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After 30 years of growth, promotion and private and public sector investment, Pittsburgh can proudly claim that when it comes to startups we're number ... 26?

The city's long-touted story of growth through high-tech innovation hasn't led to it cracking the nation's Top 10 in terms of venture capital investments, according to the National Venture Capital Association. The Pittsburgh MSA ranks 14th in the nation according to the number of deals made during the first half of the year, but falls to 26th when measuring the number of investment dollars going to local companies. There have been 92 deals worth $220 million made with 72 startups in Pittsburgh the first half of the year, according to the association.

Startups are generating buzz at this year's political conventions, thanks to three entrepreneurs and the Startup America Partnership, who collaborated on StartUp RockOn events in Tampa and Charlotte. The entrepreneurs are Ryan Costello of Event Farm, Kwasi Asare of Fighter Interactive and Lee Brenner of HyperVocal. Startup America teamed up with the trio, after seeing them in action at South by Southwest in Austin, Texas, to make entrepreneurship part of the discussion at the Republican and Democratic conventions.

A corporate mission statement isn't merely words to slap on a coffee mug or on the wall of your reception area. It should guide decision-making onevery level--so learn to communicate it effectively.

In the mid-1990s, I was working with some leaders from Iams, the premium pet food company. Its mission: “Improving the well-being of dogs and cats.”

Over a beer after the workshop finished, some of the executives were telling work stories when the subject turned to then-CEO Clay Mathile. As the legend goes, he was approached by one of the leading business magazines of the day to be the subject for the cover story--and turned it down.

I’m working on launching a small business, and I’m learning quickly that a business education circa 2012 doesn’t always start in the classroom nor end with an MBA. These days, more and more of us with the entrepreneurial itch are turning to a more grassroots approach, gleaning wisdom from the words of those who have been down the path before.

These five books are the entrepreneurial know-how that’s really spoken to me. Best of all, they’re not stand-alone entities—they’re the launching pad for (or result of) online communities built around successful business owners sharing insights on what’s worked for them.

Most of us are no stranger to this scenario:  A group of friends sits down to a meal together, laughing, swapping stories, and catching up on the news – but not necessarily with the people in front of them!  Nowadays, it’s not unusual to have one’s phone handy on the table, easily within reach for looking up movie times, checking e-mails, showing off photos, or taking a call or two.  It’s a rare person who doesn’t give in to a quick glance at the phone every now and then.  Today’s multifunctional phones have become an indispensable lifeline to the rest of the world. 

In 1946, less than a year after World War II ended, Americans began to notice something unexpected: The economy was not sinking back into the Great Depression. Rather, to everyone’s surprise, it was growing strongly. And then people noticed something else: lots of babies. Married couples who had put off having kids in the 1930s and during the war were now eager to start a family. Birth rates surged. The nation was ready to grow. “The Great American Boom is on,” announced Fortune magazine that summer.

Most entrepreneurs have their own board of directors, yet very few serve on others, despite the mass of experience they could gain from joining one.

Many want to serve on a board — for professional development, business development, or perhaps just to give back to their community through a non-profit organization — yet don’t know how to get themselves there and don’t have the free time to figure it out.

The overwhelming majority of board members obtained their board seats by knowing the right people. But what do you do when you don’t know anyone on a particular board or its management team and you want to get involved?

Highlight your city and your university research park by hosting AURP's 2014 International Conference. As the host park, you'll be recognized as a leader in the field and attract worldwide attention to the exciting progress and successes of your region. To be considered, submit your proposal, electronically, to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

Personal branding is a must for an entrepreneur who wants to really connect with others and build recognition as an expert in a certain field. But establishing a personal brand takes time and can sometimes be confusing. So how can you expand your personal brand in a way that adds value right away?

1. Engage with like-minded people where they are.

We hear all the time about how we’re supposed to engage with customers and how we have to connect with like-minded people, yet the reality is that few do it. If you want to grow your brand by establishing yourself as an expert on a topic, you have to be actively engaging with people who are interested in the same subject.

The choice of where go to college is one of the first major decisions many people make, and increasingly difficult as the cost of higher education rises.

A great infographic from onlinecolleges.net shows how that choice can follow you throughout your life.

Students who attend low quality in state schools are significantly less likely to graduate on time or move on to graduate school. Graduates of elite private instiutions have been found to earn 39 percent higher wages. 

Nearly 66% of companies on the Fortune 100 list in 1990 are not on the list some twenty-odd years later. You might ask, what is the reason for this? The fact is that while those companies were run, by and large, by competent and smart businesspeople, the odds are against them for one simple reason: They didn’t innovate and open themselves up to their next market.

Throughout my career, I’ve spoken to people around the world about the history of innovation--getting it right, and in some instances, getting it all wrong. When we talk about this concept of innovation, I’m almost always asked the same questions: Is there any way for large, established companies to innovate? How do companies find destructive innovation? The short answer is yes, but there are some distinct rules to follow when innovating an established brand, and/or starting fresh.

I started and sold my first company, ChiTown Deals, before most of my peers had finished college. Not only did I have to secure investors and convince others of the profitability of a "group coupon" before sites like Groupon became well known, but I had to prove myself as a leader despite being under the age of 25.

Young entrepreneurs--myself included--can be seen as having a lack of professional experience; however, many are turning that idea on its head through a combination of hard work, knowledge, and confidence, paired with results. Here's how they do it.

New York, London and Hong Kong are common addresses for blue-chip multinationals. Now Silicon Valley is, too.

From downtown San Francisco to Palo Alto, companies like American Express and Ford are opening offices and investing millions of dollars in local start-ups. This year, American Express opened a venture capital office in Facebook’s old headquarters in downtown Palo Alto. Less than three miles away, General Motors’ research lab houses full-time investment professionals, recent transplants from Detroit.

Money can be different; it can be “smart” and “not so smart”. When seeding or growing a start-up, it’s critical to attract the “right” investors with “smart” money.  While this may fly in the face of conventional wisdom – embrace any investors willing to bet on your business model – entrepreneurs must really pause and consider if they are making an equally shrewd bet on the investor, too.

One of the cases in my personal business carer: a prominent but conventional investor was introduced to me at a certain point about investing in Parallels, a profitable software company that we founded in 2000; his businesses bringing in steady cash flow, this big shot was hunting around for new opportunities. While due to the internal re-structuring we somewhat urgently needed to find a buyer for some small % of Parallels stock, working with this guy was doomed from the get go.  Why? He truly didn’t understand the software business model. “Let’s compare your business with a hotel,” he proposed. “How can you ask for 20x EBITDA valuation, when I could only get 5x EBITDA for my investment in a hotel?” Although it seemed rather obvious – hotels have lower margins, higher fixed costs, limited scalability with any expansion requiring high capital costs – the software model just wasn’t an intuitive recipe for his investment cook book.  His flawed comparison set off alarm bells.  Ultimately, we couldn’t reach an agreement, as I realized that while this person could bring money to the company, I would have had to constantly explain and spoon-feed every aspect of the business to him, whenever there would be a change, which is in the fast growth business is actually almost constantly, and so the trade-offs were not worth the effort.

People who have late-day prostate and kidney surgeries fare just as well as those who have their procedures earlier in the day, according to a new study.

Previous research has hinted that morning procedures - including colonoscopies and surgeries to insert a stent - might be safer or more successful than those done later in the day (for example, see Reuters Health report of June 17, 2010).

Donny and Kaisy had just flown in from the U.S. and were being chauffeured to their Bologna hotel when Donny suddenly told their driver to stop. Kaisy looked puzzled as well as jetlagged. "No point in arguing abstractions," Donny said, throwing open the car door. "I'm going to show you what I mean about the value of the 18-to-49 demographic."

He and Kaisy had spent most of their flight debating how to approach a new American marketing campaign for their employer, Fiero, an Italian stove maker. Kaisy, a tech-savvy 26-year-old, was advocating a whole new approach to understanding consumers. A vendor named Settop Analytics could harvest household TV-viewing data from the cable companies and cross-match it with survey findings and credit-card information from merchants to tell Fiero that, for example, 4% of the viewers of a Fiero ad on the show Modern Life are in the market for a stove, compared with just 2% of the viewers of America's Got Brains, even though both have about the same 18-to-49 rating.

About a year ago, the Center for Colorado’s Economic Future at the University of Denver sent a small shudder through the state Capitol. The center’s analysts, who’d been asked by the Legislature to delve into the fiscal sustainability of state government, declared that Colorado was speeding toward a brick wall. “Twelve years from now,” they wrote, “Colorado will generate only enough sales, income and other general-purpose tax revenue to pay for the three largest programs in the General Fund -- public schools, health care and prisons.” In other words, if nothing changes, taxpayers’ money will be eaten up by the young, old and poor, as well as by housing for criminals. Everything else -- public higher education, courts, child welfare, roads, bridges and other basic state services -- will have to go begging.

What does “free time” mean to you? When you’re not at work, do you pass the time — or spend it?

The difference may impact how happy you are. A new study shows people who put a price on their time are more likely to feel impatient when they’re not using it to earn money. And that hurts their ability to derive happiness during leisure activities.

Treating time as money can actually undermine your well-being,” says Sanford DeVoe, one of two researchers at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management who carried out the study.