Venture backed companies can address a large market quickly, and therefore payoff investors sooner than other businesses.

Steve Jobs famously said that creativity is just connecting things. But anyone facing a creative block knows it’s a lot harder than grabbing ideas out of thin air.

Creativity is a complex process. There’s no “creativity gene” or section of your brain responsible for creative thought. We can’t choose to turn creativity on or off. As the Atlantic reports, many studies have found that creativity happens unconsciously and beyond our control.

As humans, we love living within our comfort zone. Science tells us that our comfort zones are a place where activities and experiences fit a pattern and a routine that we're used to. It's a place of minimum risk for us, which is why it feels so good to stay in that bubble. The idea of adding experiences and actions that could be stressful, lead to failure or worse is not appealing to our minds. So, we get into comfortable routines and rationalize why we are not doing all the things we've dreamt and talked about doing in our businesses. This is a familiar pattern that we've repeated most of our adult life.

Most entrepreneurs assume that success is dependent on their product expertise, coupled with some knowledge of how to run a business. In fact, I have found from personal experience and mentoring that both of these are necessary, but not sufficient, for building a business. Successful entrepreneurs today must practice human-centered leadership to compete and win.

There are many leadership styles out there that may have worked well in the past, including authoritarian and paternalistic. But in this new age of relationships, these often work against your business. There is more and more evidence that a more human-centered or heart-centered leadership yields the best results with your team and with customers in the long run.

Image: http://blog.startupprofessionals.com

Crowdfunding gives young entrepreneurs the rare opportunity for them to start a business with some help from random strangers or investors. If you’ve been wanting to pitch your idea for a crowdfunding venture, we’ve tackled topics such as various ways to fund your startup, and even crowdfunding basics if you don’t know where to start.

Since crowdfunding is a good place for young entrepreneurs to pitch their idea and make it a reality, it’s also a great platform to learn and pick up new lessons on running a business. Let’s face it: crowdfunding is all about validating your business or idea, and it’s a matter of validating your business whether people like it or not.

Image: https://born2invest.com

The Think Tanks and Civil Societies Program (TTCSP) of the Lauder Institute at the University of Pennsylvania conducts research on the role policy institutes play in governments and civil societies around the world. Often referred to as the “think tanks’ think tank,” TTCSP examines the evolving role and character of public policy research organizations. Over the last 26 years, the TTCSP has developed and led a series of global initiatives that have helped bridge the gap between knowledge and policy in critical policy areas such as international peace and security, globalization and governance, international economics, environmental issues, information and society, poverty alleviation, and healthcare and global health. These international collaborative efforts are designed to establish regional and international networks of policy institutes and communities that improve policy making while strengthening democratic institutions and civil societies around the world.

The demand and focus on the issue of gender equity in the world of successful startups and venture capital is on the rise. For many years, I have followed the journey of several successful startup entrepreneurs and their haste to secure seed rounds from angel investors and venture capital groups to help expand and grow market share within their respective industries.

The U.Va. Licensing and Ventures group is offering funding to three local health and technology startups. 

The U.Va. Licensing and Ventures Group is responsible for the commercialization of technologies and research developed at the University by faculty and students. A subgroup of the LVG is the Seed Fund, which promotes the commercialization of developed technologies at the University by investing in startups. As of recently, Seed Fund’s current portfolio consists of three companies — TypeZero Technologies, TearSolutions and Mission Secure. 

There is never a single tip or pill for achieving optimum health. It is important to drink lots of water and get adequate sleep to maintain your fitness and overall well-being, suggest experts. Celebrity nutritionist Pooja Makhija and Govindrajan R, Head, Research and Development, Sugar Free, list down some tips:

AI and robotics are driving rapid and radical workplace transformation across all industries, for companies large and small. These and other emerging technologies, like advanced manufacturing and AR/VR, are changing jobs ranging from manufacturing to medicine to retail.

EmTech Next will examine the technology behind these global trends and their implications for the future of work. It will delve into their potential to empower the human workforce and open up new areas of economic growth, while also exploring their unintended consequences.

"Hii-yaaah!" I smiled as she laughed at her attempt to poke fun at my martial art uniform. Yes, my pants were tight fitting, but as a leader within a community of people who practice a martial art called capoeira, I am required to wear white pants, a white t-shirt and a belt around my waist to class and for events.

Capoeira has origins among enslaved Africans in Brazil and combines components of dance, music, acrobatics, rituals, and self-defense movements.

Too many are left out of our economy. The long-term decline in entrepreneurship has dragged down productivity, wages and living standards for all Americans. Put simply—fewer startups mean a lower quality of life. We need to eliminate barriers for anyone who has an idea to start and grow a business, and we need to redefine the meaning of "entrepreneur." This is how we work toward a new, inclusive and empowering economy.

Image: https://www.kauffman.org

One great idea can change the world.

Bill Gates once had the vision to have a computer in every home. Now, most of us carry our computers in our pockets. Reed Hastings returned a video late one time, so he thought of a better way to rent videos. Today, Netflix has more than 117 million subscribers worldwide.

It’s 6 a.m., and I’m rushing around my apartment getting ready to fly to California to teach an innovation workshop, when my 10-year-old son looks at me with sad eyes and asks, “Why are you always busy?” My heart pounds, and that familiar knife of guilt and pain twists in my stomach. Then a thought flickers through my head: Does Jeff Bezos go through this?

Winning customers as an entrepreneur in a startup has many parallels to a young army trying to penetrate some formidable new and unfamiliar territory. You need a strategy as well as a goal, and you need to pick your battles well. Even in this age of purpose before profits, a business won’t survive by pretending there are no competitors out there to worry about.

Image: http://blog.startupprofessionals.com

Crowdfunding has become a popular way to raise money from friends, family, and strangers for everything from artistic projects to medical expenses. The Onion presents a step-by-step guide to running a successful crowdfunding campaign:

Science Inc, the Santa Monica, Ca.-based incubator and investment firm, has closed a new venture capital fund with $75 million in commitments, shows a new SEC filing.

According to the six-year-old firm, the vehicle is its first official venture fund — with traditional limited partners, including a fund of funds, sovereign wealth funds, foundations, and other institutional investors.

Image: https://techcrunch.com

I’ve lived in China for over ten years now, and witnessed some amazing developments in my time here. The four items mentioned in the linked article are just the most prominent examples of China’s technological development, which actually covers many areas, including logistics, infrastructure, medicine and mobile technologies, to name a few.

Ora Shtull and I recently interviewed entrepreneurship guru Dorie Clark. Here are the highlights from our inspiring conversation.

Ora Shtull: Your book Entrepreneurial You captures loads of success stories. But how do you guard against disappointment?

Dorie Clark: When you're first starting out, it’s like, “How do I get traction in the first place?” There’s a story I tell in Entrepreneurial You about a woman named Stephanie who reinvented herself from being an actress to being a personal finance expert. She was good at noticing and celebrating small wins.

Pittsburghers love to party. We learned that on Thursday night as more than 200 people gathered at the second floor offices of Birchmere Ventures, which hosted team GeekWire for a welcome reception on Pittsburgh’s Robotics Row.

It was a great party, with awesome food and even better people. We took the opportunity to get to know tech leaders, entrepreneurs, university researchers, non-profit professionals and others in our adopted city, where we’ve set up shop for the month of February.

 Image: http://en.brinkwire.com