Sometimes outsourcing is a good thing, even for bigger companies.  Small businesses really need to consider all angles of their IT services and whether or not they're truly capable of not only managing their environments, but more importantly, fixing them.  Here's one story of a company learning this lesson.

Nasty things began happening at Jones & Wenner not long after the Fairlawn, Ohio, insurance brokerage decided it had grown large enough to handle company email in-house.

The free Web mail services the firm’s 20 employees had used to conduct business no longer cut it. So the company purchased a Microsoft Outlook Exchange email server.

Within weeks, email spam began to inundate each employee’s inbox, much of it carrying viral attachments or links to poisoned Web pages, recalled Joyce Sigler, Jones & Wenner’s information technology vice president.

President Bill Clinton took primetime stage at the Democratic National Convention last night and once again mesmerized, tantalized, and energized his audience.

Watching his performance, it’s easy to forget this is the same guy who was almost booed off the stage at another Democratic Convention 24 years ago while introducing candidate Michael Dukasis.

Our brand is our reputation, which is built upon our stories and expertise, and our willingness to share our knowledge. In today’s socially connected world our reputations have become global, making our brand more important than ever.

Here are 6 ways you can share your valuable knowledge with others and become known as an expert in your field:

There are plenty of legitimate reasons to work from home: it saves gasoline (if you drive or take the bus), eliminates commuting time, and on the company side, it means that less office space is needed to accomodate employees. Now there’s another reason, backed by a study (PDF) from Stanford: People who work from home are more productive than those that don’t.

The latest telecommuting talking point comes from a study that randomized 250 call center employees at a Chinese company, designating some as telecommuters for four days a week and asking others to come into the office every workday for a nine-month period. The reasoning: the company, CTrip (China’s biggest travel agency), was considering a company-wide work from home policy to decrease high attrition rates and cut down on office costs.

As a part of Lightspeed Venture Partners’ Summer Fellowship Program, we bring in influential speakers from around the valley each week to share their insights, lessons learned, and tips with our teams. An alumni of the program Pinterest CEO Ben Silbermann, spoke to the group recently.

Ben shared details of his background and thoughtfully explained the journey of how he came to be CEO of one of the hottest startups in the consumer Internet space.

The FDA, for most of the past 10 years, was the regulatory agency that many people in biotech and pharma loved to hate. Critics have long complained about bureaucratic foot-dragging, byzantine organization, poor communication, excessive aversion to risk, and arbitrary decisions around whether to approve new drugs for sale in the U.S.

But FDA bashers, at least in the pharmaceutical world, haven’t had much to complain about in 2012. Suddenly the FDA and the pharma industry it regulates look like best pals. The FDA, under commissioner Margaret Hamburg, has been making noise for some time about its desire to not just ensure the safety and effectiveness of the U.S. drug supply, but to also help promote the development of innovative new medicines. This year, the agency has absolutely done everything it can to back up its rhetoric with actions that prove it isn’t an adversary but more of a partner in the development of new medicines.

Until the recent recession, market research indicated that as many as 90 percent of the roughly 20 million American small business owners were motivated more by lifestyle than growth and money. Since 2008, the desire for profits has trumped passion in 54 percent of new startups, according to a recent study. It seems that everyone wants to make a quick buck these days.

If money is the only thing stopping you from doing something good in the world, stop waiting and start doing some good!

Nothing better symbolizes entrepreneurship than fundraising.  Social entrepreneurs are no different.  Today, there are a host of on-line resources for crowdfunding that social entrepreneurs can use to fund their projects, films, books, and social ventures.  Today, I’ll briefly profile eight.

What do 70% of successful entrepreneurs have in common? They all incubated their business ideas while employed by someone else. Indeed, most people start their own companies — or go freelance — in order to stop working for others. Why? Because most managers are simply unbearable. Year after year, Gallup reports that most employees are unhappy at work, and that the number one reason for dissatisfaction is their boss.

But there is one upside to incompetent management: by failing to attend to their employees' ideas, and continuing to demoralize their staff, bad leaders accidentally stimulate entrepreneurship. Indeed, if entrepreneurial employees (i.e., those who have the talent and drive to be inventive and enterprising) were happy at work, or at least felt that their ideas are being valued, they would contribute to innovation and growth in their employers' organization, rather than setting up their own company. Therefore, bad leadership — or, if you prefer, incompetent management — is a major source of entrepreneurship. In fact, America owes much of its recent growth, technological innovation, and socioeconomic progress, to inept managers.

The Maryland Technology Development Corp. awarded almost $1.2 million to 16 Maryland startups in its latest round of funding.

The funding, through TEDCO’s Maryland Technology Transfer and Commercialization Fund, is aimed at helping early-stage companies commercialize products they have developed working with universities and federal laboratories in Maryland.

The Australian start-up scene looks set to receive a further boost with the opening of the country's first Microsoft Innovation Centre in Brisbane yesterday.

The software giant will invest $3 million over the next three years in the centre, and team up with local incubators and universities to accelerate the growth of software start-ups and small businesses in the state.

Microsoft state director for Queensland and NT Sharon Schoenborn said the project, headed by program manager Emily Easterby, hoped to help up to 100 new ventures get off the ground by 2015.

GameFounders is giving six startups a big boost today.

Launched in July, the organization is Europe’s first business accelerator devoted to gaming. Juhan Parts, the minister of economic affairs of Estonia, is opening the first season, which includes six teams of 20 people. They have moved to Tallinn, the capital of Estonia, for a three-month regimen of mentoring, networking, and developing.

“The difference for GameFounders is that the accelerator is dealing only with games and gamification,” cofounder Kadri Ugand told us. “All mentors will understand all startups — they speak the same language and know the business. In regular accelerators, a lot of mentors are not from the right sector and can only be useful for some of the teams. With us, the mentors are used much more efficiently, and it is more fun for (them) since all the startups are down their alley.”

One of the most common complaints I hear from entrepreneurs is that they are overwhelmed by the workload and stress of starting their company. Then there are the additional challenges of balancing the demands of family and friends. Having too much on your plate can turn your dream into a nightmare.

Some people will tell you to just get a bigger plate, meaning hire some help. But with the pressures of the economy, and limited access to outside funding, we all know this isn’t always possible or appropriate. I recommend the opposite, or getting things off your plate that shouldn’t be there in the first place.

It’s exciting to watch the entrepreneurial landscape grow not only in Silicon Valley but also elsewhere throughout the United States. Florida is just one of many states with a healthy entrepreneur eco-system.  Florida’s startup landscape is vibrant, diverse and worth taking a look at.

Let’s review just some of the new concepts presented at a roundtable I co-hosted with the Jacksonville Startup Weekend in January 2012:

One of the largest startups in and around Silicon Valley is GE Global Software in San Ramon, California, a brand new division of giant General Electric, built from scratch into an organization of 400 engineers, growing to as many as 800 software engineers and researchers by year end.

Betting big on software is a key business strategy for GE. The business group’s annual revenues were more than $142 billion in 2012. In 2008 they were nearly $180 billion. Software businesses have high profit margins especially if they can be applied across a large user base.

Thinking of quitting your job to start your own business?

It won’t be easy and it’s highly risky, since you’d be giving up a steady paycheck to try something that may or may not work.

But it can also be “immensely fun and rewarding,” says Valerie Rozycki Wagoner, founder of Zipdial, a technology-based marketing company. Ms. Wagoner moved from Silicon Valley in the U.S. to the southern Indian city of Bangalore, where she started a business in 2010.

Innovation is different from everything you do as a leader in three distinct ways. First, innovation happens in the future for which you currently have no data. In fact, one of the most common forms of resistance to innovation is excessive data collection because it stops your company from taking purposeful action. Second, innovation is a time-based form of value. That is it has a shelf life and goes sour like milk. So innovation has to happen within a specific window of opportunity. Third, innovation happens in cycles; not straight lines. Revolutionary innovations seldom occur in good times because the relative risk is high and the reward low. In a down economy innovation isn’t your best friend…it’s your only friend.

Without the mentoring of my high school coach, I (Bill) would have never been able to achieve the success I did. I was cut from the junior varsity basketball team. The varsity coach took me to the Boys and Girls Club, paid the $2 membership and told me if I practice every day he would put me on the varsity team. His belief in me made me realize I had the potential to be successful. We went on to win three straight state championships.

Research increasingly confirms how critical it is for young people to have caring mentors. But here is the real secret about mentoring that we've both learned through our work at the MENTOR partnership: The mentors frequently learn as much as the students. In the corporate world, formal mentoring programs make sure newer employees are learning all they need to be successful. But, just as importantly, these programs enable mentoring managers to sharpen their skills and become better leaders by interacting with their more junior colleagues.

The High Technology Development Corp. has created Innovate Hawaii, a combination of the former Hawaii Small Business Innovation Research and Manufacturing Extension Partnership programs.

In a statement, HTDC Executive Director Yuka Nagashima said the entity hopes to maximize the resources of both former programs with an emphasis on helping small businesses create innovation projects that may be useful for federal programs, especially for future commercialization.

During the last legislative session, lawmakers passed many bills designed to stir job creation. They left gaping holes in the puzzle, however. One key missing piece is a venture capital fund. The lack of one puts Wisconsin at a competitive disadvantage.

State Sen. Tim Cullen, D-Janesville, believes he can take a lead role in writing legislation that might be ready when the Legislature reconvenes next year. He’s chair of the Senate Committee on Small Business and Venture Capital, which heard testimony during a six-hour public hearing Thursday.