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When they picture the modern American entrepreneur, many people imagine Mark Zuckerberg-types — young, tech-savvy, fresh out of college. But when it comes to successful entrepreneurship, the best years of life may be after 50.

Ready to strap on some wings and become an angel investor?

Investing in young companies or startups used to be just for very wealthy individuals with strong networks. But these days, you don’t need to be well connected to participate in deals. Now you only need fairly deep pockets and access to the Internet to get in on the ground floor of what could be the next Google or Facebook.

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Figuring out what to get that special entrepreneur on your list? Here’s our annual entrepreneur’s gift guide, compiled by the folks at the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business. Experts, professors, investors, and veteran entrepreneurs weighed in on the best things to buy your favorite budding business owner. Also included are the top wish-list items from some entrepreneurs we’ve spoken with in the past year.

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The Canadian Government is consulting on a package of draft legislative proposals for the orderly phase-out of the federal Labor-Sponsored Venture Capital Corporations tax credit.

Introduced in the 1980s, LSVCCs are a type of mutual fund corporation, sponsored by labor unions or other labor organizations, that make venture capital investments in small and medium-sized businesses. Individuals acquiring LSVCC shares of up to CAD5,000 (USD4,273) a year can receive a 15 percent federal tax credit. Federally registered LSVCCs are subject to the rules set out in the Income Tax Act, while provincially registered funds are subject to the province's own legislation and are prescribed for the purposes of the Income Tax Act. This prescription allows individuals investing in provincially registered LSVCCs to claim the federal tax credit.

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The (often dreaded) annual performance review is an inescapable part of working life, right?

Maybe not, according to Donna Morris, Adobe's SVP of People Resources:

Ranking sessions, labels, long-winded appraisals, and conversations that focus on your past are obsolete at Adobe Last year we abolished our annual performance review in favor of lighter-weight check-in conversations that center on ongoing feedback. We don’t have labels, a formal tool, or prescriptive time of year it all has to happen--we just ask people to have conversations.

 

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The SEC voted unanimously in October to advance rules that would permit startup businesses to cast a wider net in raising capital through online crowdfunding portals. The proposed rules set the stage for what could look like a tempting new investment opportunity.

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Useful innovation is one of the most meaningful outputs of human creativity. Today, technological aids are increasingly employed to improve and amplify the innovation process. Now new social methods, especially crowdsourcing, have fundamentally altered how innovation is achieved and even who does it.

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Peter DeComo raised $20 million from investors for Renal Solutions Inc. in 2002, when the Pittsburgh medical device company had only a working prototype for an artificial kidney and no money. During the next five years, he brought in $20 million more in capital before selling Renal Solutions to a German outfit in 2007 for nearly $200 million . "That company couldn't even get funded today," lamented DeComo, the CEO of South Side -based ALung Technologies Inc. , because venture capital investors have pulled back from startup companies in his industry. With that important funding source drying up, DeComo worries many promising young companies in the Pittsburgh region may never get off the ground.

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Which country is the best at developing, attracting and retaining top talent? Switzerland comes out on top, according to the Global Talent Competitiveness Index, launched Tuesday by European business school Insead. The new index rates 103 countries on 48 factors including education, government policy and quality of life. The U.S. trailed in ninth place.

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#5 – Visibility (in lieu of security) I spent the first part of my working life chasing security.  I worked at some of the biggest companies and consultancies in the country and all I got to show for my troubles was three layoffs.  I finally realized that the security of Fortune 500 life was an illusion and traded it in for visibility, which is to say that there are still bad times, but you can usually seem them coming (and have time to react).  In a large company, any day could be the day that your department gets eliminated.  In your own company, your customers can leave you, but they can’t all do it on the same day.

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Isn’t it frustrating to think you understand something new in business, like marketing with social media, only to realize that the landscape changed while you were looking at other priorities? For example, it used to be that marketing via social media meant buying banner ads on Facebook, or buying a position on search engine results, or sponsoring some blog entries, but these doesn’t work anymore.

“Highly successful people make mistakes all the time.  Some failures are big, some even bigger, but none need result in the end of your dreams to succeed.”

So writes Barbara Weltman in her latest book, “Smooth Failing: Top industry leaders share their secrets for turning Pain into Profit.”   Weltman – an attorney, tax expert, small business expert and author — is well-known as the author of the J.K. Lasser’s Small Business Taxes books and guides.  She’s also the author of several “how to” books on small business topics, including The Idiot’s Guide to Starting a Home Based Business.

For Joerg Klisch, hiring the first 60 workers to build heavy engines at his company’s new factory in South Carolina was easy. Finding the next 60 was not so simple.

“It seemed like we had sucked up everybody who knew about diesel engines,” said Mr. Klisch, vice president for North American operations of Tognum America. “It wasn’t working as we had planned.”

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FOR Viktor Frankl, the Holocaust survivor who wrote the best-selling book “Man’s Search for Meaning,” the call to answer life’s ultimate question came early. When he was a high school student, one of his science teachers declared to the class, “Life is nothing more than a combustion process, a process of oxidation.” But Frankl would have none of it. “Sir, if this is so,” he cried, jumping out of his chair, “then what can be the meaning of life?”

What directions does mentorship flow within your organization? From the top down, the bottom up, or both ways?

Among an increasing number of growth-oriented companies, the answer is both ways.

This approach contradicts the tradition that dictates mentorship, both formal and informal, should flow from the top of an organization down. Aaron Perlut, partner at the digital marketing and public relations firm Elasticity, articulates that in a large public relations firm “When you are a junior-level staffer at a large agency, you’re told what to do and how long to do it for, and little input is asked for or appreciated…younger employees should be seen periodically, but never heard from.”

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Failed actors rarely give career advice. "The advice business is a monopoly run by survivors," writes David McRaney of You Are Not So Smart. The chefs who failed don't have a line out the door of their restaurant. The entrepreneurs who launched, failed, and didn't try again don't end up on the cover of Fast Company.

To McRaney, the problem with the stories of the super productive, super creative, and super successful is that they miss half the equation:

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Europe's demographic dilemma is well known. Like East Asia and to a lesser degree most of the Western Hemisphere, Europe's birth rates have fallen so far that the population is becoming unable to replenish itself. At the same time, longer  life spans have undermined the poulation’s ability to withstand a growing  old age dependency ratio, challenging the financial ability (and perhaps even willingness) of a smaller relative workforce in the decades to come. The EU-27 (excluding Croatia) over 65 population is projected by Eurostat to increase 75 percent relative to its working age population (15-64) between 2015 and 2050, more than either the 60 percent increase the UN projects in the United States and Japan (though Japan’s current ratio is much higher than the EU or the US).

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The Innovation Centre wants to get in on the lottery and gaming industry and it is looking for projects to help the local industry grow.

City council will be asked Monday to support a resolution that will allow the Innovation Centre to access up to $150,000 from the economic diversification fund to create a digital gaming technology platform through a partnership with the Canadian Bank Note Company.

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The latest wearable tech isn’t digital. It isn’t even really all that complicated. The Cynaps Enhance Project uses bone conduction technology in the form of a baseball cap to enhance hearing. While this technology has been long-used as a hearing loss solution in the form of bone anchored hearing aid implants, the company claims the hearing aid can help anyone with a working cochlea hear better. The company has begun an Indiegogo campaign to raise $75,000 to support this nonsurgical solution by Jan. 6.

Behind him on the screen was one of the most imaginative (albeit inappropriate) images of Huntsman Hall I have ever seen. It was a stylized shot of the iconic Wharton School building with the Eye of Sauron burning at its peak (à la  Lord of the Rings trilogy). It was meant to be humorous, but Apu Gupta, WG’05, also meant to make a point in pictures to an audience of undergrads who attended his on-campus Wharton Colloquia talk. In his youth, Gupta had viewed going to business school as a career failure. At Wharton, he learned differently.

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