Sometimes, it is more efficient to operate independently. Bees would waste a lot of time and energy if fifteen of them ganged up on the same flower at one time, for instance. In a variety of circumstances and because technology is developing so much, working remotely has become a practical means of getting jobs done faster. A blog post from PDU 4 PMP gives us eight tips on how to better manage project teams remotely:

There’s this great moment in the documentary Jiro Dreams of Sushi (2011) when the world’s most celebrated sushi chef turns to his son, who is leaving to start his own restaurant, and says: ‘You have no home to come back to.’ Which, when you think about it, isn’t harsh or discouraging but is in fact the very best thing you could say to someone setting out on an adventure.

Last October I quit my job to become a freelance journalist. I had only ever made about $900 from writing, but my latest project, a profile of Douglas Hofstadter, had attracted interest from a couple of big American magazines. I stood to make anywhere between $10,000 and $20,000 from the piece.

Forget slasher movies and rom coms - with the upcoming release of Jobs, the Steve Jobs biopic, entrepreneur flicks are where it's at. MT has dusted off its favourite business movies - all you need to supply is the popcorn. Stay tuned for the second part next week...

Last night, at the Churchill Club’s annual VC roundtable in Mountain View, CA, venture capitalists from firms like Greylock Partners, Khosla Ventures, and New Enterprise Associates told an audience how to best pitch them.

Of course, none of these investors could agree.

For instance, Peter Sonsini, a partner at NEA, told would-be entrepreneurs they should use VCs’ famous “herd mentality” to their advantage. Build up that allure, he said, make it seem like competing firms have been flirting with you in the hopes of throwing money at your startup. Entrepreneurs shouldn’t lie but there are ways to convey that you’ve got other suitors without seeming hokey. Like if a VC on Sand Hill Road agrees to meet with you Sonsini said, “You can tell them, ‘I can’t. I’m going to be local, but I’ve got meetings.’”

I had the pleasure of listening to Frank Peters interview Liz Marchi, coordinator of the Frontier Angel Fund in Montana, last weekend. The podcast interview was fun, as Frontier Angels had two exits in late 2012 – great for the entrepreneurs, investors, and the angel group itself. Or as Liz puts it “everyone understands the ‘do good’ part of angel investing, but it is great to ‘do well’ so I can invest again… It’s really fun to put capital in to build companies.”

Rice Univ.’s Rice Alliance for Technology and Entrepreneurship has been named the top global university business incubator of 2013, according to the first in-depth study by the University Business Incubator (UBI) Index, based in Sweden.

The UBI Index reviewed 550 university incubators around the world and performed a study of 150 university business incubators in 22 countries. Incubators were measured on a unique assessment framework with more than 50 performance indicators. The analysis of this assessment framework shows the value participating incubators create for their ecosystem and their clients, according to a press release from the UBI Index.

Big pharmaceutical companies strike licensing deals with small companies in hopes of finding new, highly profitable medicine without the cost of buying a whole company.

Small companies get funding other ways, such as venture capital firms, but the money from licensing arrangements can mean the difference between continuing operations and closing shop.

Welcome back to Elevator Pitch, a weekly Q&A that puts top Silicon Valley tech investors under the spotlight and gets them talking about what kinds of deals they're looking for -- and the common pitfalls that can trap entrepreneurs.

This week, we're chatting with Navin Chaddha, who as managing director of Mayfield Fund oversees one of the valley's oldest VC firms. A holder of 35 patents, he's invested in Akamai, SolarCity, Fab and Appcelerator, among others. He also launched Mayfield's India Fund.

The world is flooded with college graduates this month eager to start that shiny new job. Here are a few things to keep in mind if you are looking for a job:

1. The world does not owe you a job. If you still have not found a job, stop complaining out loud. Show me the positive side of your personality.

2. A future employer does not care if you have $100,000 in student loans. That is your problem, not mine. Show me your good financial sense.

Venture capitalists are among my favorite clients. Whether the client is the firm or an individual or a portfolio company, they are often very good at keeping litigation costs down, relatively speaking. Here's how they do it.

1. Cut to the chase.

VC's tend to be time-constrained and face innumerable competing demands in their day-to-day business lives. They know how to have short meetings, short phone calls, and to cut to the chase. When you are paying your legal team by the fraction of an hour, these are valuable habits.

A new material could potentially be used to extract uranium from seawater more efficiently, new research suggests.

The world’s oceans contain nearly a thousand times as much uranium as conventional reserves, and researchers have spent decades trying to develop an efficient way to extract it. Experts say it is important to develop such technology because it could serve as insurance in case supplies of uranium for nuclear reactors ever become scarce.

Donald Trump just unveiled an exciting new start-up—a crowdfunding website called “Fund Anything.” You can find your own way to the site if you care about such things. The heightened profile of crowdfunding—Amanda Palmer, the Veronica Mars film, and even Iron Sky—probably motivated Trump to dip his toes into this new variant of capitalization.  If Trump has a talent, it seems to be sniffing out opportunities to exploit, and the shift to crowdfunding now seems like such an exploitable moment. Whatever draws the ever-listening media to listen to him bloviate, he’ll embrace it—lest we forget his all-important announcement about the conditions of the President’s birth.

Johnson & Johnson Innovation today announced the opening of the Johnson & Johnson California Innovation Center, one of four regional hubs being established in the world's leading life science innovation hotspots. A part of Johnson & Johnson Innovation, the goal of the California Innovation Center is to advance healthcare by catalyzing collaborations in science and technology between regional innovators and the Johnson & Johnson Family of Companies across a diverse spectrum of early stage innovation.

The California Innovation Center is home to a team of business, science and transaction experts who are focused on identifying and building novel early stage collaborations with emerging companies, entrepreneurs and academic centers across western North America.  This team has full and broad deal-making capabilities, with flexibility to adapt deal structures to match early-stage needs and opportunities.

Noah Kagan (31) grew up and thrived in Silicon Valley. However, his feelings about it are mixed.

After graduating from Lynbrook High School in San Jose, CA, he got a degree from UC Berkeley. Next, he worked at some of Silicon Valley’s largest success stories; Intel, Facebook, and Mint. He then went on to found several multimillion dollar companies in the Valley including his current company, AppSumo.

Noah now lives happily in Austin, TX. He captures the pluses and minuses of the valley, “If you want to build a $1B company, the valley is a great place. The people there are ridiculously smart. They push you to be better.

With immigration reform in a constant state of flux, many highly-skilled highly skilled workers are being turned away at America's doorstep. Research shows that since 2005, the number of immigrant-founded tech companies in the U.S. has declined as much as 8.5 percent in some areas, including Silicon Valley. Canada, looking to take advantage of the dysfunction, passed the "startup visa" in order to attract spurned immigrant entrepreneurs, create new jobs and drive economic growth.

How does it work?

Canada's visa allows entrepreneurs and their families to enter the country and become citizens almost immediately. The hope is that this very bold and generous residency offer will entice more people to forgo the more arduous application processes of the U.S. and other countries.

Whatever you expected when you entered the degree programme, it all looks different ten years hence. An INSEAD case study draws lessons on career success and personal fulfillment from the lives and work of the MBA class of 2002.

MBA graduates in the popular imagination probably look something like this: a man or woman in a custom-tailored Italian suit losing sleep on spreadsheets and racing through airports racking up frequent flyer miles while rising through the ranks of a consulting firm (or a multinational or a global bank). He or she boasts a hefty pay packet and a meager personal life, enjoyed on the fly in-between mega-deals.

Australia is the second best place in the world to be a female entrepreneur, with only the United States ranking higher in the first ever index of female entrepreneurship.

The Gender-GEDI Female Entrepreneurship Index launched by Dell at its Women’s Entrepreneur Network Conference in Turkey ranks Australia second out of 17 countries.

The index found there was no single determinant to entrepreneurial success, with the best performing countries demonstrating success across wide variety of categories.

Some 36 per cent fewer women than men plan to start up their own business, with only 30 per cent of women self-identifying as having an entrepreneurial mindset compared to half of men, according to research by business services provider Expert Market.

Creating a business also becomes less appealing with age, with over-50s three times less likely to embark on their own venture than the under-30s, finds the study of almost 1,000 respondents.

An Expert Market spokesperson says, 'For a lot of people, the idea of having their own business is connected with too many possibilities of failure, rather than success. However this is a huge shame as both women and the older generation offer a huge wealth of talent and experience which would be hugely beneficial to start ups.

Businesses aren’t doing their part to help commercialize university research in Canada, according to a new C.D. Howe Institute report .

Canadian universities spend more than $11-billion a year on research and development – more per capita than U.S. universities – but they are laggards when it comes to “technology transfer,” concludes social scientist Peter Howitt, professor emeritus at Brown University and a C.D. Howe resident fellow.

This week marked the start of NYU’s Summer Launchpad – a 10-week accelerator that, for 10 lucky teams, will provide coaching, mentorship, and a $7,500 stipend to help propel the next generation of successful entrepreneurs.

“It’s been documented that 75% of startups ultimately fail and that’s even when founders have 100% of their time committed to working on it,” explained Frank Rimalovski, executive director of the NYU Entrepreneurial Institute and driving force behind the program.