Three Elements Needed for Small Business Success, Report Shows

The U.S. must increase the access to three elements help small businesses thrive and restore U.S. competiveness, according to a new report from the Center for Public Policy Innovation (CPPI) — Restoring U.S. Competitiveness: Creating Jobs and Unleashing the Potential of Small Businesses through Technology and Innovation. The key elements include:

• Access to Capital — Gaining access to capital is an obstacle for all small businesses. However, the U.S. must work to connect local startups with regional investors to boost local investments and make the capital gains tax exemption permanent for investors in qualified small businesses.
• Access to Modern Technology — U.S. small business must have access to cloud computing, mobile technologies and virtual global supply chains to invest more into their products, to collaborate on a global scale and to expand their presence to foreign markets.
• Access to Global Markets — The U.S. government must make existing programs, that help domestic small business enter foreign markets, easier to find and navigate.

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Corporate Job vs. Entrepreneurship - Which is Actually Risky? >> globalEDGE: Your source for Global Business Knowledge

Entrepreneurship is risky. Entrepreneurship is for the naïve. Entrepreneurship rarely succeeds. All of these assumptions make entrepreneurship sound like a bleak place only for the most risk-averse; the de facto position from many people is that corporate life is the way to go. But this conventional position is far from true. Building new companies is far more sensible than one may think.

With the likes of Apple, Microsoft, and Facebook, all the founders took that risk and created multi-billion dollar companies, all of them also dropped out of school. I am not saying dropping out of school is a wise decision by any means, but if we look at some of the top banks or law firms, we can see many layoffs occurred in the past few years. In the “safe” job, a lawyer, 430,000 students are planned to become new legal graduates between 2008-2018. The government estimates that 215,417 jobs for these attorneys will open. So, below half will even get a chance to step foot in their chosen field. In comparison, a recent study states that 56% of businesses started in 2004 were still in business in 2012, despite the downturn in the economy.

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Entrepreneurship: Still Lost in the Davos Dialog - Daniel Isenberg - Harvard Business Review

As a Davos novice, I was fascinated to observe how entrepreneurship was reflected in the dialog among the world's movers and shakers at the World Economic Forum. The term "entrepreneurship" has achieved cult status in policy speeches, yet I was disappointed at our leaders' superficiality and wrongheadedness, as well as the topic's de facto low priority here. I suppose I shouldn't be surprised. Though the Forum has been working diligently in recent years to address the issue with sessions such as "Education-Entrepreneurship-Employment," "Innovation Ecosystems 2.0," and "Fostering Entrepreneurship Ecosystems," it will take time to elevate entrepreneurship to its rightful status — alongside, for example, the environment and corporate governance — as a crucial global policy issue.

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The battle for Brazil’s tech market is heating up | memeburn

Much of Brazil’s success has come through changes within its agricultural sector where, over the past 40 years, it has focussed on the Soya trade. But Brazil’s success does not rest on agriculture alone.

Brazil has access to huge mineral resources and has recently struck oil. Its industrial sector has been picking up pace, and China has been taking notice.

Last year, China decided to step up investment in Brazil by ploughing over US$12-billion into the economy, with most of that going to the technology sector. This figure is significant when you think back to 2009 when China’s investment in Brazil was a mere US$300-million mostly dedicated to the agricultural and mining sectors. Now it seems all eyes are on Brazil.

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Growth of short-term internships over academic breaks | Inside Higher Ed

If your students don't seem relaxed from their between-semester breaks, they may have been working in a new internship period. But in four weeks or so, did they gain much of value?

Students are increasingly using their winter breaks to squeeze in yet another notch on their résumés. Dubbed “winternships” by some, these opportunities are diverse in nature. They can vary in length anywhere from two to six weeks, and while those familiar with the trend say the jobs tend to be project-based – for example, a student spending the break helping to develop a small company’s social media strategy – their content and quality can vary just as much as those of the more traditional summer or academic term setup.

The expansion of winter internships is bound to raise questions of fairness that reached new heights as employers upped their use of unpaid internships over the last couple of years.

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The Silicon Valley 100

2011 was a huge year for Silicon Valley.

Larry Page took over Google and dropped $12.5 billion on Motorola a couple of months later.

IPOs finally returned to tech as Zynga and LinkedIn found their ways to public markets.

The greatest innovator and CEO of his generation left us.

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Quotes About Success From Great Movies About Business

Gordon Gecko is probably Hollywood's most infamous businessman. Followed by "American Psycho's" Patrick Bateman. Both movies were so loved that "Wall Street" received the redo treatment in 2010 and a remake of "American Psycho" is rumored to be in the works.

It's no suprise that two of America's favorite things—movies and capitalism—are a match made in heaven.

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Editorial: Upping the ante for tech transfer

The issue is called technology transfer, and it has not been one of Maryland’s strengths.

For all of the state’s success in attracting research dollars to an array of universities and institutions with world-class experts and facilities, it has not matched that success in spinning off commercial ventures from that research to generate jobs and economic growth.

This gap has been of growing concern to leaders in business, academia and government. Now Gov. Martin O’Malley has set out to do something about it, albeit belatedly, and we applaud his effort.

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Pittsburgh Life Sciences Incubator completes fundraising campaign - Pittsburgh Business Times

The Pittsburgh Life Sciences Greenhouse    has finished raising its $8.1 million PLSG Accelerator Fund LLC, but two-thirds of that total, or $5.4 million, already has been invested or reserved.

One more big investment with capital set aside for subsequent rounds could pretty much sop up what’s left.

That will likely have the South Side-based economic development entity looking for capital again later this year.

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Japanese Entrepreneurs Aim for Silicon Valley - ABC News

For an emerging generation of Japanese innovators, the dream isn't a job for life at a big company. They have new ambitions, and they're determined to go places. Especially Silicon Valley.

Small but growing numbers of Japanese entrepreneurs are jumping into the startup scene in northern California, particularly since the earthquake and tsunami last March. They include Naoki Shibata, who took the plunge by giving up the sort of life many Japanese in past decades spent their lives trying to attain.

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How Entrepreneurs become Visionary Leaders - Vishwas Nair - SiliconIndia Magazine

As a child I experienced firsthand the severe effects of poverty and illiteracy, especially upon women and children. My parents taught me the importance of education and that it was a key to improving an individual’s life. Very early, it made me understand that success is simply not doled out but it must be earned through hard work, persistence, educational commitment, and even a little good luck and timing. I worked for Microsoft until 1996, till I had different angle to view life. I wanted to be a billionaire and hence started off with a company-Infospace with my own funding. The company was listed among the most successful companies and indeed I became a billionaire.

Sometimes we never see what failure is and often fail to recognize it. Before defining failure we need to discuss what success is. Success is not about how much money we have in the bank but it’s about how many peoples’ lives we have impacted through it. Success is experienced when we do things which are never done before. If we have to make things work, if we have to impact hundreds and millions of people we have to do things differently. If we look at the problem as an infrastructural problem we cannot impact it because it requires a lot of effort. When we convert this problem into a knowledge problem we experience a lot of changes thereby starting to impact the environment on a positive perspective.

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Be Like Mark: 8 Ways To Emulate Facebook's Zuckerberg, The Unlikely Leader | Fast Company

Whether you love him, hate him, or are just a little jealous of his newly minted multi-billionaire status, you have to admit that Mark Zuckerberg, founder and CEO of Facebook, has made some visionary leadership moves.

In less than 10 years, Zuckerberg’s taken an idea for an online social network from his Harvard dorm room and delivered it into the homes, offices, pockets, and purses (via mobile phones) of 845 million users around the world. Last year, more than half Facebook’s users logged in every single day, spending a whopping 4 hours and 35 minutes posting, reading updates and “liking” more than 2 billion posts a day.

And how many CEOs anywhere in the world can say the company they founded before they were old enough to drink generated a net income of $1 billion in 2011 on revenue of $3.7 billion, up from $606 million on revenues of $1.97 billion in 2010?

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What’s in store for China in 2012? - McKinsey Quarterly - Economic Studies - Productivity & Performance

1. Government policies will spur consumption and investment. These moves will compensate for declining exports and a slumping housing market. To boost consumption, policy makers could pull a number of short-term levers, including tax breaks and rebates, and are likely to raise the minimum wage further. The 12th five-year plan calls for raising household disposable income by 7 percent a year; thus the government may urge large state-owned enterprises to increase wages across the board, which would pressure other companies to follow suit. Policy makers are also likely to extend a popular program offering rebates on purchases of electronics and appliances. (It fueled the sale of 200 million units, generating 450 billion renminbi—about $71 billion—in revenues from 2009 to 2011.) In addition, the government will invest heavily in manufacturing, particularly in the central and western regions, offering incentives to attract industrial companies inland. The manufacturing sector will continue to fuel China’s growth, thanks in part to the lower cost of labor and the improving infrastructure in the country’s interior.

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Legalize crowdfunding or risk losing startups to U.S., CATA says

Canadian tech entrepreneurs will lag behind their American rivals if Canada doesn't mirror U.S. moves to allow online crowdfunding for startups, the Canadian Advanced Technology Alliance warns.

Under current U.S. and Canadian laws, startups can only accept equity investments from venture capital funds or small angel pools like friends and family. Any large scale equity fundraising outside of those sources requires a company to go through the lengthy and expensive process of filing a prospectus with securities regulators.

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Matching Fund Planned To Attract Venture Funding for MI Tech Companies

The Michigan Strategic Fund (MSF) and the Michigan Economic Development Corporation (MEDC) announced public hearings for the Pure Michigan Venture Match Fund — a new program that will match early stage investments from eligible venture funds in Michigan-based technology businesses. MSF and MEDC intend for the program to attract venture funds, within and outside of Michigan, to consider investments in early stage and pre-revenue technology companies and to mitigate some risk for venture fund investments through the matching MSF funds.

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PE Breakdown Report 2012, published by PitchBook

PitchBook and Merrill DataSite have published the Annual PE Breakdown 2012. Powered by PitchBook and sponsored by Merrill DataSite, this report was compiled from the PitchBook Platform and covers trends in U.S. private equity investment, exits and fundraising, with a focus on activity and trends emerging during 2011.

Click Here to Download the PE Breakdown (PDF)

This complimentary report includes:

• U.S. PE deal flow since 2000
• Breakdown of investment by U.S. region and industry
• Debt percentages used in buyouts
• U.S. PE exit activity since 2000
• Trends for liquidity transaction types
• U.S. PE fundraising activity since 2001
• First-time fund trends
• Investor and service provider league tables

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This Guy Is Probably Going To Launch Your Next Startup

Meet Thomas Korte, the founder of AngelPad — a startup accelerator based in San Francisco.

It's kind of like Y Combinator, TechStars and other accelerators — they find interesting founders and startups and put them through a rigorous three-month program with mentorship, funding and office space to get an idea off the ground.

But unlike other programs, AngelPad focuses on founders that have technical ability and actual business plans.

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Bangalore's tech startup culture: Seven barriers that stand in the way of success | CIO Insights | silicon.com

Innovation is blossoming in India - and at the heart of the subcontinent's startup culture lies Bangalore. As the innovation ecosystem develops, tech professionals who left the country to study and work overseas are returning home to become entrepreneurs.

Even recent graduates from top global engineering and business schools are opting to start companies in Bangalore, which is seen as the prime destination for returnees.

Creating a company in the city has distinct advantages. Bangalore is perceived as a base for innovation. Historically, the success of Bangalore-based technology services outsourcing companies such as Wipro and Infosys, as well as the more recent valuations of online retailer FlipKart and mobile advertising network InMobi, has reinforced that image.

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Innovations in Light - NYTimes.com

People often write to Fixes telling us of cool new devices made for the poor:  the sOccket soccer ball that stores energy as children kick it; the neoprene LifeWrap that hospitals can use to save women hemorrhaging in childbirth; adjustable eyeglasses.

We love devices — but we don’t like to write about them.   It’s cheating.  The technology is the easy part of solving problems.  There are zillions of cool ideas.   Plenty of college students have come up with a great new technology for the poor.

The bigger challenge comes from the questions around any new device:  How do you build a market for a technology focused on people with no money?   How do you physically get it to where it needs to be?  How do poor people acquire it?   How can it be adopted on a wide scale?   How do you make it last?

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What is Required to Lead Change Successfully?

Someone once said “The world doesn’t fear a new idea, what it fears is a new experience.”

Business as usual is no longer possible. Business as unusual is now the norm in every market globally. Why? Because change is accelerating daily and much of the changes are being fueled by communications. Communications is the foundation of every business and the right of every individual. But now communications is fluid, transparent and exploding at the click of a mouse on-line and off.

Numerous studies have shown that many businesses fail at to make necessary changes that are critical to success. For example, 50 – 75% of all implementations of integrative technologies or methodologies, e.g., CRM, Business Process Improvement, Social Technology, etc., fail to achieve the financial results which justified their investment.

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iRobot Goes to the Hospital - Technology Review

iRobot Corp., makers of the beloved Roomba (and a lot more), announced that it would be investing $6 million in InTouch Health, a telemedicine company operating in 80 hospitals around the world. Though $6 million represents just a minority stake in the company, it’s--needless to say--a substantial investment, and a strong expansion of a joint development and licensing agreement the two companies had announced last summer.

Though the Roomba robo-vacuum is probably what put iRobot on your radar, it’s just the tip of the iceberg of what the company does. iRobot. I attended an iRobot event last year, and was surprised to learn that much of what the company makes is for the military--for instance, the 510 Packbot, which is tasked with disarming bombs. iRobot Packbots have also been at hand at Fukushima in the wake of last year’s tsunami.

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Cycles Of Social Transformation

My brain isn’t always the sharpest and it takes time for me to grasp information and its relative meaning.  Words carry lots of meaning and unless we really “read and listen to comprehend” we can miss the true value of someone’s work. If you’ve ever listen to or read something from someone smarter than you then you know what I mean.

Three years ago I read Doc Searls work and in particular The Cluetrain Manifesto.  The theme of the Cluetrain is “Markets are Conversations” and  the book discussed how the internet was propagating conversations at rates never before experienced and subsequently creating and influencing markets.

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MIT Sloan BioInnovations Conference to Spotlight New Trends in Entrepreneurship, Financing, Personalized Medicine and Emerging Markets - MarketWatch

What type of healthcare financing and business models nurture entrepreneurship? Which novel approaches are enabling innovation? What does the future hold for personalized medicine? And how are global companies navigating diverse policies and regulations?

These questions and more will be addressed at this year's MIT Sloan BioInnovations Conference: Driving Innovation & Entrepreneurship in a New Era. Now in its ninth year, the conference will be held on Friday, February 24, 2012 from 8am through pm at the Boston Marriott Cambridge located at Two Cambridge Center, 50 Broadway in Cambridge, MA. A poster session featuring MIT and other local university student research and networking session will follow. The 2011 conference attracted more than 250 participants from across the healthcare and life sciences industry, government, and academia.

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8 Things You Should Know Before Building a Mobile App

App appeal is obvious. The barrier to entry? So low! The upshot of producing the next Angry Birds or beer-chug simulator? So high! Heck, with just a small investment of time and cash, it’s not hard for would-be mobile moguls to turn a concept into a steady stream of cash. And thanks to today’s app stores, it’s never been easier to try your hand at becoming the next tech tycoon.

Here’s (almost) everything you need to know before you get started on your own app — and what I wish I knew before I got into the game.

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What Makes An Awesome Board Member?

I’ve written a bunch of posts over the years about how I manage my Board at Return Path.  And I think part of having awesome Board members is managing them well – giving transparent information, well organized, with enough lead time before a meeting; running great and engaging meetings; mixing social time with business time; and being a Board member yourself at some other organization so you see the other side of the equation.  All those topics are covered in more detail in the following posts:  Why I Love My Board, Part II, The Good, The Board, and The Ugly, and Powerpointless.

But by far the best way to make sure you have an awesome board is to start by having awesome Board members.  I’ve had about 15 Board members over the years, some far better than others.  Here are my top 5 things that make an awesome Board member, and my interview/vetting process for Board members.