Leaders from the tech and finance sectors are having an ever greater impact on the nonprofit world. Nowhere is this most apparent than at the Omidyar Network, a philanthropic investment firm started by eBay founder Pierre Omidyar.

Omidyar Network, or ON, works with a wide range of for-profit and non-profit ventures that they believe can have a massive social impact—including Digg, Wikia, Kiva, and Creative Commons. ON provides them all with financial capital and recruiting, governance, and scalability support.

The Dublin SmartCamp 2010 final is a grand affair. The main sessions are housed in the same building in which the first Dáil Éireann sat — and was apparently built in eight weeks which is a lot faster than a lot of start-ups.

Sitting in on a very funny presentation by Bill Reichert, managing director of Garage Technology Ventures, gave the entrepreneurs advice on how to raise funds, and more importantly how to talk to VCs.

His best slide of all — the top 10 lies entrepreneurs tell VCs:

1. Our projections are conservative
2. Our target market is $56 billion
3. We have a world class team
4. Our average sales cycle is 90 days
5. We have no direct competitor

When times are tough, it’s tough to stay positive — particularly if you are surrounded by gloomy people.

But rather than fall victim to negative attitudes, resolve to take a different approach. Stay positive and channel your optimism to create a healthy, more productive environment. One idea you can start using right away is peer recognition.

Expressing your appreciation to a co-worker is one of the simplest, most rewarding efforts you can make. Giving credit where due, or just telling a co-worker you appreciate their work, can give an unexpected boost — and it has an additional benefit: it improves their perception of you.

What ELSE in the life is the Voice’s motto. And ELSE are the new entrepreneurs and their life styles. The Voice’s players are entrepreneurial individuals of the 21^st Century Renaissance acting as channels of knowledge flows across cultural, societal and firm boundaries.

--
Nicola Farronato

Germany posted a GDP growth rate of 2.2 percent in the second quarter of 2010, the highest in 20 years. Growth slowed slightly in the third quarter, but the forecast annualized growth rate of 3.4 percent (according to Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology) would be the envy of most nations not named China or India.

A look at the Conway Data New Plant Database, which tracks new corporate facility projects, shows a steady and staggering pattern of growth over the past five years, with nary a hint of a slow-down during the global recession.

The vast majority of new corporate facility projects in Germany come from the U.S., either directly or via European subsidiaries. Arizona-based First Solar, the world’s largest manufacturer of thin-film solar modules, recently announced a new $200-million facility in Frankfurt. This will be the largest thin-film plant in Europe, and will create hundreds of new jobs at a time when competition for such jobs has never been fiercer.

Too many entrepreneurs develop a new product without regard to market demand, then build an entire strategy based on creating a need, rather than acting on an existing market need. Investors characterize this approach as a “solution looking for a problem.” These don’t get funded.

The best startups find a way to drive the market with their technology, rather than push their new technology-driven ‘solution’ on the marketplace. An example of market-driven technology is the basic automobile, but combining a car with an airplane is technology looking for a market.

New technology really doesn’t have any value, until it is integrated into a market-driven solution. Here are a few thoughts on a process that will keep you on the right track:

• Get real customer input first. Temper your product with actual market and customer feedback. Everyone's personal perspectives and interests are different, so the key is starting from market problems, and going from there to technology - not vice versa. Show your prototype to real customers, and listen.

Small business owners are all about cutting costs right now, but we’re also still looking to grow our companies and learn new things. Here are 3 ideas for great places to get help growing your company without breaking the bank.

1) SCORE: A partnership with the Small Business Administration, SCORE offers free consulting from experienced business veterans. SCORE has more than 350 offices nationwide, with SCORE mentors who meet with you one-on-one to help you grow your business. I do quite a bit of work for SCORE, and can attest to how hard they’re working to help businesses start and grow.

Believe it or not, the making of a video for the song  This Too Shall Pass by the band  OK Go has lessons for would-be innovators. The creator of the video, Adam Sadowsky, said the process of creating the complex machine for the video was a lot like what entrepreneurs go through when developing a new product or service.

He gave the talk today at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco. The video for the song was created by Synn Labs and it involved the creation of a Rube Goldberg machine, a very complicated mechanical device whose purpose is to do ridiculously simple tasks. The video was released on YouTube in January and it has been viewed more than 19 million times.

Most of the time, we find out about companies that have collected venture investments one at a time, via announcements or regulatory filings from the companies themselves. Today Santa Clara, CA-based Intel Capital shook things up a bit, unveiling a big bundle of investments all at once.

The venture wing of the giant chipmaker said in an announcement at the Intel CEO Summit in Huntington Beach, CA, that it has invested $77 million across 18 companies spanning 11 countries, including Brazil, China, Germany, India, Israel, Malaysia, the Netherlands, Russia, Taiwan, the Ukraine, and the United States. All of the companies on the list are working on technologies that relate to Intel’s core PC and server processor business, or to what it called “adjacent” areas of computing such as Internet-based video delivery and consumer electronics.

The American Human Development Project charts sociological health across the nation. Prognosis: Not good.

If you call Connecticut home, your standard of living and economic opportunities are almost two times better than that of someone in West Virginia. That basic inequality shouldn't be news to any American who's spent a day outside. But rarely has it been put in such a stark visual form.

Much has been made of President Obama’s reaction to the spanking American voters delivered in the November 2nd elections. Pundits argue alternatively that Obama doesn’t “get it,” that he is “in denial,” or that he is “too detached” to understand the message that the voters have clearly sent.

Not for the first time, I have found myself thinking, if only this guy had some business experience. Not only because he doesn’t seem to have a clue how businesses create jobs – although that experience would certainly help in an economy with 10% unemployment – but because he doesn’t have a clue how a business becomes a business in the first place.

Anyone who has worked with entrepreneurs knows that they often come up with clever ideas, nifty inventions, or cutting-edge technologies – ideas, inventions and technologies that fall completely flat in the marketplace because no one wants them, or understands what they do, or feels that they are enough of an improvement over the products the public has become accustomed to purchasing.

1. "If you can dream it, you can do it." - Walt Disney

2. "Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, and magic and power in it. Begin it now." - Goethe

3. "The greatest danger for most of us is not that our aim is too high and we miss it, but that it is too low and we reach it." - Michelangelo

4. "It's not enough to be busy, so are the ants. The question is, what are we busy about?" - Henry David Thoreau

We all have low inspiration, low energy days. One option is to simply grit your teeth and power through your fatigue. If that works for you, power to you. But for the rest of us weaker willed individuals, all hope is not lost according to a recent post by blogger Ali Luke on Dumb Little Man. Instead of relying on the brute force of willpower to get through lazy periods, Luke suggests you take the less painful route, acknowledge your inner toddler and simply trick yourself into working harder using these six techniques:

• Use Your Competitive Spirit. Give me someone to compete against, and I’ll find reserves of energy and motivation that I never knew I had. You might well be wired the same. Perhaps you love the idea of competitions like National Novel Writing Month or maybe you’d be great at losing weight if you were competing with your partner. Look for a way to turn your work into a competition: this could be something informal with your friends, a competition that you find online, or even something you start up yourself.

Have you ever failed miserably?  Been fired in a spectacular and public manner?  Your ability to make money and have a good reputation is surely over.  You are now relegated to a life of asking “would you like fries with that?” and hunting for bedbugs.  Well, only if you let it.

Let’s take Mary Meeker for an example.  When Fortune magazine wrote an article titled “Where Mary Meeker Went Wrong,” I’m sure many people thought no one would ever pay attention to her advice about tech companies again.  I mean, geesh, talk about a spectacular and public failure.  When you make a big mistake, it’s likely only your mother-in-law who brings it up at the holiday dinners your spouse forces you to attend.  But she had Fortune magazine talking about her failure.  Ouch.

The 9^th Annual Best Practices in Science Based Incubation Conference, opened with a visit to the Liverpool Science Park, a 36, 000 sq ft centre of versatile office space opened in 2006, home to over 70 knowledge based companies. The park provides accommodation, business support services and access to technical expertise to innovation-based businesses breaking out onto an international stage. The centre is a hub of knowledge exchange, which for growing companies, helps to refine value propositions, optimize costs and forge prosperous industry connections. It is no surprise companies of various size, specialities and regional origins are attracted to such a unique option for business development.  Chloe Young, Business Development Director for the Technology Science Park spoke of the expansion plans to include another 40, 000 sq ft. The Soft Landing Centre is comprised of free office facilities dedicated to attracting companies to test the swelling digital media and life sciences markets in the North West region.  The Soft Landing Centre hosts a variety of events, provides ad hoc advisory services and links local university personnel to the board. However, a common challenge remains: that of managing the relationship between entrepreneurs and university experts, ensuring optimal engagement and the leveraging of local resources. The risky, extensive real estate development and private investments are testament to the public faith in such centres to making a lasting economic impact.

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Ever since I was old enough to realize there would never be a want ad in a newspaper that described a job I wanted, I've loved working in cafes. I never really thought much about it until a few days ago when a baffled friend of mine asked why I was so into it. His assumption? That working in a cafe would be a distraction. A distraction? Dude, quite the opposite. And so, at the risk of trotting out a few half-baked conclusions that my non-cafe-going critics will have a field day trashing, here goes:

20 REASONS WHY YOU LIKE TO WORK IN A CAFE

1. It doesn't feel like work.

2. It's a nice break from the office.

3. You don't have an office.

4. Easy access to caffeine.

Even in the insular echo chamber of Silicon Valley, the name YouWeb doesn’t come up a whole lot. Yet the young incubator, largely a one-man show run by founder Peter Relan, has in just three years taken its initial seed capital of $700,000 and already launched a couple of hot internet startups. YouWeb tells Forbes that by its estimates, the companies it has invested in, including social games company CrowdStar and mobile social games platform provider OpenFeint, are collectively worth about $1 billion.

Because this is the incubator’s own estimate, it should be taken with a grain of salt. But there is evidence and support to believe this number isn’t that far off base either. By YouWeb’s calculations, the value of its companies basically breaks down like this: CrowdStar is worth around $400 to $500 million, OpenFeint around $400 million and its two newer startups Sibblingz and iSwifter each are worth around $100 million. YouWeb has come up with these figures largely by comparing its companies to similar companies with actual exits.

Fewer new businesses are getting off the ground in the U.S., available data suggest, a development that could cloud the prospects for job growth and innovation.

In the early months of the economic recovery, start-ups of job-creating companies have failed to keep pace with closings, and even those concerns that do get launched are hiring less than in the past. The number of companies with at least one employee fell by 100,000, or 2%, in the year that ended March 31, the Labor Department reported Thursday.

That was the second worst performance in 18 years, the worst being the 3.4% drop in the previous year.

Newly opened companies created a seasonally adjusted total of 2.6 million jobs in the three quarters ended in March, 15% less than in the first three quarters of the last recovery, when investors and entrepreneurs were still digging their way out of the Internet bust.