The phrase "talk is cheap" is old, and in leadership roles, talk is particularly cheap.

It is easy to make pronouncements about directions and vision. For people to trust what you say, though, it is important to recognize that you communicate in three ways: through what you say, what you do, and what you reward. And each form of communication on this list is more important than the last.

My career journey has gotten off to an interesting start: from an analyst program in investment banking to running a startup out of a trailer park across from Google Headquarters. Like so many other entrepreneurs, I’m learning that my journey is going to have a lot of twists and turns.

Image: http://beacon.wharton.upenn.edu/ 

When Tasso Roumeliotis started Location Labs in 2001, the dot-com collapse had left a smoking, desolate venture capital landscape in its wake. The founder, whose mobile security app business was acquired this past September for an estimated $220 million, remembers the carnage well. In fact, his first go at fundraising was so difficult that Roumeliotis made a vow that he wouldn't make the rounds again unless he absolutely had to — and that meant curbing burn rate.

In August, Dean Takahashi described his thoughts on the increasingly globalized video game business.

In the post, he shared interesting anecdotes collected over the course of a year traveling to game industry events around the world — Shanghai, Amsterdam, and San Francisco. Takahashi drew a comparison to the stories included by Thomas Friedman in “The World Is Flat,” the bestselling book describing the forces reshaping the global economy. I was inspired by Takahashi’s article, and during a talk at Casual Connect Amsterdam, I took the opportunity to take that comparison to “The World Is Flat” one step further — applying the notion of “flattening forces” to look at the global video game landscape, past, present, and possible future.

image: http://www.freedigitalphotos.net 

SAN MATEO, Calif. — Walking into the electrical substation, I see a green vapor cloud above a circuit breaker. There’s a dangerous gas leak, and immediate action is required. Nearby, a transformer is glowing red: It’s low on oil. Maintenance is urgently needed.

I can almost hear a loud siren wailing and a metallic voice informing me that “this is a test, this is only a test.” But while that’s in my imagination, this is a test. After all, a real gas cloud isn’t green, and a faulty transformer looks the same as one that’s working. But for those who need to spot them in such emergency situations, wouldn’t it be great if they were green and red? For me, right now? They are.

Image: Using Oculus, a utility company could see problems, like gas leaks, in real-time. Image Credit: Space-Time Insight 

Commentary: Washington state legislator Derek Stanford (D-Bothell) just introduced a bill that would eliminate the enforceability of non-compete agreements in Washington State. Microsoft will do everything in their power to kill this bill, and we — the innovation community — should do everything in *our* power to get it passed.

Why should we care?

Because we all know two things that Microsoft — and most other big companies — will never admit:

Ever wonder where we direct the most medical research dollars? You guessed right – it’s cancer – as pointed out on blog The Incidental Economist, which lifted a series infographics from a January JAMA article on the “anatomy of medical research.”

For instance, in 2013 the vast majority of compounds being developed were for cancer therapy – both chemotherapeutic and immunotherapy agents. Check it:

Image: http://medcitynews.com/ 

Hey, life science startups: Looks like Massachusetts investment firm BioVentures is raising a new venture fund – and has raised about $20 million of a potential $100 million pot, according to a regulatory filing.

Historically, the fund’s been focused heavily on medtech investments, with dollars also poured into therapeutics and diagnostics. No reason to assume otherwise with this fund. Some of its portfolio companies include Enanta Pharmaceuticals, Claros Diagnostics (acquired by OPKO Pharmaceuticals in 2011 for $49 million), and Hydra Biosciences.

Should there be a no shop, no solicit clause in the term sheet, which will be binding? From the investor's standpoint, this is often a preferred way to proceed. It avoids the contingency that the Company will "shop" the terms offered by, in this case ABC, LLC, with other potential investors and pick the winning number. This is viewed as a problem for investors, because they will be wasting their time and money on a process which they did not realize would be, in effect, an auction.

Think about the last time you came home from work completely and totally drained. I don’t mean the good kind of tired, when you’ve worked hard and gotten something done. I’m talking about exhaustion, colored by frustration and tinged with anger. Maybe you even felt hopeless. You were fed up, trying to be nice but snapping at family, wanting nothing more than to crawl into bed (or dive into a bottle of wine). If you’re like me, feeling pissed off and hopeless isn’t your natural state. And for those of us who love our work, feeling negative is doubly painful because it just shouldn’t be this way.

Urban form in American cities is in a constant state of evolution. Until recent years, American suburbia was often built without an appreciation for future evolution. This has left many older suburbs in a deteriorated state, and has accelerated claims of a more generalized suburban decline.

The Indianapolis suburb of Carmel represents a response to this historic pattern. While responding to today’s market demands with a new aspiration level designed to make it nationally competitive, it’s also trying to position itself for success tomorrow and over the longer term.

Image: http://www.newgeography.com/ 

At the end of a year with strong investment numbers and near-record exits, the confidence of Silicon Valley and Bay Area venture capitalists improved, according to a new study.

The Silicon Valley Venture Capitalist Confidence Index, conducted by University of San Francisco professor Mark V. Cannice, is a quarterly survey of a few dozen venture capitalists in Silicon Valley and the Bay Area.

Image: http://blogs.wsj.com 

This is the fourth post in my ongoing Series on Technology, Disruption (and Chess).

In my previous post we discussed what I called the Great Unbundling of Venture Capital and it led to a fascinating conversation on Twitter, in the comments, in personal conversations and on various blogs. People have strong feelings about venture capital and the topic of its evolution, and unbundling definitely touched a nerve with many.

I had the pleasure to be invited by W.I.R.E., the swiss based think tank, to participate in a “Battle of Scenarios” about the future of work. More precisely about the notion that robots will take over much of the work we are doing today. Presumably not only the physically exhausting work or the work nobody wants to do, but also highly qualified jobs, threatening even us creative snowflakes.

"We want companies to start and stay in Baltimore, and we want to make it affordable and easy for them to do so," said Elizabeth Smyth, director of strategic initiatives for Johns Hopkins University's technology ventures division. That's the inspiration behind Johns Hopkins' move to expand its innovation hub and launch a brand new accelerator called FastForward East.

Image: Image courtesy of Johns Hopkins University 

Every so often a promising entrepreneur seems to freeze in the oncoming headlights and gets run over by his competition. Why is it that his idea which seemed so fundable only months ago fails to attract investors today? The team is the same. The company's market is the same.

Venture capital investing in biotech has long been hard to disaggregate: how much goes to “early stage” vs “late stage”, how much goes to CNS vs oncology, discovery vs Phase 3, etc…

Today BIO’s David Thomas and Chad Wessel have put some much-needed light onto the biotech investor trends over the past decade with a newly released report (http://bio.org/biovcstudy).

At the end of a year with strong investment numbers and near-record exits, the confidence of Silicon Valley and Bay Area venture capitalists improved, according to a new study.

The Silicon Valley Venture Capitalist Confidence Index, conducted by University of San Francisco professor Mark V. Cannice, is a quarterly survey of a few dozen venture capitalists in Silicon Valley and the Bay Area.

Image: http://blogs.wsj.com 

Sometimes just looking at the headline figure is not the best way to judge a country’s performance in times of crisis.

As we measure countries' performance since the beginning of the global financial crisis we try to look for patterns that explain differences in behaviour and lessons on how to handle the next major downturn. When doing that comparison, however, we sometimes forget that looking at GDP growth does not always give us all the information we need to understand cross-country variation in performance due to demographic, labour market and productivity factors. While these factors might be correlated over time, this is not always the case.

Image: http://knowledge.insead.edu/ 

Electric cars are quick and quiet, with a range more than long enough for most commutes. If you want a car with extremely fast acceleration, the Tesla Model S is hard to beat. And, of course, electric vehicles avoid the pollution associated with conventional cars, including emissions of carbon dioxide from burning gasoline. Yet they account for a tiny fraction of automotive sales, mainly because the batteries that propel them are expensive and need to be recharged frequently.

Image: http://www.technologyreview.com