Most people believe that entrepreneurs learn from failure. Pick up USA Today, Entrepreneur, or any of a multitude of popular publications and you will find stories about how entrepreneurs learned from their mistakes to become successful the next time around.

Using examples of Apple’s failure with the Newton, Frederick Smith’s low grade on the Fed Ex business plan, and Bill Gates’ unsuccessful first computer business, many authors argue that entrepreneurial failure is no obstacle to later success.

IF you have a smartphone, you probably have apps on it to check the news, play games, help with shopping or further a hobby like travel or bird-watching. But chances are that you don’t yet have Bubblegum — a new app that lets you instantly dress up cellphone photos, tinting them in sepia or adding neon blue highlights, for instance, and then share the results on Facebook.

That’s because Bubblegum is an app for a nascent market: people whose smartphones have the new Windows Phone 7 software inside. The phones have been on the market for only a few months in the United States. (Four models, including the Samsung Focus, the HTC Surround and the LG Quantum, are each $100 at the Microsoft Store.)

I’m seeing a renewed appreciation of culture and values in business these days. Maybe it’s just another example of nature abhorring a vacuum, but I prefer to think it’s a natural evolution of the pervasive social networking communities, where people relate to and expect to interact with businesses and products they like. They drive the market, rather than the other way around.

Your values as you create a startup are the key to creating an enviable culture that attracts more customers, according to Ann Rhoades, in her book “Built on Values.” She would assert, and I agree, that you need to get it right the first time, because first impressions are critical, and changing your values and culture in the eyes of customers and employees is extremely difficult.

01 / Burberry

For deploying a potent combo of design and technology to burnish a storied brand
02 / Opening Ceremony

For its star-making prowess and curatorial eye for rising talent
03 /RentTheRunway

For creating a new high-fashion distribution model using rental
04 / J.Crew

For mastering the art of affordable American luxury, both online and off
05 / Createthe Group

For delivering novel e-commerce solutions that have taken the often fusty fashion world online

Is it worse to be swallowed by the sea or racked by famine?

As climate change tightens its grip on the world, institutions charged with protecting the most vulnerable nations could be faced with just such a question. Because there is no international consensus for ranking the possibilities of future devastation -- and because there are limited dollars lined up to help cope with climate change -- some countries already are battling over who will be considered most vulnerable.

The EWEA Annual Event - formerly known as EWEC is Europe's premier wind energy event. Over 10,000 wind energy professionals from over 60 countries are expected - including EU & national policy makers, leading market players and technical experts. With a unique combination of a comprehensive conference programme and a first-class exhibition, the EWEA Annual Event is recognised as a 'must attend event' among the international wind community.

We are not natively smarter than we were when our country was founded nor do we work harder. But look around you and see a world beyond the dreams of any colonial citizen. Now, as in 1776, 1861, 1932 and 1941, America’s best days lie ahead.”

I won’t rehash the rest of the letter. It is a must read. But if there is one thing that you take away from the letter it is this lesson – nothing stopped so many innovators and entrepreneurs more than the fear of failure. If you allow yourself to be constantly scared into thinking that the world is doomed you will never take that risk which might result in great reward. And perhaps worse, if you never fail you will never learn to get up, brush yourself off, move on and succeed in the future. This does not man you should wander through this world with great complacency and blind optimism, but if you deny yourself the ability to maximize your full potential you will always come up short.

Rand Fishkin has a good post in response to my marketing posts over the past two days. In it he makes this assertion:

For the first few years that I was in the "web world," 1997-2001, there was a dangerous and obvious bias in startups toward sales and marketing - and branding in particular. But, in the past few years, that pendulum has swung to the equally dangerous paradigm that product is everything.

And then he shows this great graphic:

 

Medtronic, the world's largest medical-device maker, is using microelectronics and chip manufacturing to shrink pacemakers—implanted devices that regulate the heart's rhythm. Whereas current pacemakers are about as big as a silver dollar, Medtronic's device would be smaller than a tic tac. At that size, the device would be small enough to be inserted via catheter, rather than invasive surgery.

The device is still a research instrument, says Stephen Oesterle, Medtronic's senior vice president for medicine and technology, but it could be on the market in five years.

What will you do differently in your next business venture? What did you do differently in your second or third venture? What is the BIG BUSINESS MISTAKE you won’t make again?

Every business owner or entrepreneur has one. Arguably the key difference between successful entrepreneurs and the rest is their ability to recover from big mistakes and stay in the game.

It’s not easy. Many readers have emailed with stories about the terrible side effects of failure or enterprises performing below expectation. They are stuck in the mud and feel recovery is impossible.

Stakeholders have continued to blame the high rate of unemployment in this country on our school curricula that are not tailored towards making students entrepreneurs after graduation. Consequently, most times, graduates that even want to venture into self-employment or entrepreneurship after a long search for jobs do not know where to start from. This situation is worrisome, making sustained education in this regard a matter of compulsion. What is entrepreneurship? Entrepreneurship is the practice of starting new organisations, particularly new businesses generally in response to identified opportunities. Entrepreneurial activities are substantially different, depending on the type of organisation that is to be started.

We all know that business success is dependent on developing and executing new ideas. Unfortunately, no matter how many great ideas you have, most of them do not happen. They get lost in the process of business, discussion, impatience and fear. The majority of us turn on ourselves during the “idea” to “execution” phase, we become our own worst enemies. Combine this with a cororpoation of like minded souls, innovation, or even making ideas happen becomes harder and harder and rarely exists. The key to innovation and making ideas happen is to master your own natural tendencies.

Ideas do not happen in isolation, they rely on thousands of moving parts, community, discipline, organisation, foresight and most of all leadership.

Helen Walters, from Fast Co Design has written an important piece highlighting Ryan Jacoby’s 7 Deadly sins of innovation from his recent NYU/Poly talk. Here they are:
1: Thinking the answer is in here, rather than out there

“We all get chained to our desks and caught up in email,” he said. “But the last time I looked, no innovation answers were coming over my Blackberry.” You have to get outside of the office, outside of the conference room and be open to innovation answers from unexpected places. Ryan makes h

Why have you been so successful in reaching some of your goals, but not others? If you aren't sure, you are far from alone in your confusion.

It turns out that even brilliant, highly accomplished people are pretty lousy when it comes to understanding why they succeed or fail. The intuitive answer — that you are born predisposed to certain talents and lacking in others — is really just one small piece of the puzzle.

In fact, decades of research on achievement suggests that successful people reach their goals not simply because of who they are, but more often because of what they do.

In 2009, the Irish economy underwent one of the deepest recessions in the EU, with its economy shrinking by as much as 10%. Late in 2010, Ireland received an €85bn financial rescue package. Clearly, the winner of Ireland´s general elections held on Sunday (according to polls so far Fine Gael leader Enda Kenny) will have a lot on his shoulders. However, if the past is any indication, Ireland has the potential to resurge economically.

The country changed from a largely agricultural society in the early 70s into a modern, high-technology economy. By the final decade of the 20th century, Ireland had become one of Europe's economic success stories. Rapid entrepreneurial advancement helped the Irish make this turn. But “the Irish Miracle,” as it became known, was actually the product of purposeful reforms to create favourable conditions for entrepreneurs, including the privatization of state-owned companies, freer labor markets, lower tax rates and direct equity investment to encourage Irish people to set up their own businesses. The result: Ireland’s economy grew at a much faster pace than any continental counterpart over the next quarter century. By 2004, Ireland’s per capita income was only 10 percent below that of the United States.

The board game Monopoly was originally a round oilcloth 33 inches in diameter. The earliest ever version of the board game Monopoly has sold for almost $150,000 in the UK. The game is the only one of 5,000 made by Monopoly inventor Charles Darrow in 1933 to survive to present day.

Heating engineer Darrow drew and coloured in the playing surface using pen and ink and made the little hotels and houses from strips of pine wood moulding.

He also devised and wrote the rules of the game – a carbon typescript of which was included in the auctioned set.
Despite its round shape, the design and format is almost identical to the 275 million Monopoly games that have subsequently sold around the globe.

It has 28 properties, including four train stations and two utility companies, three chance and three community chest spaces, two tax squares, and spaces for go, free parking, jail and the dreaded ‘go to jail’.

Kevin Efrusy will one day go down in the history books as the venture capitalist smart enough to recognize Facebook for what it was--not just a childish diversion, but a potential business powerhouse. As a member of vaunted Silicon Valley firm Accel Partners, Efrusy has gone on to make other bets on social companies, and in 2009, he co-authored a white paper on the rise of the social web, stating that Facebook and Twitter were presaging “a fundamental disruption” in many other categories of Internet-based businesses.

Today, Efrusy, whom Fortune dubbed one of “8 Rising VC Stars,” calls the social web the “substrate” on which a slew of new businesses will be built--and which will prompt existing businesses to retool, just as legacy businesses retooled to take advantage of the Web. Fast Company caught up with Efrusy to find out more.

Advanced technology today can sometimes seem so far fetched it might sound like it is science fiction when it’s actually science fact. Like the concept of driving a car with your brain power for example.

Yes, you read that right, the technology to do just that already exists and it really does work.

German scientists have been developing “BrainDriver” which allows the driver to operate a car using only the mind to control it. If you want to turn left or right, go faster or slower or stop, all you have to do is think it. Imagine that!

BrainDriver is part of the AutoNOMOS project at the Freie Universität in Berlin and is being led by professor Raul Rojas.

The German scientists recently demonstrated the BrainDriver in action in a wide open space at a disused airport in Berlin and it really works, they have the video to prove it.

The NZ Venture Investment Fund has invested $123 million into 100 seed and start-up companies since its establishment in 2002. Combining private investment, those 100 companies have received $308 million of venture and angel investment capital.

Of the 100 companies:

79 are exporting.

29 have received investment from offshore investors.

23 emerged from either universities or Crown Research Institutes, and 19 have been part of business incubators.

Auckland is home to 53 of the companies, with Christchurch hosting 16.

9 have been sold and 7 have been written off or liquidated.

28 of the investments were into seed stage enterprises, 56 were into start-up companies, 15 into early expansion companies, and 1 company at the expansion stage.

NZVIF chief executive Franceska Banga said that it is pleasing to have partnered with the private sector in providing over $300 million of investment capital to promising young technology companies, but considerable work is required to establish a vibrant and sustainable venture capital industry.

When it comes to being healthy and living a vibrant and energy filled life, sleep seems to be one of the most elusive aspects to conquer. Certainly we know that getting a good night’s sleep is important - crucial, even, to good health. But it’s not as simple as just deciding that you are now going to start sleeping better. At least that’s how it often seems.

Want to eat healthier or with more variety? All it takes is some planning and follow-through. Want to exercise more? It’s just a matter of making time for even 10 minutes a day, and scheduling it in.