Thousands of entrepreneurs quit their jobs each year to start their own companies. It happens all the time, and it’s no problem, right? Not quite. Many employment contracts contain provisions that can make it difficult for entrepreneurs to pursue their startups unfettered. It’s important to address those issues now before you quit your job.

The areas most likely to cause problems pertain to intellectual property, competition and solicitation (typically of customers and employees). Contracts in these areas protect companies from losing a competitive advantage when you leave to work for someone else or start a business of your own.

Thursday night’s nice breeze blowing around the rooftop of the Ford Center — home of Olson, the advertising agency that’s about a ground-rule double from Target Field — was especially welcome after the recent severe storms. But even if it had rained, it probably wouldn’t have dampened the spirits of supporters of the Minnesota Film and TV Board, which is celebrating its 30th anniversary as well as the 2013 Legislature’s approval of a record $10 million in incentives to lure film and TV production to Minnesota.

The Film Board is not the only notable local arts organization marking a milestone. “There are a lot of institutions doing round numbers right now,” said Gülgün Kayim, director of Arts, Culture and Creative Economy for the city of Minneapolis. Quickly listing the Guthrie, the Sculpture Garden, the Fringe Festival and the Minnesota Opera, Kayim said in an interview in her City Hall office that arts community’s longevity — as well as interconnectivity — isn’t coincidental. In fact, it’s the backbone of an arts ecosystem that’s led the Twin Cities to be ranked as having the sixth-highest creative vitality index (CVI) in the nation, right behind the Washington, New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Boston metro areas.

Author Thomas Friedman once described social entrepreneurs as people who attempt to “combine a business school brain with a social worker’s heart.” Substitute “educator” for “social worker” and that pretty much describes me – both in terms of why I decided to attend Wharton after years of working in urban education reform and why I decided to co-found an edtech start-up called ProfessorWord.

In talking to other social entrepreneurs, I’ve heard endlessly debated the question of how to balance the social vs. enterprise aspects of the venture. For example – do you focus on advancing your social mission or achieving financial success? If you favor the latter over the former, can you still call yourself a social entrepreneur or are you “selling out” in some way?

Wow. Imagine being invited to moderate a free-form discussion with the people who lived out the book “Bringing Down the House” and the movie “21.” It doesn’t get any better than this.

At Xconomy’s XSITE conference last week, I had the honor of moderating a reunion panel of the MIT Blackjack Team with two of the original members (Bill Kaplan and Jon Hirschtick) and two (Neelan Choksi and Semyon Dukach) who reconstituted the team in 1992. The team is known for its sophisticated card-counting techniques that outsmarted many casinos during the 1980s and 1990s.

San Francisco-based accelerator Angelpad will expand its program to New York City in the fall, co-founders Carine Magescas and Thomas Korte told VentureWire today at the Premoney.co conference in San Francisco.

Ms. Magescas said the accelerator would retain its focus on startups that offer business-to-business technology and services.

We can't hide behind email. Why? Real business relationships are formed in two ways, says entrepreneur-turned-investor Mark Suster: in person and over the phone. The dude knows how to keep a phoner concise and effective-so let's heed his call to make better calls.

Job interviews are strange rituals: both sides of the table are fidgety, anxious, alert to the weightiness of situation, and if you were showing up to be interviewed by Google, you might have been subjected to one of their synapse-snapping brain teasers.

Which, as we discussed earlier this week, the company recently ditched. Why? As, people operations SVP Laszlo Bock told the New York Times the brain game scores never predicted performance. Ever more jarring, a Google study found that the ratings that interviewers gave candidates had "zero relationship" with how they'd do when they were working.

We know how hard you work. It’s Friday afternoon and you leave the office, hopeful and optimistic of the infinite possibilities of sleep and fun your weekend offers. But in the blink of an eye you’re back at your desk on Monday morning tired, wondering where your weekend went, what you actually accomplished and wishing you had done something more useful (or at least fun). Here at Fueled, when we’re not developing awesome apps, we’re usually planning our weekends.  Here’s some tips we’ve put together to make sure you get the most out of yours:

1. Sleep.

You may be tempted to just suck it up and accept the week-long caffeine bender you’re about to go on, but don’t. Sleeplessness will catch up to you. Sleep in as late as you can and go to bed as early as you can. You’ll thank yourself Monday morning when your cross-eyed co-worker’s head is bouncing off the desk and your to-do list is adorned with check marks.

Perks are a way for employers to show how much they care about their employees. Google has its food, and Business Insider has its ping pong table. And now a company called AnyPerk is turning perks into a business.

Large companies can afford perks because of the "bulk discount" they get due to the size of their pool – lots and lots of employees. But what about those two-person startups using an ironing board as a weird inconvenient standing desk?

What do the states of Montana, Vermont, New Mexico, Alaska, and Mississippi have in common? They are, according to a report published this spring by the Kauffman Foundation, Index of Entrepreneurial Activity, 1996–2012, the states that posted the highest rates of entrepreneurial activity in 2012.

According to the Kauffman Foundation report:

• Montanans operate 530 businesses per 100,000 adults, Vermonters and New Mexicans operate 520 businesses per 100,000 adults, and Alaskans and Mississippians operate 430 businesses per 100,000 adults.

The Senate on Thursday voted to save a program that provides tax credits to people who invest in Maine startup companies.

The Maine Seed Capital Tax Credit program, which is said to have attracted roughly $70 million in investments in Maine companies, reached its lifetime cap of $30 million in tax credits in January.

The Legislature this session approved a bill, LD 734, that would extend and expand the program, but it didn’t make it into the state budget. It includes what’s known as a fiscal note, essentially what the tax credits would cost the state over the course of its two-year budget, and it was placed on the special appropriations table, where bills often die for lack of funding.

Just because you got away with it then doesn’t mean you can get away with it now. Everyone’s guilty of having bad habits, but college students develop certain habits that they should grow out of when entering the “real” world.

As you may already know, college isn’t like “real” life at all. You can often get away with the bare minimum, from food to fashion. But, once you’re out of college, that carefree collegiate lifestyle is no longer socially acceptable.

When I thought about the ideal job hunt, I believed:

I had to be the most professional and proactive It was best to update your resume often and simply upload them to career websites The best way to get my resume in front of a recruiter was to apply to jobs online through job boards and applicant tracking systems That used to work just fine… until everyone else started using these exact same methods.

Now I realize that job seekers need to do something more to really set themselves apart. Over the course of the last few months, it became apparent that creating a personal brand via online can really help you during your job hunt.

Your cover letter is your opportunity to grab a recruiter’s attention. It is the hook that gets an employer to read your resume and invite you for an interview.

Standing out from other job candidates is challenging, so it often works well to get a little creative in your cover letter. In doing so, it is important to remember that too much information can push your letter from engaging to over-sharing.

Disability is contributing to a steady decline in the number of men in the American workforce: In 2012, 3.1% of working-age males were receiving federal disability benefits, up from 1.9% in 1982, according to National Academy of Social Insurance data cited by CNN. Other factors in the decline, aside from recession and downsizing, include increasing rates of incarceration. Just 88% of men ages 25 to 54 are participating in the workforce today, down from 97% in 1956.

When my mother turned forty, we threw her a tongue-in-cheek funeral-themed surprise party, festooning the living room with paper tombstones engraved with Rest in Peace. That party theme is now a laughable conceit — forty then was older than forty now. Almost. In today's world, there is still a bias against older people — employers in particular often think (in their mind) what Shark Tank's Kevin O'Leary is fond of saying to entrepreneurs he doesn't like, "You are dead to me." If we're being honest, we probably agree with O'Leary. Who of us hasn't said, "I'm looking for someone young and hungry." The implication is clear: If you aren't young, you have nothing to contribute.

E. I. du Pont de Nemours and Company announced that it has inaugurated its new Innovation Center in Johnston, Iowa. The Innovation Center is the second in the U.S. and twelfth in the world. The facility will cater to the needs of the growing population and will reduce reliance on fossil fuels.

Ads by Google #1 Stock to Buy Right Now Here's a recommendation that several top analysts agree on www.DailyTradeAlert.com The centre focuses on extending its research into new products pertaining to the food, agriculture and energy value chains. The center has a 3,500 square foot space and is bestowed with the latest company technology, applications and products that are created to meet the world's biggest challenges, including food security, energy and protection. The Innovation Centers are launched largely with the objective of utilizing global science capabilities so that they can cater to the local needs.

Feds tout Innovation District Small biz official calls area model for world

Thursday, June 27, 2013 PrintEmail Comments (1) By: Jordan Graham

Boston’s growing Innovation District is an example for other cities that want to develop a cutting-edge startup culture, a federal official said yesterday.

Winslow Sargeant, chief counsel for the Small Business Administration’s office of advocacy, said Boston is “a Mecca for people from all over the world to launch out and build the next big company.” He credited the city’s Innovation District initiative, which he said has created a community of entrepreneurship and creativity.

I happen to be lucky enough to grow up in Silicon Valley--the central hub of technology and business, a place buzzing with venture capitalists, CEOs, and budding entrepreneurs. Within a ten minute drive, I can look up at the towering offices of Yahoo!, marvel at the Google self-driving cars, and see the "like" billboard which guards the entrance to Facebook.

I love it here. To put it simply, living in the Silicon Valley is inspiring. It makes me feel that I am important, that I can make changes. It makes me feel that, when I grow up, I can, too, be an active member of the constantly evolving technological world. And after my experience competing in the Technovation Challenge, I feel as though I am one step closer to doing so.

There are a lot of people who believe innovation is dead. And I’m not going to sugar-coat anything, some of their arguments are solid. Just listen to academic Robert Gordon or big-time entrepreneurs Peter Thiel and Max Levchin, and you might even be convinced yourself. But don’t be. Because while the arguments might appeal to the crotchety old man in each of us, they’re dead wrong.

The reasoning of innovation pessimists goes something like this: innovations of the past– like the toilet, refrigeration, and the polio vaccine– solved massive problems and changed the world. But innovations of today– like Facebook FB +0.89%, Android, and the Nintendo Wii– solved nothing (unless you consider boredom a problem). The damning implication of this is that our generation has failed to produce innovations that will solve the tremendous problems of our time, problems like global warming, rising cancer rates, or and our depleting oil supply.