I have been described as a “serial entrepreneur,” which makes it all sound easy and full of success. But what I have found is that, whether it is my first or seventh endeavor, starting a new enterprise is exhausting, ego shattering and (at times) infuriating.

But it’s also one of the greatest thrills in my life.

After more than 25 years, I have learned quite a few lessons. Here are my most valuable five:

Just do it – Nike may have trademarked the slogan, but the sentiment is universally applicable. So much is never accomplished simply because the idea generators are overcome with the paralysis of inertia.

According to a new report from Forrester, 62% of information workers in North America and Europe work remotely. The report says that many clients are approaching the firm for insight on creating best practices for remote, mobile workplaces assuming these changes are part of the remote future when in reality the change is already well underway.

Previously, we looked at some of Forrester's research indicating that as much as 18% of the workforce used their personal smartphones for work, whether they were allowed to or not. That research showed only 29% of workers polled did work outside the office.

Innovation is high on the list of CEOs’ agendas in virtually all industries. But what are the common misconceptions about it and how do successful innovators create the processes, structures and practices to move the handful of viable ideas all the way to implementation?

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Your earning potential pretty much tops out at age 40. This is because your skills become increasingly valuable until you amass fifteen years’ experience, at which point you’ve hit a peak. According to statisticians at PayScale.com, in all fields except law, people are not paid more money for experience beyond fifteen years.

This means that to remain relevant and continue to increase your value, you are going to have to learn skills outside of your field. Here are five skills you should pick up as your earning power is due to drop.

With more women than men in the U.S. earning PhDs in the biological sciences and estimates that around 15 percent of the U.S. GNP over the next two decades will be comprised of life science activities, it is no surprise that women's entrepreneurship has attracted so much attention recently in both the developed and developing countries. And in many other countries, women's entrepreneurship is even more important as a separate track for cultural reasons.

This attention to women's participation in entrepreneurial activities, and in high-growth ventures in particular, is not just a reaction to a future trend. Current data show, for example, that America's female scientists are not commercializing their technologies. In fact, male academic scientists in the life sciences secure patents at more than twice the rate of their female colleagues. Other data suggest that women-owned firms in the U.S. are smaller and less growth-oriented than men-owned firms. In the UK, only a quarter of all entrepreneurs are female, and women represent just 7% of all science, engineering and technology entrepreneurs.

So the thing with the Internet is that there is so much information it is hard to know what websites to actually keep an eye on or what ones to subscribe to, to get that nugget of information or advice or business idea. We have talked about a number of sites here before including Techcrunch, VentureBeat, Siliconrepublic and Springwise.

Here is another extremely helpful website: Innovation America. This site is literally chock-full of information on a range of subjects, including innovation, economic development, venture news and more. It is produced by Richard A. Bendis, who is the Founder, President and CEO of Innovation America (IA), a global innovation intermediary focused on accelerating the growth of the entrepreneurial innovation economy Internationally and in America. Part of this is the first email I look at in the morning, innovationDAILY (ID) a Daily Electronic Newsletter, reporting on the Daily Pulse of Global Innovation, Entrepreneurship and Angel/Seed and Venture Capital and Innovation Based Economic Development.(IBED). ID has over 700,000 unique visitors in over 185 countries with readership growing all the time.

If you look at how Apple fares on the public markets today, compared to other tech powerhouses, you’ll notice that the Cupertino computer giant is currently valued at roughly $301 billion, which is close to the sum of the market cap of three of its closest rivals: Microsoft (~$200.3 billion), Hewlett-Packard (~$72.8 billion) and Dell (~$29.3 billion).

Market cap is of course just one metric – and arguably not even the best one – to make comparisons between companies. It is, nevertheless, a most excellent trend barometer and a simple way to compare valuations.

To be frank, I’m not sure this is the first time Apple’s equity value has come this close to the combined value of Microsoft, HP and Dell, but it’s most definitely the first time I’ve noticed. And while we’re at it …

WWDC. The annual Apple event where no real hints about what products they plan to release are floated in the public domain in advance. No private head nods are given to small startup companies to help them prepare. We’re in a market where 800-pound gorillas throw their weight around and the rest of the market races to react and survive.

Any company who develops products reliant on iOS spends weeks crapping their pants before WWDC. No vacation schedules allowed for weeks before or weeks after. The announcements come out in one day and then even if you survive the annual release announcements you often still have to scramble to make sure your product is ready to work on time.

Twice a year (in June and in December), Vincenzo Cosenza creates a “world map of social networks”, showing the dominant social networks by country, based on traffic data gathered from Alexa and Google Trends for Websites.

In June 2009, Facebook was already quite big, and at the end of that year its accelerating growth became even more apparent. By December 2010, the map colored bluer than ever.

The trend shows no signs of stopping this year. How long until it turns all blue?

Don’t BS me. Everyone wants to sell their startup. We all pay lip service to building a billion dollar Groupon but in general that’s a lie. Even Larry Page and Sergey Brin wanted to sell Google to Yahoo for $1 million within ten seconds of starting their company. And Yahoo said, “No”.

As soon as I start a company, I want to sell it. I’ve sold four companies and I’m invested in another dozen that have been through various stages of the selling process. It’s not pleasant, it’s ugly, and everyone paints a pretty face so they look good on the first date. But later on in the dating process you realize who beats their children and who doesn’t. It’s important to keep track of the following nine things throughout the process so you don’t end up being beaten too or even worse—broke and out of business.

Recently I went through a Valley ritual: pitching a story to TechCrunch (not this one). We liked our chances: we were announcing funding, contracts, and growing metrics. It was our first TechCrunch pitch.

Like most press pitches, it went into the ether. We understood; journalists are swamped and cutting through the noise is hard. Yet I noticed that day out of TechCrunch’s forty stories, only two were about early-stage startups. The rest were on large or high-profile companies like Google, Twitter, and Foursquare.

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How are small business owners feeling about their financial situation these days? According to Capital One’s latest Small Business Barometer Survey, there’s good news and bad news. The good news is small business owners overall are more optimistic about the future. The bad news is, they’re still not quite ready to spend and hire.

Capital One’s quarterly survey polls small businesses nationwide about their current financial condition and their projections for the next six months. The most recent report, which surveyed entrepreneurs about the first quarter of 2011, shows many small businesses’ financial performance is improving, but their economic outlook, although optimistic, is still guarded.

An astonishing look at which companies in the Valley are stealing the most talent away from others.

There's no more vital factor in the longterm success of Google, Facebook, Yahoo!, Apple, and the rest than the quality of their human capital. No wonder then that Google has been paying $500,000, cash -- and as much as $50 million in stock -- to retain its top engineers.

Now, you might think that Google's towering piles of cash would allow it to win the Valley's talent war. But not according to a fascinating graph by Top Prospect. As you can see, their data shows that Facebook is far and away the biggest winner:

Raising capital can be the hardest step in launching a startup. You can be passionate about your idea and convince a lot of people that it will be the next big thing, but it takes the right person to ask for money and close the deal. Here are five options to explore. 1. Friends and Family

People like to invest not only in the idea but in the person. You are turning to the people who know you the best, and because of that they will be more inclined to invest in you. Most often, money from friends and family is the first round of financing. It will give you the funds you need to get your startup off the ground and create a value for the next round.

Business comes from solving problems. Innovation comes from solving problems in style—meaning that companies like Apple, Google and 3M

• solve a problem that others have not, will not or cannot solve; or
• they solve it in a cutting-edge manner; or
• their solution is more cost effective and/or more fun.

There are a lot of ways to be innovative with your products. But ultimately, it’s not even about the product. It’s about the problem that the product solves.

Bill Gates gave an incredible interview to the Daily Mail in advance of his announcement that his foundation has raised about $3.7 billion to vaccinate more than 200 million children.

It's one of those rare, amazingly candid looks into Gates' personality.

Seriously, you should read it now. We learned a lot.

And check out our 10 favorite anecdotes from the interview below.

Editor's Note: This is the second of two stories about the Talent and Innovation Initiative recentlypassed by the Legislature. Part 1 appeared in Sunday's business section.

The four-part Talent and Innovation Initiative, passed during the recent legislative session, is designed to advance business innovation and strengthen workforce recruitment in Nebraska.

Gov. Dave Heineman called it "a bold action on our part."

"We are focused on the future and positioning Nebraska for additional economic growth," he said.

One of the forceful presenters at a recent event of SPIN (Software Process Improvement Network), Chennai, was Tathagat Varma, Sr Director-Business Operations, Yahoo! Software Development India Pvt Ltd, Bangalore. Speaking on innovation, Tathagat emphasised that today’s customers expect top-quality innovative solutions in less time and lesser dollars than ever before, and that competing on ‘cost arbitrage’ or ‘part quality’ is necessary but not enough.

“As the premier digital media company, Yahoo! places a strong emphasis on innovation,” he noted, during a brief interaction with Business Line. “Being in the consumer Internet space, innovation directly relates to our ability to adapt to a fast-changing market environment.” Our conversation continued over the email, on the theme ‘Creating an innovation ecosystem in the IT industry.’

Excerpts from the interview.

Why do we need an ecosystem to foster a culture of innovation in the IT industry?

It takes a great entrepreneur with a great vision to start a business, but it takes a collaboration of many people to make it a success. That’s where leadership comes in as a key ingredient, to drive the collaborative process to make the whole team better than the sum of the parts.

I remember a book from a while back by Amilya Antonetti, titled “The Recipe: A Fable for Leaders and Teams” which illustrates the key concepts with stories and specific guidance on how to develop your natural leadership style. It all starts with how to be the leader in your own life, but then extends to learning the following skills she outlines for building a great collaborative team:

Build and maintain trust. Trust is a key element we all need to set aside vulnerability, but it is hard to build, and easy to lose. It is not built on words, but through actions and evidence. Only when it works can a team raise and address the necessary issues to win.