This morning I was reading my social media and came across an article that Christine Tsai had posted on Facebook.

It was about the founder of Sriracha sauce, David Tran, displaced from Vietnam when the North’s communists took power.

As the son of an immigrant myself, I am a sucker for an immigrant story.

Since Google has yet to make news of its miracle time machine public, we'll have to learn to make do with the measly real-time time we've got now (full disclosure: that's a joke). So let us benefit from the insights from "time coach" and author Elizabeth Grace Saunders.

As Saunders writes for Lifehacker, we can learn to become more punctual--but only if we consider the underlying reasons for our constant lateness.

If you've ever found yourself pacing around your room trying to decide whether to end a text message with an exclamation point or a period (or maybe no punctuation--edgy!), then you are intimately familiar with the scarcity of signaling in virtual communications.

As Keith Ferrazzi writes for HBR, we feel even more clueless about communication online than in person because of the paucity of contextual information available. Take work, for example: If you are having an all-hands meeting, hiearchy will be represented by the way people order themselves (CEO in the center, interns on the roof). These signals are not available during a conference call--which is probably why you hardly ever hear the folks lurking via phone pop in with a question.

True confession: I started writing this article more than two months ago, and I am just finishing it now.

I had the best intentions, of course. I planned to bang it out that very first week, but I realized that I was going to be traveling for work, which meant that I really needed to spend time planning for packing, and then, of course, do the packing itself. So, I aimed for the following week when I came home, but I realized that I had follow-up emails from my work trip that needed to be sent out in a timely manner, whereas writing this article could surely wait.

Entrepreneurs are master firefighters. Every day they hustle for new clients, maintain current ones, and handle the million little problems that crop up. When entrepreneurs run a business with employees and a growing consumer base, these problems multiply, draining their time even more.

Business owners have to think about and address several issues on a daily basis. Continual innovation and creativity usually fall by the wayside as a result. It’s hard for many of these owners to think about the next step when the task at-hand is already so overwhelming.

While most favor bottom-up, entrepreneur-led efforts to develop robust entrepreneurial ecosystems, in Africa especially, what the government does actually matters a great deal. In the third of four posts this month on Africa, I look at Rwanda and find a country where smart government engagement has created a favorable climate for entrepreneurs.

In the 2010 Ease of Doing Business ranking from the World Bank, Rwanda made a spectacular leap—from 143rd on the list to 67th. It had a better business environment than Italy, Turkey and Poland. That same year, the Heritage Foundation’s Index of Economic Freedom showed similar results as Rwanda had improved on half of the ten indicators of economic freedom, achieving the fourth largest score gain among 179 countries. On the ground, those improvements translated into real impact: per capita GDP had almost quadrupled since 1995, life expectancy had increased by 23 years, the country’s primary school enrolment had risen by 50 percent and 18,447 new businesses were registered in 2010 alone.

The 12th floor of an office building in downtown D.C. was barren in February when Donna Harris and Evan Burfield launched1776, their incubator for tech companies.

Not for long.

The walls of the building are still being painted, and the furniture is still being arranged at 1776, a reference to the Revolutionary War and to modern-day “disrupters.” But Harris and Burfield have had little difficulty persuading founders and would-be founders of tech start-ups to sign up for desks in the new space. Harris says that more than 75 start-ups have committed to taking space in the eight weeks since the launch. Most are tech-related, whether focusing on health, education, fashion or green energy.

On Thursday, March 28, Canada announced that a new startup visa program would begin accepting applications.

Governments can be notorious for slow change, especially in the eyes of entrepreneurs who move at an incredibly fast-pace. But Canada’s federal government moved impressively quickly to implement this new visa, which is aimed at encouraging entrepreneurs from all over the globe to call us home.

Entrepreneurs in any industry need to start with a big idea – and a big tolerance for risk. But in health care, startups often need to take on a unique set of regulatory hurdles, complex systems and entrenched ways of getting things done to successfully build and scale.

At the TEDMED conference Thursday, a few of the industry’s most seasoned entrepreneurs and investors gave emerging startups a dose of advice. Here are a few of their tips:

User data has fueled the growth of apps in the mobile economy.

Instead of buying digital goods, we are increasingly exchanging them for our personal information, such as our names, email addresses, browsing preferences, location and much more.  There is absolutely nothing wrong with this model but the long term viability of it depends on all parties coming together to ensure transparency across the value-exchange.

Innovation is at or near the center of nearly everyone’s radar screen. If you’re not looking for it in your work, you’re looking for it in your personal life, because stirring in each of us is the desire to employ our ingenuity. Thus, the potential to innovate is alive and well in everyone.

Actually doing it with any acumen and consistency is another matter entirely.

Experts on commerce said entrepreneurship and preventing “brain drain” were essential in promoting new businesses in Mediterranean regions, during a debate in Marseille on Saturday. A successful economy begins by creating a place where educated people want to be, they say.

Can countries on the Mediterranean work to reinvent commerce? This was the question for Cécile Jolly, an economist at the Center for Strategic Analysis and Daniel Rouach, an administrator at the Chamber of Commerce France-Israel.

When I co-founded my company in 1986, I had two business cards made. One said "President." The other said "Archduke." Whenever I gave clients a choice, they always wanted the Archduke card.

In time, I gave all the Archduke cards away and never re-ordered them -- in a pitiful attempt, I think, to seem more professional.

Fortunately, everything comes full circle. Last night, while enjoying a wonderful concert in my hometown of Woodstock, my next title was suddenly revealed.

America's success has been fed by its innovators and inventors – optimists like Steve Jobs and Thomas Edison whose inspired work continues, even after their deaths, to fuel this country's growth. Author Alec Foege celebrates these quirky geniuses in his new book, The Tinkerers: The Amateurs, DIYers, and Inventors Who Make America Great (Basic Books). Certain sites still resonate with a tinkering spirit, he says: "These are places to go to inspire if you want to create your own project or just to get into the mind-set." He shares some favorites with Larry Bleiberg for USA TODAY.

The Consumer Electronics Association (CEA)(R) honored Congressman Greg Walden (R-OR) with the inaugural Innovation Policy Ninja Award, and named Senator Jerry Moran (R-KS), Congressman Jared Polis (D-CO) and DISH CEO Joseph Clayton as Digital Patriots at Wednesday's CEA awards dinner. These four unique award recipients were recognized for their instrumental roles in advancing technology innovation. As part of a two-day event that brought together trailblazing technology companies and Washington leaders, CES on the Hill showcased technologies at the center of today's tech policy debates to a record 500+ attendees, including 32 members of Congress on Tuesday night.

Citizen, a mobile tech company in Portland, Ore., has taken its health and wellness programs in an interesting direction. The company encourages its employees to submit health and fitness data such as what they eat, how much they exercise and how many hours of sleep they get.

The employees upload their results to a central server as part of a wellness program to determine whether healthy employees are indeed happier or more productive.

The system, called C3PO (Citizen Evolutionary Process Organism), takes a cue from the quantified self movement, which is basically self-tracking your well-being with statistics.

What talented people want has changed. They used to want high salaries to verify their value and stable career paths to allow them to sleep well at night. Now they want purposeful work and jobs that fit clearly into the larger context of their career. And that means they want jobs that are sensible parts of an ongoing journey through a series of professional endeavors — not some supposedly linear path toward "success".

The difficulty is that companies haven't quite figured out how to provide this. In fact, for all its accomplishments, business in the 21st century has a dirty little secret: Statistically speaking, companies aren't sure how to hire the right people.

Motivating people to change their health behaviors is a tricky feat, but people sure are trying. In fact, the number of fitness tracking applications and workplace wellness companies that exist today is staggering, to the point where I simply can’t keep track of them all anymore. So many of them are so similar, too, using some mix of education, social networking and incentives to encourage people to make healthier life choices.

One day, we may be able to check e-mail or call a friend without ever touching a screen or even speaking to a disembodied helper. Samsung is researching how to bring mind control to its mobile devices with the hope of developing ways for people with mobility impairments to connect to the world. The ultimate goal of the project, say researchers in the company’s Emerging Technology Lab, is to broaden the ways in which all people can interact with devices.

Change is hard. I see entrepreneurs every day who are trying to change the world with a new idea, and startups that are trying to survive their hyper-growth phase by changing processes to meet demand. In both cases, it’s easy for them to become frustrated and give up, since most have never been trained in change management, and don’t even know what questions to ask.

Recently I spotted a new book for change management leaders in large organization, and I realized that many of the issues they face are the same as ones faced in every growing startup. Phil Buckley, in his new book “Change With Confidence,” provides practical answer to fifty of the biggest questions that keep change leaders up at night.