“What exactly is a business plan?” a startup says to me. Life in Nigeria’s booming startup scene is not like any other. “We don’t really take on a lot of risk,” he says to me, but the business he is running will probably hang on risks that he will have to start taking soon. A business plan is not really a fully formed idea for some of the startups I have met. I ask about business models and revenue projections — “I don’t know” is the standard response. This ecosystem is not actually an ecosystem, I am told.

Image: http://ventureburn.com 

I talk to at least a dozen new entrepreneurs each week and probably review two dozen email pitches. Here’s what to expect the first time you contact me.

The bar is much higher if you contact me, instead of getting someone else to introduce you. This is a pretty common practice in every industry. It’s always best to get an introduction from someone trusted by the person you want to meet. If you contact me cold then we’re probably going to exchange a few emails before I invite you to meet in person.

In a colorful office on the Peninsula, students and professors agonize over code and molecules late at night, occasionally interrupting work with quick bouts of Nerf gunplay and basketball.

This is StartX, where a select group of Stanford University entrepreneurs try to turn apps or other inventions into businesses that will revolutionize society or make a killing on the stock market - or preferably both.

Image: Elliot Lui of Travelnuts sits at his work space at StartX. More than 150 companies have gone through the incubator. Photo: James Tensuan, Special To The Chronicle 

Entrepreneurs are a special breed – they are risk takers, innovators, and problem solvers. They are often enthusiastic, passionate and willing to stand up for their beliefs. But many entrepreneurs struggle with sales and marketing. If you’re one of these new entrepreneurs getting ready to launch your company, pay attention to these tips on how to get your sales and marketing done right.

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The early stage of business ownership can be very difficult. Most people have heard that, yet many still have dreamy visions of overnight success. No matter how confident you are with your business idea and ability to make it work, be prepared for some hard times at first. According to Dan Andrews of Tropical MBA, new business owners should prepare for a period of about 1,000 days of making less than they did while working for someone else.

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Canadian ski coach Justin Wadsworth came to the help of Russian cross-country skier Anton Gafarov. Gafarov's ski broke during the semi-finals of the men's freestyle sprint. Wadsworth ran from the sidelines to give the Russian a replacement ski, allowing him to finish the race.

Image: http://mashable.com/ 

If electric cars become popular quickly, the demand for charging them is likely to exceed supply. Now mathematicians have worked out how electricity companies can distribute their power fairly to car owners. But the price–accurate information about driving habits–may be too much to ask.

Image: http://www.technologyreview.com 

I’ve written about how creativity works in the brain before, and I found it really useful to understand this process. Or, I should say, multiple processes

There’s so much going on in the brain during creativity that science is still trying to pin down exactly how it all works.

What we do know is which three parts of the brain work together to help us create and come up with new ideas:

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To-do lists seem pretty straightforward: A list of all of the tasks you plan to accomplish during any given day or week. And, really, there are few things more satisfying than drawing lines through each entry. Progress!

But, many times, they balloon to unrealistic levels, and we end up feeling overwhelmed and ineffective. That’s usually because we’re using them as a catch-all for every task that’s thrown at us. Instead, our lists should be derived from our larger goals and include tasks that move us toward those big-picture endeavors, says Robert C. Pozen, senior lecturer at Harvard Business School and Brookings Institution senior fellow. Pozen, author of Extreme Productivity: Boost Your Results, Reduce Your Hours, says some simple tweaks can make your to-do list a better productivity tool.

As recently as last year, nearly 50 million Americans didn’t have health insurance. With the implementation of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), this has started to change. Beginning January 1 of this year, millions of Americans, including hundreds of thousands in the Philadelphia region, have gained access to health insurance for the first time.

But the reform law is just a first step. The U.S. health care system still faces significant challenges — first among them, inconsistent quality and costs that continue to rise. These problems are so large and complex they cannot be addressed with yesterday's solutions.

Image: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Philadelhpia_Montage_by_Jleon_0310.jpg 

Every startup founder I know talks about the chaos of their business, which they usually attribute to that burst of growth that is required to get to positive cash flow. They envision a stable environment after that point, and may have convinced themselves that they will be safer and happier with a livable income, maintaining a loyal but flat customer base.

Sadly, this false perception often leads to the death of their business, or at least the end of their tenure as CEO. I “second the message” that chaos never subsides, from a couple of successful entrepreneurs, Clate Mask and Scott Martineau, in their book “Conquer the Chaos.” Your only choice is to live with it, and find a way to conquer it.

BlackBerry isn’t quite done yet. The beleaguered handset maker may find some new life as Ford is reportedly considering using BlackBerry’s QNX software in cars, according to Bloomberg sources. Ford currently has more than 7 million vehicles that use Microsoft’s Sync technology, so any change would be a blow to the Redmond company.

Image: http://gigaom.com 

Peter Thiel, the billionaire PayPal co-founder and libertarian venture investor, on Thursday shared his thoughts on the roots of U.S. income inequality and offered some sideways praise for WhatsApp founder Jan Koum's "heroic escape" from welfare. The remarks came during a debate on the good and bad effects of technology on U.S. workers, according to a recap by Forbes. The role of tech on income inequality has been a growing source of friction in the country, boiling up in demonstrations against Google buses and tax breaks in San Francisco.

Image: Bloomberg/Patrick T. Fallon - Peter Thiel, president of Thiel Capital, blames globalization rather than technology for growing income inequality in the U.S. 

South Korean president Park Geun-hye announced in her January 6 New Year’s address to the nation a three-year plan for “economic innovation,” with the goals of increasing Korea’s economic growth rate to 4 percent, employment to 70 percent, and per capita income to $40,000—the “474” vision.  Park’s strategies to achieve these targets include tackling public sector reforms and righting “ill practices rampant in our society”; boosting domestic demand through promoting Korea’s long-underperforming small and medium enterprises (SMEs) and services sector; and fostering a “creative economy.”  While much commentary has focused on the feasibility of the “474” slogan—drawing some parallels with former President Lee Myung-bak’s overly ambitious “747” growth plan, more significant is the underlying objective of fostering the innovation that will sustain Korea’s future economic competitiveness.

Image: President of South Korea Park Geun-hye advocated her “creative economy” vision during a session at the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos on January 22, 2014 (Denis Balibouse/Courtesy Reuters). 

Debate over the role of company boards invariably intensifies when things go wrong on a grand scale, as has happened in recent years. Many of the companies whose corpses litter the industrial and financial landscape were undermined by negligent, overoptimistic, or ill-informed boards prior to the financial crisis and the ensuing deep recession. Not surprisingly, there’s been a renewed focus on improved corporate governance: better structures, more rigorous checks and balances, and greater independence by nonexecutives, for example.

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People who appreciate baseball stats agree: Jonny Gomes of the Boston Red Sox is a below-average player. Yet, if you pay attention to his intangibles, he looks better. Even with lousy performance data, he was credited with playing a key role last fall in helping his team win the World Series.

The Gomes example reminds me—no matter how hard people try—that you can’t reduce everything in the world to data-driven decision-making. Especially when you’re talking about evaluating people, and how they might perform for a company.

Fitness and aesthetics have been around forever (You’ve seen the movie 300. Those dudes were ripped!). Tons of information, good and bad, gets passed around the gym that helps people achieve their fitness goals. But, what people might not realize is that there are also entrepreneurial lessons to be learned as well.

#1: Perception is everything

Let’s be honest, we do what we do because it makes us look good. Seeing our hard work pay off makes us feel good. And we love the sense of accomplishment when we make progress.

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 With all the yarns spun regarding Silicon Valley, a casual observer may conclude the Californian tech cluster is the centre of the American innovation universe. In truth, however, America’s landscape is a tale of two coasts, with the older eastern side of the country still teaching the west new tricks.

The whole of the east coast, stretching to the cluster of small states in the north east from where the US first sprang down to Florida, is a bristling community of innovation and home to numerous world famous universities. And while Florida, North Carolina, Connecticut, New Jersey, and Virginia are all solid contributors to tech transfer in their own right, this snapshot overview will focus on three states: Massachusetts, New York, and Pennsylvania.

Image Courtesy of emptyglass / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

To review, Silicon Valley is dying. Pittsburgh will take its place as the epicenter of the next economic epoch. The Innovation Economy is in decline. The Legacy Economy ascends. There isn’t a next or new Silicon Valley. Like the automobile industry in Detroit, production will diffuse to places with cheaper labor. The cost for talent is too damn high.

Image Courtesy of Damian Brandon / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

BALTIMORE -- Inside a drab computer lab at Johns Hopkins University, a team of researchers is trying to build something that has never existed before: a digital currency that changes hands completely in secret. Its name is Zerocoin.

The untraceable currency is designed to compete with other virtual moneys such as Bitcoin, which are drawing attention as alternatives for businesses and individuals -- and drawing criticism from some who believe they enable money laundering and other criminal activity.