“Culture is one of the most precious things a company has,” insists Herb Kelleher, founder of Southwest Airlines. “So you must work harder on it than anything else.”

For the entrepreneurial business, its culture begins on Day One. The culture is a reflection of the values the entrepreneur brings into the business.

Culture is important for an entrepreneurial venture because it’s the mechanism that institutionalizes the values of its founders. Culture serves to socialize new employees. It helps them understand how they should treat customers, how they should treat one another, how they should act in their jobs and how to generally fit in and be successful within the business.

Is your organization creative?  Should your organization be creative?  How do you change your organization's level of creativity?  Does creativity equal more new products and processes?  August is dedicated to answering these questions.

Here's some non-peer reviewed research to help.  It was inspired by the much better research of Teresa Amabile and with the same conclusions.

Over the years I've taught a graduate course in creativity six times.  The three day course always started with the dozen or so students working together for a few hours to define creativity and then to come up with ways that I could remember each of their names.

We tracked down some of the brightest minds in venture capital to learn more about what makes great companies tick. We asked Phin Barnes, Brad Feld, Rob Go and Alex Taussig to share the advice to they most often give to (and the mistakes they most often see from) the CEOs and founders in their portfolios.

Here’s what they had to say:

Phin Barnes, principal, First Round Capital – Recruit and hire a team you would be honored to work for, and create a culture of “no ego” where the best ideas win.

A startup is a race against time in a world of extremely limited resources and imperfect information. I worry when founders take too long to make a decision and work to collect more information rather than trusting their instincts and being decisive about strategy, staffing, or fund-raising.

In an industry dominated by men, at least three venture-capital firms are trying to raise funds that would go out of their way to help female entrepreneurs.

The latest is Women’s Venture Capital Fund, which is seeking $25 million for its first fund, Women’s Venture Capital Fund LP, VentureWire reports.

The firm is making early-stage investments in female entrepreneurs starting West Coast-based companies that have “a unique proprietary value proposition” in digital media and sustainability, according to its website. Management teams, however, must be “gender diverse.”

As I read this morning’s news about Syrian security forces renewing attacks on the city of Hama, I become even more committed to finding stories of Syrians looking beyond the divides of politics, class and religion, who can help shape the fate of the country and its four-months-long revolt against President Bashar al-Assad. This is particularly so because unemployment, which is always an underlying cause for any revolt, is essentially a youth issue in Syria, where young people represent nearly 80 percent of the unemployed.

An entrepreneur is someone who is willing to take a risk—seeing solutions and opportunity where others only see problems—and someone who has a drive to create value and wealth. Obviously, the current situation in Syria is not favorable for risk-taking. But as has happened in other strife-ridden countries, many people take control of their own lives through entrepreneurship, a career path that provides the opportunity for greater freedom and prosperity. It also helps that there is a tradition of entrepreneurship and commerce in Syrian culture at all levels of society. For thousands of years, it has been one of the great trading nations of the world.

A popular refrain from venture capitalists to entrepreneurs: We’re more than just money!

Getty Images While that may be true, will VCs meet with entrepreneurs when the subject is not about money?

Allen Morgan of Mayfield Fund argues that entrepreneurs should never meet with VCs unless they’re formally pitching a start-up.  On his blog he writes:

“When the meeting is premised on the notion that it’s just ‘informational’, there is a risk that the entrepreneur is too casual, not well-prepared, lets down his guard and does not put his best foot forward. And, because they’re wired this way, that is what the VC is likely to remember: a lousy pitch.”

Wow. It isn’t often that I drop everything after I read an article and feel compelled to respond. But I was dumbstruck when I read this piece in the Washington Post.

It was titled: Five myths about entrepreneurs. In around 1000 words, the author went on to trash the National Venture Capital Association, Peter Thiel, Jason Calacanis and Fred Wilson, using “scientific research” to try to prove them wrong.

This just goes to show why academics don’t “get” entrepreneurs, don’t understand job creation and don’t make good VCs. It also proves that academics looking to make headlines can do so by using bogus statistics and misleading phrases.

So how did he get this so-called research SO wrong and backwards? I mean, his conclusions are mind-boggling in their naiveté. In a nutshell, the author confuses average with great. He looks at quantity instead of quality. And in doing so he reaches irrelevant and misleading conclusions. I downloaded the study and read it. You too can do so here. Part of the problem is that the author surveyed “549 company founders across a dozen fast-growth industries.” But nowhere could I find a list of the companies or founders surveyed. I am betting that they include no $100B companies, no $10B companies, no $1B companies, and probably few $100M companies. But perhaps he could prove me wrong. Again, his research looked at quantity, but I can’t tell if it included “quality” companies.

We have light bulbs made from glowing metal filaments, fluorescent gas, and LED diodes. And now we have one made of water. There is also a virtually unlimited supply since the "bulb" is composed  of nothing more than one-liter plastic bottle, water, and bleach. The simple technology can be installed in less than an hour, lasts for five years, and is equivalent to a 60 watt bulb.

It works simply: The water defracts the light, letting it spread throughout the house instead of focusing on one point. The bleach keeps the water clear and microbe-free.

The jury is still out on whether Michigan's new economic development strategy will work. But one thing's for certain. The state is making a 180-degree shift from its previous strategy of using billions of dollars in tax breaks and other incentives to jumpstart growth in five key industries.

Under Gov. Rick Snyder, Michigan economic development officials are betting that spending fewer dollars more wisely, helping existing businesses grow and giving many companies a big tax cut will enable the state's economy to flourish.

"It's not necessary to offer ever-increasing incentives in order to be competitive as a state," said Michael Finney, CEO and president of the Michigan Economic Development Corp.

Which is more Kiwi? Sauvignon blanc and pinot noir, or respiratory humidifiers and sleep apnoea breathing masks? One is a $1 billion industry that has been carpeting hillsides in stubby ranks of vines for the past 30 years and successfully lowering the nation's average wage through its employment of unskilled Tongans, Thais and Brazilians.

The other is a single company, Fisher & Paykel Healthcare, which exists almost invisibly in a South Auckland factory zone and alone earns New Zealand around half what our wine exports make.

The problem, says Sir Paul Callaghan, Victoria University professor of physics and the 2011 New Zealander of the Year, is Kiwis don't actually know what success looks like. We talk about catching up with Australia, but think that means more mining, dairying or tourism. However, hi-tech is where it is at. It is the only way New Zealand can be rich again, while still having the environment we love.

We see a lot of metrics on web and mobile apps. Our portfolio companies share their metrics with us, which we keep confidential and do not share with anyone outside of our firm. And companies that are seeking investment from USV also share their metrics with us. We also keep these metrics confidential and do not share them outside of our firm.

One thing that never ceases to amaze me is how similar some of the metrics are from service to service and company to company. I like to call these the web/mobile laws of physics. One fairly common "law of web/mobile physics" is the ratio of registered users/downloads to monthly actives, daily actives, and max concurrent users (for services that have a real time component to them).

Business is often compared to war and waging battle with enemies. Indeed, Sun Tzu’s “The Art of War” is one of the most popular business books ever written, and it was originally written as a military strategy guide. Battle terminology has been a mainstay in the business lexicon for decades. The list of war references used in business is almost endless, from “gathering the troops” to “losing a battle but winning the war.”

One battle concept that has enduring applicability is that of creating a citadel. A citadel is a fortress in a commanding position in a city. The purpose of a citadel is to provide defense for a city. Citadels are fortified, meaning they have the firepower to fight off enemies. When a citadel is built, a city is preparing itself for a battle.

SAN FRANCISCO: The Indian entrepreneur in America - a middle-aged man who runs an IT consulting outfit or a body shop. That person has not disappeared. But it's a stereotype that is now being challenged by a new clutch of entrepreneurs looking beyond the usual realms thatIndian entrepreneurs are identified with.

"A lot of traditionalSilicon Valley industries like semiconductors and networking have matured. Today's Indian entrepreneur is simply where the market is. And that obviously includes social, mobile and cloud," says Vish Mishra, a venture capitalist at ClearStone Ventures and global head of the world's largest entrepreneurial body, The Indus Entrepreneurs (TiE).

While still in his 20s, Aayush Phumbhra started textbook rentalChegg - which in a few years made several acquisitions and is now rumoured to be filing an IPO in the near future. Just six years out of college, Kunal Sarkar created

In my last post, I cautioned about the dangers of learning about venture capital from watching a TV show. After all, would you learn about how to remove a gallbladder from watching ER, or how to behave if you're arrested from Law and Order? No, TV isn't reality (even reality TV) and Shark Tank is plenty entertaining, but hardly a roadmap for funding.

So how do you go about raising capital? Any proper "show me the money" checklist begins with one question: What kind of money are you raising? Money comes in three basic flavors, Friends and Family, Angel Money, and Venture Capital.

Last week, Burt Rutan announced his retirement from Scaled Composites while simultaneously unveiling a prototype of his latest design, the Model 367 BiPod flying car roadable plane. Rutan gave each of his aircraft designs a model number, and as you may have surmised by now, he's got a lot of designs, and most of them are spectacularly innovative.

The most extraordinary thing about Rutan's aircraft is how many of them were actually built and flown by the company he founded, Scaled Composites. And it's not like it's just the (relatively) ordinary ones that got off the ground either, since no less than five of his designs now reside in the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum.

The legends of Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg and other high-tech entrepreneurs have fed a stereotypical vision of innovation in America: Mix a brainy college dropout, a garage-incubated idea and a powerful venture capitalist, stir well, and you get the latest Silicon Valley powerhouse. That’s Hollywood’s version of technological innovation; unfortunately, it’s also the one that venture capitalists try to fund and government planners seek to replicate. But these individuals are not America’s typical entrepreneurs. To find them, first let’s dispense with some major misconceptions about where our best ideas comes from.

The National Business Incubator Association says there are about 1,200 business incubators operating in America.

The Athens, Ohio-based group also has some ideas on how healthcare entrepreneurs can latch on to a local incubators group – and make it work for them.

So how do you go about it?

David Monkman, the president of the National Business Incubation Association, has some specific tips on what entrepreneurs should look for before joining an incubator.

Monkman tells MSNBC in a recent interview that a business incubator has many advantages. “Business owners can get counseling and mentorship options and incubators give them access to financial support,” he says.

For a lot of businesses, or so I thought, summer means slower days and less work. Blame it on the kids being out of school or people taking more vacations. I know a lot of my mom blog and mompreneur work-at-home friends usually have slow summers, due to the kids being out of school (I’m glad my son is in year-round school and is out for just six weeks!)

But the statistics prove otherwise. Manta, an online community for promoting and connecting small business, polled more than 1,000 small business owners about their business during the summer months. I found the results a bit surprising.  A whopping 85 percent of the small businesses surveyed said they do not experience a slump in productivity due to increases in employee vacation time in the summer. And nearly three in four small businesses keep the same schedule through the year with no changes during the summer months.

David Tisch began investing in startups when he was a teenager. He took his bar mitzvah money, invested it in eBay's IPO, and saw a 15x return.

Since then he has started two companies.  He is currently the managing director of TechStars NYC, a 3-month startup mentorship and accelerator program. Tisch has also made 43 angel investments.

Jane and Dick worked together at Denver Health, the nation’s “most wired” hospital according to Hospitals & Health Networks Magazine. They have seen first-hand the impact technology can have in the medical field through exposure to a number of Denver Health IT initiatives. Through a series of conversations, Jane and Dick have come up with the idea to develop a social network tailored to the medical community. Through an online platform, doctors, nurses, and administrators would be able to assist each other with complicated diagnoses, collaborate on research studies, and find and fill job openings. After sharing the concept with a number of colleagues and receiving enthusiastic support for the idea, Jane and Dick built up the confidence to quit their day jobs and launch a business together.

Jane and Dick each brings a similar level of skill and capability to the business, making it easy for them to agree to a 50/50 equity split. While they could both go without salaries for a year, Dick had no extra money to invest in the business. However, Jane was in a position to invest some of her savings into the startup. How could they treat Jane’s cash investment in the business in a way that was fair to both of them?