Michigan’s angel, venture capital and entrepreneur communities are hailing this week’s passage by the state Legislature of tax breaks for angel investors. The bill, passed by both houses and expected to be signed into law by Gov. Jennifer Granholm, gives angel investors a 25 percent tax credit over two years, with a maximum of $250,000 per year and per investment.

The legislation was pushed heavily by angel investors in the state and by the Michigan Venture Capital Association. Longtime Michigan angel investor Terry Cross says that while he has not read the final bill yet, he is optimistic about it.

A few angel investors have slipped or fallen from their lofty perch, so entrepreneurs must take great care to validate the character and reputation of every prospective investor. The entrepreneur’s tendency to be in a huge hurry to obtain the funding can end up being disastrous, and play into the hands of these less scrupulous investors.

Many entrepreneurs believe all money is created equal. As long as somebody recognizes their million dollar idea and writes them a check, the source really doesn't matter. In fact, most angels are pure, but there are some exceptions that may cost you more than an investment:

1. Shark angels. This is the ultimate bad guy whose sole intention of getting involved in early-stage investing is to take advantage of what they believe is the entrepreneur’s lack of financial and deal-making experience. If the term sheet process turns to pure torture, it may be time to respectfully bow out.

In a memorable scene in the movie “The Social Network,” Sean Parker, the investor played by Justin Timberlake, leans over the table and tells the founders of Facebook in a conspiratorial tone: “A million dollars isn’t cool. You know what’s cool? A billion dollars.”

These days in Silicon Valley, a billion dollars seems downright quaint. The enthusiasm for social networking and mobile apps has venture capitalists clamoring to give money to young companies.

The exuberance has given rise to an elite club of start-ups — all younger than seven years and all worth billions. Successive investments in Twitter have reportedly increased its value 33 percent, to $4 billion, while Zynga, creator of the popular Facebook game FarmVille, is worth more than $5 billion.

The International Institute for Analytics this week released nine predictions for business analytics in 2011 — including a prediction that it won't take much economic growth next year to spark huge growth for analytics.

IIA, founded by analytics researcher Tom Davenport and sponsored by the likes of SAS, Intel, Accenture and Teradata, unveiled the list on a conference call this week.

The group is predicting strong growth for analytics, with a growing competitive edge for companies using analytics. Here's IIA's predictions for the year ahead.

1. With even modest economic growth in 2011, the use of analytics as a competitive differentiator in selected industries will explode. IIA says the biggest industries for analytics will be banking, insurance, healthcare, telecom, retail, energy, media and transportation. "IIA expects 2011 to mark the beginning of a multi-year cycle where the sparks of economic growth ignite a tinderbox of technology and business forces that are set to drive mainstream adoption of business analytics across commercial and government sectors," the group said.

The burn: Come the end of the day, little can be shown for hours of “work” at the office.

The diagnosis: When asked the question, “Where do you go when you really need to get something done?” people do not respond in ways businesses expect. For a boss or company owner, the ideal answer would likely be “work.” But it seldom is.

This is a fascinating and important observation. There is no doubt about it: The world is changing and it is impacting all arenas of life – especially the way we approach one of our most consuming activities: Our occupation, career, and working life.

A survey in English universities has found record levels of enterprise and entrepreneurship among students who look to setting up their own businesses as an alternative career path.
The bi-annual survey by the National Council for Graduate Entrepreneurship (NCGE) shows that (comparisons are with the previous survey in 2007):

* Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) have become more enterprising with most institutions now committed to it through their mission statements
* The student engagement rate in enterprise and entrepreneurship has risen by nearly 50 per cent
* The level of start-ups has increased to an average of 28 per HEI, representing an increase of 27 per cent.

Qualcomm Ventures is promoting QPrize, a global competition for entrepreneurs and start-ups that are seeking their first “seed” round of funding. We are looking for entrepreneurs who have business ideas based on innovative technology and need a little capital to get them off the ground. We are hosting six regional competitions and selecting eight finalists from within each region. The winners from each region will receive $100,000 in convertible note funding and will be invited to compete in our Grand Prize final for an additional $150,000.

How does QPrize benefit entrepreneurs?
Last year, Qualcomm Ventures hosted four regional QPrize competitions and funded them with $550,000 in convertible note seed capital. All four winners went on to secure Series A investments from institutional investors.

How many times have you participated in a brainstorming session, only to be underwhelmed by the utter lack of follow up?

Unfortunately, in most businesses, this is often the norm.

Here's why:

1. The output of the session is underwhelming.

2. No one has taken the time, pre-brainstorm, to consider follow-up.

3. No criteria is established to evaluate the output.

4. No next steps are established at the end of the session.
5. No champions (i.e. process owners) are identified.
6. The champions are not really committed.
7. The champions are committed, but under-estimate the effort.

8. The ideas are too threatening to key stakeholders.
9. No one is accountable for results.

10. The project leader doesn't stay in contact with key players and "out of sight, out of mind" takes over.

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Fifty ideas have been enrolled in the 5th annual Innovate ND competition, involving 52 teams and a total of 92 participants. Twenty-two of the people enrolled participated last year and 10 of them finished in the Top 20.

Innovate ND is a statewide venture-building program that offers people with business ideas access to online entrepreneur education, business planning tools, and coaching and mentoring from successful entrepreneurs and proven business owners.

The top 20 entries will get the chance to pitch their business idea to a panel of potential investors. Up to five $15,000 cash prizes will be awarded as well as a wide variety of business services and potential seed capital investments to launch their businesses.

TO train its future leaders, General Electric has rising young stars study and visit an array of different organizations, from Google to West Point.

What can managers at the 132-year-old industrial giant learn from Google? A corporate mind-set that prizes “constant entrepreneurship,” says Jeffrey R. Immelt, G.E.’s chairman and chief executive, during an interview at his corporate headquarters in Fairfield, Conn.

And what wisdom is on tap at the United States Military Academy? “Adaptability” and “resiliency” amid uncertainty, says Mr. Immelt — skills as vital to surviving in business as they are on the battlefield.

Strategies are useful, he says, but only if they can quickly adjust to nasty real-world surprises. “In the words of the great philosopher Mike Tyson,” Mr. Immelt says, smiling, “everybody has a plan till they get punched in the mouth.”

1. Never price what you do so low that you resent doing it or serving the customer paying the low price. You’d both be better off if you didn’t do business together in the first place.

2. When you’re most certain of how something HAS to be done, it’s the right time to think of another way to accomplish it.

3. If you have limited time with people, give them big ideas. Don’t bog them down in little details.

4. I came home from working out one night this week to find a former employee of mine had dropped off her very special pumpkin bread for us. That just jumped to the top of my measures of employee loyalty!

5. If your blog posts aren’t any longer than tweets, maybe you should look at cutting back on your blogging.

Bangalore: Angel investment has gone through different stages of development since at first when angels were helping entrepreneurs with time and money. Then came the angel networks which were clusters comprising hundreds of angels who invested in early-stage ideas. Now even as the Indian entrepreneurial ecosystem is still shaping up, many experienced professionals are choosing to engage in angel investments with entrepreneurs in their individual capacities, reports Archana Rai of Economic Times.

These professionals are called "Real Angels" and they create a fresh layer of capital and expertise for aspiring entrepreneurs. This group include a cross section of experts like VeriSign country manager Shekhar Kirani, big-ticket entrepreneurs such as Jerry Rao of MphasiS, Alok Kejriwal of Games2Win, Naveen Tewari of In-Mobi , Ravindra Krishnappa of Vertexperts Consulting, industry mentor Sanjay Anandaram, as well as venture capitalists Ashish Gupta and Kanwaljit Singh of Helion Advisors who are occasional angels backing start-ups that do not fall within the purview of the fund.

Wall Streeters, this may be your chance to ditch that pinstripe suit and replace it with jeans and a T-shirt.

The New York City Investment Fund is teaming up with consulting firm Accenture to launch a seed program aimed at start-ups servicing the financial industry.

“New York City, which employs nearly half a million people in the financial services industry, is uniquely positioned to benefit from the growth of financial technology as an entrepreneurial sector,” said Kathryn Wylde, President & CEO of the Partnership for New York City, a nonprofit comprised of 200 New York-based chief executives.

In 1983, the Internet was still a secretive Defense Department computer networking project and the first cell phone – weighing in at 2 pounds and nicknamed “the brick” – was still several months away from hitting the market.

Hydrogen conjured images of bombs rather than fuel cells, and the term “knowledge economy” was mostly a theoretical concept reserved to academia.

IPods did not exist, nor did iPads, PDAs or PDFs.

However, the Research Triangle Park in North Carolina already was up and running, and well on its way toward anchoring the renowned Research Triangle of science- and technology-based economic development in the Tar Heel State.

To the southwest, meanwhile, the Georgia Institute of Technology was fully functioning, too, with an even longer record of research, commercialization and other activities related to knowledge-based economic development.

But here in South Carolina, there was no comparable entity or organization.

AMES, Iowa — Researchers from Iowa State University and the Ames Laboratory have developed a process capable of producing a thin and uniform light-absorbing layer on textured substrates that improves the efficiency of polymer solar cells by increasing light absorption.

“Our technology efficiently utilizes the light trapping scheme,” said Sumit Chaudhary, an Iowa State assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering and an associate of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Ames Laboratory. “And so solar cell efficiency improved by 20 percent.”

Details of the fabrication technology were recently published online by the journal Advanced Materials: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/adma.201002898/abstract;jsessionid=D83B2095A0572345BF38B850977F0568.d03t01

For most of the past century, the financial-services industry has used actuarial tables to design life-insurance policies, pensions, and other products based on predictions of human lifespan. These "life tables" rely on historical death rates to predict the future longevity of broadly defined population groups. But human life expectancy has increased dramatically—from 47 years in 1900 to 77 today in the United States, with similar surges around the world, leading to skyrocking pension and healthcare costs. What's more, sizable variations in longevity have emerged among different subgroups. Thus the financial-services industry no longer considers life tables adequate, as they leave too much room for companies to lose money.

A growing number of corporations and governments are turning to an emerging group of lifespan modelers. These experts are studying the living in an attempt to predict who will make it well into old age—and who won't. "Life tables are crude and based on the past," says S. Jay Olshansky, a professor of epidemiology at the University of Illinois at Chicago and co-founder of GD Analytics, a longevity consulting firm. Olshanksy says we now need to "generate much more finely grained estimates of survival."

Did you know, in Australia, it takes an average 51.8 days to get paid, according to Dunn & Bradstreet?

Frustration with tardy debtors was the obvious impetus behind this nifty invention from Belgium outfit ikki; an invoice with a voice-chip that begins to make weeping noises 20 seconds after the envelope is opened. (How? The chip reacts to light.)

However, what’s truly inventive about the ‘crying invoice’ is its other purpose.