On Wednesday, May 26, 2010, just after 2:30 p.m., the unthinkable happened: Apple became the largest company in the tech universe, and, after ExxonMobil, the second largest in the nation. For months, its market capitalization had hovered just under that of Microsoft -- the giant that buried Apple and then saved it from almost certain demise with a $150 million investment in 1997. Now Microsoft gets in line with Google, Amazon, HTC, Nokia, and HP as companies that Apple seems bent on sidelining. The one-time underdog from Cupertino is the biggest music company in the world and soon may rule the market for e-books as well. What's next? Farming? Toothbrushes? Fixing the airline industry?

Right now, it seems as if Apple could do all that and more. The company's surge over the past few years has resembled a space-shuttle launch -- a series of rapid, tightly choreographed explosions that leave everyone dumbfounded and smiling. The whole thing has happened so quickly, and seemed so natural, that there has been little opportunity to understand what we have been witnessing.

The company, its leader, and its products have become cultural lingua franca. Dell wants to be the Apple for business; Zipcar the Apple for car sharing. Industries such as health care and clean energy search for their own Steve Jobs, while comedian Bill Maher says the government would be better run if the Apple CEO were head of state. (The Justice Department and FTC, which are both investigating Apple's tactics, might disagree.) A Minnesota Vikings fan dubs his team the "iTunes of quarterbacks," serially sampling one track from a player's career, as with Brett Favre, rather than buying the whole album as the Colts have done with Peyton Manning.

As a venture capitalist active in emerging technologies, I meet with countless entrepreneurs looking for seed capital. Many of the start-up founders I meet are scientists with PhD's. These individuals are brilliant - indeed they are passionate about their ideas, inventions and products - but too often they lack the business and marketing acumen they need to turn ideas into successful companies.

This impression leaves me feeling a certain degree of concern primarily for the cleantech sector. If you are an electrical engineer designing cutting edge semiconductors in Palo Alto, I'm not worried about your business prospects; you'll be fine. If you are a microbiologist developing lifesaving pharmaceuticals in Boston, I'm not worried about you, either. And if you are a cognitive scientist applying air force simulator training to user experience on the Internet with offices are in Tel Aviv, I'm confident that you, too, are in your element.

 Here's who I am worried about: the fluid dynamics physicists in Texas developing better turbines for wind energy; the botanists in Nevada developing agricultural technology for arid regions; the civil engineers in Ireland figuring out a grid system for electric cars; Chinese desalination specialists bringing water tech to the next level; photovoltaic scientists working to solve storage issues in Spain, and the biochemists developing more efficient bio gas in Germany. Why am I worried?

THANKS TO PAUL RAETSCH FOR THE LEAD TO THIS ARTICLE.

To see the future of solar power, take an hour-long train ride inland from Shanghai and then a horn-blaring cab trek through the smog of Wuxi, a fast-growing Chinese city of five million. After winding through an industrial park, you will arrive at the front door of Suntech Power, a company that in the few years since its founding has become the world's largest maker of crystalline-silicon solar panels.

Solar panels cover the entire front face of the sprawling eight-story headquarters. Nearly 2,600 two-meter-long panels form the largest grid-connected solar façade in the world. Together with an array of 1,800 smaller panels on the roof, it can generate a megawatt of power on a sunny day. It's expected to produce over a million kilowatt-hours of electricity in a year--enough for more than 300 people in China.

In 2001, when Suntech was founded, all the solar-panel factories in China operating at full capacity would have taken six months to build enough panels for such a massive array. Suntech's first factory, which opened in 2002, cut that time to a little more than a month. Today, the company can make that many panels in less than one 12-hour shift. By the end of this year, the workers could be done by lunchtime. Suntech's production capacity has increased from 10 megawatts a year in 2002 to well over 1,000 megawatts today. Chinese solar manufacturing as a whole has increased its capacity from two megawatts in 2001 to over 4,000 megawatts.

In a story we’ve just published, Pamela Ryckman writes about Bizdom U, an intense program in entrepreneurship that helps students like James Smith Moore, shown above, start businesses — and that also has ambitions to revive the city of Detroit.

Interestingly, Ms. Ryckman writes that the program, created by Dan Gilbert, who founded Quicken Loans and owns the Cleveland Cavaliers, “operates on the principle that entrepreneurs are born, not made. Its program leaders do not necessarily believe entrepreneurship can be taught. Instead, an essential part of Bizdom U’s job is to unearth candidates with a distinct combination of vision, ambition, drive and risk tolerance and then mold them into business owners.”

Do you think entrepreneurship can be taught?

In a TED talk earlier this year in Edmonton, serial entrepreneur Cameron Herold tackles a subject that we've written about here on ReadWriteStart before: how to raise the next generation of entrepreneurs and how to foster a culture that encourages startups.

Herold wants to see parents and schools nurture entrepreneurial traits, traits like tenacity, leadership, introspection, networking, and sales. "We miss an opportunity to find kids that have entrepreneurial traits," says Herold, "and to show them that being an entrepreneur is a cool thing."

In his talk, Herold rails against the school system for grooming kids for "good jobs," but not promoting entrepreneurship as a viable career option.

There’s a lot of good web writing on corporate culture lately.  Business Insider has a series by Small Business Trends regular Lisa Barone on corporate culture and innovation. And Tony Hsieh of Zappos set off a wave of blog posts with his post about culture on Inc. There’s some great advice here. I really like Lisa’s list of major factors in corporate culture and innovation. And who’d want to argue with Tony and Zappos’ success?

But meanwhile, good as that advice is, I can’t resist adding some warnings about old-fashioned implementation, particularly as corporate culture applies to small business.

1. Culture isn’t Corporate in small business

We shouldn’t write about corporate culture in small businesses because small businesses do have their unique cultures but they aren’t corporate. There’s a real difference between culture as you and I deal with it in small business, and corporate culture in larger businesses.

The conversation today on innovation tends to focus on the corporate level  – how can companies prepare themselves, how should they be organized, who are the best of the best, etc. It’s time we take a look at what needs to happen at the individual level (after all this is where “the rubber meets the road” when it comes to successful innovation).

The new innovation framework will require the development of new skills for all players.  These new skills will allow individuals (and ultimately companies) to thrive in this new paradigm.  A few critical skills that will significantly aid individual innovators are:

• Learn to frame the question properly – When presented with a challenge, too often as individuals we focus immediately on ways to solve that challenge without taking into consideration whether or not it was a well-defined challenge to begin with.  Take a step back from the problem you are trying to solve and try to come up with new ways to ask the question. Become skilled in clear oral and written communication. Develop a “Frame and Connect” mindset – these new insights can go a long way to getting to the right answer!

A few years ago, I asked an investor who specialized in Russian and Eastern European investments what the current business climate and atmosphere was like in the Far East.

The level of scientific research and the quality of the scientists and engineers was top-notch, he said. A large number of the projects that had been inaugurated and funded by the former Soviet Union with potential commercial application had also not been exploited.

This corresponded with what I had heard from other companies. Intel years earlier had opened a lab in Nizny Novograd that performed much of the company's communications research. Ten PhDs could be hired for the price of a single American, former Intel exec Pat Gelsinger told me. Search engines like Yandex rivalled Google in the country. And ideas like underground coal gasification were coming to the West by being licensed to startups like Laurus Energy.

The sluggish U.S. jobs recovery is inching beyond the industrial South and Midwest, and is spreading toward the service-heavy economies of the two coasts, in a sign of hope for a labor force hit by the worst recession in generations.

New Labor Department data, released Friday, showed that the decline in unemployment was widespread: The jobless rate fell last month from April in 37 states, plus the District of Columbia.

"The recovery has spread out," said Steven Cochrane, an economist at Moody's Analytics.

The U.S. has added nearly a million jobs since the trough of the recession in December 2009, including some temporary Census Bureau jobs that will soon disappear. The gains have been uneven. States with big manufacturing and natural-resource sectors like Texas and Indiana have enjoyed steady growth, while states like Nevada, where the housing bust was especially dire, have lagged badly.

Personal branding is a hot concept, which is both good news and bad. For fans of the idea, its ascendancy means more people can benefit from presenting themselves in a compelling way. For those trying to stand out from the personal branding herd, however, it could be a problem.

With everyone and their mother trying to make a name for themselves, it’s harder and harder to be heard through all the noise. To do so you need expert help, and for top tips there are few better qualified to help than entrepreneur and uber-blogger Guy Kawasaki. Recently on Dan Schawbel’s Personal Branding Blog, Pete Kistler dug into Kawasaki’s book Art of the Start and outlined five secrets of personal branding success he found there:

• Make Meaning, Not Money. If you’re into personal branding with the goal of making money, stop now. You will attract the wrong kind of people into your life. Instead, start with the goal of making meaning. What better way to align all your actions with your long-term goals. What kind of meaning will you make? Kawasaki suggests two ideas for inspiration: 1) right a wrong, or 2) prevent the end of something good. What will you do to make the world a better place?

We have invested in many first time founding teams that have never participated in a board meeting before.

To make them useful it’s good to be prepared and engage your board.

Here is an outline I like to use. Of course there can be different versions of this depending on the stage of the company, but for early stage, I think the following works pretty well:

1. Overview and metrics
2. Product update and roadmap
3. Staffing
4. Objectives for the year and progress against those goals

We worship innovation and creativity. Forget about that guy in the U.S. Patent Office reputed to have said that there was nothing left to invent: We're certain that there are oodles of new gizmos, gadgets, processes and potions waiting in the wings, poised to provide us with things that we don't even know we want or need.

As business drivers, invention and innovation are usually cited at the top of the heap of things required for substantial growth. But often, companies are wary of marketing something completely untried and untested in the market. Here are two new books that look at offering something new - and something newish - in business.

"The Complete Idiot's Guide to Cashing in on Your Inventions" by Richard C. Levy; Alpha, 400 pages ($19.95).

Wichita, Kansas, June 16, 2010 - NetWork Kansas announced today that it will coordinate and provide matching funds for the launch of an Economic Gardening pilot program for businesses in rural communities throughout Kansas. In addition to existing NetWork Kansas funds, NetWork Kansas also received a $50,000 Rural Business Enterprise Grant from USDA Rural Development to help fund the pilot program.

NetWork Kansas has collaborated with an Economic Gardening Working Group convened by the Kansas Department of Commerce Rural Development Division since the fall of 2009 to determine the pilot program's objectives, scope, and criteria for evaluation. Current members of the working group crafting the vision and direction for this pilot program include representatives from the following organizations: Advanced Manufacturing Institute at Kansas State University; Kansas Department of Commerce Business Development Division; Kansas Economic Development Alliance; Kansas Inc.; Kansas Small Business Development Centers; Kansas Technology Enterprise Corporation; NetWork Kansas; Western Kansas Rural Economic Development Alliance (wKREDA); and Wichita Technology Corporation.

If you’re an entrepreneur, odds are you’re insanely busy. You may welcome constructive suggestions to improve your business, but don’t really have time to hunt for answers. The good news is there are plenty of great books on the market that can help make a difference.

No time to read? You’re not alone. But starting tomorrow here in the Entrepreneur Corner, I’ll be providing monthly reviews of helpful books for entrepreneurs that are meant to at least capture the authors’ big ideas.

I love reading: the value you get from an insightful book amazes me. You are, in essence, getting the benefit of an author’s life’s work for a trivial amount of money and an investment of a handful of hours. Even more, I am entertained in the process.

James Smith Moore, the son of a single mother on Detroit’s east side, knows how to hustle.

He started a lizard-breeding business at age 15 and sold more than 500 hatchlings online for $15 to $80 apiece.

At 16, after local stores ran out of a certain popular Nike sneaker, he hired a manufacturer in China to supply him with knock-offs, which he sold for $80 to $200 a pair on his own Web site as well as eBay and other auction sites. Four months later, he received a cease-and-desist letter, but he had made a $14,000 profit, enough to buy his first car, The New York Times’s Pamela Ryckman writes.

This bootstrapping spirit got Mr. Moore, now 21, accepted into Bizdom U, an intense boot camp for aspiring entrepreneurs who aim to start high-growth businesses in Detroit. Bizdom U is the brainchild of Dan Gilbert, a Motor City native who is founder and chairman of the online mortgage lender Quicken Loans. He also hopes to help revitalize his hometown.

You want to buy a new company, expand operations, acquire a business, or raise capital. You’ve decided to go for venture capital funding versus a bank loan for a multitude of reasons from the risks involved to the amount you need to carry out your plan.

Do you know as much as you’d like about gaining capital? Most people don’t. Their expertise is in their business, not in capital funding. Here are ways to protect yourself from vultures, deals you can’t afford, and the nightmares of both.

Some quick explanations:

A venture capitalist (VC) is a person, group of people, company, or group of companies with money to invest in your business.

A VC broker represents you (or possibly a VC) and arranges the parties to create a deal. This article is about working with the broker.

The event also marked the debut of a Global CEO Survey and Index on Competitiveness in Manufacturing. The survey, commissioned by the Council and Deloitte, indicated that access to talented workers capable of supporting innovation is the key factor driving global competitiveness at manufacturing companies.

Applications accepted to fund as many as 15 existing clusters

Washington, D.C. - infoZine - The U.S. Small Business Administration announced the availability of funding to support economic development and job creation through existing regional clusters. As part of its Regional Cluster Initiative, SBA will accept proposals from local and regional cluster initiatives beginning July 7 for funding of up to $600,000 per cluster to support up to 15 projects across the country. Proposals should be submitted by the cluster’s coordinating entity.

SBA’s Regional Cluster Initiative focuses on accelerating small business growth and job creation through clusters that leverage and align a region’s economic, business and workforce assets. Regional clusters are networks of organizations and businesses in a geographic area that grow through increased collaboration, efficiency and innovation.

“Clusters bring together many businesses and organizations in a region to maximize the economic strengths of that region, enhancing its ability to compete on a national and global scale,” SBA Administrator Karen Mills said. “SBA is committed to providing both financial and technical assistance resources that can be a catalyst for accelerating a regional cluster’s viability and lead to sustainable economic growth and job creation.”

What will population centers look like in 20 years' time? Innovations in transportation, energy production and technology will have to keep pace with a host of challenges.

So, yo’are an eager entrepreneur with the next best thing since sliced bread in your hands and your IP adviser has told you that you must not expose your idea without first securing a Non Disclosure Agreement (NDA).

So far, that makes sense and seems like good advice.

Next, you decide to approach investors so that you can ask them to put their hard-earned money into your fledgling business and help turn your great IP into mountains of cash.

That too makes sense and seems a reasonable approach.

Your IP attorney, or your lawyer provide you with the correct documentation — a Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA) or a Confidentiality Agreement (CA) designed to protect your intellectual property (IP). (One copied from a mate is not a good idea, unless your mate is a specialist lawyer.)