Remember the myriad of jokes back in the early eighties when products were showing up by the groves with the imprint “Made in China”. If anybody even noticed at all, it seemed to be acceptable when low-paying manufacturing jobs were leaving overseas by the hundreds of thousands. First it was the toys and widgets. Then it was the shoes and clothing that were being lost to cheap foreign competition. Next up was the steel industry, shipbuilders and auto manufacturing. Furniture and household goods were also hard hit. Outsourcing has also found its way into higher-paid jobs; software development, aerospace, animation, electronics and all forms of technology are now under threat. To understand more of this read the article; The Death of American Manufacturing.

We are now seeing the erosion of our manufacturing and production capabilities at a faster pace than ever before. Towns and cities all across America have been impacted by the rise in outsourcing. In fact outsourcing our production and manufacturing are the leading factors in the rise of unemployment. Unemployment continues to post record numbers as more and more companies are finding themselves in a position where they can only compete if they cut costs down to the bare bones. Companies must conserve like never before. Even those companies who would have never dreamed of outsourcing their jobs to overseas markets just a few years ago are finding themselves in a position where the economics demand it. There is this deep sense of fear that has gripped Corporate America as small business continues to bleed red and jobs are increasingly scarce.

It is said that in order to become a successful individual in whatever endeavor you wish to take, you must have the right attitude and characteristics. This is also true with an entrepreneur. Not everyone can become an entrepreneur. But before anything else, what is an entrepreneur?

According to one definition, an entrepreneur is someone who finances or initiates a certain business undertaking. If you too would want to become a businessperson, you have to possess the characteristics of an entrepreneur.

What are the characteristics of an entrepreneur? Are they really important? Well, of course the characteristics are important because if you don’t possess them, you will have lower chances in terms of business success. The characteristics are as follows –

1. Risk taker – this is a very important characteristic of an entrepreneur. If you’re not willing to take any risk, then you will not succeed as a businessperson. In the everyday course of the business, you will encounter a lot of problems and challenges which you need to decide the soonest.

Some risks are worth taking after careful evaluation especially if it’s for the good of the business. If you’re not a risk taker, then you’re not an effective entrepreneur and you’re bound to fail in your business undertaking.

America is facing some of the greatest challenges in a generation.  At the same time, promising nonprofit organizations across the country are making heroic efforts to meet overwhelming need and, implement effective and innovative ways to meet these challenges.  But their impact is often hampered by a lack of resources and support to evaluate and improve their programs, and expand them so they can serve more communities of need.

Yesterday, the Corporation for National and Community Service launched the Social Innovation Fund (SIF) grant competition, which takes a new approach to addressing our nation’s most critical social challenges.

The SIF will direct funding through innovative, hands-on grant makers (or intermediaries) across the country. These grant makers will identify fund and support over a period of years promising nonprofit organizations working in low-income communities.

It’s an approach that has clear benefits.

It leverages private funding from grant makers and others. Each federal dollar will be matched with at least $3 of private funding, for a total of $200 million or greater.

Dr. Janice Presser, CEO, The Gabriel Institute

Sound familiar?

• Your startup seemed to have essential Angel funding ‘in the bag,’ but for some reason the money never arrives.
• A strategic alliance took months to establish, and can nearly double your revenue projection, but suddenly your new partner gets bought by a competitor and the deal is off.
• The new marketing materials are ready just in time for product launch at a major show, but a storm in the Midwest delays the shipment, leaving you empty-handed.

Bad things do happen to good entrepreneurs—all too frequently.  Some manage to recover and others don’t. Is there a way to distinguish the teams that will step up from the teams that give up?

Many budding entreprenerus, and especially those without a background in finance, and even those with a background in finance won't really understand how the startup financing process functions.

Or more adequately how you go from cracking open your piggy bank to issuing shares on the DAX, or any stock exchange for that matter.

But first thing's first, your 3F's are your Friends, Family and Fools, and they're the only ones willing to donate some money to your cause, friends and family, cause they care, and fools, cause well only a fool would give someone they don't know cash.

International patent applications in 2009 dropped for the first time on the back of a double-digit fall in US applications - but China, with a 30% surge, claimed a bigger piece of the shrunken pie. Yet observers say the quality of Chinese applications has not kept pace with their volume, and the country still has far to go before it can establish itself as a dominant player in intellectual property.

Applications filed under the Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT), an international pact signed into law in 1970, fell by 4.5% in 2009. Declines were spread across most of the Western world: application numbers for the United States, Germany, Canada and Sweden all fell by more than 11%.

Francis Gurry, director general of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), which publishes the PCT patents, told a press conference on 8 February that the dip was not surprising given the economic conditions. But Gurry called China's 29.7% increase "extraordinary"; it propelled the country ahead of France and into fifth place overall. Although the United States still holds the top spot with 45,790 applications, increases for China, second-ranked Japan and fourth-ranked South Korea indicate a shift towards Asia (see chart). "This confirms a trend we have seen over the last five years in particular, but it continues despite the economic crisis," says Gurry.

Silicon may represent one of Earth's more common elements, but it transformed Silicon Valley into a high-tech corridor and helped usher the world into the Information Age.

Now rare earth elements with exotic names such as europium and tantalum hold the key to hybrid cars, wind turbines and crystal-clear TV displays - that is, if a looming supply shortage doesn't stop innovation in its tracks.

Rare earth elements, called "rare earths" by those who use and study them, often prove irreplaceable in green technologies and high-tech consumer products. Yet the world's production of rare minerals relies mainly upon China, and the Chinese government warned last year that its own rising demand will soon force it to stop exporting the precious elements.

"Countries and companies that have or plan to develop industries that need rare earth minerals to make products are concerned about China's growing consumption, which they fear will eliminate China's exports of rare earths," said W. David Menzie, chief of the international minerals section at the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS).

As the market improves, many start-up owners are likely be thinking about raising funding. With my latest startup, I’m now a venture-backed startup founder (I’ve raised $33 million in three rounds of capital for my marketing software company). So, I’ve got some direct experience with the process. Several of the companies I’m an angel investor in or otherwise involved with have also been in the fund-raising process. So, along the way, I’ve learned a few things, and I’d like to share them with you.

There’s already lots of great content on the web about raising capital and understanding deal terms. But, I figured it wouldn’t hurt to share some of the “lessons learned” from my own experiences.

1. Get the first round right: The terms of your Series A deal are very important. Not just because of the impact on that first round, but because many of those same terms are likely to carry through to future rounds. It’s tempting to concede on some important terms but try to resist that temptation. When negotiating the term-sheet for your Series B or Series C round, the “base” terms (the starting point of negotiations) is whatever terms were in your Series A. So, if you agree to some non-favorable terms on the “A” round, you’re likely going to continue to pay the price for that in future rounds as well.

We make marketing blunders when we don’t know who it is we’re marketing toward or when we try to treat all of our customers the same way. The truth is that our customers are not the same. They don’t take to marketing the same way, they don’t want the same things and they’re not equal in what they mean to our business. By segmenting customers into different “buckets” or personas it allows us to create a more targeted experience, while also helping SMB owners to better manage internal resources.

How Narrow Should You Segment? How Many Groups?

The simple answer is to create as many as make sense, whether that means creating two or twenty. Segmenting too broadly will take away your ability to customize service to the segment, while segmenting too narrowly may reduce profitability. You want to segment customers by the common characteristics shown to affect conversions. For example, if you’re a local hardware shop, you may only find that you have two customer types – Commercial and Non-Commercial. If you’re a florist, maybe you want to create an entire segment for marketing at Special Occasion customers or Men Buying For Wives. Once you get into the data, your segments should become fairly obvious.

There is a flurry of activity on the University of Missouri campus related to technology transfer. The technology transfer group is all but taking over the third-floor offices in the Bond Life Sciences Center. In engineering, newly constructed offices will house a technology transfer staff about equal in number to the number of engineering faculty who are actively trying to commercialize technology through the university. In addition, President Gary Forsee is giving an additional $5 million to the business incubator center.

The MU faculty would gladly welcome a technology transfer office that would regularly succeed in commercializing the employee-inventors’ technologies. For many of us, few things are more motivating than to see our laboratory breakthroughs make it to commercialization where they can help society.

Sadly, the MU technology transfer groups do not rise to this challenge. The need for a $5 million influx of funds to the business incubator is evidence of this — that center was supposed to be self-sufficient. An absence of companies using the facility, however, necessitates that someone step up to pay the mortgage.

A reader asks:

“How do you set a valuation for a start-up company?”

I’ll answer the question with a few other questions (and answers) of my own:

How much money do you need?

First, figure out how much money you need to run the business for “two rounds” and then add 3 additional months of expenses. “Two Rounds” refers to periods of time in the business to sufficiently provide a test of your product/service/store. The test is to determine if you have a viable product/service that people will pay money for and see value enough to either refer someone else or buy from you again.

For the sake of this example let’s assume you need $50,000 to run the business for two rounds plus the extra 3 months.

If you need to raise the $50,000 you now need to determine a valuation. The question next is: How much of the company will you sell for $50,000?

JEDDAH - Saudi Arabia will become one of the leading countries in the world because of its investment in science and technology.

This is the view of Prof. Choon Fong Shih, President of King Abdullah University for Science and Technology (Kaust). He was speaking during the second session of the final day of the Jeddah Economic Forum Tuesday.

Shih said Kaust has brought in a number of experts from various fields such as science, engineering, and economics to exchange their experience and knowledge with Saudis.

He also spoke about sustainable prosperity through science and technology and specifically the role of Kaust in advancing science and technology through education and research. The mission of Kaust also involves catalyzing diversification of the Saudi economy through innovation and enterprise as well as connecting people and improving lives through science and technology.

A few years ago, nurses Michael Howlett and James Mercer began patenting concepts for catheters that would block the transmission of pathogens into patients' bloodstream -- the cause of infections that cause up to 100,000 preventable deaths a year.

"We're providers, we take cake of patients and we saw a need for a device that would prevent catheter-related infections. We designed a prototype and got a provisional patent, then looked for someone to turn it into a reality," said Howlett, who works with Mercer at Salt Lake City's VA Hospital. "It's hard for a couple little guys to get to the titans of industry."

Instead they went to University of Utah biomedical engineers who developed their ideas into marketable products and fledged a company, Catheter Connections, one of 20 the U. spun off in 2008.

This young company, which doesn't even have an office yet, is a reason the U. now leads the nation in spinning off companies, finally catching No. 1 Massachusetts Institute of Technology, one of the nation's premier research centers.

The U. performs well not only in creating companies, but also in filing patents (119), patents awarded (33) and generating revenue from licensing technology ($26.2 million), according to 2008 rankings released Tuesday by the Association of University Technology Managers, or AUTM (pronounced "autumn").

U. officials say the U. has surpassed its Massachusetts rival in fiscal year 2009 with 23 spin-offs, versus MIT's 20.

"The best way to grow Maine’s economy is through creative enterprise," said David Cheever of Maine’s Cultural Affairs Council. "The creative economy taps into why people do what they do. The quality of life in Maine is so good, people want to live here. We need to trumpet the success story of how Maine is continuing to attract people in the creative sector. The governor sees where the best chance of growth is, in the economy, and that’s in people who want to live here and do things that ad value to all our lives."

Cheever made those remarks back during the economic growth period of President George W. Bush. He has been much quieter since the beginning of the recession of President Barack Obama.

Cheever wasn’t alone in heralding the golden path of Maine’s creative economy. “The economic engines that create opportunity are our people — our youth, our creative workers and our creative entrepreneurs — and we must provide them with the resources and support to be able to succeed," Governor John Baldacci said back when the only thing Democrats had to complain about was the Iraq war. We still have that war and have tossed in a crippling lack of jobs- creative or otherwise. "The creative economy is a major piece of my economic development plan.”

The Chronicle of Higher Education is reporting that academic inventions spurred the "creation of a record 543 new university spinoff companies in the 2008 fiscal year, while generating more than $2.3 billion in licensing revenue for 154 institutions and their inventors."

According to this Chronicle survey, the University of Wisconsin-Madison was one of just 10 institutions that reported licensing revenue of more than $50 million. The survey shows UW-Madison ranked No. 9, with $54.1 million in licensing income.

Only four institutions brought in more than $100 million in licensing revenues: Northwestern University ($824.4 million); University of California system ($146.3 million); Columbia University ($134.3 million); and New York University ($104.3 million). In addition to Northwestern and Wisconsin, the University of Minnesota ($84.7 million) was the only other Big Ten Conference institution in the top 10.

The Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation, or WARF, is the entity which helps patent discoveries of UW-Madison researchers and licenses those technologies to companies across the globe.

In a speech that will perk up the pointy ears of Atlanta’s tech community, Gubernatorial candidate Karen Handel said Georgia must "figure out a way to reignite entrepreneurship.”

“We have some of the best research institutions ... and we are failing to harness and capture the ideas and innovations that are coming out of those institutions...when they go to commercialization,” Handel told a gathering of real estate-types at the Databank Conference on Thursday.

“We are losing them to places such as the Carolinas, Florida, Texas, increasingly Tennessee, and even Kentucky, because we are not creative and we are not in the game in that whole area,” the former Georgia Secretary of State said.

Handel called for tax credits to boost angel and venture investing, which Handel said, would help retain new companies and ideas.

“We are one of the few states that don't have this type of tax credit,” she said. “If Kentucky can give a 50 percent tax credit for that phase 1 angel investment, then we are woefully, woefully behind, folks.”

Five neighboring East African nations are moving to address poverty, environmental degradation, and other problems by undertaking ambitious efforts to collaborate in developing their expertise in science and technology.

High-ranking science policy leaders from Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, and Rwanda, in a public discussion at AAAS, detailed work by their governments and the government of Burundi to use science diplomacy and regional cooperation to address a range of challenges, from wildlife conservation and management of natural resources to building a regional fiber-optic network and an educational system that can provide S&T training to serve their nations and others in Africa.

The countries are sharing in the growing global interest in international science cooperation, using formal treaties, alignment of national policies, and informal networks to bring those ideas to bear on issues that in the past have weakened individual nations and fanned regional tensions.

A bunch of folks have been sending in Google CEO Eric Schmidt's recent op-ed on how to encourage more innovation in the US.  The suggestions make perfect sense and there's nothing in there that I disagree with. He says Congress should encourage more competition, and be careful not to pass legislation that favors incumbents over upstarts. This is absolutely true, but the likelihood of that happening is pretty dismal, given how big a role big company lobbyists have in drafting legislation, and given how campaign contributions work today. He also talks about more open information access and the importance of keeping talented skilled workers here, rather than pushing them to other countries.

Kiva is p2p-lending site that facilitates loans between lenders in wealthy countries and entrepreneurs in developing countries. Now a new startup aims to bring a simialr model to startups in the developed world but with an investment focus. The idea here is to fix the current inefficiencies of private seed funding for web and mobile companies, especially in markets outside of the hothouse that is Silicon Valley (i.e. Europe and Asia).

Grow VC is a new community funding model for technology startups. Here’s how it works: Grow VC will pool 75 per cent of membership fees into a community fund that gets invested back into ‘promising startups’ which are members of the platform. The fund is managed by Grow VC but all the investment decisions are left to members who determine how to invest their portion of the fund into other startup companies that they feel have the most potential. The most successful decision makers get financially rewarded when the community fund begins earning a return on investment. So, if you promote the best companies you make moola.

Isn’t every business a social venture? After all, it pays taxes, generates employment and hopefully increases incomes of its stakeholders. So why the hoopla around social ventures, social entrepreneurship and social investing? Not surprisingly, social entrepreneurship is the latest victim of feel-good “buzz-word compliance,” an all too common disease in management. What was a business process improvement in the 80s is now a hotly debated incremental or quantum innovation; hiring someone who speaks a foreign language in a foreign location is part of the new and improved HR strategy; no self-respecting company will let go the opportunity to talk sustainability and social responsibility and Bottom Of the Pyramid (BOP) strategy!

The increased media focus and the casual throwing around of fashionable jargon serves some purposes -some useful and others not. It democratizes notions and concepts and makes them acceptable; it generates pressure to actually do something, however small, with a social angle; It can also however, unfortunately, trivialize the enormous challenges of having really meaningful social impact and make it just an agenda item for the next corporate event.