might be around the corner. Judging by the economy’s overall performance, there is no need for immediate concern. But for entrepreneurs who prefer to be safe than sorry, the question remains: what should you do when the next crisis hits?

New program for female angel investors launched LISTEN | PRINT BY TIM SANDLE     MAY 16, 2018 IN BUSINESS A new venture has been formed as an accelerator program for women corporate and technology executives. The aim is boost the number of women performing deal-making venture capital gains. The new development comes from Highline BETA, which is a startup co-creation and a new venture development company. The organization operates in the U.S. and Canada. Highline BETA has relaunched the Female Funders Angel Academy.

Image: http://www.digitaljournal.com

Artificial intelligence. Augmented reality. Facial recognition. Connected “internet” vehicles. Global virtual marketplaces. App-based digital payment systems. Pharmaceutical e-commerce. Humanoid robots. Giant vending machines for cars. This is not just the magical stuff of today’s digital-driven, transformation economy. It’s a snapshot of the cutting-edge innovation work currently underway at one of the world’s most exciting and admired companies: the Chinese tech titan, Alibaba Group.

Image: http://innovationexcellence.com

Every startup founder loves to prompt for questions from investors and potential key team members about their vision, and the huge opportunity that can be had with their disruptive technology. Yet if you are on the other side of the table, there are some other key questions that you need to ask, which will tell you more about the real success prospects for this business.

Image: https://blog.startupprofessionals.com

Kavitha, a Canadian national, played tennis from a very early age. Her sporting skills and academic prowess earned her a place at Princeton and Oxford universities, as well as a spot on junior Grand Slam tournaments such as the U.S. Open and Wimbledon. Several years on the pro circuit brought her satisfaction but also pain and loneliness. After winning several championships, she decided to leverage her habits of hard work, persistence, resilience and discipline to transition towards the world of business.

Image: https://knowledge.insead.edu

Every successful, publicly-traded company started out in the private markets, where venture capitalists and other investors provide early-stage funding in exchange for a shot at incredible future returns.

You're likely already familiar with many of the success stories. Naspers' $32 million investment in 2001 in a little-known Chinese tech company called Tencent rose 60,000% in value over the next 17 years. And no, that's not a typo -- they recently sold 2% of their stake for a cool $10.6 billion. Twitter, Alphabet, and WhatsApp all took early stage capital and went on to provide huge future payouts for their VC partners.

36 measures of health, the factors that shape health, and drivers of health equity to guide local solutions for 500 U.S. cities

Image: https://www.cityhealthdashboard.com

Reaching for the sun and success all day is tiring work, and everyone must occasionally give it a rest, whether insect, animal, plant, or human.

Evolutionary biologist Charles Darwin in 1880 wrote The Power of Movement in Plants, noting that the Colocasia antiquorum, or elephant ear, dozes in the dark. “The leaves of this plant sleep by their blades sinking in the evening…By an early [morning] hour it had assumed its diurnal position.”

At the beginning of every meeting, a question hangs in the air: Who will be heard? The answer has huge implications not only for decision making, but for the levels of diversity and inclusion throughout the organization. Being heard is a matter of whose ideas get included — and who, therefore, reaps the accompanying career benefits — and whose ideas get left behind.