I recently led an initiative to communicate more proactively and frequently with the leaders of the FDA about issues specifically related to improving the agency’s focus on innovative biomedical and therapeutic technologies.

At San Diego’s Biocom, where I am CEO, we believe that both industry and regulators can benefit from an atmosphere of open communication and trust. Ultimately, we all benefit from an improved track record of product review and approval, compliance, and regulatory policy development. Over the course of this initiative, we learned that while there is nothing as important to product approval as a well-developed data package, it helps to follow a few basic tenets for working with FDA.

The world of data centers, servers and networking cables looks pretty monolithic to most people, but like Darwin’s finches, when you spend time talking to users you realize that they have evolved into different creatures. And because the types of machines and software that enterprise customers buy are very different from what Amazon might purchase to run its cloud, it’s worth it to understand the differences if you’re buying from, selling to or investing in infrastructure companies.

This is how I have broken them down, and where I think things are heading based on my talks with vendors and customers in all of these industries, but I hope to hear from others who may have different opinions. Let’s get to it.

The buzz from startup executives, especially high-tech ones, has long been that startups are no place for Baby-Boomers (1946-1964) – you must have the high energy and crazy determination to work 20-hour days to succeed. Only the under-35 age group need apply.

I will argue that times have changed, and you better take another look. First of all, the Boomer demographic is currently the single largest, mainstream pool of experienced talent in the market today (76 million people strong). They have worked with high technology and computers for at least 20 years, are highly educated, and highly motivated. Last year, nearly 40% of the total workforce was Boomers.

Polaroid made headlines last week when it announced it would open 10 retail stores, or Polaroid Fotobars, across the U.S. this year. But the idea for the stores didn't originate within the 76-year-old camera company.

Fotobar, it turns out, is the brainchild of serial entrepreneur Warren Struhl. Struhl has founded 10 companies, among them the kettle corn brand Popcorn, Indiana and the energy strip company Sheets Brand.

CES 2013 has proven itself again, mostly with futuristic and interesting products being introduced, and as always the totally weird and wonderful makes its appearance as well. Gearburn reported on the HAPIfork, and it promises to change your life much in the way a new and improved family washing powder would. That seems to be a recurring theme at shows like this. Gadgets and products that will make Nirvana of your life because it’s new and improved and technologically advanced to a degree that you will never fully understand how it works. Like the nutty Japanese and their techno toilet.

Building a new business is a gamble: Not every entrepreneur strikes it big, especially on his or her first attempt. There's also a potential payoff, of course. From startups that earn their founders hundreds of millions of dollars to small businesses that provide a comfortable living for the owner's family, many entrepreneurs have found that the benefits outweigh the risks. Before an entrepreneur has any chance of reaping the rewards, he or she needs to recognize the risks and avoid them.

The Murray Story The risks of entrepreneurship are very real. Sometimes businesses fail, even organizations that have functioned for decades have disappeared over night as industries have dramatically changed. Even if an idea has a lot of potential, it may cost more than an entrepreneur actually has to get to market. David Murray, who left a six-figure position at Google to found a startup, has found that out the hard way. The effort of getting his product (an iPhone app) to market, combined with an underwater mortgage, has left Murray in debt.

Among UCR’s student body are full-time student athletes, artists and even self-starting entrepreneurs. Jaijeet Kakkar, who goes by Jai, is a third-year engineering student and one of the founders of IMPRUE, an internationally recognized company devoted to the manufacturing and designing of cases and accessories for all of today’s major cell phones. The company only consists of 12 people throughout California, including five in their Fremont headquarters, but is also host to warehouse employees, associates, manufacturers and designers from ages 17-40 all over the world. Kakkar, who is obviously committed to IMPRUE part-time due to his status as a student, still says “I consider myself on the job 24 hours.”

Looking back now, he never imagined his small business coming so far. In 2009, during the release of Apple’s iPhone 3GS, both Kakkar and his father anticipated the massive demand and dependence on smart phones in the near future and realized that this was the industry to get into. “I needed someone to fund the project because in high school, I was broke,” says Kakkar with a laugh. Driven by a simple idea to beautify and protect phones, father and son had the first shipments of products delivered to their own home before eventually buying and opening their own warehouse, then hiring employees.

The Kauffman Foundation funds a series of programs and initiatives designed to create a substantial body of research on entrepreneurship and innovation. The programs assist promising young scholars in their efforts to earn doctoral degrees, and encourage scholars to conduct research early in their careers and recognize ground-breaking research—all with a focus on entrepreneurship. The Foundation’s Emerging Scholars Program supports and recognizes achievements at each career level of an academic professional.

We first heard about ValuationUP, the financial performance analysis, benchmarking and valuation tool for SMBs when it won the Ignite startup competition at African innovation conference, Tech4Africa, last year. The South African team behind ValuationUP, Gareth Ochse and Kenneth Kalmer believe their startup will help people — even those without financial backgrounds — benchmark the financial performance of the ventures they are growing, selling, buying or advising. Research suggests that a high percentage of startups fail — some estimate 75%, depending on how failure is defined. “Startups often fail because founders and investors neglect to look before they leap, surging forward with plans without taking the time to realise that the base assumption of the business plan is wrong,” says Shikhar Ghosh, a senior lecturer of Business Administration at Harvard Business School who has held executive positions at a number of technology-based start-ups.

The smartest entrepreneurs don’t emulate trends — they set them. In 2013, with both rapid technological advances (NFC, anyone?) and policy changes on the horizon, startup founders are looking ahead to figure out how, and where, to position their offerings so they can see the biggest wins.

Specifically, they’re looking to capitalize on emerging industries and technologies that will shape the way we do business in the future.

Is your job description helping you attract the right people? Or is it too vanilla to get you what you need?

The passionate and opinionated authors of The 22 Immutable Laws of Branding, Al Ries and Laura Ries, say:

“In business there is never only one way to do anything.”

It’s true we have choices:

To market primarily online or off-line. To focus our brand or try to be all things to all people (the second choice is dangerous).

A parade of fitness gadgets at this week’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas may be just the antidote for the couch-potato behavior induced by all the 3-D televisions, gaming laptops, and other gizmos on display at the show.

Some of these activity-monitoring devices offer new ways to monitor your activity and health, including an iPhone and iPad pulse oximeter that can precisely detect blood oxygen levels, and sensor technology that can be tucked inside a set of conventional earbuds to keep tabs on the whole body.

Can other cities learn a lesson from Asheville’s new emphasis on business innovators and start-up risk-takers?

The National League of Cities is blogging today about Asheville as a case study for best practices in promoting entrepreneurship.

Asheville economic developers were invited to present at a panel discussion along with Boston and Beaverton, Ore., a Portland suburb, at the annual Congress of Cities held in Boston in late November.

Ben Teague, executive director of the Economic Development Coalition of Asheville-Buncombe County, and Pam Lewis, the coalition’s director of entrepreneurship, outlined what Asheville is doing differently to create “an entrepreneurial eco-system.”

The numbers are in: 2012, the year of a surreal March heat wave, a severe drought in the Corn Belt and a huge storm that caused broad devastation in the Middle Atlantic States, turns out to have been the hottest year ever recorded in the contiguous United States. 

How hot was it? The temperature differences between years are usually measured in fractions of a degree, but last year’s 55.3 degree average demolished the previous record, set in 1998, by a full degree Fahrenheit.

If that does not sound sufficiently impressive, consider that 34,008 daily high records were set at weather stations across the country, compared with only 6,664 record lows, according to a count maintained by the Weather Channel meteorologist Guy Walton, using federal temperature records.

Being a marketing leader in today's economy reminds me of my first solo cross country flight in 1988: even when I think I'm totally in control, bad things can happen.

I prepared one week in advance for this adventure from Stratford, Connecticut to Concord, New Hampshire. I had all of my sectional charts clearly marked, and the forecast was clear blue skies and calm air. As I crossed the invisible aerial border from Connecticut to Massachusetts, something strange happened.

I was headed for an airport--but it wasn't the Concord airport. In fact, it had two runways. It took me several seconds to realize it was Manchester airport, a military base. Visions of armed military guards greeting me and my Cessna 152 were scary. Even though I had meticulously prepared for this day, my plans were almost thwarted.

Thousands of years ago Greeks plied the waters of the Mediterranean as traders and merchants. They were, perhaps, amongst the first ever entrepreneurs. But somewhere along the line between then and now that history faded.

Admittedly, inklings of that spirit remained in the world famous Greek shipping industry – but a reliance on government jobs and European Union subsidies did its best to quell the age-old spirit of entrepreneurship.

The last thing I ever want to do is create work for my portfolio companies.  That being said, I think that there's a certain amount of management communication that serves a purpose well beyond just letting the investors know what's going on in the company. 

Ideally, investor communication serves the following purposes:

1. Focuses the attention of the CEO on goals over a fixed about of time: "What are we going to accomplish between now and the next update?" 
2. It can create a sense of urgency by putting those goals to paper. 
3. Requires the team to reflect upon how well they acheived prior goals and whether anything can be learned to improve performance.

When the U.S. civil aeronautics administration certified the Aerocar for operation in 1956, it seemed inevitable, at least to aerospace engineers, that before long the flying car would take its place as a fixture in the garage of the typical suburban ranch home. Yet that was not to be. The Aerocar, which looked like a car but had wings and could take off on a short runway, was too expensive to justify mass production. Aerocar International built only six of these vehicles, leaving the promise of the flying car unfulfilled—except in episodes of The Jetsons.

Just a handful fewer venture funds raised money last year than in 2011, but the ones who came to invest did it up big time.

Commitments to 182 venture capital funds grew 10 percent during 2012 to reach $20.6 billion, according to data released today by Thomson Reuters and the National Venture Capital Association.

That’s up from $18.7 billion in 2011, but still shy of the $25.6 billion raised nationally in 2008.

The growth of the industry, in dollars anyway, doesn’t entirely solve the Series A crunch many experts are projecting to come this year. There are still far more seed-funded startups looking for cash than funds willing to provide it. But more dollars is a positive trend for an industry that has lagged since the economic recession took hold.