Founders of emerging companies, such as those in the medical device industry, are often required to “bootstrap” their young companies before institutional dollars become a realistic option. Venture capital, strategic, and other institutional funding sources typically require target companies to have advanced the development of their core product beyond theory and blue prints before they will consider the investment opportunity.

According to the National Venture Capital Association’s 2010 NVCA Yearbook, venture capital under management in the United States by the end of 2009 decreased 11.9% from the 2008 level, and more than 35% from its reported peak in 2006. With continued contraction in the venture capital markets, founders increasingly are required to find alternative sources of capital to fund their ventures.

SPOONS and forks, the metal flatware that everyone uses, are no longer made in the United States. The last factory in an industry stretching back to colonial times closed eight months ago in Sherrill, N.Y., a small community in the foothills of the Adirondacks, and 80 employees lost their jobs.

No one paid much attention beyond the people in the town itself, even though the closing represented the demise of an industry that had flourished in this country for generations. Paul Revere, in fact, was a flatware craftsman.

If Michigan is to grow its way toward a new economic future, it will have to depend less on the General Motorses of the world and more on firms like IC Datacom.

A tenant at the TechTown business accelerator at Wayne State University, IC Datacom offers IT services to small nonprofits and other entities. Founding partners Terence Willis and Dwayne Carson, both 40, started IC Datacom in 2005 and now employ about 27 workers.

Many universities need to change their attitudes and the way they operate if they are to play an effective part in helping their cities and regions promote human capital development and become more innovative and globally competitive. In particular they should widen their access to include sections of the population currently under-represented in higher education, and redefine their concept of 'innovation'.

These are among findings identified by Jaana Puukka, analyst and project leader of the OECD's work on higher education in regional and city development, in the light of research by the organisation's Programme on Institutional Management of Higher Education (IMHE).

Innovation and trade are keys to growth and competitiveness for small and medium enterprises around the world. Yet many entrepreneurs are unfamiliar with the opportunities for innovation across borders and the good practices that mitigate the challenges of successful international business development.

Note: Bendis to Speak at Event - Ed.

A straightforward guide to leveraging your company's intellectual capital by creating a knowledge management culture
The Complete Guide to Knowledge Management offers managers the tools they need to create an organizational culture that improves knowledge sharing, reuse, learning, collaboration, and innovation to ensure mesurable growth. Written by internationally recognized knowledge management pioneers, it addresses all those topics in knowledge management that a manager needs to ensure organizational success.

• Provides plenty of real-life examples and case studies
• Includes interviews with prominent managers who have successfully implemented knowledge management structures within their organizations
• Offers chapters composed of short theoretical explanations and practical methods that you can utilize, based primarily on hands-on author experience

Taking an intellectual journey into knowledge management, beginning with an understanding of the concept of intellectual capital and how to establish an appropriate culture, this book looks at the human aspects of managing knowledge workers, promoting interactions for knowledge creation and sharing.

Large and small corporations, both in high-tech and traditional industries, now owe most of their value to investments in knowledge. These investments, creating value from the intangible assets of intellectual capital, have a better return on investment (ROI) than physical assets. The Complete Guide to Knowledge Management reveals how your company can achieve a measurable growth in its value by using knowledge management (KM) to create an organizational culture that cultivates knowledge sharing, reuse, learning, collaboration, and innovation.

Many foreign-born techies in the U.S. and abroad are pinning their entrepreneurial hopes on the passage of a bill, sponsored by Senators John Kerry (D-Mass.) and Richard Lugar (R-Ind.), to create a startup visa. Tech-industry notables such as Paul Graham, Eric Ries, Brad Feld, Fred Wilson, and David McClure have lobbied for this. I, too, lent this my support. In fact, I have been advocating such a visa since 2007—when my team’s research revealed that 52% of Silicon Valley’s startups from 1995 to 2005 were founded by immigrants. We also learned that a million skilled workers and their families were stuck in “immigration limbo” and that many were beginning to return home—causing America’s first brain drain.

Most VCs consider it a very bad idea to invest in companies doing contract research and development for the government. Government R&D is a specialized business model that’s made even more complicated by the nuances of government accounting and contracting practices. Companies that start out with government contracts have a tough time generating new business and winning proposals. And even if they do win new business, they may find that the government claims the rights to all of the intellectual property they developed while under contract.

Fair or unfair, German Web entrepreneurs get a bad rap for being copy cats. If Stefan Gulas is any representation, the same can’t be said for German entrepreneurs making…what I guess you would call futuristic motorized bicycles?

Gulas has spent the last six years building something called the eROCKIT that defies a vehicle category. Unlike a motorcycle, it’s active– you have to pedal to make it go. But unlike a motorized bicycle it goes incredibly fast. So fast it can out accelerate a car. And it’s completely electric, borrowing some technology and looks from your home exercise bike.

The good news is that venture investing grew in 2010 for the first time since 2007, according to the MoneyTree Report by PricewaterhouseCoopers and the National Venture Capital Assn. (NVCA). Venture capitalists invested nearly $21.8 billion in 3,277 deals last year, up from $18.3 billion in 2009.

The bad news: although more venture money is going out, less investor money is coming in, points out Michael Greeley, founder and general partner of Flybridge Capital Partners, a Boston-based venture-capital firm. Venture-capital funds raised only $12.3 billion in 2010, down from $16.3 billion in 2009, according to the NVCA and Thomson Reuters. That was the fourth consecutive annual decline and a far cry from 2006, when VC funds raised about $31.9 billion. All told, there were 157 VC funds in 2010, says the NVCA and Thomson Reuters, compared with 237 funds in 2007.

As if we needed another sign that Valentine’s Day is getting awfully expensive, the coupon Web sites have now gotten into the game.

LivingSocial offered deeply discounted candy to New York City residents on Tuesday. Two days later, Groupon offered $40 worth of flowers from FTD for $20.

These group buying sites may be trying to strike decent bargains for users. But now that so many people subscribe to their e-mails, gift givers have to be playing a weird psychic game with themselves. Will he know I used a Groupon? Will she think less of me for doing so? Cut-rate romance feels somehow wrong, so plenty of people simply pay up. It’s a special day, after all.

HAPPY VALENTINES DAY TO ALL IN THE BENDIS EXTENDED FAMILY.......RICH BENDIS

(ThyBlackMan.com) We are all quite aware of President Obama’s call for greater U.S. innovation and entrepreneurship as demonstrated in his recent State Of The Union Address. And it was certainly not lost on the hip hop generation that President Obama’s “we do big things”, when referring to American ingenuity, was a direct sample from the everyday language used by urban millennials.

But while the President’s use of that term may be familiar, the steps to actually becoming one of these business innovators that Obama would so much like to see, may not be quite so accessible. In fact, I get the feeling that much of Black GenY demographic is still shaking their heads in terms of figuring out just how the President expects today’s young people of color to take the entrepreneurial bull by the horns, particularly when it comes to an area where there is so much potential opportunity: the digital industry.

The Austin Technology Incubator, a University of Texas effort to spawn clean tech companies, is spreading its mission.

Strategies hatched at the incubator to match burgeoning companies with venture capital money will be replicated in San Antonio and El Paso, ATI Director Isaac Barchas said.

"We want to work together to start new clean energy companies in other parts of the state," he said.

Calling on a pot of federal money, the State Energy Conservation Office will put $500,000 toward organizing the two new incubators.

Mark Legenstein had spent many years installing carpets. He also spent as many years stuck on his knees while handling each project. Mark had enough. According to Fox WPMT, he created a special pair of skates that straps to your knees. For carpet installers, it means scooting across the floor with ease.

Knee Blades makes the job easier for anyone that works on all fours.

Creatives and inventors don’t need a record label, a movie studio or a wealthy uncle any longer - now, community websites let fans be benefactors. But how do these platforms stack up? We spoke with each of the main crowdfunding sites. Here’s what they did - and didn’t - tell us…

Dave McClure, founder of seed and incubator fund 500 Startups, which provides betwen $10,000 to $250,000 in seed capital, is a pretty well-known angel investor. Dave has invested in more than 100 startups, such as Mint (acquired by Intuit), Crowdflower, Sendgrid, Simply Hired, SlideShare and Twilio, to name a few.

As you can imagine, Dave's spent enough time with entrepreneurs to know what kind of advice they need.

Here's his three pieces of advice:

Be revenue focused- transation, and not we’ll-figure-it-out-later model.

Be user focused (solving problems that exist)

Be metrics focused and focus on improving conversion metrics.

We had a chance to talk to angel investor Dave McClure earlier this week, prior to the announcement of 500 Startups' new accelerator program.

We met in the company's 12th-floor offices high over downtown Mountain View, with a view of San Francisco 20 miles to the north. It seems like an amazing location for an individual entrepreneur or small team to spend a few months getting a product ready for a big investor to take a look. It's certainly a lot more comfortable than Susan Wojcicki's garage.

Whether you are an old hat at getting up in front of an audience, or stone cold terrified of speaking into a mic, one thing is certain: We all have at least one thing that sends chills of fear down our collective spinal cords.

Regardless of where your fear resides, the most important step to overcoming said fear is to NAME IT and get it out into the sunlight.

Let’s be serious - EVERYBODY is wondering if there is another shoe to drop in the Great Internet Gold Rush of 2011. $6 billion for Groupon? Nah, too low. Something between $8-$10 billion for Twitter? Sure, why not? Eight-figure pre-money valuations for numerous West Coast consumer web start-ups? Hey, it’s just supply and demand, and besides which, they DID go through YCombinator. $50 billion+ for Facebook? How about $70 billion in a handful of trades on SecondMarket. Even $315 million for HuffPo. Is AOL nuts? What’s up?

There is a strong desire to characterize the market in a homogenous way, e.g., “We’re in a bubble” (Fred Wilson) or “Valuations are reasonable” (Chris Dixon). Bottom line, this doesn’t begin to explain the variations observed in nature. There is a world of difference between Quora and Facebook, YCombinator start-ups and Groupon, every “social shopping” start-up and Twitter. One needs to look beyond the headlines and ask “What is REALLY going on here?”

Check out the picture on the right.

You are looking at the interior of a 2010 Lexus SC 430.

You are also looking at the last production car to come with a cassette tape deck.

Starting with the 2011 model year "no manufacturer selling cars in the United States offers a tape player either as standard equipment or as an option on a new vehicle," reports to the New York Times.