As entrepreneurs we are supposed to be goal-getters, achievers and risk takers. On the internet you will find over a million blog posts having something to say about the successful and unusual day-day-day habits of entrepreneurs. I am not trying to condemn other blog posts. I am just trying to focus on the nitty-gritty and what elements could make you a better entrepreneur, something that will give you a defining edge.

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How you start your day sets the context and your mindset for the rest of the day. 

Yet, most people start the day with procrastination by hitting the snooze button, telling their subconscious that they don’t even have the self-discipline to get out of bed in the morning, let alone do what’s necessary to be happy, healthy and successful.

WHAT do a Braille printer made out of Lego and a drone that helps farmers monitor crops (pictured) have to do with chipmaking? Intel Capital, the venture-capital VC unit of the American technology giant, is not quite sure yet but it wants to find out. It recently announced it was taking stakes in 16 startups, including the firms making these products. Intel has been in the venture-capital business for over 20 years, and has invested in more than 1,300 companies in 56 countries. Over that time corporate enthusiasm for venture capital has waxed and waned—but has seldom been greater than it is now.

Image: http://www.economist.com

SAN MATEO, Calif., Nov. 20, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- NetSuite Inc. (NYSE: N), the industry's leading provider of cloud-based financials / ERP and omnichannel commerce software suites, today announced that 31 percent of companies on the Deloitte Technology Fast 500 list for 2014 in the fast-growing Silicon Valley and Seattle markets run NetSuite to drive innovation, business efficiency, agility and scalability. Now in its 20th year, the Deloitte Technology Fast 500 ranks the fastest-growing technology, media, telecommunications, life sciences, and clean technology companies in North America based on percentage of fiscal year revenue growth over the past four years.

Last week the Tax Foundation published its “International Tax Competitiveness Index,” which ranked 34 OECD countries on the competitiveness of each nation’s tax code. According to the report, the United States ranks 32nd. Ooph.

The report rightfully dings the U.S. tax code for its statutory corporate tax rate (currently the highest in the OECD). But, the United States also ranks poorly for its R&D tax credit. With more than two dozen countries having a more generous R&D credit, it seems obvious that the credit is hurting U.S. tax competitiveness because of its miserliness.

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Since their inception in the 1940s, the Department of Energy (DOE) national laboratories have been in the vanguard of America’s global research and development leadership. However, the national innovation system has changed in the past 70 years. 

Today, much technology development and application occurs in the context of synergistic regional clusters of firms, trade associations, educational institutions, private labs, and regional economic development organizations. Unfortunately, legacy operating procedures limit the DOE labs’ ability to engage fully with the regional economies in which they are located. This lack of consistent engagement with regional technology clusters has likely limited the labs’ overall contributions to U.S. economic growth.

You probably don’t think of making a sandwich as a creative act. And yet when I asked my 10-year-old son for an example of a business he considered creative, he said Subway.

When you think about it, every aspect of Subway’s business model is highly creative — from the order flow to the pricing to the way the bread is prepared. Subway has positioned itself as the go-to place for a sandwich like you would make at home. And with more than 40,000 stores around the globe, it’s the world’s largest sandwich chain.

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I love Thanksgiving. It’s my favorite holiday. What’s not to love? Food, family, and football are three of my favorite things. The prodromal smells of homemade cooking pervade the house which means turkey and pecan pie are only days away. Smiling is easy this week while making sure everything is perfect for the welcome cacophony of our kids and grandkids returning home to our empty nest for a holiday visit. Thanksgiving spirit warms the soul.

Everyone has a different email ritual.

Maybe you send emails early in the morning, or late at night. Maybe you create insanely long subject lines or militaristically short ones. Maybe you CC as many people as possible in hope of eliciting a response. You stay steadfast in your superstition — but what if you could know for sure what really works?

Cover letters are tough to crack.

They're the lengthier cousins of resumes, requiring you to call upon your writing skills and explain why you deserve the job. It can be a frustrating process, one that sometimes feels like a blatant cry of, "Please just hire me already!"

In The Age of Turbulence, Alan Greenspan’s 2007 memoir, the former Fed Chairman recalled two visits to the former Soviet Union that occurred far apart in terms of time. During his second visit Greenspan was struck by the sight of the same kind of tractor in use by Soviet laborers as the one seen decades before.

To a Greenspan properly reverential toward Joseph Schumpeter’s “creative destruction” whereby new forms of machinery and labor are constantly replacing the old on the way to substantial growth, the scene in the Soviet Union spoke to a stationary economy that fraudulent numbers like GDP would miss, and that hid just how desperate the situation had become in the U.S.S.R.

Ordinarily, installing and connecting a new array of rooftop solar panels takes days, weeks, or even months because the hardware is complex and various permits are needed. Yesterday, on a frigid day in Charlestown, Massachusetts, researchers completed the process in about an hour.

Image: http://www.technologyreview.com

Venturef0rth wants to make it easy for DreamIt Ventures companies to stick around in Philadelphia.

Led by new owner Marvin Weinberger, Venturef0rth is raising a seed fund to make small ($25,000) investments in tech companies that choose to work out of the space. The incubator will also offer mentoring and short-term leases with a deferred payment option that lets startups pay fees when they’re ready.

Image: Inside Venturef0rth, during a Philly Tech Week 2014 planning meeting. (Photo by Corinne Warnshuis, file)

Every technical entrepreneur is an early adopter of technology, so naturally they build things with people like themselves in mind. Unfortunately, for most solution markets, early adopters represent only 10 to 15 percent of the total opportunity, so it’s easy to get mislead on the real requirements of mainstream customers. Psychologists call this the confirmation bias. I call it failing by early adopters.

My startup, Final, was lucky enough to take part in this year’s Techstars Boulder program. Along with learning that a diet consisting only of free coffee and Cosmo’s pizza gives your skin a weird tint, here are some key takeaways from my experience with one of the top tech accelerators.

1. Getting into a highly competitive, elite tech accelerator is not unlike getting into a highly competitive, elite university — if you rest on your acceptance, you’ll surely fail.

Image: The 2010 class of Techstars entrepreneurs. Image Credit: Robert Scoble via photopin cc

Last year, after more than a decade in Silicon Valley, Stacia Carr helped sell the company she was running and went looking for a change of pace. “The Bay Area is supersaturated,” she said. “It’s very expensive; it’s hypercompetitive.” After a friend connected her with Iñigo Amoribieta, a former chief executive of GrouponSpain, Carr and Amoribieta started talking about creating an online video business together that would be based in Madrid, his hometown.

It’s one thing to stand on the outside of a startup culture and look in. It’s another to actually become part of that very same ecosystem.

We spent the months following graduation from Seattle University visiting and speaking with the entrepreneurs who fuel the Latin American startup ecosystem. We began in Colombia with Bogotá and Medellín, and then had to turn back to Seattle. We now find ourselves in Santiago, Chile participating in the startup scene in a whole different fashion.

Image: Armand Pizzicarola and Andrew Mewborn in front of the Startup Chile offices.

Print is dead. It’s a refrain we’ve heard so often over the past few years that it has to be true, right? When it comes to ad revenue that statement might well be true. In the US, print revenue has been in free-fall, going from US$47.41-billion in 2005 to just US$17.3-billion today. Things aren’t about to get any better either. Both the New York Times and Time have forecast further cuts in their own print ad revenue. So why, in the midst of all that, are publishers still launching print magazines?

Most experts out there give really bad advice when it relates to the topic of career setbacks –- or failures, as many of us would label them. So often, we’re told to take a deep inward breath, then breathe all the pain and frustration out. We’re advised to forget and move on, to meditate, or to blame our follies on something external, since it’s not good to carry the weight of failure around with us for too long.

Practically every company innovates. But few do so in an orderly, reliable way. In far too many organizations, the big breakthroughs happen despite the company. Successful innovations typically follow invisible development paths and require acts of individual heroism or a heavy dose of serendipity. Successive efforts to jump-start innovation through, say, hack-a-thons, cash prizes for inventive concepts, and on-again, off-again task forces frequently prove fruitless. Great ideas remain captive in the heads of employees, innovation initiatives take way too long, and the ideas that are developed are not necessarily the best efforts or the best fit with strategic priorities.

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