Pundits often assume that what most established businesses need to survive – low taxes and less regulation – are equally important for fast‐growing tech firms. In fact, recent interviews with leaders of fast‐growing firms in a variety of industries and growth stages reveal something quite different. The good news is that what they want, the new governor can deliver readily.

To find out what would make Connecticut a compelling place for fast‐growing technology companies, starting in June 2010 the Connecticut Technology Council interviewed a cross‐section of Connecticut’s fastest growing and strongest enterprises in most technology clusters, from start‐ups to established titans. We also assembled a team of business leaders and graduate students, predominately from Yale and University of Connecticut, to research issues brought up by the CEOs and to review past reports and analyses of states’ competiveness. What we found surprised us.

Today’s most successful entrepreneurs and managers have a common and surprisingly consistent view—the state is not on their innovation and growth wave length. One after another the CEOs told us they like the quality of life here, but that it is a suboptimal location for their business. They expressed concern that the state’s leaders “don’t get it” when it comes to making Connecticut’s institutions flexible and innovation‐oriented. And given the high costs of running a business in Connecticut, the CEOs we spoke with expect our leaders to “get it.”

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If you've just stumbled upon Business Insider recently, then you've missed a ton of excellent stuff.

Our writers compiled a list of the most popular business strategy and entrepreneurship articles we've written in 2010.

See the best of marketing, strategy, social media, hiring, and just plain fun articles for a perfect "in-between-week" reading break.

One of the most pleasurable days of my life was when my kids picked out items they wanted to sell, put price tags on them, painted signs that they then copied at a copy store and then hung up all over town, and then bargained, negotiated, and made deals left and right until the front of our lawn was empty of all the items they wanted to sell.

Every kid needs entrepreneurial experience. The feeling that you create something powerful enough that people pay money for it. Its exhilarating and inspires growth in so many ways. But its not about reading, or studying, or being smart, or even providing a good role model. The only way your kid will be an entrepreneur is if he or she starts TODAY.

If your startup is great enough to get a term sheet from angel investors or a venture capitalist, the next step for the investor is to complete the dreaded due diligence process. This is the last step of the process, where surprises in the evaluation of the management team, documentation, and personnel problems can derail the investment.

Some startups do nothing to prepare for the due diligence process, assuming the people and business plan documents will speak for themselves. Others stage elaborate “training” sessions, to “assure” that everyone tells the same story. The right answer is somewhere in between.

I believe that proactive preparation for due diligence is a bigger job than the work for investor meetings, because your whole team is involved, not just you as the CEO. If there are financial anomalies, or someone on the team doesn’t know the current strategy, or is unhappy with you or the company, the investment will be jeopardized.

The burn: Finding yourself stuck in an unfulfilling annual process cordially called “life.”

The diagnosis: Going through life without assessing performance, results, and direction only encourages monotony and mediocrity. Machines were created for mindless, rote tasks, not humans. In fact, what makes us unique compared to even the most sophisticated robots is our ability to reflect and ruminate.

Life should not be a mundane process – and nor does it need to be. With some thought, reflection, and planning life can become a journey of purpose and passion. But I assure you, this doesn’t happen without being proactive and very honest with yourself. Keep in mind:

If you do not confront your past, you are destined to repeat it.

BEIJING - China's first national private equity "fund of funds", which invests in other funds, started operating on Tuesday, and one of its primary aims is to support the overseas expansion of Chinese enterprises.

Set up by China Development Bank (CDB) and Suzhou Venture Group, the Suzhou-based Guochuang Fund of Funds has 60 billion yuan ($9 billion) under management.

The first-phase investment of 15 billion yuan will mainly be raised among big Chinese companies and funds, such as the Social Security Fund, China Life Insurance Company Limited, China Reinsurance (Group) Corporation, and Huawei Technologies.

The initial investment consists of two parts, 10 billion yuan for private equity and 5 billion yuan for venture capital investment.

Thanks to Gap's face-plant of a logo revamp, 2010 will go down in the historical ledger as the worst year for brand design since, well, OK, just last year. Still, it’s a damn shame, because the past 12 months have witnessed a raft of branding innovations, from a classed-up packaging concept for Tang to logos that morph across the full spectrum of modern-day media. Here, we’ve compiled eight of the best branding schemes we saw this year. (And, in the interest of objective journalism, we’ve also thrown in a couple that make us want to barf.)

I may not have been an early bird since birth, but after years of training myself to jump-start my day, my body naturally wants to get a move on as soon as it’s light outside. In fact, I’m now almost incapable of sleeping past 8 a.m.

Some people may consider that a tragic flaw, but I enjoy getting up early. I like not being rushed as I prepare for work, and I enjoy the morning hour when I’m alone in the office. For some people, waking up early isn’t the easiest lifestyle to sustain, but for those who can stick it out, it offers a bevy of benefits.

Spies and the Internet

The year started off with revelations from Google that China was attacking the Web giant's corporate infrastructure (Google Reveals Chinese Espionage Efforts). The company said, among other things, that the attackers went after Gmail accounts belonging to Chinese human-rights activists, and that 20 other large companies had also been targeted.

That was the first of many examples of how the Internet is changing the way secrets are being kept and revealed. In April, researchers from the Citizen Lab at the Munk School of Global Affairs detailed how over the course of several months social sites helped hackers steal classified documents from the Indian government (Social Sites Cover Chinese Hackers' Tracks).

SAN FRANCISCO — Internet entrepreneurs climb on stage at technology conferences and praise a world in which everyone is perpetually connected to the Web.

But down in the audience, where people are busy typing and transmitting this wisdom, getting a Wi-Fi connection is often downright impossible.

“I’ve been to 50 events where the organizer gets on stage and says, ‘It will work,’ ” said Jason Calacanis, chief executive of Mahalo, a Web search company. “It never does.”

A University of New Brunswick student from Miramichi has been selected for a prestigious entrepreneurship program designed to help launch the careers of Canada's next high-impact entrepreneurs.

Ryan Brideau, currently a University of New Brunswick physics and economics student, will head to Toronto's Massey College in May to be part of The Next 36 program, an intensive entrepreneurial boot camp led by acclaimed business professors, Canadian entrepreneurs and business leaders.

"That's what I'm really looking for. I'm looking for people to push me," Brideau said.

This is the inaugural year for The Next36, and over 1,300 students registered to apply for the program.

The initial process itself was extensive. Applicants were required to submit two references, several essays, a list of awards and extracurricular activities, and a university transcript.

VCs are good for much more than just their money. I have never gotten VC funding, but I have had many VCs help me.

VCs might get criticized for their lack of domain knowledge, but they have great general business knowledge, and a VC’s BlackBerry can be a distribution channel in itself. The tricky part is charming them into helping you. These steps will help you navigate your way into new worlds and go from outsider to VIP. Think of this as life-hacking and accelerated networking.

As 2010 comes to a close, we asked several venture capital investors to reflect on the past year and give us their outlook for 2011. We’ll be bringing you their responses over the coming days.

Next up in the series is Scott Sandell, general partner at New Enterprise Associates. Sandell, who focuses on information technology and alternative energy and is responsible for NEA’s activities in China, thinks funding will be in short supply for many companies, but that the contraction of the industry is “exactly what is needed” for the long run.

The frenzy to own a piece of one of the white-hot Internet companies rumbling toward what is expected to be an eventual blockbuster IPO has caught the attention of the Securities and Exchange Commission. The regulatory agency has sent information requests to people involved in the buying and selling of shares in Facebook, Twitter, Zynga and LinkedIn, according to the New York Times, which cited sources familiar with the inquiry.

SecondMarket, the most well-known private-shares marketplace, told the Wall Street Journal it had not been contacted by the SEC, raising the possibility that the agency’s focus could be on the slew of company-specific funds that have cropped up in recent months focused on buying up private-company shares on behalf of limited partners - often individuals who may not be professional investors.

In the middle of the 19th century blackboards were all the rage. According to Pennsylvania State University engineering communication professor Michael Alley, it was common for universities and research institutions to proudly advertise that they had the only slate writing board in a 100-mile radius. Scientific lectures became more engaging than they’d ever been.

More than 150 years later, there’s still room for improvement. “People are not anywhere close to tapping the potential that a PowerPoint presentation offers,” Alley says. “We have a tool that can do an incredible amount, and people just waste it.” Who hasn’t been lulled into a somnolent state by some well-intentioned scientist presenting his research to a captive audience by reading a seemingly endless stream of bullet points?

Earlier this years Linkedin Labs, which showcases projects created by LinkedIn employees, launched a feature that lets you quickly convert your profile on the professional social networking site into a more traditional resume. It’s quite slick, with a handful of templates to choose from and buttons to convert it to PDF for easy printing (or to share it on Twitter and Facebook).

Now SnapPages, a website builder that we’ve covered before, has launched a new feature that does something similar, but with a bit more flexibility. SnapPages founder Steve Testone explains that many of the site’s users have said that it would be helpful if they could create ‘resume websites’ that would let them showcase their work experience in a format that doesn’t look identical to everyone else’s. To help with that, SnapPages has launched a new resume builder.

Cloud computing blogger Chirag Mehta and Constellation Research Group principal analyst R "Ray" Wang published today a list of their cloud computing predictions for 2011. The pair sees public cloud adoption stalling temporarily, the spread of the app store model in the enterprise, the convergence of Development-as-a-Service and Platform-as-a-Service and an overall simplification of the technology landscape as some of the most important trends in cloud computing in 2011.

Mehta and Wang's predictions are:

1. Most new procurement will be replaced with cloud strategies
2. Private clouds will serve as a stepping stone to public clouds
3. Cloud customers will stop saying "the cloud is not secured" and start asking hard questions about how the cloud can be secured
4. Public cloud adoption will be temporarily reduced by concerns about cybersecurity. Private clouds will be kept for security and backups.
5. A transition from best-of-breed purpose-built applications to "cloud mega stacks" will occur. (See our article "Jive Just Became a Platform Vendor" for more on this idea.)