If New York City wants to be the top spot for startups, it isn’t just Silicon Valley that it needs to beat. In a report released Tuesday on the world’s most active startup ecosystems, Startup Genome ranked New York fifth — behind Silicon Valley, Tel Aviv, Los Angeles and Seattle. Startup Genome, which began as an academic research project, provides tools for startups and investors to benchmark progress.

It’s hardly a shocker that longtime tech hub Silicon Valley took the No. 1 spot. But, over the past couple of years, New York has become more of a magnet for entrepreneurs and it’s surprising to see the city lag behind not just one location, but four. As my colleague Ryan Kim reported earlier this year, East Coast industries, like media and advertising, as well as the rise of local angel investors and venture capital firms, have made the city more of a draw for entrepreneurs.

A pristine tropical reef that has weathered several natural disasters is now part of America's largest marine sanctuary.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) finalized a huge expansion of the Fagatele Bay National Marine Sanctuary in American Samoa last month, from 0.25 square miles (0.65 square kilometers) to 13,523 square miles (33,024 square km).

The boost takes the sanctuary from a single protected coral reef to a marine area larger than the state of Maryland. The agency also renamed the protected region, now calling it the National Marine Sanctuary of American Samoa.

What happens when the FDA approval process slows down and imposes higher hurdles, when cost-reduction becomes central to the healthcare provider business model, when clinical trials and commercialization costs for medical devices and biotechnology products spiral through the roof, and when exit returns are compressed by general economic conditions and the decline of the IPO market?

Venture capital funding for early stage life science companies markedly contracts. In fact, venture capital funding for these companies declined consistently over the last few years. Even if federal grant funding for basic research increases, there will still remain the proverbial "valley of death" in funding the necessary first steps of translating research into products and ideas into companies. The emerging life sciences company must find a bridge to the development and commercialization of new life-saving technologies.

Despite the odds stacked against the success of startups, the allure of the occasional startup success story keeps inspiring other entrepreneurs to try their hands at a high growth business venture. We’ve put together a list of five actions startups should never take in order to have the best odds at having success.

Settle for Less Than A Players

There’s a reason why startups tend to have high turnover rates in their first few years. With limited resources, the need for talented employees is crucial to a startup’s growth and future success. Not only must an employee be hardworking and dedicated but they must also fit in well with the office culture. Often having few employees and a heavy volume of work, finding employees that bring their passion for the vision of the business is not only important – it’s vital. While there may be many skilled candidates, the most promising candidates will be genuinely enthusiastic about the startup’s future and not just landing a new job.

Mark Twain once noted that “to get the right word in the right place is a rare achievement.”

I find it hard to believe the author of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn considered writing a struggle (though he must have--he also said, "Writing is easy. All you have to do is cross out the wrong words.") Today, with so many publishing platforms, many people fancy themselves writers. But I know how difficult it is, even for those responsible for writing, tweeting, and speaking on behalf of companies, to find the right words and the right place for them. Good writing is, indeed, all too rare.

Cranking out masterful writing that is crisp, stirring, and grammatically spot-on is hard--really hard. Still, as a communicator, I want to see writing that inspires me. However, the reality is different. Major news organizations have sent copyeditors packing to save money and to enable writers to publish quickly. People are encouraged to package thoughts in 140 characters or less and express themselves--OMG--in cutesy shorthand. Even Twain--who championed the use of simple language, short words, and brief sentences--would be appalled.

Though a majority of kids over 5 use the Internet, most American adults think children should have to wait until age 13 to connect to the Web without supervision, a new survey found.

In September, the C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital National Poll on Children's Health asked parents about their kids' Internet use. Among parents of children age 9 to 12, 87 percent said their kid uses the Internet. The same was true for 58 percent of parents with a kid age 5 to 8.

Successful business incubation at universities is about much more than a capable technology transfer office (TTO) and strong commercialization policies. New businesses are born at universities because faculty and students have the freedom to develop innovative ideas and pursue new lines of inquiry. To emerge from the university successfully, these pioneering ideas must be accompanied by prototype development, market research, commercialization strategy, and effective fundraising. It’s the larger university ecosystem, not just the TTO, that fosters the collaboration and novel thinking that allows new businesses to thrive.

The pathway from idea generation to successful commercialization is far from uniform. The need for the broader university environment and an expansive range of programs and practices for facilitating spinoff development cannot be underestimated.

Silicon Valley contributed more to President Barack Obama’s re-election campaign than Wall Street and Hollywood, according to a Nov. 3 San Francisco Chronicle report. The Valley contributed $14.7 million compared to $14.5 million from New York City and $6.3 million from the Beverly Hills crowd. The data were compiled for the Chronicle by the nonpartisan organization MapLight.org. During his many trips to Silicon Valley, the President made a number of promises. Now that he has won, the Valley expects him to keep his end of the bargain.

I asked several notable people in Silicon Valley what they want from Congress and Obama’s second-term administration. The tech moguls I spoke to or exchanged e-mails with include Marc Andreesen, Paul Graham, Heidi Roizen, Ron Conway, Vinod Khosla, Carl Bass, Dan’l Lewin and Jason Calacanis. The bloggers who gave me feedback include Eric Eldon, Dan Lyons, and Om Malik. And I spoke to several of my colleagues at Stanford Law School including Joe Grundfest, Mariano-Florentino Cuellar, and Dan Siciliano. Here, Mr. President, is their wish list:

A new guide funded by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) “Designing Consumer Health IT: A Guide for Developers and Systems Designers” presents suggested recommendations for designers and developers of consumer health IT products. Recommendations included are either general guidance for designers and design teams that can be applied to the process of designing and developing a product; or specific to a design phase such as idea generation, identification of end users, testing and commercialization. The guide presents results of an environmental scan and grey literature review; and expert interviews to improve consumer health IT design in order to increase effective use of consumer health IT. Select to access this report (PDF file, 299 MB),

Download the Report

In many ways, it's never been easier to be an entrepreneur. From small-business loans to university courses to mentorship programs to incubators, resources abound for people who want to start new businesses. Yet only about half of all new businesses survive the first five years, despite the support their owners receive. To discover what makes some businesses thrive while others wither, Gallup studied the behaviors that successful entrepreneurs exhibit.

Our findings indicate that a new company's odds of survival have a lot to do with the innate abilities of its founder. All other things being equal, people with talent for a task outperform people without it -- and that includes entrepreneurship. Those with the inherent ability to meet the demands of entrepreneurship are more likely to create a sustainable and successful venture than those with less ability to meet these demands.

www.coopvoce.it

A brand new collaboration has been launched in Italy with the marketing department of COOP Italia and MySmark italian partner M2I.

COOP is one of the most important retailers in Italy and CoopVoce, its mobile operator, one of the best performing in the market.

MySmark will integrate and enhance CoopVoce promotions and customer care in search of new interactive conversation with customers, made of listening, engagement and consumer experience enhancement.

All MySmark team is really enthusiast of this new project with a top market player as COOP.

We all invite you to visit www.coopvoce.it to learn more and make your smark!

Mayor Vincent Gray struck a hopeful note at the DC Week keynotes Wednesday, calling the District “the country’s next big tech hub” and announcing the arrival of another startup within the city’s boundaries.

A year after calling the D.C. “the best place in the country to start and grow your tech company,” the mayor this time opened up with a bit of tech boosterism that was a little more aspirational. No one actually thinks D.C., under current circumstances, is the nation’s foremost startup hub.

There are countless garage-to-Fortune 500 success stories. Jeff Bezos first ran Amazon.com out of his garage in Bellevue, Wash. As Stanford University graduate students, Larry Page and Sergey Brin launched Google from Susan Wojcicki’s garage. And invoicing company FreshBooks was headquartered in Mike McDerment’s parents’ basement for 3.5 years.

Launching a business from your garage, basement or dining room table is a great way to keep overhead costs down when you’re just starting out. And in most cases, it’s usually the only option for bootstrapping startups. But how are you supposed to handle a home-based startup from a legal perspective?

Whether you’re developing a mobile app or digital media consulting group, here are six steps to ensure your home-based business is legit.

Last week I had the privilege of attending SSTI’s annual conference in Atlanta, representing NIST and the MEP system.  The conference was aptly titled “The Power of Re—defining, imagining, and energizing regional economies,” reflecting the change that so many of our communities have gone through in recent years, and how our organizations, institutions, and approaches must adapt accordingly.

Every year, I am reminded that this gathering is one of the best around for MEP’ers and our partners.  In fact, many attendees ARE MEP partners.  SSTI, officially the State Science and Technology Institute is focused on technology-based economic development (TBED), but now has more than three-quarters of its members from “non-state” organizations.  These include regional, local, and national organizations interested in tech transfer, capital financing, innovation, R&D, higher education, workforce development…the whole range of entities and issues relevant to manufacturing today.

Superinvestor Warren Buffett once observed that more money doesn't change people so much as amplify their essential traits. "Of the billionaires I have known...." he declared, "If they were jerks before they had money, they are simply jerks with a billion dollars."

Buffett's "jerk doctrine" applies equally well to the growing digital wealth of managers and leaders. Technology seems to make managerial control freaks even freakier and the empowerers more empowering. Social media platforms and apps — LinkedIn, Jive, Yammer, SharePoint, Klout, etc. — pervasively proliferating inside the enterprise have made it easier for obsessive-compulsive leaders to compulsively obsess and for trusting leaders to trust (but verify.) Instant access and cloud has compressed the "mean time to meddling" to milliseconds for micromanagers. By the same token, more trusting and nurturing managers increasingly have the luxury to tacitly monitor their people and projects and choose when to intervene.

Nurturing employee engagement is an ongoing process, not something to tick off the list once a year. Here's how to make the most out of performance reviews and career coaching.

Engagement is a personal equation, and managers must play a role in helping each employee solve it. Your best managers already understand this. They’re not waiting for survey data to shape what they do. They don’t make engagement a once-a-year priority, distinct from what they do the rest of the time. They always manage their teams with an eye toward results and engagement.

How do they do it? Dialogue. Sounds pretty simple: if you manage employees, you need to talk to them. Yet manager-employee conversations are more of a myth than a best practice in a majority of organizations. Many managers sheepishly acknowledge that they should have more regular sit-downs with their individual team members, but a variety of excuses (e.g., “Not enough time,” “Mired in my own work,” “Never get around to it”) stand in the way. That is too bad, because dialogue is at the heart of high engagement and sustainable performance.

(Reuters) - Google will increase the cash it allocates to its venture-capital arm to up to $300 million a year from $200 million, catapulting Google Ventures into the top echelon of corporate venture-capital funds.

Access to that sizeable checkbook means Google Ventures will be able to invest in more later-stage financing rounds, which tend to be in the tens of millions of dollars or more per investor.

It puts the firm on the same footing as more established corporate venture funds such as Intel's Intel Capital, which typically invests $300-$500 million a year.

Building a startup is hard work for low pay, it’s risky, and it requires total responsibility to make it work. Yet, many entrepreneurs are the happiest people I know. On the other hand, I know many unhappy individuals who are always partying, have minimal commitments, and little responsibility. I suspect the real parameters of happiness have eluded these people.

According to one of my favorite authors, Brian Tracy, in his book “The Power of Self-Discipline,” happiness is not even a goal that you can aim at and achieve in and of itself, but it is a by-product that comes to you when you are engaged in doing something you really enjoy while in the company of people you like and respect.

November 2012

To our friends, customers and colleagues,

I am pleased to send you the UW-Madison Office of Corporate Relations 2011-2012 Annual Report.  The report highlights OCR's role in helping to meet the business needs of partners ranging from industry leaders like Mercury Marine to innovative startups like Imbed Biosciences.  These stories represent just a few of the ways OCR staff and others at UW-Madison are working to help businesses and entrepreneurs grow the economy of our state and nation.

I’d also encourage you to read the End-of-Grant report that details the activities and outcomes resulting from the $3 million grant UW-Madison received from the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation.  The goal of the 5-year grant, which ended in June, 2012 and was managed by OCR, was to increase access to and involvement in entrepreneurship-related activities across the UW-Madison campus and beyond.

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about how our ideals and idols are totally broken and that we needed to re-evaluate how we work on, and within online / digital / technology companies.

So I was quite sad to see another idol admitting that same brokenness.

I’m trying to figure out when and why it became so acceptable for us to:

• Leave the office at 7pm AND then go home to work some more. 
• Not take any kind of non-working holiday. 
• Work every single weekend. 
• Compromise on every single aspect of our lives in favour of work.