On Friday, the House of Representatives passed a bill that would do many things, including raising the taxes that venture capitalists pay on capital gains. In so doing, Congress is taking a page from Willie Sutton -- who famously said he robbed banks because that's where the money was -- and turning that page on its side.

Ten years ago venture capital, or VC, was where the money was. But not anymore -- the costs of this tax change will exceed its benefits.

The latest organization to spring fully formed from the brow of San Diego’s Life Sciences community was not Athena, but the San Diego Entrepreneurs Exchange, which Denise profiled in March when the SDEE was preparing to hold its first meeting.

I’d guess close to 140 people turned out earlier this week for the group’s second meeting, which was organized around a case study presentation and discussion among local biotech entrepreneurs who were successful in winning Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grants from the National Institutes of Health. These are small grants. David Larocca, the founder, CEO, and principle scientist of Mandala Biosciences, says a Phase I SBIR “proof of principle” grant is usually limited to $150,000, while a Phase II “commercialization” grant is typically limited to $1.2 million.

1. Aiming too low. For fear of failure, low self expectations and a slough of other possible reasons, many people tend to limit themselves when thinking about what’s possible for their business. You don’t have to want to conquer the world, but it’s ok to dream big when planning and building your business. In fact, it’s not just ok, it’s really important. Setting your goals too small can kill your business, because you’re likely to get what you aim for. It’s infinitely better to just miss a huge goal than to barely hit a mediocre goal. Plan for mediocrity, and that’s what you’ll get.

2. Procrastination. Entrepreneurs and non-entrepreneurs alike suffer from this ailment, which is a surefire dream killer. Putting off what needs to be done in your business opens up the possibility for a competitor to take advantage of your procrastination. You might end up inconveniencing a customer or client, or you might end up taking time away from another important task later. Either way, you’re hurting your business, and this habit is bound to catch up with you. One of our favorite quotes on this topic is “Procrastination is the thief of fortune!”

Does your startup need a lawyer? I can't legally answer that question, of course. My background is in folklore and literature, so when it comes to lawyers I'm able to quote Shakepeare's Henry VI or reference Madame Bovary, and that's about it.

Laugh all you want at my background, but I would wager a lot of first-time entrepreneurs aren't certain of the answer to whether or not they need a lawyer either. So I called one - Katherine Moyer, an attorney who specializes in startups at Endeavor Law Group

It's commonly thought that even though globalization was shifting manufacturing jobs from America to lower-cost, more efficient, off-shore competitors, the U.S. retained a vast lead in high-end innovation. But are the powerful forces of globalization now leading to the off-shoring of America's innovation and R&D? New statistics from the National Science Foundation (via Mike Mandel) certainly point in that direction.

Way back in 1990, I wrote a book titled The Breakthrough Illusion with Martin Kenney that argued that the U.S. had developed a powerful capacity for venture capital-backed innovation, but that the actual manufacturing and production of those innovative new products - and the jobs that flow from that - was increasingly being shifted off-shore.

Few will dispute Amazon’s role as current king of the e-commerce space, but this week’s TechCrunch Disrupt conference raised an interesting question: Did Amazon miss the boat on social commerce?

At the conference last week in New York, John Caplan, CEO, OpenSky; Rob Kalin, CEO, Etsy; Susan Lyne, CEO, Gilt Groupe and Dan Porter, CEO, OMGPOP sat down to discuss the idea of social commerce and where the marketplace is going in the future in terms of both monetization and socialization. All of the panelists seemed to agree that Amazon will continue to reign supreme in “commodity commerce” but will not be able to lead social commerce. Kalin stated, “I think Amazon is doing a good job monopolizing the boring way of shopping.” Caplan agreed, saying that “Amazon will own commodity commerce. They won’t lead the way to relationship commerce and more and more people are craving relationships in shopping.”

Siguler Guff & Company, a US-based private equity firm with over $8.5 billion of assets under management, is investing $250 million in a high-tech hub outside Moscow that is often referred to as Russia’s ‘answer to Silicon Valley’, according to various reports.

Siguler Guff, owner of a subsidiary called Russia Partners, has made the investment public right after a visit to innovation center Skolkovo.

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev recently invited a group of US venture capitalists and entrepreneurs to visit the high-tech hub, which is located in Moscow’s woody suburbs, in an effort to convince them of his plans to spur economic modernization and reduce its dependence on oil and gas by giving birth to a local ‘Silicon Valley’.

Switching off the pilot light on your furnace or fireplace during warm summer months will save natural gas and save you money.

Consider that the pilot light on a gas fireplace can use half the total gas that fireplace burns in one year!

Depending on gas prices, you can save about $50 on bills each year if you turn off a pilot light during warm months.

Today quite a variety of entrepreneurs presented their business ideas at my Online Strategy Roundtables. Several times I brought up how precious our time is and we need to treat it as such. So many people become enamored with technology and the building of the product before they ever think to validate that this is a business service or product that a customer wants to pay for.

I've seen too many entrepreneurs wasting precious years of their lives, and I sincerely try to discourage anyone from wasting his or her time on an idea that does not have legs based on concrete customer feedback. One of the entrepreneurs said he thinks of me as the Simon Cowell for entrepreneurs after listening to some recordings of previous roundtables. I think my advice is only valuable if I'm being honest and direct. Plus, I don't want to waste my precious time either!

NASA_logoNASA has launched an initiative that will help reach tomorrow’s leaders and innovators and get a younger generation to consider the space agency as a first choice for employment.

On OpenNASA.com, a collaborative blog written by NASA employees  and occasional invited guests, Nick Skytland, a project manager within the Space Life Sciences Directorate at the NASA Johnson Space Center, writes how tomorrow’s leaders want to work for the “cool” company, the next Google, or a company that is open to new ideas.

“And so I wonder, how do we make NASA cool again? How do we use our space program as a catalyst to pass along that innovative, entrepreneurial, American spirit that got us to the moon in less than 10 years and launched a generation of innovators?” Skytland asks. “Or better yet, how do we communicate all the cool things NASA is actually doing?”

In the wake of the Gulf oil spill atrocity, both The Colbert Report and The Huffington Post did bits on "wind spills." The jokes were especially topical because -- almost, it seemed, in coordination with the oil spill -- the Interior Department announced it was clearing the way for final approval of Cape Wind, the long-beleaguered Nantucket Sound offshore wind project.

The Obama Interior Department is pushing as hard as it can to create opportunities for offshore energy. By approving Cape Wind, the Administration demonstrated that it is willing to put the nation's energy needs ahead of resolvable environmental and aesthetic objections. So, will the U.S.' first offshore "wind spills" be in Massachusetts waters?

Frank Maisano, an energy expert with Washington, D.C. law and lobbying firm Bracewell-Giuliani who has worked on behalf of offshore wind projects for years, says developers face three significant obstacles: (1) economics, (2) transmission and (3) technology.

A new way of printing and folding ceramic and metal lattices into miniature structures could lead to novel lightweight engineering structures. The technique involves making latticed sheets from ceramic ink, then folding and heating these sheets to create intricate shapes. The method could be used to make lightweight parts for aerospace applications, complex scaffolds for tissue engineering, and filters and catalysts for industrial chemical production.

"We can make complex, three-dimensional shapes that can't be made in other ways," says Jennifer Lewis, director of the Materials Research Laboratory at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Lewis developed the technique with Illinois researcher Bok Ahn and David Dunand, a professor of materials science at Northwestern University. The researchers say it fills a need for a way to fabricate complex structures on the centimeter scale--too small for conventional molding or machining, and too big for lithography or similar techniques.

Lewis has previously created new kinds of inks and printing methods for making two-dimensional structures. Her approach involved squeezing inks containing ceramic or metal particles out of a print head, similar to the way toothpaste would be squeezed from a tube. With these inks, Lewis could make latticed patterns, one layer at a time. The lattices could then be heated to fuse the particles together and remove the ink solvents.

Can people learn or be taught to be more creative? Creativity is valued in many areas of human activity, including scientific discovery, technological invention, artistic imagination, and social innovation. I know of no studies that show that creativity is teachable, but history provides some interesting suggestions about the habits of highly creative scientists.

In an article called "How to be a Successful Scientist", I compiled a set of suggestions about what contributed to the great success of leading scientific researchers. (The article can be found on the Web, and is reprinted in my book Hot Thought.) My sources were a group of psychologists, philosophers and historians at a conference on scientific thinking, as well as writings by three important scientists: Santiago Ramón y Cajal, Peter Medawar, and James Watson. Here is the resulting list, organized into 6 categories.

One of my blog readers – Boaz Fletcher – sent me an awesome video this morning from RSA Animate. It’s 11 minutes long and is a fascinating lecture by Dan Pink about The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us. I love the RSA Animate format – an artist animates the talk on a giant whiteboard in real time.

In this case Pink takes on the question of “Does More Money Motivate Higher Performance?” In the first few minutes he shows that while this works for tasks requiring mechanical skill, this does not work for tasks that require even rudimentary cognitive skill. In fact, in these cases there is an negative correlation between greater monetary reward and increased performance. It’s counterintuitive, but the talk illustrates it beautifully with several examples that will appeal to any technology entrepreneur.

Whales are remarkably diverse, with 84 living species of dramatically different sizes and more than 400 other species that have gone extinct, including some that lived partly on land. Why are there so many whale species, with so much diversity in body size?

To answer that, UCLA evolutionary biologists and a colleague used molecular and computational techniques to look back 35 million years, when the ancestor of all living whales appeared, to analyze the evolutionary tempo of modern whale species and probe how fast whales changed their shape and body size. They have provided the first test of an old idea about why whales show such rich diversity.

I’ve had this conversation so many times it’s painful. A friend calls me up from “you name it” city: Boston, New York, Chicago, San Francisco and says, “I’m thinking about moving to Los Angeles (or SF, NY, etc) and I’d love to start interviewing. Let me know if you hear of anything interesting.”

I guess when I hear things like this I revert back to my shock jock instincts and say, “Don’t bother. If you’re committed to living in New York then move there. Otherwise you’re not serious and you’ll never get the right job so don’t bother.” Definitely gets shock value. At least I have their attention.

Why do I give this blunt advice?

As you explore the Green Economy Map and consider your green career options, keep the following points in mind.

1)The green economy is made up of over 50 industries and sectors. Each one is making concerted efforts to make their business practices greener, cleaner, and more sustainable.

The takeaway for you: To get a sense of where your skills may fit within the green economy, click on each segment of the Green Economy Map to discover which industries fall into which sector. Pay attention to the industries that look interesting to you.

The Maryland Technology Development Corporation (TEDCO), celebrated the funding of its 200th company. American Dynamics Flight Systems (ADFS) in Jessup, Md., which received $75,000 from TEDCO's NAVAIR Technology Insertion (NAVTI) program was lucky No. 200. Over the course of TEDCO's 12-year history, the organization has provided more than $8.5 million in funding to Maryland businesses through its signature Maryland Technology Transfer and Commercialization Fund (MTTCF), which makes up over 75 percent of TEDCO's portfolio.

"TEDCO's has done an outstanding job in making Maryland one of the premier locations for technology-based economic development, bringing high-skilled, high-paying jobs to Maryland," says Senator Benjamin L. Cardin. "Today, I join TEDCO as it features its 10 most innovative companies and celebrates the funding of its 200th company, American Dynamic Flight Systems. TEDCO understands the importance of nurturing high-tech companies with the capital they need to succeed so that we can ensure good paying jobs for Marylanders."

Either you lead or follow and Chinese manufacturing houses have been chasing Apple’s designs for years. The iPad is just their latest victim. You can’t blame them, really. It’s the hottest device since the rotary phone.

We’ve seen a steady stream of clones flowing onto the web for months. Here’s the seven best starting with the just-found iPed.

Cities cover only 3% of the world's land mass, but they house 50% of the world's population, consume 75% of the world's resources and emit a corresponding proportion of greenhouse gases.

Statistics like that make a convincing case for green innovation.

But can planners, engineers, politicians and bureaucrats create a culture of learning and innovation focused on sustainability? There are daunting barriers to overcome - lack of time, funding, human resources, clarity, passion and cooperation, to name a few.