Ok, it's still resolution time, right?  Time to get cracking on some new initiatives in 2013... and I can't argue strenously enough for investing the time into a blog this year if you've started a company.

Forget the fact that you can't write or it takes a long time.  These are things that go away over time.  First off, many of the widely read tech bloggers aren't the best writers either.  They're not known for their literary prowess or their way around the English language.  They're known for their insight--their ability to focus an audience on something others might not have noticed.  Being a good writer is NOT a prerequisite for being a good blogger--AND, you get better by writing. 

Plus, if it takes too much time, just write shorter posts.  Problem solved.  It's not about how much you write--it's about the practice of noticing stuff.

As we enter 2013, it seems like a fitting time to question what lies in store for the “Start-Up Nation” in the coming years. A long-standing debate exists on the source of entrepreneurial opportunities.

With Israel’s strong ties to America and Europe, it is unsurprising that most of the opportunities Israelis pursue involve developing gizmos and gadgets that answer recognized needs in the Western world. In this respect Israel the “Start-Up Nation” is certainly at the forefront of the types of innovative technologies that improve Western consumers’ lives by making them simpler and more convenient or entertaining.

However, Europe and North America comprise only 15 percent of the world’s population and its share in global GDP is constantly shrinking. Sub-Saharan Africa and Asia, on the other hand, are seen as strategically significant and rapidly growing new markets with annual average real GDP growth rates of 5.7% and 7.9%, respectively, compared to the OECD average of 1.65% in the past decade.

Norman Augustine, former chairman and CEO of Lockheed Martin (Bethesda, Md.), gave the inaugural address in the President's Distinguished Lecture Series at Stevens Institute of Technology (Hoboken) Oct. 24, 2013.

He presented a pessimistic picture of America’s ability to boost its educational system in science and technology subjects, bolster its science and research underpinnings, and develop a job engine that will create jobs here at home and not abroad.

Near the end of the speech, he said, people often ask him if he is a pessimist or a populist. He replies with an old saying: A pessimist is a person who wants to be an optimist but has a grasp of the facts.

Driving under the influence of alcohol or drugs is known to increase the chances of causing an accident. For instance, marijuana can impair drivers’ reaction time. But what about drowsiness? As many as a third of all fatal car crashes might involve fatigued drivers, according to research by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

And a new study finds that driving while under the influence—of drowsiness—is exceedingly common.

Forecasting trends in an industry that you cover every day, if you take time to think about it, is not that hard. Checking back a year later to see how right you were? That can be a little uncomfortable.

Rather than add to the pile of predictions people have already made about biotech in 2013, and will continue to make this week at the JP Morgan Healthcare Conference, I looked back instead at the five predictions I put down here 12 months ago. The exercise, I figured, ought to provide some humility for the year ahead, which is never a bad thing.

HHS' Health Resources and Services Administration has announced plans to distribute $1.9 million for the creation of six telehealth resource centers, mHIMSS reports (Wicklund, mHIMSS, 1/3).

About the Grants HRSA is administering the grants through the Telehealth Resource Center Grant Program, which provides funding to projects that use telehealth networks to improve health care services (Roney, Becker's Hospital Review, 1/4).

The grants will help launch five regional centers and one national center.

ORGANIZATIONS HAVE undergone unprecedented change. Some adjustments have been by design; the remainder have naturally evolved. Some adjustments – however carefully constructed – have not produced anticipated results. In many instances, the reverse effects may have occurred. then, there are those times when the unexpected just happens and you cannot seem to trace the roots of a successful venture. who would have predicted the success of google, eBay, iPhone, Facebook or the orb-like tata nano – even a few years ago? these are breakthroughs of sorts; the effect of a multiplicity of factors which, coming together, produce a certain result.

Breakthroughs can come in the form of a research discovery which so catapults the application possibilities that even current R&d seems obsolete. It can be in the form of a market acceptance which demands more of the technology than product engineers ever imagined. It can come in the form of a managerial set of experiences during which the collective insights of a team produce something far beyond what any combination of individuals might otherwise have designed. these developments are also the result of excellent knowledge management (Km) practices and programs which have developed over the last two decades and have been employed from the strategic technology investments to the shop floor.

What’s wrong with citation analysis?

Other than your papers not being cited enough, what’s wrong with measuring scientific influence based on citation count? Citation analysis-based decisions concerning grants, promotions, etc. have become popular because, among other things, they’re considered “unbiased.” After all, such analysis gives numbers even non-professionals can understand, helping them make the best and most accurate decisions.

The written above is polite fiction. Why? First of all, citation analysis can only work with written, actual citations, but being influenced by something doesn’t mean you’re automatically going to refer to it. One of the basic assumptions behind citation analysis is that all, or at least most, of influences are cited in articles. It doesn’t work that way. MacRoberts and MacRoberts (2010) define influence as “When it is evident in the text that an author makes use of another’s work either directly or through secondary sources he or she has been influenced by that work.” According to a series of studies they conducted, only about 30% of influences are cited.

Innovation—the improvement of existing or the creation of entirely new products, processes, services, and business or organizational models—is the central driver of modern economic growth. For example, technological innovation has been linked directly to three-quarters of the United States’ post-World War II economic growth rate. Innovation is key because it drives productivity growth—increased output per unit of work—as reflected by the fact that two-thirds of United Kingdom (UK) private-sector productivity growth between 2000 and 2007 was a result of innovation. And this drives increasing incomes; in fact, 90 percent of the variation in the growth of income per worker across countries is attributable to innovation.

Given innovation’s central importance to modern economies, a fierce race for global innovation leadership has emerged, as nations try to incubate, grow, and attract the highest-value-added economic activity they can: the high-wage, knowledge-intensive manufacturing, research, information technology (IT), and services industries (and jobs) that power today’s global, innovation-based economy, as the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF) writes in its new book Innovation Economics: The Race for Global Advantage. Indeed, countries around the world are establishing national innovation agencies and strategies, restructuring their tax and regulatory systems to become more competitive, expanding support for science and technology, improving their education systems, spurring investments in broadband and other IT platforms, and taking a myriad of other steps to bolster their innovation capacity. This article examines three key steps many nations have taken to turbocharge innovation—developing national innovation agencies and strategies, investing in research and innovation, and redesigning their tax systems to incentivize innovation—and reflects on the implications of the race for innovation advantage on the global economy.

“Cooking requires confident guesswork and improvisation– experimentation and substitution, dealing with failure and uncertainty in a creative way.”

― Paul Theroux, Sir Vidia’s Shadow: A Friendship Across Five Continents

Read any blog, business article, news story or management piece and you’re likely to read something about innovation. Each will offer a magic component, a secret sauce, a particular flavor  . . . always a specific ingredient that will give you the definitive “innovation recipe.”

Headlines declare:  “Ten Critical Changes To Make Your Company More Innovative” or “How To Organize for Innovation” or “How Your Chief Innovation Officer Can Make A Difference” or . . . well, you get the drift.

Can venture capital fund-of-funds boost innovation and regional growth? Several companies in the Midwest are experimenting, including most recently Proctor and Gamble. This consumer behemoth with over $80 billion in annual revenues, spends over $2 billion each year on its research and development. An army of over a thousand PhDs are scattered in 27 labs, trying to find better ways to whiten your teeth or add that much-needed gloss to your hair. The company spends as much as $500 million a year on consumer research alone.

To further boost ‘discontinuous innovation’, its leading the charge in forming, Cintrifuse, a $100 million venture capital fund-of-funds in Cincinnati, Ohio. The mantra of “discontinuous innovation,” as initiated by P & G CEO Bob McDonald  is based on the notion of technologies that create entirely new brand categories or new capabilities, rather than just improve an existing product. Creating new categories of revenues streams that are not just incremental, but rather disruptive, is the holy grail for large companies. And crucial pieces toward this goal are capital and wide-reaching sources of innovation — typically more than can be found in a single company.

We need to make sure we are investing time and energy to developing future generations of women for leadership. As Warren Buffett notes, harnessing the talent of women is key for building strong economies. There are five universal factors that, no matter where people are, where they are from, or what sector they are in, make a real difference in encouraging young women to reach success.

Though successful women are often prone to credit luck for their success, it is mostly hard work and perseverance that brings women to the top of their field, be they artists, scientists, entrepreneurs or academics. These are the women who never settle for the mediocre, are perpetually restless and striving, and who know that real success can only be found by crossing time zones, cultures, and cruising through stop signs.

Interviewing for a job is hard enough, but what if the person who interviews you does a terrible job?

When that happens, all is not lost. Here’s what to do when:

1. The interviewer springs a surprise group interview. Many companies prefer candidates to be screened by multiple people, if only to make the process efficient. (Efficient, but not necessarily effective.)

Then you get to sit on one side of the table while three or four or even twelve people (which happened to me) sit on the other side, and big fun is had by all. Or not.

Guy Kawasaki is perhaps the consummate entrepreneur.

He’s built and sold three companies, invested in dozens more as a venture capitalist, still runs a few startups fairly actively, and worked for Apple in the early breakout years of its 1984-style fight against Big Brother (aka IBM). But he’s also a prolific writer, with books like The Art of the Start and Rules for Revolutionaries that have been must-reads for founders and intrapreneurs for years.

Put the two together, and you’ve got someone who budding authors should listen to about what it means to write  books in 2013. Especially if you actually want to sell any.

“It’s a combination of passion, vision, creativity and a sense of adventure.” - Sir Richard Branson

A Master of Business Administration (MBA) can open the door to high-paying positions in the corporate world. Does it also have value for an entrepreneur? Is the degree worth the investment for those who want to chart their own career outside a large corporation? Can the skills that are required to succeed as an entrepreneur be taught?

Many business schools believe an MBA does offer value to entrepreneurs and have introduced entrepreneurship specializations. If you’ve start

I don’t have an MBA. I used to fear that this would put me at a disadvantage in starting my own company, but now I’m convinced that it may be the other way around. In some reputable surveys, as many as two-thirds of entrepreneurs felt that their entrepreneurial spirit was more ingrained than learned, so a specific education level is at least irrelevant.

For business professionals who aspire to an executive position in a large company, most people agree that an MBA is always positive. It will get you a higher starting salary, and a valuable edge in your credentials at every promotion opportunity. In fact, BusinessWeek reports that roughly 40 percent of the S&P 500 chief executives have MBAs in any given year.

RYAN CALDBECK was stumped. A director at a private equity firm, he was taking part in a panel discussion at a consumer goods conference last summer in New York when an entrepreneur raised his hand with a question: Where could a young company with just a few million dollars in sales go for money to grow? Enlarge This Image

Mr. Caldbeck and his peers on the panel fumbled for a response. The fact is, most private equity investors and venture capitalists won’t touch a consumer products company until it has surpassed $10 million in sales — anything else is too small to bother with.

I remember the first time my partner and I presented our startup to an angel investor. Many questions asked by the investor were left unanswered.

The intuitive question, “What are each you in charge of?” was answered by, “Both of us do whatever needs to be done for the startup’s success.” Does that sound like a good answer? No! He was hoping to hear that there was a clear role for each position and that each of us was in charge of a specific aspect of the business without losing focus and missing something important between us.

Based on the final report for 2012 from Thomson Reuters and the National Venture Capital Association (NVCA), it may appear that IPOs are back as a viable startup exit strategy. For the full year 2012, venture-backed initial public offerings raised $21.5 billion from 49 listings, and represented the strongest annual period for IPOs since 2000.

Yet 2013 is still projected by The Fiscal Times as a difficult IPO opportunity for startups, due to choppy markets, continuing fiscal uncertainty, and the Facebook fiasco. The dot.com heydays of free flowing venture capital and supercharged IPOs are not back. The market and venture capitalists are looking for business, but with a continuing focus on proven business models.