Staebler, an Ann Arbor resident, left his position as a vice president of the Michigan Economic Development Corp. to become vice president for economic development at Wayne State, which is located in Detroit. He'll start his new position June 6, WSU announced today.

He will lead Wayne State's involvement in the Detroit startup incubator TechTown, coordinate the university's efforts to create startup companies and license technology to private companies and lead the university's efforts to spur economic development in Detroit.

Last week Intellectual Ventures revealed its list of major investors. On it were several major U.S. research universities and research organizations.

• Brown University
• Cornell University
• Grinnell College
• Mayo Clinic
• Northwestern University
• Stanford University
• University of Minnesota
• University of Pennsylvania
• University of Southern California
• University of Texas

You may be asking yourself, so what’s the big deal about a university investing its endowment in Intellectual Ventures?

After all, according to conventional dictates of what constitutes as “good investment,” Intellectual Ventures is a real and legitimate company led by a famous and well-established executive team. In fact, over the past decade, it has raised $5 billion from investors and has grown to employ 650 employees and at last count, has accumulated a patent portfolio roughly the size of IBM’s – 30,000 active patents. Sure, the company is the target of controversy and criticism due to its business model, but that hasn’t stopped universities from investing their endowments before (remember the public controversies over university investments in Nike, and South African mines, Big Tobacco, Big Pharma, etc.?).

The residents of Joplin, Missouri, had 24 minutes of warning before a tornado hit their city on Sunday. That gave many people time to take cover, but despite the warning, 100 people were killed. Meteorologists would like to be able to warn people earlier and perhaps save more lives, and they have gotten better at predicting the conditions that produce tornadoes. But the swift and chaotic nature of tornado formation might defy our technological capacity to forecast them with greater precision anytime soon.

The National Weather Service and its Storm Prediction Center issue two forms of tornado alerts: watches and warnings. Watches alert people to the presence of storm conditions that breed tornadoes, and can now be called up to five days in advance (10 years ago, warnings came three days in advance, at best). But watches only tell us that tornadoes might be coming—they're not precise about when or where.

Hoffman believes an entrepreneurial venture will face competition by either innovating against no competitors or against slow competitors. If a startup faces a smart, aggressive competitor, they must be really sure of what they are doing. He elaborates on this point with the example of 'Friendster' losing its first mover advantage to 'MySpace,' due to a lack of marketing strategy.

I talk to job seekers all the time about what they can expect if they join a high-growth startup. Many of the folks I meet have never worked for a company that doesn’t earn profits (let alone revenues). Likewise, I often speak to groups of recent graduates without any work experience at all. I tell them the obvious stuff. The hours are long, the pay (at least initially) isn’t great, and chances are good that the company will fail within the first few years. You never know what will break from one day to the next, how your competition will react, or whether you’ve got enough cash in the bank to prove you’ve got a viable business. It’s decidedly not for everyone. There was a time when I wasn’t sure it was for me.

Before JumpStart, I’d only worked for high-growth or startup technology companies. Many of those companies no longer exist. In fact, during a brief period between the summer of 2000 and late 2004, I was laid off three times in four years. The first time was pretty straight forward. The company could not prove its business model, had burned through about $40 million in a year trying to do so (this was 2000, after all), and started shutting everything down. Ironically, that business model was very similar to the one that fuels Groupon and LivingSocial today. While I wasn’t pleased to be on the street, I had only been there for six months and I saw where the company was headed. I wasn’t surprised.

Startup Open, a competition that recognizes startups with high-growth potential, has launched its search for the 50 most promising new startups around the world as part ofGlobal Entrepreneurship Week (GEW) 2011. The "GEW 50" will be announced on Oct. 15, 2011, with those companies then competing for the top honors and prizes.

Startup Open is a featured competition of GEW, an initiative founded by the Kauffman Foundation to spur new ideas, ingenuity, and firm creation through local, national, and global activities in more than 100 countries. The competition, now in its second year, is open to entrepreneurs who have a "startup moment" between GEW 2010 and GEW 2011 (Nov. 22, 2010 to Nov. 20, 2011). A startup moment is defined as any action related to launching a new business, such as incorporating a company; officially opening the doors for business; completing a first sale; or securing outside funding.

Startup Open applicants will be judged on concept, growth projections, and knowledge of their industry.A handful of companies winning the top honors and prizes will be announced on Nov. 14 as GEW 2011 gets underway.

Startup Open applicants will have until Sept. 15 to submit their startup moment. For more information on how to enter and the 2010 winners, please visit www.startupopen.com.

A friend of mine, the CEO of a professional services firm,  recently gave me a copy of David Maister’s The Trusted Advisor (2000). Buy it here. Maister is the author of the best selling, Managing The Professional Services Firm (1993).

Maister, and his two co-authors, Charlie Green and Rob Galford, posit that the realm of a true trusted advisor involves three skills,- 1. Earning Respect; 2. Giving Advice Effectively; and, 3. Building Relationships. The authors are adamant that professional service firms which focus only on content and expertise will be relegated to a service-offering or needs-based relationship.

The book is detailed, practical and prescriptive. It’s not just about what you should do during your journey to becoming a trusted advisor, but actionable suggestions on how you might accomplish your goal.

As a new batch of graduates pounds the pavement looking for work, Gen Y remains painfully aware of workforce reality. After all, 75% of them did not have a job waiting for them after the caps were thrown in the air.

Yes, the economy still sucks. No, not enough of this year’s graduates learned from those from 2008, 2009 and 2010 – many of whom remain unemployed or under-employed. Yes, the job search process has never been more difficult. And yes, student loan debt has again reached record levels.

However, many in Gen Y – having seen promises made and broken by preceding generations (as well as by two political parties in a row) – now, finally, recognize that quick fixes do not exist.

‘Entrepreneur’ is a pretty broad, and often abused, word. How do you define it and what do you need to do to call yourself one? I don’t have the answer, but I do know that there are a lot of different types of entrepreneurs. Here are a few typical entrepreneurs you might meet. Which one are you?

The Manager Entrepreneur This is the type of person who becomes involved with startups once they have received a fair bit of funding and are just beyond the first high-risk stage. These people often call themselves entrepreneurs because they are close to entrepreneurs and have worked at startups. I think it is safe to say these entrepreneurs are more like managers then entrepreneurs and they might be very good at it too.

One summer after my freshman year in college, I took a job selling high-end Kirby vacuum cleaners door-to-door. I thought it might be a good experience.

It was. I learned that based on my selling statistics (which were good, but not great), every non-sale got me 1/15th of the way toward a sale.

To stay super-motivated, I had to train myself to view a non-sale as having earned a hard $20 (1/15th of a full commission), rather than seeing it as a failure.

What does this have to do with being an entrepreneur? Quite a lot. Apparently, there is some magic ratio (depending on the circumstance) that any new idea will succeed. Every attempt - and every failure - gets you one step closer to the next success. I wasn’t aware of this magic ratio while I was selling Kirby vacuum cleaners door-to-door, but by seeing every non-sale as a stepping stone to a sale, I was well on my way to becoming an entrepreneur.

Takeaway: Innovation is the life blood of most organizations in the 21st century, but most of them regularly do things to snuff out innovation wherever it rears its head. Here are five of the main culprits.

We live in an age of innovation. If you’re standing still, you’re going backward.

This is especially true in the technology industry, but it’s also true to varying degrees in most other industries since new technologies and new discoveries are pushing civilization forward at a rip-roaring pace. At some point, the pace will settle down a bit and there will be time to consolidate and wring out efficiencies, but it’s not happening anytime soon.

Last week, U.S. Department of Energy Secretary Steven Chu today announced the formation of U.S. DRIVE, a cooperative partnership with industry to accelerate the development of clean, energy-efficient technologies for vehicles. Formerly known as the FreedomCAR and Fuel Partnership, U.S. DRIVE – Driving Research and Innovation for Vehicle efficiency and Energy sustainability – brings together the DOE's technical experts with national laboratories and industry partners to develop targets and strategic roadmaps and evaluate progress on a range of advanced vehicle technologies. Energy Secretary Chu says that government-industry partnerships like U.S. DRIVE can:

Quicken the pace at which affordable, fuel-efficient vehicles reach and succeed in the commercial market. By bringing together the best and brightest in government and the automobile, electric utility, and fuels industries, we can develop promising, innovative technologies that move rapidly from the lab into cars on the road, along with the infrastructure to support them.

Maryland — home to brilliant innovators, but not-so-great entrepreneurs.

That's the challenge the state faces if it hopes to bolster its high-tech economy, according to business, government and consultants who gathered in Silver Spring on Friday to chart that course.

In a state that has been programmed to concentrate on government business, more must be done to foster an entrepreneurial spirit, said Christian S. Johansson, secretary of the Department of Business and Economic Development.

"We have phenomenal innovators," Johansson said. "We're just not very good at commercializing that."

Key concepts

Cardiovascular system Exercise Energy and metabolism

From National Science Education Standards: Personal health

Introduction When you exercise, do you notice that you get out of breath? What about feeling your heart rate—your pulse—increasing? These two changes are not coincidental—they are both important, and natural, reactions of your cardiovascular system to exercise.

From your brain down to your fingers and toes, your body needs plenty of oxygen to keep going. That oxygen is carried through your body in the bloodstream. Blood is pumped through the heart and picks up oxygen as it passes by the lungs.

Apple, unlike any other company in the world, has its identity tied to one individual: Steve Jobs.

And without question, Jobs is the driving force that turned Apple into the world's most valuable tech company.

But, Jobs didn't do it alone.

We decided to take a look at the first ten employees at Apple, and see what they did and where they are today.

Apple's first CEO Michael Scott gave us a bunch of color on the early days, and Steve Wozniak helped with a list of early employees, though it was based on his memory. We got our full list from another early employee. (We don't think this list has been produced anywhere else.)

National Competition Showcases TBED Successes: 2011 Call for Applications

Most technology-based economic development (TBED) practitioners want to know the same thing: What approaches to TBED are being taken in other states and regions, and how are they succeeding?

Distinguishing those initiatives with proven impact and a high degree of excellence is a complicated process. SSTI’s Excellence in TBED Awards program was created to help answer these questions and highlight on a national level programs improving the nation’s competitiveness.

SSTI is now accepting applications for the 2011 Excellence in TBED Awards. Winners of this award are provided a national platform to showcase their achievement. Awards are presented in the following six categories:

• Expanding the Research
• Capacity Commercializing Research
• Building Entrepreneurial Capacity
• Increasing Access to Capital
• Improving Competitiveness of Existing Industries
• Most Promising TBED Initiative – NEW!

The deadline to apply is July 19. More information is available at: http://www.ssti.org/Awards.

It feels good to solve customers’ problems. They shower you with praise, and you get the satisfaction of feeling needed.

The ego boost can be addictive — I know it was for me.

The problem is, the more your customers need you and ask for you personally, the harder it is to grow your business, and — in the long run — the less valuable your company will be.

In my consulting business, I found myself in the role of fixing clients’ problems personally. It felt good at the time, and it certainly paid well, but I soon realized I wasn’t building anything of long-term value.

I had to get out of the business of solving individual customers’ problems, but I found it hard to train others in what had taken me years to learn.

Have you ever wondered about an item for sale, with no way to verify its condition? Whenever someone buys a product on e-bay, for example, they are putting themselves at risk. However, there is now a unique service which will do the looking for you.

WeGoLook is a service that helps protect their clients from being scammed by looking into the things they hope to buy. Their service is available for nearly any high-priced item you would like to purchase but want to check on first, from animals to vehicles. They travel to the location, confirm its existence, fill out a personalized report, confirm specific details, provide 10 photos, and answer customer questions. At a time when dishonesty exists in online sales, their service provides the peace of mind many shoppers need.

I recently had the opportunity to ask the co-founder of WeGoLook, Robin Smith, a few questions about their unique service.

Cloud computing is still all the rage in the business world these days. Yet I find that most business people don’t understand and fully trust it, and I defy even the technologists to define it in ten words or less for business people. Many say it’s just marketing hype applied to old principles that have been around for a long time.

A typical definition (from Wikipedia) is that “cloud computing, is Internet-based computing, whereby shared resources, software and information are provided to computers and other devices on-demand, like a public utility.” That’s about 25 words which I’m certain doesn’t paint a very precise picture to the entrepreneurs I know.

As Chicago’s Groupon spurns $6 billion and spawn’s literally hundreds of competitors, Microsoft scoops up Estonia’s Skype for a reported $8.5 billion, Finland’s Angry Birds pluck $42 million from happy venture capitalists and China’s RenRen rakes in $742 million in its NYSE debut, is there method to this entrepreneurial madness? Are these random events, or can we identify, or even cultivate, the conditions in which value-creating entrepreneurial ventures like these will thrive?

For years I have looked at how to foster entrepreneurship in such super-venture societies as Israel, Ireland, Taiwan and Iceland, and worked with public and private sector leaders in over a dozen large municipalities and nations including in Spain, Chile, South Africa, Colombia, Puerto Rico and Argentina, not to mention StartUp America. I have written in the Harvard Business Review about some of the principles and processes that drive the evolution of entrepreneurship ecosystems, but let’s go back to basics: What exactly is this entrepreneurship ecosystem that is generating so much buzz these days?