Regardless of the industry, entrepreneurs vary when it comes to leadership styles. Some employers prefer the traditional top-down approach, while others treat their employees like equals who can IM them throughout the day and grab drinks with them once that day is over. But altogether, teams are formulated at startups to create things, to get things done — without micromanaging.

The approach of “MBWA” or “management by walking around” might sound like an outdated technique, but for some business owners, it still works—if not in a new way. To do so without micromanaging your employees—or even being in the same office space—impacts both a startup’s deadlines and the company culture as well.

If you’re ready to incorporate a business, one of the simplest ways to create a legal entity for your company is to set up an LLC.  The LLC stands for “limited liability company,” and it gives you the ability to create a separate legal entity for your business which is separate from your identity as the owner. Like other corporate structures, the LLC gives you a “corporate shield” when you incorporate a business, to separate and protect your personal assets from those of your business.

Computerized hospital equipment is increasingly vulnerable to malware infections, according to participants in a recent government panel. These infections can clog patient-monitoring equipment and other software systems, at times rendering the devices temporarily inoperable.

While no injuries have been reported, the malware problem at hospitals is clearly rising nationwide, says Kevin Fu, a leading expert on medical-device security and a computer scientist at the University of Michigan and the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, who took part in the panel discussion.

How important are immigrants to the entrepreneurial landscape? Given the furor around changing the visa requirements for even the most skilled immigrants, you might think this would be a tough question to answer.

It's not. Instead, it's abundantly clear that entrepreneurs and those who support them have an unusually high stake in immigration reform. Allowing skilled immigrant entrepreneurs to more easily enter America, where they can create good jobs and pay taxes, is the closest thing to an economic free lunch that we are likely to get. In the words of New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, we are committing "economic suicide" by making it hard for skilled immigrants to stay in the U.S. and contribute to our economy.

Billionaire investor Peter Thiel is offering 20 young innovators a chance to trade school for Silicon Valley and start turning their vision into reality.

The finalists are competing for a two year fellowship in unrivaled network of mentors and USD 100,000. But to win the opportunity of a lifetime they will need to dazzle some of the brightest minds in Silicon Valley.

Singapore: In a move to promote openness, transparency and collaboration in research and development, multinational pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) has thrown open its TB compound library.

GSK scientists have screened the company's entire pharmaceutical compound library of more than two million compounds for any that may inhibit tuberculosis (TB) bacteria and will publish in a scientific journal the results of this process - about 200 promising hits that could act as new starting points for the discovery of new medicines for TB. This is the first time a pharmaceutical company will have made public its own proprietary compounds which have demonstrated signs of activity against TB.

When I started mentoring entrepreneurs and startups a few years ago, I anticipated that I would get mostly tough technical questions, but instead I more often hear things like “Where do I start?” I find that the basics are actually the hardest to answer, just like your parents found out when they first tried to fill you in on the “facts of life” a long time ago.

Most entrepreneurs are not born with the knowledge to run a successful business, so the right place to start is some business training in school, or some practical work experience in a business of your interest, prior to starting your own company. Jumping into a business area you don’t know, because you see a chance for big money, is a surefire path to disaster.

I also found a wealth of books are available to address the basic facts of business life, like one I just finished by Bill McBean, aptly named “The Facts of Business Life,” based on his forty years running large and small businesses. Bill does a great job of outlining the key facts as follows:

In a letter addressed to NYTechMeetup, President Obama mentioned crowdfunding as one of the tools available to grow the tech startup industry. As the CEO and co-founder of CircleUp, the largest equity-based crowdfunding site in the U.S., my views on the merits of crowdfunding are no secret. However, I disagree with the assertion that crowdfunding is a good way to grow tech startups—crowdfunding is an amazing vehicle to make inefficient capital markets more efficient for some companies; however, there are many types of companies that are not good candidates to raise money via crowdfunding. Below are four signs that a company is NOT a good candidate for crowdfunding:

 1.  The company is a tech company. One of crowdfunding’s greatest benefits is that it makes capital markets in inefficient industries more efficient. Tech is definitely not one of those industries. Tech companies have an existing wealth of resources to get in front of potential investors: demo days, incubators, well respected publications like TechCrunch, and most importantly ample angel and venture capitalist money that is earmarked for investments in the tech space. Over 70% of the $28 billion of venture capital financing in 2011 went to businesses in the tech or life sciences spaces. In short, venture capital financing is what you get if you’re a tech company worthy of investment.  If a tech company can’t get traction through one of these well-established channels, the most likely reason is that they simply don’t have a viable business plan.  And crowdfunding won’t change that.  Think about this- if you’re investing in an e-commerce business or a social media company through a crowdfunding site, don’t you think those companies approached Sand Hill Road first?  They should have.  And their failure to generate interest on Sand Hill Road should provide some pause.  One might reasonably ask–if you see a tech company seeking crowdfunding–what didn’t the hundreds of venture capital firms in the country like about it?

Over the next twenty years, as 78 million baby boomers will reach retirement age, there will be increased demand for a wide array of services and goods desired and required for seniors. In tomorrow’s economy, communities that can tailor their entrepreneurship strategies to the needs and assets of a changing population will come out ahead. Is your community ready?

Rural and urban communities can take advantage of this trend and create economic growth through strategic entrepreneurship efforts. Strategies that engage older individuals in entrepreneurial and project-based work provide communities opportunities to tap into the professional knowledge and unmatched experience of boomers, even after they have left the workforce. Join IEDC’s October 25, 2012 webinar to learn tactics to help position your community to succeed in the coming retirement boom.

University of Michigan's Office of Tech Transfer reported this week that 368 new inventions were reported in the fiscal year 2012, which ended in June, comfortably eclipsing last year’s then-record total of 332.

The Tech Transfer office helps scientists take their inventions to market through a variety of programs and also handles the licensing agreements that allow technologies and inventions to spin off into for-profit companies while still benefiting the university.

The purpose of this Notice is to announce the availability of a Commercialization Assistance Program (CAP) for NIH SBIR and STTR Phase II awardees. Now in its ninth year, this program is designed to help NIH SBIR and STTR Phase II awardees transition their developed products into the marketplace. Through a contract with Humanitas, Inc. of Silver Spring, MD with a sub-contract to Larta Institute of Los Angeles, CA, the CAP will provide early stage companies with individualized assistance toward accomplishing their commercialization goals.

The 2012-2013 CAP will begin in December 2012 and will conclude at the end of August 2013.  With two distinctive tracks, the program offers customized assistance to meet the specific needs of both early stage and seasoned companies: Commercialization Training Track (CTT), and Accelerated Commercialization Track (ACT).  Each is different in their objectives and outcomes.

Have no fear

Very few people love to network. Putting yourself out there is the first step to creating a valuable professional network. Go to Meetups, local tech events and Demo Days to get exposure to new potential contacts. Talk to people who seem nervous or lost in the crowd, they will be relieved that you did and you never know who you might meet. Be sure to ask for business cards when you think a follow up will be helpful.

Ask about them first

Before you launch in to your pitch, be sure you have invested yourself in the conversation. Ask questions about what the other person does, and listen to their answers. Be authentic in your interactions, and remember that networking is a two way street.

More good news for our startup community: As I read through many of the ACA Innovation Challenge proposals, I see many that are pre-revenue, and thus really not eligible for much venture funding. They’re based on promising new technologies, often in life sciences, green energy, or advanced materials.

Traditionally, the government has funded this kind of research through U.S. Small Business Administration grants designed to take promising technology out of the lab and into the commercial market. These come through the SBA’s Small Business Innovation Research and Small Business Technology Transfer programs.

There is no doubt that women are incredibly important in business. My mother was and still is exceptionally entrepreneurial and she was largely my inspiration to start my first business as a teenager. However all the stats show that there are significantly fewer female entrepreneurs than male entrepreneurs, with global studies affirming that in some countries the ratio is as unbalanced as 5:1. The question is why? I spent several weeks trying to discover exactly why this is the case, talking to female entrepreneurs, male entrepreneurs and psychologists. Unemployment has reached unprecedented levels; as entrepreneurs are important sources of job creation, we should be concerned for economic reasons, when any group of society is seemingly excluded, even in part, from taking part in such an economically valuable pursuit.

Starting a new business? You might want to avoid these like the plague.

You see — I’ve spent the last 10 months working with hundreds of startup entrepreneurs on their businesses.

And yes — a multitude of problems and roadblocks explode to life in a new startup. But here are the top 7 that can stop an entrepreneur dead in his (or her) tracks:

The final video of Fast Company’s ‘Pivot’ series examines how almost 20 companies, including Intel, Instagram and Zappos, view the strategic shifts that led to their success.

But it does allow for change in direction. This series explores those destiny-altering decisions made by companies that have gone on to great success. Read more about their course corrections--and alternate endings. READ MORE Pivot. Pivot. Pivot. Ask about strategic change, and it’s a safe bet that any group of technology executives will turn into a chorus of entrepreneurial frogs. But just because the word “pivot” is at the tip of every tech founder’s tongue--and almost all will agree it’s an overused term--doesn’t mean there’s any consensus on what it means.

It’s hard to quantify what makes a city "greener" than any other metropolis, but there are some clues: car ownership, green space, bicycle usage, solar installations, recycling, and water consumption are just some of the factors that add up to create environmentally responsible cities. An infographic from HouseTrip lays out what different cities are doing in an easy-to-read format.

More than a dozen science and engineering organizations worked with ScienceDebate.org to draft 14 top science questions to ask the two main presidential candidates this election year. Although President Barack Obama and Governor Mitt Romney declined to debate these issues in person (at least as of press time), their campaigns provided written responses to the queries.

Because these are substantive issues that will play a critical role in determining the nation's—not to mention our planet's—future, the Scientific American editors summarized and rated the candidates' answers. Our following analysis is not a comprehensive guide to the election—you will have to look elsewhere for an evaluation of the candidates' positions on foreign affairs, social values or tax policy. Instead we focused on highlighting how the candidates differ from each other on science.

The Founder Institute claims to be the world’s largest startup accelerator having helped to launch more than 550 companies in 27 cities on five continents in its three years, with the goal of “Globalizing Silicon Valley”. Now it is doubling its European presence with five new chapters, according to The Next Web.

The newly launched chapters are Zagreb (Croatia), Helsinki (Finland), Istanbul (Turkey), Rome (Italy) and Kyiv (Ukraine). In addition, the Founder Institute is also testing new programs in Barcelona, Lisbon, London, Zurich, and Warsaw, and will be hosting several free events across Europe this autumn…

I’m a very logical guy, so I still fondly remember when new solutions and technologies started trends on the basis of their logical strengths. In today’s world, it seems that emotion, not logic, sparks the new trends that become culture, and drives our devotion or disappointment in new products and brands. How does an entrepreneur best deal with that environment?

I just saw some real insights in a new book by Jeremy D. Holden, “Second That Emotion: How Decisions, Trends, and Movements Are Shaped.” He is a branding and research strategist who outlines how social contracts cause culture shifts, illustrates how they are created by emotion, and clarifies ways that they can make or break a new product, as well as a career.