There are lots of myths about venture capital and biotech in particular, as noted previously on this blog.  Many of these myths are deeply held beliefs about returns, what works and what doesn’t, and the state of the industry.  Told often enough, these beliefs are presumed to be true by many observers, including practitioners in the field, Limited Partners, and pundits.

Surprisingly, data exists to address lots of these points, and I’ve attempted here to summarize (and link to) a number of prior posts aimed at debunking these myths and sharing a few observations on them.

We don't often think about the way we usually operate at work, whether we're performing an informal five-step process for evaluating a new proposal, or setting priorities for managing our time. But our ability to improve the ways we do things depends on defining and shaping our daily habits of mind and practice — our "standard work."

Consider the experience of my friend Lynn Kelley, who joined Union Pacific Railroad, the largest railroad network in the United States with 46,000 employees, as vice president of continuous improvement about two years ago. When she arrived, she learned that a large proportion of the workforce would retire over the next decade. So the organization started documenting standard operating procedures to capture employee know-how and wisdom. She told me, "I initially thought standard work would make people into robots. Instead we learned to use standard work to involve workers in documenting and improving their work. Managers think that they should find out what the best practice is and then roll it out. But we decided if we did that, we'd pay for it in worker engagement. Instead, we look for work groups that are willing to be involved in developing their own standard work, and implement there first."

More than half of all eligible providers nationwide have received federal incentive payments for demonstrating meaningful use of electronic health records, rates that have more than doubled since last year alone, HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius announced Wednesday.

Sebelius says HHS has met and exceeded its goal for 50 percent of doctor offices and 80 percent of eligible hospitals to have adopted EHRs by 2013's end.

The fact is that the system that people work in and the interaction with people may account for 90 or 95 percent of performance.

– W. Edwards Deming

Gardeners tend to be an interesting mix of idealism and pragmatism.

They set about to grow things – vegetables, spring flowers, long-lived trees. They believe with all their hearts that what they do in their garden will result in what they can later see in the garden.  This is their idealism at work.

“Sometimes, I think it’s a sin when I feel like I’m winning when I’m losing again.”

That memorable morning-after line was written by Canada’s great singer-songwriter, Gordon Lightfoot, in a 1974 hit, Sundown.  It came to mind last week when I was conducting Top7 site visits in Canada and reading an article by Joel Kotkin in The Daily Beast.  The title was a real grabber: “Richard Florida Concedes the Limits of the Creative Class.”

According to Kotkin, Dr. Florida recently admitted in the pages of The Atlantic, “what his critics, including myself, have said for a decade: that the benefits of appealing to the creative class accrue largely to its members – and do little to make anyone else any better off.”  

A number of cases have considered the question whether an agreement in principle in a term sheet amounts to a contract of some sort. For example, assume an investing entity backs out of financing a start-up company. The start-up company claims that the investing entity had made binding legal promises in the term sheet, including particularly the promise to invest money, and should be liable in the event of breach. Generally, the relevant cases have arisen in the context of a lender-creditor relationship; indeed, the cases concerning promises at the preliminary stage are grouped under the general heading of "lender liability," upon which there has been a good deal of commentary.(1)

An illustrative case that raises the alarm systems of investor's counsel if Judge Duffy's opinion in Penthouse International Ltd. v. Dominion Federal Savings & Loan Ass'n.(2) In that case, subsequently reversed by the Court of Appeals,(3) Dominion Federal was held liable to the applicant debtor for $112 million in lost profits for failure to fund its promise to advance a $35 million participation in a loan made by another lender to construct an Atlantic City casino.(4) If one construes the term sheet as equivalent to a lender's commitment letter, then the problems are apparent, including particularly the inrodinate measures of damages that juries award in cases such as Penthouse International and Texaco v. Pennzoil. (5)

Risk management firm and insurance broker Aon has just released its Terrorism And Political Violence risk map for 2013. The news is that apparently, the U.S. is in no danger of the latter kind of disturbance. Instead, the only risk to America is terrorism.

Forget about your job title or profession – everyone is looking for ways to be more productive at work. It’s time to set down your gallon-sized container of coffee, toss out your three-page to-do list, and put an end to those ridiculously long emails you’ve been sending.

Experiencing a highly productive workday can feel euphoric. But contrary to popular belief, simply checking tasks off your to-do list isn’t really an indication of productivity. Truly productive people aren’t focused on doing more things; this is actually the opposite of productivity. If you really want to be productive, you’ve got to make a point to do fewer things.

If you suspect that your 20-something employee is sneering at you from behind the stack of copies you asked him to collate, research suggests you might be right. Three-quarters of professionals under age 30 think their skills exceed those of an entry-level job, a survey released today by LinkedIn shows.

But workers over 30 were wary of this attitude, saying they doubted the younger generation’s work ethic. Perhaps more shockingly, 64 percent of all adults — young adults included — are nervous about millennials leading the workforce.

The season for commencement speeches — the annual ritual designed to bridge this ever-widening gap — is underway. Typically an admired leader, often with decades of work experience under her belt, imparts wisdom to a crowd of hopeful youth in polyester robes on the day of their college graduation.

Associate director for the Motivation Science Center at the Columbia University Business School and author of Nine Things Successful People Do Differently.

There will be obstacles, setbacks, challenges. Many things will be more difficult than you thought they'd be. The key to success (scientifically speaking) is perseverance. You've just got to hang in there — there's no other way to win. But how do you do it? A great way to be more resilient is to stop comparing yourself to other people, and compare yourself to your own past performance — last week, last month, last year. Are you improving? That's the only question that matters.

David Cohen’s had a hypothesis. He raised some money and did an experiment. He tweaked the experiment and proved the concept could be a company. He raised more money. And then it grew.

The difference between Cohen and any other tech entrepreneur is that his company was built for them. TechStars would, in seven years time, impact thousands of entrepreneurs and investors around the world. It would spark innovation in cities struggling to overcome mass layoffs, plant closures and other economic struggles post-recession. It would celebrate entrepreneurship as a viable career, all while training more people how to do it with the greatest probability of success. It’d give venture capitalists a new way to invest their money and vet deals.

$1.1 billion. That's how much your company is worth if it's long on users and short on paying customers. Just ask Tumblr. Or Instagram. Each yanked down billion-dollar acquisitions despite making virtually no revenue. 

Is this a big deal?

Acquihires And Billion-Dollar Payouts

Some seem to think so. At least, for acquihires, the kissing cousin to the revenue-free-massive acquisition. For example, Pando Daily's Sarah Lacy slams the acquihire, arguing that

Lazy profit-seekers love these periods in the Valley. Why not? They can make money without having to actually build a company. It’s like a get-out-of-actual-entrepreneurship-free card.

As creatives, we might imagine investors to be souless suits behind Excel spreadsheets who do little more than sign checks — but that's far from true. Increasingly, VCs are people who used to be entrepreneurs (Kevin Rose, Mark Suster, Josh Kopelman). Many startup founders actually prefer to take money from someone who has been in the trenches. You might spend most of your time competing for funding — trying to stand out from the multitude of startups hoping to raise a round — but don't forget that for VCs, they must compete for the best startups as well. One way they do that is through value-add, or offering additional services to their portfolio companies. Atlas Ventures VC Dustin Dolginow says these services are no longer "above and beyond" — they're crucial.

Entrepreneurship is like a computer game in which you have to master every level before achieving success. Startups repeatedly stumble and have to go back to the drawing board. The best way to skip some levels and to increase the odds of survival is to learn from others who have already played the game. That is the value that mentors provide and the reason why you need to start building relationships with people who can help you when you are stuck.

You will never find a mentor who can guide you through every level of your game. That’s because technology is changing ever more rapidly and continually altering the landscape. No one has built your exact company before. The good news is, however, that the basics of building a business haven’t changed. You start with a great idea and test it with customers to figure out what they want and need. Then you build your product, and market, sell, and support it. The skills required for each of these steps is different. An understanding of the challenges that lie ahead can dramatically change your product, distribution plans, and growth strategy.

Today, I am launching a new book.  I want to explain why I’m doing this.  And how you can participate.

For decades, people have asked a deceptively simple question: can you replicate the magic of Silicon Valley?  Can you do this in businesses, organizations, and communities to unleash innovation, anywhere in the world?

This is more than an academic mystery.  The answer affects real lives.  Every day, countless opportunities are passed by to invent better solutions, create new jobs, improve quality of life.  There is an invisible cost that we pay for medicines that never make it to market, communication tools that might have saved a struggling business, or alternative fuels that might have prevented a war.  This mystery has a price tag.

It’s a rich moment for women in big-ticket philanthropy.

Sara Blakely, founder of the privately held Spanx, just became the first self-made female billionaire to sign onto The Giving Pledge, an effort spearheaded by Bill and Melinda Gates and Warren Buffett that has had dozens of the world’s billionaires sign on to give away more than half of their wealth, either during their lifetime or after their death.

Another member of the still tiny circle of female billionaires, Steve Jobs’ widow, is stepping out publicly for the first time as a philanthropist. Steve Jobs was criticized for not giving much money away, at least publicly, during his lifetime. But Laurene Powell Jobs is now speaking to issues as diverse as education and gun control.

Successful startups are all about turning ideas into action quickly and efficiently. These actions must be the hard part, since entrepreneurs always seem to come to me with ideas, and ask me for help on the actions. That has always seemed strange to me, since the magic is supposed to be in the ideas, and the actions are the same for every business.

In fact, the actions required to start and run a business are well documented, the subject of many books, and taught in college courses across the land. As confirmed to me by John Spence in his book on this subject, Awesomely Simple, turning business ideas into action consists of six essential strategies:

In October 2007, professor Randy Pausch, a devoted husband and father who was fighting pancreatic cancer, shared his famous last lecture on The Oprah Show.

In 2006, Salemi Industries thought they had a surefire moneymaking product. It was something totally new that (a) had an obvious need and (b) could be sold worldwide. Anthony Ferranti, the man behind the innovative product, had noticed that with the widespread usage of cell phones in public areas, callers needed a private place to have their conversations--and to not disturb others in, say, a restaurant. So he decided to create a solution.

That solution was his invention of what he called “The Cell Zone”, a large plastic pod that he saw as the modern equivalent of the phone booth. You could step into The Cell Zone and have a perfectly private talk without being bothered and without bothering anyone else. The early signs were good--The Cell Zone proved to be a sensation at that year’s Restaurant Show, where eatery owners expressed enormous enthusiasm for the product.

As Cosmo editor-in-chief Joanna Coles once told us, nothing can annoy your boss more than over-asking for money that you "need"--you're better off “explaining that you’re worth more.”

Begin by knowing the average salaries for your title, industry, and area: Sites like Salary.com and Glassdoor.com can help. But you need the small scale, too: Like Shawn Graham wrote for us, it's wise to gauge the health of your company before starting the compensation conversation.