What if all businesses were run like the Oakland A’s under Billy Beane as portrayed by Brad Pitt in the new movie Moneyball? Instead of making personnel decisions based on preconceived pedigrees, what if managers used a more scientific approach to assess talent? What if managers were able to make difficult personnel decisions without having to involve a bevy of lawyers and human resources representatives?

Production trumps pedigree

Like scouts, recruiters are tasked with assessing talent for their organizations. And like scouts, recruiters often rely too heavily on a particular pedigree or candidate profile when making hiring decisions. They look to fill job descriptions instead of assessing capabilities and potential--and that’s often a deathblow for career changers. In Moneyball, Beane signed a former catcher to play first base--a position he never played before. He even went so far as to trade the potential All Star he already had playing at the position because he believed the move would give his team the best chance to score more runs--and ultimately win more games.

In today’s installment of our convertible debt series, we cover a specific case where the company is acquired before the debt converts into equity. There are a few different scenarios.

The lender gets its money back plus interest. If there is no specific language addressing this situation, this is what usually ends up happening. In this case, the convertible debt document doesn’t allow the debt to convert into anything, but at the same time mandates that upon a sale the debt must be paid off. So the lenders don’t see any of the upside on the acquisition. The potential bad news is that if the merger is an all stock deal, the company will need to find a way to find cash to pay back the loan or negotiate a way for the acquiring company to deal with the debt.

The dramatic challenges facing the U.S. economy have had an equally dramatic impact on the market of businesses for sale over the past few years.

Despite the steady growth of the number of businesses sold over the last few quarters, the number sold each quarter is still down roughly 40 percent from its peak in mid-2008. Put simply, our economy is no longer able to transition mature businesses to new ownership at a healthy pace.

As of today, I will have published an article here for entrepreneurs and startups every day for the last 1001 days, since I started Startup Professionals Musings near the close of 2008. It’s been a great ride, but it’s now time to dial it back a bit, and focus on some other priorities. I still plan to publish on this blog occasionally, as well as more frequently on my blogs at Forbes, Huffington Post, and others.

In my traditional notational style, I’ve taken a nostalgic look back over the ground covered and lessons learned in the past almost three years. Here are ten key messages that I would like to leave you with:

That was the sentiment of panelists at the Dow Jones Private Equity Analyst Conference in New York on Tuesday, discussing whether returns from billion dollar social media companies like Facebook, Groupon, Twitter and Zynga can save the venture industry.

Valuations have climbed. The public markets have deadbolted the door. The number of prospective corporate acquirers who can shell out ten figures are few. Yet, investors have shown they’re willing to write early-stage checks in the tens of millions to test a thesis. Fail. Test a different thesis. And do it all over again because costs to build consumer Internet companies are a fraction of what was required for dot-com trailblazers of the first boom.

President Obama is not the only one who recognizes the need to create more jobs to repair our anemic economy. Bolstered by the help of dozens of universities across the country, Obama's new America Invents Act could potentially help businesses bring their inventions to the market sooner, creating new businesses and new jobs.

There has been very little good news regarding unemployment numbers since the recession struck in early 2008. The U.S. unemployment rate has climbed from 4.9 to 9.1 percent over the last three years, while the 14 million unemployed persons as of August is a number that is anticipated to increase by the end of September, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

Email. Ah, email. That great productivity drain that we somehow all buy into. I’ve taken to saying, “Email is our personal to-do list that anybody adds to – whether they know us or not.”

I was lamenting it tonight when I saw the most brilliant response Tweet by Andrew Hyde

“inbox = tetris getting zero lines doesn’t win it just makes the next move easy.”

Brilliant! We spend our lives doing it. Nobody really enjoys it. Twitter is filled with people either bragging (complaining?) about their marathon 4-hour sessions to get to zero inbox or somebody else claiming email bankruptcy (definition if you don’t know it already).

[CURITIBA] Brazilian scientists have joined forces to ask for part of the royalties from newly discovered oil fields to be invested in science, technology, innovation (ST&I) and education.

They started a public petition that calls for seven per cent of total royalties be invested in ST&I and a further 30 per cent in education. The request is supported by science minister Aloizio Mercadante, the vast majority of Brazilian educational institutions and even by some state governors.

The petition was launched last week (12 September) and has gathered around 20,000 signatures.

We’re smack dab in the middle of the work week, and some of you (and by “some of you” I mean “me) may have even lost track of what day it is. That’s not good! So how about a creativity boost to get you back on your creative feed this Wednesday! Here are 14 ideas for a creativity boost from a variety of different perspecrtives. These ideas will help whether you have a creative block or just need “permission” to boost your creativity in new directions today – or any day!

Photo by: nailiaschwarz | Source: photocase.com Other people will simply see things differently than you. It is hard to beat the creative boost of letting others react to things in ways you would never think of by yourself.

Outcomes are not the only thing to focus on – building the capacity of individuals and organisations is important in bringing about change.

This is why looking at "social innovation coaching" is important, as it is a process that supports people involved in influencing people and planet for the better.

As the Centre for Social Innovation puts it: "A true social innovation is systems-changing – it permanently alters the perceptions, behaviours and structures that previously gave rise to these challenges."

Some of our best ideas supposedly come to us in the shower: a business to start, an industry to shake up. Or maybe not, says entrepreneur Eric Ries.

"When we're in the shower, when we're thinking about our idea — boy, does it sound brilliant. But the reality is that most of our ideas are actually terrible," he says. "But it's hard to know which are the brilliant ones, and which are the crazy ones, until we actually test them against reality."

Ries, who runs the popular blog Startup Lessons Learned, has sought to collect good ideas about how to start a business. And he describes them in his new book, The Lean Startup, about innovation in an evolving marketplace.

With the new patent law, now more than ever you need an automated collaborative system for ideas.

The new patent reform law has many ramifications and I want to look at one of them. At its essence the “America Invents Act” has one critical attribute: Instead of awarding patents to those with “first to invent” status, it is based on “first to file” for their patent. Just like Ken Jennings vs. the IBM computer on Jeopardy, the computer can hit the button faster than is humanly possible.

It’s true the America Invents Act purports to shave time off the patent approval, juggling 750,000 patent applications with a 4% increase in filings, from the current three year wait to a guaranteed 12 month turnaround. But the new law will likely force inventors to build a patent portfolio rather than relying on a single patent. Ergo the patent lawyers will have to file several times to keep first-filing status at each stage of enablement of a company’s good idea.

The second day of the conference started with an interesting presentation by Martin Hinoul, a innovation guru when it comes to effective science based regional development. His inspiring words were followed by a discussion with experts such as IBM Finland’s general manager Tuomo Haukkovaara, President of the American Council on Germany, William Drozdiak and the Chair of the South African Technology Innovation Agency, Mamphela Ramphele. They highlighted the importance of international collaboration and an exchange of ideas and knowledge when it comes to future regional development. It was particularly interesting how much willingness there was to assist South Africa in overcoming its challenges by making use of the opportunities that exist. The Technopolicy Network is eager to develop further projects to stimulate this North/ South collaboration, which will result in an interesting set of best practices.

The discussion was followed by two sets of break-out sessions that focused on the role taking process in the implementation of Open Innovation in regions, and the implementation of OI in clusters. Richard Bendis led a lively discussion on the best Practices in Innovation Based Economic Development, addressing the different needs of emerging versus established regions. Another session focused on the role a university can play in the local system. This resulted in a lot of constructive discussion, one that certainly will continue after this event and might even become a conference on its own.

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To generate growth, companies seem to love "hard" product innovation--the type of expensive breakthroughs that require engineers and PhDs to toil away deep in the lab. Think Teflon, Viagra, or the Segway scooter. The challenge with this type of innovation is that it's expensive and high risk because it requires a lot of marketing dollars to educate consumers, not to mention the cost of developing the product itself. And because mass advertising is not as effective as it once was, it's becoming more lengthy and expensive to recapture this type of significant R&D investment. The growing glut of technology and patents is creating a lot of noise, making it harder to predictably execute big innovations. What if your amazing new product doesn't take off?

On the flip side, soft innovators establish new standards for quality, experience, and sales in their categories without actually doing anything profoundly innovative. Think Ben & Jerry's, which introduced the ice cream pint to the world as a more personal alternative to the half-gallon or gallon tub.

Europe is gradually recovering from the deepest economic and financial crisis since the 1930s. At the same time, as the Spring 2011 European Council emphasises, "risks remain and we must continue our determined action".

For the recovery to be maintained, we must use existing public and private resources for research and innovation (R&I) in a smart way to optimise the contribution of public and private players in achieving sustainable growth. This is essential to achieving the European Research Area (ERA) by 2014 and for delivering on the Innovation Union, the Digital Agenda and other EU 2020 Flagships.

The Commission's Innovation Union Communication highlights the importance of partnering in European R&I as a means of "pooling forces to achieve breakthroughs".

WASHINGTON, Sep 26, 2011 (BUSINESS WIRE) -- HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius today announced six winners for Round 3 of the HHSinnovates program, and said the program is part of an HHS-wide initiative "to build a constant thrust of innovation into the everyday operations of our health and human services agencies."

"At HHS, we're proud to create new ways to achieve America's goals," Secretary Sebelius said in recognizing Round 3 winners. "Along with our partners in the states and the private sector, HHS is delivering on the President's vision of an America that does not rely on accomplishments of the past, but accepts once more the challenge of creating the future."

In conjunction with President Obama’s signing of the America Invents Act today – legislation that will streamline the patent process and foster economic development – the University of Nebraska is highlighting its key efforts in innovation and entrepreneurship that are helping to build a more competitive economy for Nebraska.

The America Invents Act is the first comprehensive patent reform bill since the 1950s. It makes America’s patent system consistent with other nations in the global marketplace and has important implications for university researchers who want to move inventions into the marketplace.

NU has made significant strides in the last few years to provide innovation and entrepreneurial opportunities to students and faculty, enhance technology transfer, facilitate new university-industry collaborations on all four campuses, and recognize entrepreneurial excellence. The university’s efforts are aligned with goals outlined in an April 2011 letter from the National Advisory Council on Innovation and Entrepreneurship to then-U.S. Secretary of Commerce Gary Locke. NU President James B. Milliken, University of Nebraska-Lincoln Chancellor Harvey Perlman and University of Nebraska Medical Center Chancellor Harold Maurer were among the university signatories to the letter.

Many (or most) of my mechanical engineering learning experiences at MIT, bored me to tears. One exception was an undergraduate course called "Creativity," which possibly influenced my entrepreneurial future.

The experience was clearly designed to push our class beyond the framework of standard thinking, and it likely influenced my future thinking processes. On day one of this course, our professor handed out a 150-page manual, which he had written to describe a planet called Arcturus IV. We immediately assumed that this planet was fictitious, because it possessed different characteristics than Earth, for example gravitational pull, soil and atmospheric characteristics, weirdly conceived inhabitants, and so forth.

Over the years, I’ve noticed a strong connection between the state of my physical space and my ability to do high-level creative work. When my space is in disarray, my thoughts are generally also in disarray. I can still function, I can come up with ideas, write decent-enough content and solve-problems. But, I always know that I’m not operating anywhere near my true potential.

And it’s also not about cleanliness, or complying with someone else’s idea of order. It’s really about having some level of logic to the state of my physical space that works for me, even if nobody else can see it.

Turns out, there may well be a neuroscience basis for this.