Ryan Weber considered himself a prudent business owner. He borrowed $6,000 from family members to start Radiant Photography in Las Vegas, and he paid them back--with interest--in three years. To cut expenses, he rented a studio when he needed it, instead of building his own. And when Advanta, a credit card company in Spring House, Penn., offered a business credit card with a $7,500 line of credit, he accepted it.

"Having $7,500 in reserve really helped," Weber says. "In case a check didn't go through from a client, it was there to rent studio lights or pay my cell phone bill."

Then last spring--a few months before declaring bankruptcy--Advanta pulled the credit lines of 1 million small-business customers, including Weber. It also capped their credit cards at the level of their outstanding balances, effectively cutting off their access to emergency cash.

Have a dream but starved for start-up capital? Enter one of these 15 university-sponsored contests.

As students at MIT, Lucchino and his team were eligible for the MIT 100K Entrepreneurship Competition. Entrants to the contest need only present a business plan; proof of concept helps, too. Lucchino and his team, at what would soon become Semprus BioSciences, bagged the grand prize: $30,000 in cash. (Back then the "100K" refers to the competition's entire purse.)

Semprus then hit the business plan circuit, winning top honors at small-business contests at Harvard's Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, Rice University, Oxford University and Cambridge University. Total take: about $75,000 in cash and plenty of "street cred" with deep-pocketed investors. "It's a good spring training exercise," says Lucchino, who went on to raise $2 million in 2007 from private investors and another $8 million in venture funding in December 2008.

Market research company and business information provider IBISWorld recently released its findings on Australia’s leading export industries for 2010 and their outlook for the next five years.

A forecast of $237 billion of combined export revenue for 2010 (representing 21.4 percent of the Australian economy) puts Australia in the top echelon of global exporters, with only Germany (40.8 percent) and China (33.2 percent) recording higher export proportions of their total economic revenue.

As expected, mining constitutes Australia’s largest export industry, generating $283.7 billion of revenue for 2009/2010 — of which $128 billion was from exports. The industry is forecast to grow by 6.1 percent in the next five years.

Mission: China Business Competency for Every Interested Executive in America

Philadelphia (PRWEB) January 27, 2010 -- In the past 30 years, China has raked in massive amounts of foreign direct investment; its trade surpluses continue to break records; and its vast foreign-exchange reserves make it a key player in determining the value of the dollar. Summary: China has gained tremendous global economic strength, and the nation’s economic relevance to the USA is not fading anytime soon. Leaving us with the question, “What can we do, through our own business lives, to gain some leverage, strength, and effectiveness relative to Chinese businesses?”

One of the key USA-based programs of The China Business Network, China Business Boot Camp, taking place in Philadelphia at the Union League on February 18, 2010. China Business Boot Camp (www.chinabusinessbootcamp.com) is designed to provide practical answers: namely, a knowledge of what really works when doing business in China, and what resources are available in the region and beyond, to help us win in every China business challenge.

On January 24th 2010, New York Times Columnist Thomas L. Friedman wrote an op-ed piece titled, “More (Steve) Jobs, Jobs, Jobs, Jobs,” which gave advice to President Obama as he puts the finishing touches on this week’s State of the Union speech.

He wrote “We need to make 2010 what Obama should have made 2009: the year of innovation, the year of making our pie bigger, the year of “Start-Up America.”

He went on further to say, ”Obama should make the centerpiece of his presidency (this year) mobilizing a million new start-up companies that won’t just give us temporary highway jobs, but lasting good jobs that keep America on the cutting edge.”

Well Mr. Friedman, I [Melinda Emerson] believe you are spot on. While your editorial largely focused on exposing youth to entrepreneurship, which is absolutely needed, I think there should be a two-pronged approach with a focus on working professionals and academic innovators who are ready to start businesses right now.

Cisco (NASDAQ: CSCO) today announced the launch of the second I-Prize contest, an open global innovation competition in which entrepreneurs worldwide can collaborate and submit their proposals with the potential to be Cisco's next billion-dollar business idea. Following last year's competition, which drew nearly 2,500 entrants, this year innovative thinkers will have access to an expanded portfolio of Cisco® collaboration solutions to build on as they share their ideas with other participants around the world. The winning team will be eligible for $250,000 in prize money.

The Association of University Research Parks invites you to share your knowledge and experience with your colleagues at our 2010 International Conference in Minneapolis, Minnesota, September 15-17, 2010.

University Research Parks are the engines of innovation. During this conference, we will examine the best way to build that innovation engine.

Interesting approaches and creative solutions to the challenges surrounding the topic of "Building the Innovation Engine" are sought for concurrent presentations.

Proposals for suggested concurrent sessions should be no more than one page in length. Each proposal should include the following:

-a full description of the proposed session, including how the information to be shared will benefit the attendees and address the conference subject;

-a 50-75 word description for possible future marketing materials;

-the contact information, biography in narrative format, and high resolution photo of each proposed presenter

The proposals are due no later than Friday, January 29th at 5:00 p.m. MST. They should be sent in electronic format by email to AURP Event Manager Victoria Palmer, at: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. Please contact Victoria with any questions. 

Accepted proposals will be announced no later than March 15th, 2010.

WASHINGTON, Jan. 27 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- As part of his continuing effort to support small business, U.S. Senator Benjamin L. Cardin (D-MD), a member of the Senate Small Business and Entrepreneurship Committee, today introduced a bill designed to spur job creation and strengthen our economy by providing essential tax credits and loans to small businesses. Key provisions of Senator Cardin's bill will make available urgently needed working capital loans, reward small businesses for creating new jobs, and help to offset the skyrocketing cost of health insurance.

Small firms pump almost a trillion dollars into the economy each year, create two-thirds of our nation's new jobs annually and account for more than half of America's workforce. Recognizing the vital role small business has always had in the overall growth of our economy, the bill also encourages elevating the Small Business Administration to Cabinet-level status.

Apple watchers can now see how truly huge the company's iPhone business has become, thanks to a new accounting method the company started using this past quarter.

In less than three years, the iPhone has grown to become Apple's biggest business -- up from zero.

Specifically, during Apple's December quarter, the company reported $5.6 billion of iPhone-related revenue, up 90% year-over-year. That edged out the Mac business ($4.5 billion) and iPod business ($3.4 billion) for the second quarter in a row and the third time ever. It was the first time the iPhone has beat the Mac and iPod businesses by more than $1 billion each.

Entrepreneurship Week at Stanford, February 21-28, 2010

Why conduct a weeklong celebration of entrepreneurship at Stanford, when the entrepreneurial spirit is so completely pervasive here? After all, our university president, John Hennessy, is a very successful entrepreneur. Many of our faculty, staff, alumni and even current students have started businesses or somehow bring extremely entrepreneurial approaches to their work. There are at least two dozen organizations on campus related to entrepreneurship. And we took part in the birth of Silicon Valley, the breeding ground of some of the world's greatest innovations and companies.

The answer is simple. It's a chance to bring all of us together for a week and focus on a theme that we take rather for granted around here - the importance of entrepreneurial leadership and the role it must play in helping to solve some of the world's most pressing problems.

Entrepreneurship is of enormous interest on campus, because the Stanford community recognizes that the 21st Century will belong to innovators who can turn ideas into action. This applies more than ever to today's students and everyone else in society. We all need to be self starters and possess an entrepreneurial mindset, regardless of what we go on to do in life.

Albert Einstein once said “If, at first, the idea is not absurd, then there is no hope for it.” Here is my list of the top ten most absurd and hopeless ideas I have heard about in my lifetime:

1. Coffee shops? The world hardly needs more coffee shops. Plus, coffee shops don’t scale.
2. A Maine-based line of natural products that are made with bees wax? Last time I checked, the “bee” supply chain wasn’t that scalable.
3. Overpriced, finely made historically accurate dolls that will teach children about history? Seriously? I don’t even know where to go with that.
4. An algorithm that will improve upon Yahoo’s web search technology? Fatal flaw: why couldn’t Yahoo just do that themselves?
5. Packages overnight? The infrastructure required to make that happen is prohibitively expensive. Nice idea, but too much capital risk...