It is often said that it is best to “surround yourself with the best people you can find, who are smarter than you are” when assembling a team.  While I don’t disagree with this, when founders try and assemble their management team (or even their founding team), they need to remember how the entrepreneurship context might necessitate a different way of executing on this sentiment.  What is different in entrepreneurship is that things are almost always in a state of flux, and what we find and hold to be true in more established organizations has but a slight resemblance in entrepreneurship. 

One of the things that I hear most often is that founders are struggling to find good people to join their team –most notably, a strong tech person and a strong sales person.  There are so many loose ends to grapple with in start-ups – thinking about business models, pricing models, revenue models (all very sexy things); positioning for exit, launch, disruption (sometimes in that order) – that how to hire good people often falls by the wayside because it is more mundane. 

Sugar is indeed toxic. It may not be the only problem with the Standard American Diet, but it’s fast becoming clear that it’s the major one.

A study published in the Feb. 27 issue of the journal PLoS One links increased consumption of sugar with increased rates of diabetes by examining the data on sugar availability and the rate of diabetes in 175 countries over the past decade. And after accounting for many other factors, the researchers found that increased sugar in a population’s food supply was linked to higher diabetes rates independent of rates of obesity.

At South by Southwest it’s not just about mingling with hoodie-sporting digerati and beta testing their latest apps, it’s equally important how you arrive.  At least that’s what startups like Silvercar, SideCar and Tagged are hoping.

Banking on transportation as the great equalizer of the week-long music, film and technology conference that starts next week in Austin, Texas–namely, the need for every attendee to get from the airport to the conference and dozens of  venues–a handful of startups are offering new services or extended existing ones in their quest to woo early adopters as users, and (they hope), ambassadors.

Morgenthaler Ventures is scaling back its investment team as it sets out to raise its smallest venture fund in 15 years, according to documents viewed by VentureWire.

The firm is the latest venture firm to downsize amid a general shrinking of the venture industry that has seen smaller teams set out to raise smaller, more focused funds as interest from limited partners has shifted toward the top-performing investors.

IBM’s Watson, a supercomputer designed for artificial intelligence, isn’t just good at answering Jeopardy questions — it’s also smart at diagnostic medicine and creating new recipes.

A new report from the New York Times today shows that IBM is looking to bring Watson’s powerful abilities to more industries in order to give the company an edge in the “big data” field. Watson has already had some success as a diagnostic assistant at a few medical centers around the country, including the Cleveland Clinic. Now IBM is looking to use its powerhouse elsewhere.

The U.S. economy is not creating new jobs as fast as it once did.

Nobody is really sure how to crank up the great American jobs machine to match the performance of the mid-1980s or late 1990s, but economists point to a number of things that could help improve hiring.

Here’s five things the U.S. could do. The catch? All would require help from Washington — no sure thing in the highly charged political climate of the nation’s capitol. Read more about January jobs data.

What kinds of industrial production can bring innovation to the American economy? An intensive, long-term study by a group of MIT scholars suggests that a renewed commitment to research and development in manufacturing, sometimes through creative new forms of collaboration, can spur innovation and growth in the United States as a whole.

The findings are outlined in the preview of a report issued by a special MIT commission on innovation, called Production in the Innovation Economy (PIE). Among the approaches the report recommends are new forms of collaboration and risk-sharing — often through public-private partnerships or industry-university agreements — that can enable a wide variety of firms and industries to grow.

Truly innovative small businesses and startups create a bold vision of a future that doesn't exist yet, solving problems that customers don't even know they have. But they don't pull that vision out of thin air -- many inventive companies use a strategy called design thinking.

"Design thinking is a problem-solving approach," says Jeanne Liedtka, a design and innovation expert at University of Virginia's Darden School of Business. "It's a set of tools that help you make decisions in the kinds of high uncertainty situations that entrepreneurs face."

Who’s interested in learning more about how to create an “innovation culture”?

Most of us are, and most of us want to know more about best practices, and powerful, vetted ideas and workable strategies for innovation. But reading the daily onslaught of innovation tips clogging up our media aggregators, our Twitter feeds, our social media, our blogs, our email — the list goes on – can sometimes feel like  “Innovation Whac-A-Mole.”

It’s better for a CEO to describe success than to prescribe the exact methods employees must use to achieve it. This is done, says Chegg CEO Dan Rosensweig, by establishing a company vision and sharing it often with employees. He advises to not think in terms of business models, but rather to reframe the questions to ensure your company is thinking big enough. Then, hire people willing to be part of a team that will be integral to this vision.

In order for innovation to flourish in your organization, your innovation champions must be supported through properly structured responsibilities, goals and resources. Otherwise, they will leave to pursue other opportunities, taking their energy and ideas with them. That’s one of the core messages of Gerard J. Tellis’ new book, Unrelenting Innovation.

If you have a killer idea for a startup, but lack the time, resources and budget to develop a business plan, a business plan-generating app can help you get your plan on paper and, ideally, off the ground.

A number of apps simplify the often tedious, complicated process of crafting a thorough bank- and investor-ready business plan. You provide the information, they organize it into a plan, and hopefully soon you'll be in business.

Here's a look at three apps that can help get your business plan rolling:

WANT TO BE MORE CREATIVE? SOMETIMES IT’S JUST A MATTER OF GIVING YOURSELF THE SPACE TO THINK, WRITES BRUCE NUSSBAUM.

Everyone can learn to be more creative, but to become very creative, I’ve come to believe you need to lead a creative life. In watching my best students, in examining the lives of successful entrepreneurs, and in seeing the process of the great Native American artists who I know, it is clear that how they live their daily lives is crucial to their success. I realize that it sounds very “zen-y” (which is OK by me), yet I come to this realization not through a search for spirituality or clarity but from simple observation.

Starting off on the right foot means learning to love the gruntwork, building peer relationships, and managing your manager, among other things.

"Your first job is not only about showing that you can get the job done," Thorin Klosowski writes at Lifehacker. After the thrill of the hire and the trial of negotiation, the maiden voyage begins--one in which you'll need all the connections and tricks of the trade that you can develop from the beginning.

Relish the gruntwork "Chances are you'll need to clean the proverbial toilet for a while before you're given any real responsibility," Klosowski says. "This means you need to show off your work ethic even if you're stuck doing tasks you don't like."

Sitting on a table in Skylar Tibbits’s lab, at MIT’s new Center for International Design, is a 200-gallon-fish tank--it's large enough to hold one of Damien Hirst’s pickled sharks. If Tibbits’s experiment goes according to plan, within the next few weeks, it will be the scene of a sort of fractal monster movie. A 50-foot-long strand of coded mystery material will be dumped into the water-filled tank, and transform--without benefit of human hands!--into a sweet little 8-inch square Hilbert curve.

How long will it take? Nobody knows.

“It will probably depend on how hot the water is, or if I add a little salt,” jokes Tibbits, the 28-year-old wunderkind architect-designer-computer scientist behind what may be the next wave in manufacturing: 4-D printing.

Are you a production monster or do you, like me, find that certain things you do throughout the day end up being time killers online? Maybe Facebook is the culprit? Or possibly all that time spent looking at eBay auctions is cutting into your productivity? You might even be one of those who constantly checks email which can be one of the all time worst time killers online.

No matter how efficient you are, the fact is that we all waste time, at some point or another. This infographic from OfficeTime examines the top 10 ways we kill time every day. Follow the flow chart and see how you can change the way you work.

Almost every early-stage startup who has approached investors for funding has heard the innocuous sounding rejection “I love your idea, but come back when you have more traction.” What does traction really mean to investors, and how much is enough? Let me try to clarify the rules, and what it takes to win at this game.

First of all, a definition. Traction is evidence that your product or service has started that “hockey- stick” adoption rate which implies a large market, a valid business model, and sustainable growth. Investors want evidence that the “dogs are eating the dog food,” and your financial projections are not just a dream.

In a recent speech at the annual "SEC speaks" event, current Securities and Exchange Commission chair Elisse Walter placed the word "crowdfunding" immediately after the word "soon."

Well, that seems like progress.

Of course, I could just be engaging in the time-honored tradition of over-parsing every word uttered by a beltway insider in search of clues about what's going on inside the government. Here's the complete sentence:

"Soon, crowdfunding will bring the potential for a broader range of investors to provide private capital, although their investments will be and should be limited. "

If you were invited to the White House to present to senior administration officials on the state of entrepreneurship in North Carolina, what would you ask for?

A few weeks ago, I had the chance to do just that -- lead a group of Startup NC regional champions on a trip to Washington DC, where Startup America Partnership is headquartered.

I had some pretty awesome company - I was joined by Brooks Bell (Brooks Bell), Chris Heivly (TSF), Adam Hill (Packard Place), Adam Klein (American Underground), Scott Moody, and Rick Terrell. Our group was joined by entrepreneurial leaders from 10 other states, including Colorado, Texas, Arizona, Maryland, Tennessee and Indiana.

Something extraordinary happened to the American economy in the 1780s and '90s. There were no big technological changes — factories, steamships, and railroads were still largely in the future. Yet a burst of entrepreneurial activity led to a jump in productivity.

What brought on the improvement? A single great event: the overthrow of colonial rule. But not the economic policies of the empire, since British control in that area had not been so onerous.

The key change lay elsewhere. After all, the overthrow wasn't just a war for independence. It was also a revolution — a major change in social as well as political relations. Most colonists had seen themselves within a great hierarchical order where everyone knew their rank in society. The vast majority of people were "the vulgar" expected to show deference to their betters. Largely stuck in their positions, they sought protection in personal ties, and only noblesse oblige kept many from falling into utter poverty. The wealthy classes also sought stability over market-oriented efficiency and growth, not unlike Lord Grantham in the television show "Downton Abbey."