A lot of small business owners spend their workdays seated. It’s the reality of the modern work environment. That means hours a day, week after week, behind a desk, in some cubicle or even in your home office hunched over a computer.

Image: http://smallbiztrends.com 

The San Francisco Chronicle reports that more brilliant young techies are taking their creative skills to social change work. It features 28-year-old Zac Halbert, who left his gig as a Web designer at a billing management software company and took a 40 percent pay cut to join Samahope, a new nonprofit enterprise that facilitates funding for doctors in the developing world. 

Image: https://nonprofitquarterly.org 

I’ve noticed that the way I spend my lunch break affects how productive I am for the rest of the day: how quickly I get started once I get back to my desk, how effective I am in the first hour after lunch, and how I feel throughout the afternoon.

Luckily, we’ve been writing about ways to improve your day for a while now: from tips on making your environment more conducive to creativity to pushing through writer’s block. 

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Alibaba wants to become a more global company, reads a statement posted on the company’s blog Sunday – so it’s decided to begin the process of an initial public offering in the United States.

The Alibaba IPO is expected to be one of the largest of all time. It could raise more than the $16 billion Facebook scooped up in its 2012 IPO — and if it doesn’t it’s bound to come close. Analysts believe the company could reach a valuation north of $130 billion.

Image: Opening of the Alibaba Group's Taiwan branch. Image Credit: Rico Shen 

If you don’t do it, your competitor will.

That was the message former Microsoft COO Bob Herbold delivered to professors, students and business leaders in Cleveland recently. Herbold spoke at the Case School of Engineering’s annual banquet, where he shared his insights on leadership, innovation and entrepreneurship.

Herbold shared two well-known stories of once-successful companies that failed to disrupt their own businesses and were essentially driven out of business by innovative competitors: Research in Motion vs. Apple/Samsung and Blockbuster vs. Netflix.

The Economist had a recent piece about software patents and said, GASP “(P)atent issuance is a poor measure of innovation.” Amen. But wait! Don’t order yet! There’s more! “Patenting is strictly a metric of invention. Innovation is such a vastly different endeavour—in terms of investment, time and the human resources required—as to be virtually unrelated to invention.” (The applause and boos commence simultaneously).

image: http://www.freedigitalphotos.net 

Don't take $5,000 from all your friends, Fortify Ventures Managing Director Jonathon Perrelli warns a founder over lunch in the second episode of “Startupland,” or "you're going to have 20 pains in the asses."

If “Startupland” — a documentary on early-stage entrepreneurship that premiered last week in D.C — does one thing well, it's depicting the complex and uneasy relationship founders have with outside capital. The above quote, in particular, is a particularly blunt reference to the pitfalls of the friends-and-family round, where a startup CEO risks adding a horde of impatient, inexperienced micromanagers to his cap table. It's a tension that runs throughout the first two episodes of “Startupland,” which was screened on March 13 at Landmark's E Street Cinema. Founders need early money, yet early money is expensive.

Image: Joanne S. Lawton - "Startupland" director Justin Gutwein 

You’ve got great ideas.

You’ve gained access to a terrific startup accelerator program that helped you with funding and introduced you to insightful mentors.

You’ve been networking in a sheltered environment and you’re better off than you ever were before.

So now what do you do?

image: http://www.freedigitalphotos.net 

That last bit of toothpaste is the stubborn cousin of that last ounce of ketchup: You’ll never get it out of the tube, no matter how much you squeeze and flatten the other end. Plus, as you curl the tube in futile attempts to do so, the resulting awkward shape makes it more and more difficult to store. That could all change with this student-designed, origami-inspired tube designed to extrude every drop of paste.

Image: http://www.fastcodesign.com 

The soluble fiber in oats helps lower total and LDL cholesterol, but scientists now say that the cardiovascular health benefits of oats goes beyond fiber

Eleven top scientists from around the globe presented the latest findings on the powerful compounds found in oats in a scientific session titled, Physicochemical Properties and Biological Functionality of Oats, at the 247th Annual Conference of the American Chemical Society in Dallas, TX. Scientists described research on the diverse health benefits of oats and emphasized the growing evidence that the type of phenolic compound avenanthramide (AVE) – found only in oats – may possess antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, anti-itch and anti-cancer properties. The culmination of the studies suggests that oat AVEs may play an important role in protecting the heart.

Image Courtesy of Serge Bertasius Photography / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

It is bracket time again, so people all across our great land are taking pen or pencil to brackets at hoping for the best. They reason, they debate, they flip a coin. Most of all, they think they are correct. They go to blogs and websites to get that last bit of info to make their selections.

This isn't that post.

 Image Courtesy of imagerymajestic / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

A fundraising inspiration launched in 1985 led to a remarkable partnership between the venture capital community and the Stanford School of Engineering that is still going strong today.

The relationship between the Stanford School of Engineering, Silicon Valley and the venture capital community on Sand Hill Road is the stuff of legend. It is a symbiosis that has produced transformative personalities, products and businesses. The flow of ideas and people out of the labs of Stanford Engineering into the companies that spring up almost like wildflowers in the Valley—generously

image: http://www.freedigitalphotos.net 

Are leaders born or made?  When I pose this question to executives or HR professionals, the vast majority say that leaders are made; that is, leadership is something one can learn. Yet researchers have found traits, such as extraversion and intelligence, which differentiate leaders from others.  This seems to imply that we can identify future leaders by looking at their traits – but we must be cautious when drawing such conclusions.

image: http://www.freedigitalphotos.net 

To realize its vision for a creative economy,.. the Korean government is putting its money where its mouth is. Some 60 billion won, or roughly 56 million U.S. dollars will be injected into what's being called a "creative economy vitamin project" this year. It aims at realizing sustainable growth and cultivating new business sectors by integrating information technology with existing industries including agriculture, education and tourism.

image: http://www.freedigitalphotos.net 

Every day it seems like we feel hundreds of different emotions, each nuanced and specific to the physical and social situations we find ourselves in.

According to science, it’s not that complicated by a long shot. A new study says we’re really only capable of four “basic” emotions: happy, sad, afraid/surprised, and angry/disgusted.

image: http://www.freedigitalphotos.net 

Women have long fought for gender equality in the workplace, so one would imagine female entrepreneurs would naturally narrow the salary gap. Yet, a recent study by Babson College showed women are paid less, even when they write their own paycheck.

The study surveyed graduates of Goldman Sachs's Small Business Program and found the gender gap that exists in the workforce also exists amongst entrepreneurs. Women in the United States earn an average of 77 cents for every dollar paid to men

Image: Wikimedia Commons

The subtitle of the writer and artist Austin Kleon’s new book, Show Your Work! is “10 Ways to Share Your Creativity and Get Discovered.” But that subtitle could just as easily be, “How to Self-Promote Without Being a Jerkface.” It’s an incredibly useful and compulsively readable short book about how to use social media and networking if you’re a creative person of any stripe.

Image: Austin Kleon - Image by Lily Photography

When it comes to cities, being big and rich is better for the planet than being big and poor, according to a new study of carbon dioxide emissions from cities around the world. But is this correct?

With more than half of the world’s population now living in cities, there is growing interest in better understanding how these geographical social structures work. Consequently, a new science of cities is being fueled by the sudden availability of fascinating datasets collected from urban areas all over the world.

Image: http://www.technologyreview.com 

I usually enjoy making fun of people who walk around wearing Bluetooth headsets, seemingly talking to themselves. So of course I felt like a hypocrite last week wandering around downtown San Francisco doing exactly that.

I had an excuse, though. The rise of wearable gadgets means touch displays are getting ever smaller, and in some cases they may not be the best way to interact with these new devices. Voice-activated assistants like Siri and Google Now, meanwhile, are becoming increasingly popular. So I wanted to see how easy it would be to control both an iPhone and an Android smartphone with my voice, without having to touch them (spoiler: not very, but voice control does show promise).

Image: http://www.technologyreview.com - So controlling: There are plenty of things you can do on your smartphone via voice control. Texting isn’t always that easy, though. 

It’s not uncommon for me to see a startup business plan “mission” to be the “premier brand” for their product, yet their marketing budget in the financials is trivial. This combination will almost certainly get your plan tossed by potential investors, who understand all too well the need and cost for marketing in today’s environment.

When questioned, founders usually mention word-of-mouth, viral marketing, and a top quality product. These founders need a reality check on what recognized brand names have spent to reach that threshold, and how long it is likely to take. Viral marketing costs real money these days, which usually means adding at least an extra zero to budget estimates.