THE global property bust that pulled the world into recession in 2008 began to lift in 2010. House prices turned up in Britain and stabilised in America (chart 1) but slid further in Spain. The process of deleveraging kept rich-world inflation subdued (chart 2).

The unemployment rate in Silicon Valley may be higher than the 9% national average, but that’s not making it any easier for some young technology start-ups looking to hire engineers.

Todd McKinnon, the co-founder and chief executive of San Francisco software start-up Okta Inc., calls the competition for top talent “a war.” His company, which this year raised $10 million in Series A funding from venture firm Andreessen Horowitz and angel investors, plans to spend 80% of its new capital on salaries, mostly for engineers.

Welcome to the New Year 2011! You’ve probably already made your resolutions, but if not, I suggest a renewed commitment to finding happiness and satisfaction in your work. After all, most of us spend more hours in this role than any other, and life is too short to spend most of your life unhappy.

If you haven’t tried it, one way to be happier at work is to be an entrepreneur, according to a recent survey in the UK, and an older one in the US. This is despite all the risks and stresses associated with starting and running a business and the fact that business owners do make a bit less than other executives.

The green tech industry will fondly remember 2010 as The Year After the Near-Death Experience.

So what happens next?

Things We’d Like to See Happen in Green Technology:

--The U.S. Establishes Long-Term Energy Policies. Investors, utilities, manufacturers, landlords and consumers all need long-term guidance. A national policy, ideally, would include carbon regulations, but tax credits and renewable power standards would be a tremendous help.

--Time-of-Use Pricing Begins to Spread. Demand for power soars in the afternoon, but the price for most consumers stays the same. Time-of-use pricing would create a market-based incentive to conserve. Utilities could finally justify their smart meter investments, too.

There’s been a lot of talk as of late regarding young entrepreneurs and the paths available to them; PayPal cofounder Peter Theil is going as far as to give 20 teams of entrepreneurs under 20 a two-year $100,000 fellowship on which to fund their next big ideas. Unfortunately, there simply aren’t that many investors out there to fund ideas from mostly unproven young adults, so it remains up to the entrepreneur to do it on their own.

For young adults, the best place to flex your entrepreneurial muscle is while you are in college — or at the very least when you are young enough to not be bogged down with a career.

1. Get Ready to be Broke

Tough lesson to learn. It gets even tougher when your company is actually generating revenue, but you need to reinvest it rather than take it off the table. Starting a company is about the long term investment, not the short term payoff. If you are focused in the short term, affiliate marketing or consulting is likely a better fit. These types of ventures allow you to run lucrative solo enterprises. If your goal is to build a company with a product or service that you are passionate about, then prepared for the early days of scraping.

Learn a lesson from my mistakes, this is easier without a family to feed.

As you’ve probably read, Steven Burrill’s predictions regarding the biotech industry go over at MedCity News the way former Detroit Lions President Matt Millen’s football forecasts go over in Michigan.

Nonetheless, it’s notable when the renowned biotech specialist, venture capitalist, author and keynote speaker offers his thoughts on currents events in life sciences and the future of the industry next year (even if it is to promote his upcoming book: Biotech 2011-Life Sciences: Looking Back to See Ahead).

Burrill believes the financial crisis has triggered changes in healthcare that have biotech executives “writing their new ‘play book’ in response.”

Looking to 2011. There have been plenty of Top Moments of 2010, but these typical end-of-the-year retrospectives have been short on 2011 predictions. N. Anthony Coles, president and CEO of Onyx Pharmaceuticals, offers his list:

1. An escalating legal battle over the constitutionality of President Obama’s healthcare reform legislation.
2. Implementation of the pharma tax, which is expected to raise $2.3 billion a year, and will target branded prescription drug sales of more than $5 million to Medicare and other government programs.
3. Rethinking biopharma and physician relationships in light of the implementation of the Sunshine Act in 2012.

As part of my entrepreneurship classes, I teach my students to raise capital. When people find this out, they often ask one question: What’s the most important thing I need to know about raising money? For entrepreneurs, four lessons are especially important.

1. For most entrepreneurs, seeking outside financing isn’t worth your time. Only a small fraction of new businesses obtain money from someone who is not a founder of the business.  Therefore, unless your business has a lot of hard assets that can be used as collateral for a loan, or one of a handful of startups that has the super-high growth potential and exit plan to attract accredited angel investors and venture capitalists, seeking outside money is unlikely to be fruitful.  You are better off developing a less capital-intensive business model and financing the startup yourself than you are spending your time trying to raise money.

How can you tell a real business opportunity, one with staying power,  from last year’s opportunity?

Some fields might seem hot right now but, for many, there’s a good chance that the real opportunity was over five months ago and the field will be totally glutted by February.

Then, too, the opportunities that shine like a beacon for larger firms might not work so well for microbusinesses.

So, how do you find microbusiness opportunities with staying power?

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.

As U.S. small businesses employ nearly 50 percent of the private workforce, many analysts are predicting that economic recovery will come primarily from this sector.

However, unemployment remains leveled at a stubborn 9.8 percent, and many economists such as Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke have claimed it may take several years for unemployment to drop to pre-recession levels.

As we wrap up 2010, things might seem bleak. The common wisdom says that the chickens have all come home to roost from a disastrous series of economic decisions including outsourcing the manufacture of America’s physical goods. The pundits say the American dream is dead and this next decade will see the further decline and fall of the West and in particular of the United States.

Personally, I think there’s a chance that the common wisdom is very, very wrong – and that the second decade of the 21st century may turn out to be the West’s – and in particular the United States’ – finest hour.

A warm and cuddly environment for companies sounds wonderful. A way to encourage the innovative economy that a high cost country such as the UK needs to sustain. We should see Incubators as the nursery schools for companies and Science Parks as the Secondary schools. Although rather less emphasis on testing and CRB checks!

Physical Infrastructure is the description on the Innovation Map, a bit dry and a limited shorthand necessary on such an overview. Looking at real life the offering from successful Incubators and Science Parks is a lot more sophisticated, as they keep telling me, so apologies to friends in the incubator and science park movements.

My advice for the new year: go East and South, young man and woman … and investor. America, Europe, and Japan are stagnant and ponderous. More and more, in the coming years, the real moving and shaking will happen elsewhere.

“2011 will be the year Android explodes!” cried a recent headline, citing a new Broadcom chipset that will reportedly make sub-$100 unsubsidized smartphones ubiquitous. Maybe so, but I second MG’s skepticism: North American carriers will fight this tooth and nail, and even when they lose, we’ll still have to wait for the three-year contracts that are status quo here to finally die. If that chipset is real, though, the headline’s not wrong; Android will explode … in the developing world, where virtually all phone service is pre-paid. (As, ahem, I predicted 20 months ago.)

Which state has the highest per capita marijuana use? Who has the most horses? Deer-collisions? What about suicides? Rice production?

There will be some stats on this graphic by our friends at 1bog that will not surprise you, such as the state with the largest economy or the most wind farms, but some of the stats will likely blow your mind.

Rick Snyder makes no secret of his urbanist tendencies or his belief that Michigan’s economy requires a healthy Detroit. He said as much during his Election Night victory speech.

The incoming Republican governor even tapped Dave Bing, Detroit’s Democratic mayor to serve as his inauguration’s master of ceremonies.

To be sure, Lansing can only help a Detroit that helps itself. But that’s finally happening.

Earlier this month, Americans woke up to the bad news that their education system was just "average" in the developed world. Worse news, however, was that Shanghai, China took the top spot. For a country already in a declinist mood, this was a blow. Perhaps not even U.S. President Barack Obama thought the future would arrive so quickly: As he told a group of educators at the White House earlier this year, the "nation that out-educates us today is going to out-compete us tomorrow." 

America is rightfully worried about its sinking competitiveness, and does indeed need to improve its education system. But it could win the battle and lose the war, because India's and China's successes aren't due to their education systems, but despite them. You've probably heard of Indian outsourcing hotspots like Bangalore and Chennai, but it's not just call centers and software sweatshops Americans now need to worry about: Technology entrepreneurship is booming all over in China and India, and is beginning to innovate; these startups will soon start competing with Silicon Valley. The next Google could well be cooked up in a garage in Guangzhou or Ahmedabad.