The fourth and final phase of the Wharton Business Plan Competition (BPC) is coming to a close this week with the Venture Finals. During the yearlong competition, students worked with distinguished faculty, alumni, and other members of the entrepreneurial community to bring their business ventures from the ideation stage to a fully developed business plan ready to be presented in front of a panel of judges. Along the way, a series of workshops and one-on-one mentorship helped students fine tune their plans.

Whether you’re training for a marathon or have a dream of taking your business public, one of the most essential tools to success is writing down your goals. A business plan can help visualize every aspect of making your business successful. It tells you if your business makes sense or is viable. It helps you get financing. It communicates to the rest of your team (assuming you aren’t going it alone) what is expected of them now and in the future.

If you’ve already started your business, but haven’t written a formal business plan, the time to do so is now. Though, much of this advice is focused on entrepreneurs before they start their journey.

MaRS Innovation, a Centre of Excellence for Commercialization and Research, today says it is forming a strategic partnership with Pfizer to advance early-stage technologies related to human health in therapeutics and diagnostics.

The partnership's goal is to identify investment opportunities emerging from well-validated scientific research discoveries within MaRS Innovation's 16 member institutions, including the University of Toronto and its nine affiliated teaching hospitals.

Last month the BLS put out the first official release of annual job data for metropolitan areas, so I wanted to take a brief look at this for large metro areas (more than one million in population, based on old metro area definitions that the BLS still uses). Here are the top 10 cities for percentage job growth. Nashville takes the crown. I’m also personally glad to see Indy bounce back after a couple tough years.

The MAKERS series is a documentary video project of epic scope that would never have seen the light of day if not for the commitment of filmmaker Dyllan McGee.

McGee traveled all over the United States interviewing dozens of women who played a role in the feminist movement and found herself confronted with that all-to-common problem for working women: She felt she wasn't spending enough time with her kids.

If you’ve had broadband piping into your home, and the various devices within it, for a while now, you might have forgotten what it was like to have your phone on a mobile network only. Imagine what it would be like if you tried to use as much data as you do now in that scenario. Scary right. That’s why tech research company Gartner has come to the same conclusion as many of us: a network that shares a robust, reliable and fast fixed broadband access in the home will provide a cost-effective alternative to a metered mobile data plan.

Are you considering selling your small business?  Perhaps you think it’s a good time to sell, considering that more businesses have been bought and sold this year than at this time last year, according to a BizBuySell survey.

However, valuations of those businesses could be lower in 2013, thanks to some tax changes. So if you want to get the best sales price possible, there are likely some steps you should already be taking. And allow yourself enough time to sell a small business.

We are living in the age of the entrepreneur — more people are starting up, and it's ever important to stand out in the crowd. When pitching investors, then, it's crucial that entrepreneurs do their research, understand what's expected of them and pitch accordingly.

We spoke to a handful of venture capitalists and startup entrepreneurs to get their top tips on how to put together the ideal startup pitch. Here are the best five tips we heard.

This article delves into the goals every organization should work toward to boost product development performance, looks at how these goals further a product organizations ability to bring innovative products to market, and outlines the ways that a Product Portfolio Management (PPM) Solution helps companies reach these goals.

Sometimes a whole is greater than the sum of its parts. The startup Catabasis Pharmaceuticals is hoping that will hold true for the multifunctional drugs it’s developing.

The company, which is based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, has developed a chemical linker technology that can bring together two different therapeutic components so they have a greater effect on their target pathways than they would if both compounds were administered separately. The company hopes their lead therapy will target the complex inflammation pathways in patients with irritable bowel syndromes such as Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis.

Think of the most frustrating, intractable, or simply annoying problems you can imagine. Now think about what technology is doing to fix them. That’s what we did in coming up with our annual list of 10 Breakthrough Technologies. We’re looking for technologies that we believe will expand the scope of human possibilities.

Entrepreneurs are gaining an increasing level of respect in Africa, according to a new report with the title ‘Accelerating entrepreneurship in Africa’.

In many parts of Africa entrepreneurship is still seen as a “last resort, as opposed to the pursuit of an opportunity or aspiration”. While formal employment is still highly regarded, opportunity-driven entrepreneurship is becoming more admirable. To produce the report, the Omidyar Network in partnership with the Monitor Group, conducted a survey with 582 entrepreneurs in six sub-Saharan African countries: Nigeria, Ghana, Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania and South Africa.

As a serial entrepreneur, I have absolutely loved building and running two successful companies. I founded my first company, JobDirect, as a junior in college, eventually putting college on hold while my business partner (a fellow college student!) and I grew that company to 100 employees in four years.

I enjoyed the thrills and challenges of entrepreneurship, and the experience made a deep impression on me that I carried even into non-entrepreneurial roles. But, even though I became a successful entrepreneur while I was a college student, would I have majored in entrepreneurship? To be honest, probably not, because I hadn’t pegged myself as an entrepreneur.

Entrepreneurship is a bit like white blood cells. It's a good thing, of course, and something we need. But more of it isn't necessarily good news. It fact, heightened levels of it can be a sign that something is wrong.

Take New Orleans, for example, where per capita start-ups have shot up since Katrina. A resurgent economy needs younger talent, but this is also a sign of a broken city with more cultural appeal than business opportunities, which has forced new residents to start their own companies rather than join existing, thriving enterprises.

The Biotechnology Industry Organization (BIO) today issued the annual Scientific American Worldview Report and Bio-Innovation Scorecard. On Wednesday, April 24, the Scientific American Worldview Super Session will take place during the 2013 BIO International Convention, the global biotechnology event, in Chicago, Ill. at McCormick Place.

Moderated by Fareed Zakaria, author, journalist and host of CNN's Fareed Zakaria GPS, the Convention Super Session is the marquee discussion forum among industry leaders on the state of biotech hubs and innovation around the globe. Panelists include Trevor Mundel, President, Global Health Program for The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation; Robert Hariri, Chief Executive Officer, Celgene Cellular Therapeutics; Tomas Philipson, Daniel Levin Professor of Public Policy, The University of Chicago; and Sam Pitroda, Chairman, National Innovation Council, Government of India. The session will be held from 3:45pm to 5:15pm.

Just listen to Dimitrius Graham sing. His voice soars up and down the scale like a bird carried on the wind. As a music major at Morgan State University, he seems keenly aware of certain realities about his life: His talent is undeniable and probably innate, and his future is promising but uncertain. He could make a career singing on Broadway or climbing the charts as a Billboard phenomenon. Or he could spend years singing for church groups and community theaters, for little or no money.

I’ve noticed that some entrepreneurs seem to have no trouble attracting investors, while others with a great business plan struggle with it. The reality is that angel investors are humans, and personal traits often make or break the relationship, even before the investment is considered.

On the top line, angel investors look to invest in entrepreneurs that have an almost unwavering passion and sense of urgency. In the business, this is commonly called “fire in the belly.” If you don’t have it, you probably won’t succeed, even with funding.

I had the pleasure of reading a recent article by Beth Comstock, Chief Marketing Office of GE, in the more recent editing of the Harvard Business Review. The focus of the article was the changing world of the social enterprise and how that changes employee training, education and interaction with management… consumers… and the world.

Long story short, it is about “figuring it out.”

What is the difference between managers and leaders? What sets them apart?

I have found over the years running various different companies that not all good managers go on to make great leaders.That might sound strange but I have always been a big believer in differentiating between managing a group of people and leading a company. The best leaders are the ones who are always looking to move the business they run onto the next stage of its development.