Do you want to achieve more in less time? Then you are like most of my Executive Coaching clients: successful managers who still feel they stay behind their full potential despite working around the clock. They think they could achieve even more if they were less distracted during the day-to-day business.

Famous blogger Yaro Starak published a great post on this topic: “How To Remain Productive When You Feel Like Giving Up”

Yaro gives valuable insights and one key messages is that success is to a great deal based on the “ability to force yourself to be productive when you don’t feel like it.”

Although I admire people with such output-oriented attitudes, I have a slightly different view.

There is no doubt that persistence is at the heart of truly successful business people and entrepreneurs. However, it is most important that you find out how you are most productive. And this does not contradict with the idea of persistence as a key of success.

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- Every morning entrepreneur Hajj Flemings wakes up and heads to his favorite coffee shop in downtown Mountain View, Calif., to prep for one of the most important presentations of his career.

On Thursday, the 39-year old Detroit native will have six minutes to present his fledgling startup venture to a roster of Silicon Valley's top investment firms, including SV Angel, Bessemer Venture Partners, Google (GOOG, Fortune 500) Ventures and Sequoia, to name just a few.

Since June, Flemings and seven other entrepreneurs have been living and working together in a house in tech hub Mountain View as part of the NewMe Accelerator, a pioneering incubator for minority-led startups.

The entrepreneurs have spent the summer coding, designing, and meeting with seasoned tech mentors for feedback as they prepare to present their companies to the Valley's leading investors. Demo Day marks the finish line for their two-month startup sprint.

Intel Capital, the venture-capital arm of the world’s biggest chipmaker, said it may boost its investments by more than 50 percent this year, adding deals in overseas markets including China.

The investment arm of Intel Corp. (INTC) plans to invest about $500 million globally in 2011, President Arvind Sodhani said at a briefing in Beijing today. Intel Capital invested $327 million last year, according to its website.

Intel Capital is stepping up its search for technology companies in China, the world’s fastest-growing major economy, where the firm has made six investments this year. That number may increase to 12, Sodhani said today.

Venture capitalists continue to mostly target Maryland’s early- and late-stage companies, leaving an investment gap that seed companies are struggling to overcome.

Investments in the state jumped to $96.42 million in the second quarter of the year, representing 23 deals, according to the latest MoneyTree report by PricewaterhouseCoopers and the National Venture Capital Association. Early- and late-stage investments accounted for 16 of these deals, while expansions accounted for four and investments in seed companies accounted for three.

With investors continuing to view seed investments as those in the $3 million range, seed companies pursuing smaller infusions are still experiencing a drought in funding, said Robert A. Rosenbaum, president and executive director of the Maryland Technology Development Corp.

For a first-time entrepreneur, dealing with a venture capitalist can involve an equal mix of excitement and apprehension. If the VC has any sort of reputation or prominence, entrepreneurs are often grateful simply to be pitching their idea in the first place. Should discussions get far enough along that a term sheet is offered, a new entrepreneur is usually thrilled beyond words.

Those certainly were my emotions back in my entrepreneurial youth, the first time I dealt with venture capitalists. It was one of the most exciting times of my life. But I also remember a few other, much more troubling, emotions, and I know that these, too, are part of being a first-time entrepreneur. These involve the vaguely-formed stories that many entrepreneurs hear about the dark side of the venture world; stories of VCs who weren’t trusted partners interested in growing a business, but who simply took advantage of inexperienced or unlucky entrepreneurs for a quick, unsavory gain.

“Pay to play” in venture term sheets should have the same deservedly bad reputation as it does in government contracting, where it is illegal.  In this piece, I will present three arguments against pay to play.

By way of background, “pay to play” provisions in a term sheet are a mechanism to induce existing investors in a company to invest additional capital into the company.  This is accomplished by punitive treatment of the existing investment should the investor want or need to sit out the current round.  Typically, this treatment includes forced conversion of a preferred security into common stock, as well as some other common measures to change the rights and value of the prior investment.

City dwellers like car sharing because it's convenient -- no need to find parking or handle maintenance issues. Now, in San Diego, it's also more environmentally friendly. By the end of this year, California's second largest city will have 300 vehicles on the road, representing the nation's first all-electric car sharing fleet. Cars will be available at all hours of every day and users will be charged by the minute, hour or day (after a one-time $35 fee). The car-sharing company sponsoring the fleet told local news outlets that it chose San Diego as the first city because of its unprecedented number of charging stations, which will make it easier for people to get around without worrying about running out of battery life. The cars can travel up to 84 miles on a single charge. The city council also unanimously approved changes in the municipal code to create dedicated spaces for more charging stations and allow the electric vehicles to be parked downtown. The car-sharing company is going to reimburse the city for any lost parking meter revenue.

Innovative Australians are improving the things they make and the way they make them, ensuring a fairer, richer, healthier and greener future, according to the Australian Government’s latest Australian Innovation System Report.

“Innovation will make Australia more productive and competitive, and may answer the great challenges of our time such as our changing climate, national security, hunger and disease,” Innovation Minister Senator Kim Carr said.

“This is the second annual report on the performance of Australia’s national innovation system, and provides the latest data and analysis of how our innovation system is performing compared with other countries. It also tracks progress against the Government’s innovation priorities and targets.

If it weren't for venture capital, companies such as Apple Inc., Google Inc. and Microsoft Corp. probably never would have become as successful as they are today. Yet these days, aspiring entrepreneurs and business leaders across the nation are wondering about the big squeeze in the capital markets.

For big businesses that are showing robust earnings, thanks primarily to their international operations, access to capital currently is significantly easier, especially since money is cheap.

THE HEADLINE of Scott Kirsner’s Innovation Economy column, “Start-ups courting older talent’ (Business, Aug. 1), caught my attention, as I volunteer with a network of mature, accomplished professionals who are in career-life transitions.

Kirsner wondered whether HubSpot’s aggressive recruitment program targeting experienced software engineers would draw “the employees least likely to succeed at a start-up: comfy old-timers used to their reserved parking spots and days that end at 5.’’ Perhaps Kirsner could become more aware of his apparent prejudice if he substituted, say, “blacks’’ or “Hispanics’’ for “comfy old-timers.’’

Photovoltaic cells are best known for turning sunlight into electrical power—and they’re big business. But did you know that there’s a type of PV cell that eats heat instead of light to make power? It could replace the Li-ion battery in your cell phone, and it may also be used to scavenge waste heat from almost anything that normally dumps it into the environment, from your TV’s electronics to your car’s engine (even an electrical one).

Over the past couple of weeks I have interacted with people who work for small business owners who aren’t such great bosses. In fact, they are downright angry and mean. I can’t help wondering what they are hoping to accomplish. Yelling at people, demeaning them, using nasty language – none of these are leadership tactics, nor are they effective.

You don’t get people to perform at their best when you spend your time beating them down. Fear is not a motivator. This behavior isn’t something that is learned in leadership training courses. It comes from one of a couple of places – insecurity, fear or mistrust. I submit that you can’t be successful if you operate from any of these platforms.

The strength and size of the nation's science-and-engineering work force are the subject of much concern, following the Obama administration's education initiatives; international testing that shows students in Shanghai at the top of the world; and, last year, an update of the influential report "Rising Above the Gathering Storm." That report finds the deterioration of America's competitiveness so severe that it is likened to a Category 5 hurricane. It calls for the United States to create a "New Sputnik" education initiative and expand our science-and-engineering work force. It reinforces a common worry over American students' lackluster international standing compared with those in several Asian nations and in a handful of small European nations.

We believe that those concerns are overstating and misidentifying America's challenges in science and engineering, and that they are missing the real opportunities for improving the nation's education and work force. As we examined the evidence, several points became clear: The United States needs to improve education broadly rather than expand particular fields of study; look inward rather than abroad for exemplary educational models, in light of the limits of international comparisons; and focus on the core lessons about improving the lowest-performing group of students. There is actually no compelling evidence that, over all, the educational pipeline is failing to meet demand.

Recently I wrote a post titled Competition where I listed out a set of topics that summarizes my philosophy around competition. I’m involved in a lot of companies, many of which are either the market leader in their segment, fighting head to head with a few other companies for clear market leadership, going after an existing incumbent, or creating a new segment entirely. As a result I spend a lot of time thinking and talking about competition, as well as executing a variety of strategies to address competitive dynamics.

The first topic I want to address is the idea of being the first mover. Several people challenged this idea in the comments and there are many investors that like to invest in “fast followers” (I’m not one of them.) There’s also a well worn cliche that you can identify early leaders as they are the ones with arrows in their back. While I understand the convention wisdom around this, especially in the context of corporate strategy and general innovation theory, I take a different approach, especially in very fast moving markets like the ones I invest in.

The House Subcommittee on Immigration Policy and Enforcement met recently to hash out concerns related to the H-1B program, one of the most controversial of foreign visa topics in the United States. At issue was a stubborn question that politicians, corporations, academics, and lobbyists have been arguing since the creation of the program more than 20 years ago: Is the program helpful or hurtful to American workers?

The program enables US employers to hire highly skilled, specialized foreign workers for three years, with the opportunity to apply for an additional three-year extension. During this period, workers can request green cards and secure permanent residency status if they desire. The current annual cap for the "regular" H1-B category is 65,000 visas. (There is a separate category, capped at 20,000, specifically for beneficiaries who have received advanced degrees in the United States.)

Every entrepreneur seeking funding loves the challenge of getting customers and investors excited, but dreads the thought of negotiating the terms of a deal with potential investors. They are naturally reluctant to step out of the friendly and familiar business territory into the unfamiliar battlefield of venture capitalists from which few escape unscathed.

In reality, a financing negotiation is not a single-round winner-take-all game, since a “good” deal requires that both parties walk away satisfied -- with a win-win relationship. Brad Feld and Jason Mendelson, in their new book “Venture Deals: Be Smarter Than Your Lawyer and Venture Capitalist” emphasize that there are only three things that really matter in this negotiation: achieving a good and fair result, not killing your personal relationship getting there, and understanding the deal that you are striking.

When does innovation begin? Is it at the moment of inception, or at the moment of adoption, or at the moment when the new innovation really displaces the old? An interesting question, especially as the implications of each milestone are fundamentally different, yet each is a profound accomplishment in their own right. British historian David Edgerton has argued in his book The Shock of the Old for a focus on something between adoption and dominance; and reliance upon what he calls “use-centered history” to mark the real impact of new innovations.

1."Whatever you do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius and power and magic in it." - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

2. "There are two mistakes one can make along the road to truth -- not going all the way, and not starting." - Buddha

3. "Be willing to be a beginner every single morning." - Meister Eckhart

4. "All great ideas and all great thoughts have a ridiculous beginning." - Albert Camus

5. "A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step." - Lao Tzu

Looking for an internship this Fall when you return to school?  The Startup America Partnership will be hiring interns with a broad range of interests, skill sets, and academic concentrations. However, students should want to be engaged in entrepreneurial activities and civic engagement.  Internships will be available in Washington D.C. and Southwest Connecticut.

Interns have the unique chance to join a team and have immediate responsibility managing Startup American Partnership’s database and contacts, aiding staff members, completing special projects, and supporting various events put on by the organization. Here are the different fields that interns will have an opportunity to work in:

Communications: Constantly on Facebook and Twitter? Here is your chance to help manage these social media channels along with tracking news sources and promoted articles.  Applicants must be strong writers and speakers.

Six months ago, we joined together at the White House in a room packed full of entrepreneurs, to celebrate the launch of Startup America.  In President Obama’s words, “Startup America [is] a national campaign to help win the future by knocking down barriers in the path of men and women in every corner of this country hoping to take a chance, follow a dream, and start a business.”

Throughout this Administration, we understand that young companies are responsible for virtually all new job growth across the U.S., and we are committed to accelerating entrepreneurial success.  So what has the Obama Administration accomplished over the past 180 days since launching the Startup America initiative?

• We said we would drive up to $2 billion in private investment into high-growth companies over the next five years, at no cost to taxpayers.  Just last week, the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) announced the first Impact Investment Fund in Michigan, providing up to $130 million in capital to job-creating businesses throughout the state.