So you have a great product, platform or business that you’re stoked to start up. It can be an exciting and thrilling opportunity to get your own company up and running, but it’s also filled with stress and anxiety — that road can be full of obstacles and a lot of confusion.

Well, first things first: Have you done your business plan yet?

It sounds trite, but the business plan is really the roadmap to success. When done correctly and thoroughly, that document can not only put you on track to proper growth and healthy strategies, but it can also be the perfect way to introduce your company to potential investors.

I've been playing tennis for nearly five decades. I love the game and I hit the ball well, but I'm far from the player I wish I were. I've been thinking about this a lot the past couple of weeks, because I've taken the opportunity, for the first time in many years, to play tennis nearly every day. My game has gotten progressively stronger. I've had a number of rapturous moments during which I've played like the player I long to be.

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.

You expect everything to go perfectly. If you think that everything in your life is going to go just as you planned it in your head, you are probably mistaken. Like Saunders says, if you're laying out your itenarary with prerequisites like "If I hit every green light" or "If the train comes right on time," you're leaving little margin for error. It's like living in a fantasy world, and not a good-natured, hobbit-filled one.

A leading mum-marketing company is the giving the nation's mothers the chance to be recognised as the next generation of female innovators and inventors.

Between now and May 10, 2013, MumPanel, which counts brands such as BBC, Kelloggs, Organix and Soreen as customers, will be looking for the best life enhancing products or services for families, taking the cream of the crop to the nation's top marketeers.

What do nylon stockings, the rabies vaccine and the geodesic dome have in common? All were discovered or developed by innovators with a connection to Greater Philadelphia.

As part of its 50(th) Anniversary Celebration, the University City Science Center is accepting nominations for its inaugural Innovators Walk of Fame. The Innovators Walk of Fame will commemorate and celebrate the Greater Philadelphia region's dynamic history of innovation and the trailblazers who continue to invent the future.

In part one I covered the need for early-stage enterprise software companies to build up professional services staff to ensure successful implementation projects. This goes against the conventional wisdom of VCs.

In part two I talked about how to ensure that your professional services practice doesn’t take over your software company although I’m on record that there is nothing wrong with a services company as long as you’re not VC backed.

Eight years of work, thousands of researchers around the world, $1 billion spent — and finally it was done. On April 14, 2003, a decade ago this week, scientists announced that they had completed the Human Genome Project, compiling a list of the three billion letters of genetic code that make up what they considered to be a sort of everyperson’s DNA.

CONFERENCE

• Global 1000, VC and Angel Panels – Global 1000 companies, Venture Capitalists and Angel investors talking about the latest trends in startup funding and exits.

SHOWCASES

• Startup Showcases – featuring the best startups nominated by universities, accelerators, Angel investors and VCs from their portfolios. 
• Corporate “Needs” Showcases – a series of presentations by Global 1000 companies outlining their open innovation platforms and technology needs.

While technology can improve your business, it can also do great harm. The consequences of a technological misstep can be far-reaching and devastating — especially for a small- to mid-size organization. Make note of the five biggest corporate technology mistakes so you can avoid these pitfalls. Jumping into the cloud blindly Jumping into a cloud computing model without evaluation all of the key considerations is a huge — and hugely common — mistake. Before deciding whether to put all or part of your network into the cloud, you must consider:

You're probably hiring employees because you're totally overwhelmed or need to meet a milestone, says business coach Ann Mehl. She recommends forecasting your hiring needs a year to 18 months in advance, so you don't have to make your decisions in haste.

Traditionally, local economic developers have sought growth by trying to lure businesses from outside a region — so-called "economic hunting." Hunting can produce big economic gains, but it poses lots of challenges: It’s slow, uncertain and usually requires big marketing budgets and travel along with a raft of local and state incentives. It also may end up attracting highly mobile companies looking for the cheapest place to do business at the moment — and willing to leave for another town as soon as they believe the grass is greener elsewhere.

Many of the boldest experiments in higher education these days are led by a relatively new kind of business leader: the social entrepreneur.

The founders of Coursera proudly claim the label, stressing their lack of concern about a business plan as they set up free online courses from top colleges. So does the head of Udacity, another provider of MOOCs, or massive open online courses. In fact, it's hard to find any chief executives of education start-ups these days who don't drop "social entrepreneur" into their bios, as they stress that they are not your typical money-grubbing suits.

In the past eight months, I’ve had my Yahoo email account hacked four different times. Considering that I’m a pretty savvy internet user who knows about basic security practices, that’s pretty pitiful on Yahoo’s part.

Apparently, I’m not alone. Thousands of Yahoo account users have reported that their accounts have been compromised – even public figures such as Sarah Palin have had issues with their Yahoo accounts. Despite the fact that these matters have persisted for several months, Yahoo has been slow to address and fix them.

Being an entrepreneur is not easy. It takes courage, confidence and strength of character, determination and talent. Not everyone possesses the traits necessary to survive in an entrepreneurial environment due to the stresses and challenges of running your own business.

Business Review Australia takes a look at the common traits of an entrepreneur and determines the most important factors for success.

"George Dantzig arrived late for a statistics class. He copied down the two problems on the blackboard and turned them in a few days later. Apologizing for the delay, as he had found them much harder than usual,  Professor Neyman threw it on a disheveled desk. Six weeks later, the professor banged on Dantzig’s door. The problems that Dantzig had assumed were homework were actually unproved statistical theorems and Dantzig had proved both of them."

If you’re an aspiring entrepreneur looking to start your own business, I’ve got some advice for you.

Start a blog before you start a business.

I know what you’re thinking, “Why would I start a blog when I should be focused on starting my business?” To be honest, that’s a perfectly good question, but as an entrepreneur I’m going to need you to think outside the box.

The advent of telecommuting or working at home has transformed the global economy. More often referenced as ‘remote work’ by human resource specialists recruiting at-home workers, the rise of ‘off-site’ or consultancy businesses for outsourcing business processes and other core competencies formerly attributed to ‘bricks and mortar’ based employees in traditional professional roles is evidence of the radical reinterpretation of work as a meaningful and profitable task. If nomadic traditions are wrought by necessity, it is the real convenience and cost cutting value of remote work that has inevitably seduced multinational corporations worldwide. In some locations this translates to a near 10% of the workforce. Workers in Asia, Latin America and the Middle East now work at home more frequently than even their European or North American counterparts.

Continuing the theme of case studies for MBA Mondays, I want to use a milestone that was passed last night to make a bigger point about startups.

I have known Scott Heiferman since the late 90s. He was one of the early NYC web 1.0 entrepreneurs. We were quite friendly with Scott but we were not early investors in Meetup, the company Scott started right after 9/11. Scott and I were at an event together and when asked about something he replied that he viewed Meetup as "a twenty year project." He said that it would take at least twenty years for Meetup to achieve all that he wanted from it and possibly a lot longer. And that he was patient and committed to that timeline.

The National Business Incubation Association based in Athens, Ohio named the University of Central Florida Business Incubation Program the 2013 Incubator Network of the Year today during NBIA’s International Conference on Business Incubation in Boston.

The UCF Business Incubation Program is a university-driven community partnership that includes nine business incubators in Central Florida. Its mission is to provide early-stage companies with the tools, training and infrastructure to create financially stable, high-growth enterprises that lead to positive economic impact within local communities.

Adding a photo of a face to x-ray images can reduce “wrong-patient” errors five-fold, a new study finds.

“X-rays can look alike, and if one patient’s images are confused with another before the radiologist sees them, it can be difficult for the radiologist to determine there is a mismatch,” said Dr. Srini Tridandapani, of Emory University and an author of the study.