Calling all entrepreneurs: Whether you’ve launched a thousand endeavors or are just launching your first one, we know you have a story to tell. We know that a brilliant idea can go a long way, but it takes more than an idea and luck to succeed. And no one can do it alone.

Most entrepreneurs have someone who helped them get their start, whether it was by shaping them philosophically, giving them important training, offering advice that they needed, or providing that first investment to get them on their feet. Perhaps its even the person that first gave you the spark of an idea that set you on course.

A proposal accepted Thursday by the University System of Maryland’s board of regents creates an alliance between its flagship institution in College Park and the professional school in Baltimore centered around combining research initiatives, blending public health programs and expanding course offerings in Montgomery County.

Chancellor William E. “Brit” Kirwan introduced the $45 million proposal, the result of an eight-month study ordered last year by the General Assembly, in Annapolis, calling it “a strategic alliance, a very significant set of initiatives and activities.”

Making subtraction a way of life isn't a theme raised in Good Boss, Bad Boss, but as I began thinking about many of the main ideas, and Matthew May's great book In Pursuit of Elegance, I realized that great bosses have a "subtraction mind-set." They are always looking to remove bad or necessary things.

As we know, "bad is stronger than good.” Getting rid of bad people is probably even more crucial than bringing in great people. We saw, for example, how Paul Purcell enforces the "no-asshole rule" at Baird. Removing selfish jerks has not only made Baird a civilized place but has helped keep it on Fortune's Top 100 Best Companies to Work For list since 2004. And it has helped Baird grow and improve profits in recent years even as many other financial services firms faltered and failed.

Survey results that a former president of the American Medical Association called “deeply concerning and disheartening” revealed that nine out of 10 doctors wouldn’t recommend healthcare as a profession.

The results come from a 5,000-physician survey from The Doctors Company, a medical liability insurer for doctors.

What’s got doctors so down on their profession? Federal health reform, or Obamacare, apparently.

Sixty percent of respondents said health reform would have a negative impact on patient care, while just 20 percent said it would have a positive impact. And there’s another not insignificant reason (and it may very well be the real reason) that doctors don’t like health reform: 78 percent say that it’ll have a negative impact on their earnings.

I don’t have any children, but almost all of my girlfriends do. I remember a time early last decade when they were constantly shipping maternity clothes back and forth to one another to avoid spending money on an entirely new wardrobe. They could have used a website like Fashion Forward Maternity,  an online boutique that allows pregnant women to “borrow” maternity clothes without paying retail prices—and this year’s Michigan Business Challenge winner.

Forty-five teams competed in the 29th annual Michigan Business Challenge, a business-plan competition for innovative University of Michigan startups. What makes the competition unique is that it has four rounds and lasts about four months, with a March Madness-style process of elimination along the way. The final round has four teams giving a three-minute pitch to investors and U-M alumni, who then spend 20 minutes picking apart each idea.

When we look at developing regional industry clusters, one of the key players has always been the media.  But just how important is the media in supporting the growth of regional industries, in particular, and economic development, in general?

The most obvious role, of course, is the media as a vehicle for information dissemination.  As we build regional clusters, it is important for media to tell stories about the economy, emerging industries, successful cluster companies, and aspiring entrepreneurs. Doing so drives greater awareness of cluster development efforts and can help attract additional resources to a region such as businesses, talent, and investment.

ChinaBang conference, an annual two-day event with a focus on local startups, innovation and entrepreneurship, was held last weekend in Beijing. With a mixture of keynote and panel discussions from local startup founders and entrepreneurs, the awards ceremony recognized the best Chinese startups and founders in 2011 and featured a startup launchpad contest. Organized by TechNode, ChinaBang’s Launchpad competition had 16 teams pitch to 14 judges (from GSR Ventures, IDG, Qiming, Matrix Ventures, Atomico, Singtel, Paypal, Innovation Works, CyberAgent, Rovio, Infinity Ventures, Taishan, CSDN) and a live audience. Each team was given 10 minutes to present on stage – five minutes pitch time and five minutes for answering judges’ questions. The judges scored each team on a scale of 10 points. The teams were then ranked by point average to result in the top three, who all would be walking away with prizes including cash and overseas trips.

Here is the rundown of all startups presented on stage in the launchpad.

Few events are more exciting in the life of a young entrepreneurial company than being able to raise venture capital. Venture capital investors are highly selective; hence getting an investment from them is considered as a quality mark for early ventures. Research has, for example, shown that companies that receive venture capital are able to attract more and higher quality employees, are more legitimate and are hence able to negotiate with more powerful partners, customers or suppliers. Their corporate governance is strengthened with a small but focused board that helps in strategic decision making.

A new pan-European research project, the VICO project, has investigated how European venture capital-backed companies develop, compared to their non-venture capital backed peers. Receiving venture capital has a positive effect on entrepreneurial companies beyond the mere effect of venture capital investors selecting the best deals. Capital expenditures, investments in R&D and productivity are higher in venture capital backed companies, and as a result they grow stronger compared to their peers. Interestingly, venture capital backed companies are more resilient in the current crisis: while non-venture capital backed companies reduce their number of employees following drops in sales, venture capital backed companies are currently still able to slightly grow in sales and in employees. Interestingly, portfolio firms have higher chances of success if they attract venture capital later on, when their products are already developed.

Ever wondered how the startup world really works? Are you dying to know who the key players are in this mystical world? Do you lie awake at night cursing the sky hoping your anguish will penetrate the darkness and send you some answers? Well, it’s your lucky day.

The idea of a startup ecosystem is actually quite simple. There are 13 key players. Yep, it only takes 13 people to make a startup work. These fearless men and women venture out into dangerous seas braving the predators while eyeing out their prey.

I was under the impression that inspiration hits us best at the oddest, most unpredictable times, or at least that it cannot be forced. However, the ASSU disagrees. Today the ASSU unveils its new great achievement- transforming a Suites house into Stanford’s newest focus house- specifically, an entrepreneurship-themed residence blandly (and incorrectly) dubbed “eDorm.”

As we wait to see how this residence performs, I have a few objections from the outset. Saving you the trouble of having to read a massive article, I’ll respect brevity as much as possible.

Michael Pellini fires up his computer and opens a report on a patient with a tumor of the salivary gland. The patient had surgery, but the cancer recurred. That's when a biopsy was sent to Foundation Medicine, the company that Pellini runs, for a detailed DNA study. Foundation deciphered some 200 genes with a known link to cancer and found what he calls "actionable" mutations in three of them. That is, each genetic defect is the target of anticancer drugs undergoing testing—though not for salivary tumors. Should the patient take one of them? "Without the DNA, no one would have thought to try these drugs," says Pellini.

Starting this spring, for about $5,000, any oncologist will be able to ship a sliver of tumor in a bar-coded package to Foundation's lab. Foundation will extract the DNA, sequence scores of cancer genes, and prepare a report to steer doctors and patients toward drugs, most still in early testing, that are known to target the cellular defects caused by the DNA errors the analysis turns up. Pellini says that about 70 percent of cases studied to date have yielded information that a doctor could act on—whether by prescribing a particular drug, stopping treatment with another, or enrolling the patient in a clinical trial.

Sen. Scott Brown called yesterday for the passage of his “crowd-funding” bill at a City Hall forum, saying it can help bring investors and small businesspeople seeking funding together.

“We’re finding there’s a disconnect between people that want to get financing and lend and people who have great ideas, but they can’t draw that connection,” Brown said after moderating a panel on access to capital for small businesses. “The crowd-funding bill we talked about is a great bill. It’s ready to go and they won’t bring it up. It’s shocking to me and many Democrats. We need to get our country moving. We’re Americans first. We can work together on this issue.”

The naïve entrepreneur thinks he can relax, after he finally cashes the check from a professional investor, but in reality that’s when the work and the pressure starts. His first reality reset is that now, maybe for the first time, he really has a boss, or several bosses, and often very demanding ones at that.

Angel and venture capital investors rarely just give you the cash, and stand back to wait for you to spend it the way you want. First of all, they are usually more experienced than you in your own business domain, so they have strong views on what it takes to succeed, and probably would prefer it done their way.

Work on a long-awaited National Academies study on the future of American research universities will probably end soon, with the institutions being warned that they need to make fundamental improvements before they can even begin to hope for any substantial increase in federal financial support.

Google’s chairman Eric Schmidt took the stage at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona to talk about the role of technology in the “world we live in today” and how it will shape the societies of the future. Schmidt, for example, noted that the number of people who use smartphones is still very small, but “think how amazing the web is today with just 2-billion people” and what will happen when another 5-billion get online.

A delegation of 26 business and academic leaders from South Carolina went home from Israel in November with 50 business and research partnerships ready to roll -- and more are expected to come.

“I have been putting together these kinds of delegations for 20 years, and this was one of the best,” says Tom Glaser, president of the American-Israel Chamber of Commerce Southeast Region.

In a town that's typically hungry for consumer Internet startups, health companies finally have a place to go.

The second class of health technology companies has had a month to settle into the Rock Health incubator in San Francisco.

Rock Health founder Halle Tecco is creating a community devoted to the healthcare space, the same way Paul Graham has seeded many successful companies through his Y Combinator program.

"Last year, no one knew what Rock Health was, but now it's a destination for healthcare entrepreneurs," Tecco said.

Living a "life" while being an entrepreneur can have its challenges, according to entrepreneur and investor Brad Feld. Through a candid story from his own marriage, Feld explains how he has successfully found a way to balance his love of work with his love of family.

Dominic Orr, CEO of Aruba Networks, wrestles with the definition of work-life balance for people deeply engaged by their work. Orr recognizes it can be difficult to separate work and life, but that we must still make room for relationships that matter to us. According to Orr, this ultimately comes down to carefully allocating our time and energy.

Nick Vaidya is the latest media entrepreneur to get into trouble for producing a publication about entrepreneurship and having the audacity to use the word entrepreneur in the title. Like others before him who've tried the same thing, Vaidya was hit with a lawsuit from Entrepreneur Media Incorporated (EMI), which owns Entrepreneur magazine and Entrepreneur.com.

Turns out that EMI loves entrepreneurs (the "little e" kind) but not Entrepreneurs (the "big E" kind, especially when related to the media). This is not the first time EMI has aggressively defended its brand, and anyone in the future who attempts to use the word entrepreneur in the wrong context will likely find themselves in a similar predicament.