The venture capital business is highly competitive. There is more money out there chasing good deals than most people imagine. It is also true that there are good deals and good entrepreneurs that can't find anyone to invest in them. That is a failure of the system. But this post is not about that. It is about how a VC can compete and win a deal that many others want.

Here are my rules:

1) Do your very best to connect with the entrepreneur. If you don't have a great personal connection, you won't win the deal. Don't even bother to try to win a deal where you don't have good personal chemistry with the founder/CEO.

The European Commission will present on Wednesday (10 November) its energy strategy for the coming decade, calling for investment of around €1 trillion to secure the bloc's energy needs in a sustainable way.

The new strategy will set out priorities for 2020 in order to deliver on the EU's energy and climate goals.

This will require the EU to spend €1 trillion over the next decade on infrastructure, new technologies and electricity storage, according to a draft, seen by EurActiv.

There were 45,344 runners who participated in the 2010 New York City Marathon. Here are 99 of them right after they crossed the finish line.

With all the attention on renewable-energy technology, and for all the hopes that politicians have expressed that by pushing dollars into the innovation system they can magically get “cluster” jobs out the other side, I thought I would tell the cautionary story of three extremely impressive energy-tech-type companies that my colleagues1 and I assisted when we worked for the (lately defunct) New Jersey Commission on Science and Technology (NJCST) back in the late 1980s/early 1990s.2

As free-marketeers like to say, politicians don’t create jobs: entrepreneurs and investors do. Absolutely correct. All we did in government was help by providing resources that the entrepreneurs leveraged and exploited at a very early stage of corporate existence. Except in one case where we provided a modest amount of pre-seed financing, I wouldn’t say we even tried to “pick winners.” We applied public funding to create physical environments and incentives for academic/industrial collaboration, we provided a little free publicity and moral support, and then we sat back and watched the inventors and innovators/entrepreneurs do their thing.

In this world of slander, liable and blacklist, there is little span for creativity, writing robotically is not an efficient way to allure the readers and retain their interest. Creative writing is the powerful tool that is used to express feelings and thoughts of a person in imaginative and poetic way rather than to covey it in simple informative style. Writing is the type of expressing your personal freedom that is used
to free us from mass identity spread around us.

How to get started for creative writing ideas
Many people consider it a simple thing to write about the stuff they have read in form of stories and essays; they are able to write good piece through it. But that is not a good approach to become a skillful creative writer. Creative writing has its own requirements and principles of construction that need to be learnt. It does not mean that you possess creative writing skills because you have read plenty of novels and stories.

I’ve lost count of the people I know who want to teach entrepreneurship programs or start entire courses. Entrepreneurship education, it seems, has become a significant entrepreneurial opportunity in itself.

More universities offer specialist entrepreneurship degrees these days, and some, like Melbourne's RMIT, do an excellent job. Still, I can’t help think the university system by its nature makes it hard to teach entrepreneurship to budding or current business owners who want more practice than theory, and instruction from practitioners rather than academics.

In my experience, too much traditional business education designed for big companies is repackaged as entrepreneurship education. Much of it is useless for start-up entrepreneurs. There is simply too much theory when the majority of entrepreneurship students want “how to” vocational training.

Efficient vs. Effective – there is sometimes a very big difference between the two. So much so, that I have really come to cringe every time I hear the word efficiency. It’s not really that there is anything wrong with becoming more efficient, but what I find is that far too many executives major in the minors when it comes to efficiency. Let me ask you a question – Have you become so efficient that you’ve rendered yourself ineffective? At an organizational level have you focused so much on process improvements and incremental gains that you’ve failed to recognize opportunity and innovate? Are you efficient or effective, or do you know?

Tens of thousands of turbines anchored to the bottom of the Mississippi River could someday provide more than a gigawatt of renewable energy, enough to power a quarter of a million homes. That's the vision of Free Flow Power, a startup based in Gloucester, Massachusetts, that recently received preliminary permits from the U.S. Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) granting it the right to explore energy production at dozens of sites along the lower Mississippi over the next three years.

The proposed development is one of a number of "hydrokinetic" projects in the works. Such projects seek to generate electricity from wave movement, tidal flows, or river currents, without the use of dams.

The ambitious Mississippi project, however, relies on relatively unproven technology. The only commercial hydrokinetic river-power system operating in the U.S. is a single turbine deployed by Hydro Green Energy close to a conventional hydropower dam on the Mississippi River in Hastings, Minnesota.

In the age of viral videos, advertisers sometimes call what they create "content." That may be justified in the case of Unilever, the London-based consumer products giant. A few years back, "Evolution," a one-minute video by Dove fast-forwarding the transformation of a girl into a model, became one of the first ads to spread to tens of millions of people through social media. A recent consumer survey from ExactTarget named Dove and its Campaign for Real Beauty among the five favorite brands on Facebook (along with iTunes, Oreo, Victoria's Secret, and Wal-Mart). Meanwhile, Unilever's Axe brand has a decidedly different message. Most famously, when its "Chocolate Man" video for body spray went viral, it seemed to convince millions of guys that using the spray would make them as irresistible to women as a fudge sundae. Earlier this year, Unilever revealed that it is doubling its spending on digital marketing globally. To find out more about its digital media strategy, Technology Review spoke with Rob Master, Unilever's North American media director.

Philadelphia, PA – The Mid-Atlantic - Russia Business Council (MARBC) is pleased to announce the Days of Russian-American Innovation Entrepreneurship Cooperation, which, for the first time, will occur simultaneously with the Semi-Annual Russian-American Innovation Technology Week (RANIT). Activities from both events will start in Philadelphia and the Mid-Atlantic region on November 8, 2010 with an opening ceremony in Philadelphia City Hall. One of the leading events will be the 6th Annual Russian-American Technology Entrepreneurship Conference in Philadelphia City Hall on November 8. Additional events will include a roundtable at the International Incubator at the Science Center on November 9. MARBC is also organizing Russian participation in the IMPACT 2010 Conference on November 9-10, 2010 in Philadelphia. IMPACT is one of the biggest and oldest venture capital events in the United States. A Russian delegation of entrepreneurs and industry executives will participate in a number of venture capital business events and learn about the U.S. venture capital industry. This event is an important part of the MARBC’s Program for Russian-American innovation cooperation.

As the important part of the Days of Russian-American Innovation Entrepreneurship Cooperation, MARBC is organizing the Russian participation in the IMPACT on November 9-10, 2010. Highlighting the wide variety of investment opportunities in the Mid-Atlantic region, IMPACT is one of the oldest venture capital events in the United States and continues to truly be a catalyst for companies and capital. Participants at IMPACT share their knowledge of the seed and venture capital industry, as well as discuss the best strategies and tools for building and managing strategic investment programs and institutions. IMPACT showcases the best young and developing companies and provides these companies with incomparable exposure to the top venture capitalists and private equity investors. IMPACT features a technology track, presenting companies in various technology areas, such as information technologies, telecommunications, nanotechnology, clean energy, biotechnology and life sciences. The IMPACT continues to build upon the momentum created at last year’s success by adding eagerly anticipated new content sections to this year’s program, including Angel to Venture, Institutional Investing, Technology Transfer, Business Development and Strategic Growth.

Download Details Here

ANNAPOLIS, Md., November 1, 2010 - The BoatUS Foundation's "Innovation in Life Jacket Design Competition" is once again calling for out-of-the-box life jacket design entries.

Five years ago, the Innovation in Life Jacket Design Competition resulted with the introduction of several new and innovative life jacket designs to the public, the US Coast Guard and recreational boating industry. Since then, the interest in new, more comfortable designs has not faded. While current models of life jackets save lives every day, many are still bulky and uncomfortable, leaving boaters reluctant to wear them.

So the BoatUS Foundation, along with Underwriters Laboratories and the Personal Floatation Device Manufacturer's Association, decided another competition was necessary to keep the momentum going to seek out the newest technologies and design innovations that could rethink a 100-year-old design.

Connecticut must leverage the research achievements from its knowledge corridor into entrepreneurial ventures, especially by spurring private individuals and organizations to invest in these start-ups. Peter Longo, president and executive director, Connecticut Innovations

That was the message from the head of Connecticut state investment fund after a senior official from the Obama Administration came to Windsor on Nov. 1 looking for ways to bolster America’s development of breakthrough research.

“The reality is you need to get money in the hands of the entrepreneurs,” said Peter Longo, president and executive director of Connecticut Innovations, the quasi-public state investment fund.

At the Northeast Technology Exchange Conference in Windsor, Longo and several other members from the state business and investment community sat on a panel hosted by Ginger Lew — the White House’s senior counselor on technology transfer — where she decried the nation’s problems in taking groundbreaking research and turning it into profitable business ventures.

I believe the Business model canvas, presented by Alexander Osterwalder & Yves Pigneur in their book “Business Model Generation”, holds a very powerful way for Venture Capital to use in their assessments of promising ventures they are considering for investment.

Traditional pitches to VC’s are loaded with financial numbers, providing crisp, well written business plans pitched by teams oozing with optimism but much of this is still highly intangible in reality. There is often a decision made on the people chemistry more than anything else. There is nothing wrong with that if you are the lucky one, but tough on the countless thousands that face rejection after rejection for their ideas to attract the necessary funding needed to move their business forward.

Angel investing in most parts of the country remains a relatively informal and unstructured process. The depressed economy has dampened the angel community’s appetite, making the identification of the trophy investor more important than ever. Professional angel investing takes time, knowledge, skills and resources. The trophy investor understands these challenges and has developed a professional process to manage his investments.

Main Street Venture Fund LLC, an angel fund of about 25 private investors, was formed by Ruffolo Benson LLC in northeast Indiana with the intention of bringing together area entrepreneurs and private investors to create economic value for the region. I will share several of our group’s insights from the past two years.

For an angel investor, it’s a buyer’s market. At Main Street, we consistently have more money available than we have found good opportunities for investment. The ideal angel investor possesses a variety of personal characteristics that likely have contributed to successful achievements in his or her own careers.

A miracle eye implant has restored sight to the blind, said the Daily Express. Many newspapers reported this ‘proof of concept’ trial in three patients who were completely blind due to a genetic condition. Each patient had a microchip implanted into one of their eyes, which was designed to convert light patterns into electrical impulses that could be fed into the optic nerve.

All three patients were better able to perceive light and locate light objects on a dark table. Furthermore, one patient could recognise objects such as a cup and a spoon on a table and could determine letters.

As the Daily Express implies, this is exciting research. Although complete vision restoration remains a long way off, a crude improvement in vision from complete blindness is a promising result. As this was a small pilot study, further work is needed to assess how well the device works in a larger group of patients and to refine the surgical technique and the device itself.

THE ECONOMIC downturn has presented both challenges and opportunities that put us at a crossroads. We know all too well what the challenges are, but to find the opportunities, we must move beyond old economic development models and the noisy rhetoric that demonizes government or business. We must come together as a region to unleash the creative and innovative spirit that resides here to create what we call the new innovation economy.

Virginia has the nation's highest concentration of technology workers, but it lags in technology transfer, or commercialization, and seed-stage capital formation, both key factors when creating the next generation of technology companies.

AS the sun rose over the mountains circling Los Reyes, a town in the Mexican state of Michoacán, one morning in March 2009, a caravan of more than 300 heavily armed law enforcement agents set out on a raid.

All but the lead vehicle turned off their headlights to evade lookouts, called “falcons,” who work for La Familia Michoacana, the brutal Mexican cartel that controls the drug trade. This time, the police weren’t hunting for a secret stash of drugs, guns or money. Instead, they looked to crack down on La Familia’s growing counterfeit software ring.

The police reached the house undetected, barreled in and found rooms crammed with about 50 machines used to copy CDs and make counterfeit versions of software like Microsoft Office and Xbox video games. They arrested three men on the spot, who were later released while the authorities investigate the case. “The entire operation was very complicated and risky,” says a person close to the investigation, who demanded anonymity out of fear for his life.