At age 7, I was selling lemonade on the corner. A few years later, looking for even higher margin product, I started checking the prices on different beverages around the house and noticed wine sold for more than juice.

I remembered an episode of I Love Lucy where Lucille Ball stood in a massive vat of grapes crushing them into wine, so I crushed a bag of grapes into a mini clay urn, sealed-off the top with electrical tape and hid it in my tree-house to ferment in an attempt to make my own wine to sell.

Chateaux Fields never quite made it to market, but to this day, I can remember the smell when I opened that urn a month later.

Thinking of starting the next Twitter, Groupon, or Facebook? With these remarkable successes permeating the media, most aspiring entrepreneurs don’t get to hear about the reality of business ownership for 99.99 percent of those who start a new venture. Here are five of the most common myths—along with one absolute truth—about entrepreneurship.

Myth 1: You get to do more of what you love. Everyone thinks that if you love to do something, you’ll get to do more of it when you run a business. Wrong! When you run a business, you have to do and oversee many functions, from marketing to accounting to handling employees to dealing with customer service and more. So at the end of the day, you actually spend less time doing whatever it is you enjoy doing. Your job as an entrepreneur is not to do one thing—it’s to run a business. So, if you love to wear multiple hats and are jazzed by the idea of managing all aspects of an operation, and you think you’ve got the chops to do it, you’re headed in the right direction. If not, beware of the myth.

A report released today by the National Research Council presents a new framework for K-12 science education that identifies the key scientific ideas and practices all students should learn by the end of high school. The framework will serve as the foundation for new K-12 science education standards, to replace those issued more than a decade ago. The National Research Council is the operating arm of the National Academy of Sciences and National Academy of Engineering; all three are independent, nongovernmental organizations.

The committee that wrote the report sees the need for significant improvements in how science is taught in the U.S. The new framework is designed to help students gradually deepen their knowledge of core ideas in four disciplinary areas over multiple years of school, rather than acquire shallow knowledge of many topics. And it strongly emphasizes the practices of science – helping students learn to plan and carry out investigations, for example, and to engage in argumentation from evidence.

Five Ways to “Think Different” by Jeff Dyer, Hal Gregersen, and Clayton M. Christensen co-authors of  "THE INNOVATOR’S DNA: Mastering the Five Skills of Disruptive Innovators"

A few years ago, we set out to discover where innovative ideas come from. So much had been written on the innovation of organizations – thanks, primarily, to the pioneering work of our co-author, Clayton M. Christensen in The Innovator’s Dilemma and The Innovator’s Solution.

But we wanted to know more about the actual people who came up with these brilliant ideas.

We set out on a study that involved over 5,000 executives, and identified five skills that innovative thinkers regularly practice – and that anyone can follow to become innovators themselves. During the course of this study, we discovered that of the five skills, the most important one is a cognitive skill we call “associational thinking.” It helps you discover new directions by making connections across seemingly unrelated questions, problems, or ideas. It’s what Apple [AAPL  388.32    11.47  (+3.04%)   ] means when they say, “Think Different.”

Google AdWords is a dynamic, auction-based marketplace where advertisers bid on keywords to compete for top ad placement. The minimum bid per keyword is 5 cents, but this research shows that in highly competitive categories, Google can make up to $50 per click.

According to Wordstream, these are the top 10 most expensive keywords to buy from Google Adwords, ranked by their search volume:

Insurance $54.91 per click Loans $44.28 per click Mortgage $47.12 per click Attorney $47.07 per click Credit $36.06 per click

The “tech world” is really more of a “tech family.” Between digital giants’ appetites for acquisitions and the tendency of their ex-employees to start new companies, it’s easy to see how nearly every blip in the ecosystem is closely related.

We’ve mapped just a few of these family ties between “Xooglers,” the “PayPal Mafia”, “Softies” and the many other tech connectors who have yet to be nicknamed.

Our guess is that if you gathered a handful of tech veterans in a room, you could keep the tech connection game going forever. So while this graphic is hardly exhaustive, we’ll keep it going in the comments — feel free to add connections to the list!

When you introduce yourself, the most important audience is not the people you meet. The most important audience is actually you.

I have zero soccer ability but still played in a pretty competitive adult soccer league with my teenage stepson. (When three different ambulances show up during one game, you know it’s competitive.)

I was terrible but still played. Why? My stepson asked me to.

Note to parents: When your teenage kids ask you to do something with them, the first time you say no is also the last time you’ll be asked.

As we took the field before a game a guy on the opposing team strutted over. I think he picked me out since I was obviously the oldest player on the field. (Huh; there’s a delightful sentence to write.)

COLUMBIA, Md. -- The Maryland Technology Development Corporation (TEDCO) announced today that 15 Maryland technology companies have received $1,125,000 total in funding. AccuStrata, Inc.; Applied Plasma Science, LLC; Branchpoint Technologies, LLC; Combined Technology Solutions, LLC; Creatv Microtech, Inc.; EncephRX, Inc.; Euveda Biosciences, Inc.; Fuzbien Technology Institute, Inc.; GM Biosciences, Inc.; OmniSpeech, LLC; Opticul Diagnostics, Inc.; SemaConnect, Inc.; TreeMiner, Inc.; Video Semantics, LLC and VisiSonics Corporation each received $75,000 from TEDCO's Maryland Technology Transfer and Commercialization Fund (MTTCF). This program is designed to foster greater collaboration between businesses, Maryland universities and federal laboratories in order to bring technology into the marketplace.

"TEDCO is pleased to provide seed funding to these fifteen promising companies," said Rob Rosenbaum, president and executive director of TEDCO. "Each of these companies has tremendous potential to leverage these funds in hopes of attracting support from future investors, which is vital to ensuring their continued success and pathway to the commercial market."

Venture capital investments continued to grow at a rapid clip in the second quarter of 2011, with VC firms investing $7.5 billion across 966 deals, according to the latest MoneyTree report from PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) and the National Venture Capital Association (NVCA.) But some industry experts are saying that the current level of VC activity could be too good to be sustained.

The second quarter of 2011 saw the highest total amount of money invested by VCs since the second quarter of 2008, according to the MoneyTree report released this week. Quarterly venture capital investment activity increased 19 percent during Q2 compared to the first quarter of 2011, during which VCs invested $6.3 billion in 814 deals (click on image to expand):

Venture-capital funding in biotechnology companies jumped 46 percent in the second quarter, as investors looked to replenish their portfolios after an increase in acquisitions and initial public offerings.

Venture-capital investing across all sectors rose 19 percent to $7.5 billion in 966 deals, compared with $6.3 billion and 814 deals in the first quarter of 2011, the National Venture Capital Association and PricewaterhouseCoopers LLC said today in a report. The three months that ended June 30 represented the biggest quarter for venture funding in two years.

Biotechnology companies attracted $1.24 billion in 116 deals, ranking second behind software makers, who earned $1.52 billion, a 35 percent jump, in 254 deals. Biotech garnered about $847 million in 97 first-quarter investments. Funding for medical device and equipment makers gained 20 percent to $841 million in 90 deals.

Schools and startups in economically challenged areas share a similar problem: a difficulty in attracting and retaining young talent. Teach For America has worked for decades toward fixing the education issue by placing top-notch college graduates in struggling schools. Venture For America, a nonprofit that launched this week, aims to do the same thing--but for startups.

Like Teach For America, VFA will bring promising college graduates to work in underserved communities for at least two years. Startups that focus on up-and-coming industries (i.e. education innovation, energy, biotechnology) will be offered a VFA fellow for a salary of $32,000 to $38,000 annually. At the end of the two years, the companies can opt to hire fellows under new terms.

Private research organizations employ almost 31,000 people in San Diego County, more than the number of similar employees in any other California county, according to a new quarterly innovation report from Connect, the local non-profit group for technology and entrepreneurship.

Researchers teased that statistic from U.S. Department of Labor data for the third quarter of 2010, the most recent quarter available, according to Steve Hoey, a project leader at Connect who called the new finding “a testament to the strong R&D base we have in our region.” The report ranked Silicon Valley’s Santa Clara County second, with almost 19,000 working at private research institutions. Los Angeles was third with more than 17,000.

There has been a recent dialog around a theme I’ll call “hacking the corporation” – creating novel approaches to building young companies, particularly when they are in their formative start-up stage and pre-product market fit.  One of them, reinventing board meetings (or, “Why Board Meetings Suck”), has gotten some attention from leading thinkers like Steve Blank and Brad Feld.

I’d like to submit another item to add to the “hacking the corporation” punch list: Eliminating titles.

At business school, I learned all about titles and hierarchies and the importance of organizational structure.  When I joined my first start-up after graduation, e-commerce leader Open Market, I found the operating philosophy of the founder jarring – he declared no one would have titles in the first few years.  If you needed a title for external reasons, our founder told us, we should feel free to make one up.  But we would avoid using labels internally.  In other words, there would be no “vice president” or “director” or other such hierarchical denominations.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo on Wednesday announced that he has redesigned the process for the state to distribute $1 billion in economic development money, enabling applicants to fill out just one form when seeking to tap funds from nine separate state agencies.

The procedural streamlining is part of the governor's effort to get more bang for the state's economic development dollars by having regions compete for funding. The governor also released a “blueprint” for his regional economic councils, which will represent each of the state's 10 economic development regions.

Mr. Cuomo described the new Consolidated Funding Application as a “one-stop shop” for organizations seeking economic development money.

New York City aims to be the next Silicon Valley by attempting to attract excellent students and professors. But it's unclear whether this approach will make any gains for the city.

Is New York City the right place to build the "next Silicon Valley"? The Mayor appears to believe so and he is prepared to use a fair bit of $ to try to achieve this goal.

"The RFP is the next step in the initiative – unveiled in December 2010 – that seeks a university, institution or consortium to develop and operate a new or expanded campus in the City in exchange for access to City-owned land – at the Navy Hospital Campus at theBrooklyn Navy Yard, the Goldwater Hospital Campus on Roosevelt Island, or on Governors Island – and the full support and partnership of the Bloomberg Administration. The City is also prepared to make a significant investment in site infrastructure, offering up to $100 million in a competitive process designed to select the proposal that yields the most benefit to the City for the lowest commitment of City resources. The City expects that any public contribution will be matched several times over by resources raised by the winner or winners themselves."

Will it be able to come up with a new one? Here is a story that Robert O’Brien tells in a recent paper in the journal China Security. In 2005, China’s National Development and Reform Commission, which had the power to set government procurement policies, said that state-owned wind farms could only buy turbines that had 70 percent of their parts made in China.

China, starting around that time, has become a major force in wind power, growing in the last 5 years at a dramatic pace: Chinese producers now control about 85 percent of the Chinese market, and half of the market globally, according to the New York Times, as O’Brien points out.

In 2005, Gamesa, a thirty-five year old Spanish company and one of the world’s largest producers of wind turbines, controlled about a third of the Chinese market. In response to the new rules, Gamesa started teaching local suppliers how to make parts of its turbines. But the suppliers then started to abandon it, and Gamesa’s market share is now a only 3 percent. Up to now, China’s growth has been dramatic enough that no one complains–that 3 percent of today’s market is double what Gamesa was selling in 2005. This bonanza-like atmosphere has given the Chinese government license to act with license.

The fuzzy front end of innovation confronts you with a lot of questions. Many things can go wrong during the process of creating new products, services or business models. I give you ten examples.  Perhaps it is a ‘feast of recognition’, which in this case is unfortunate but rest assured, you are not alone.

1.  We don’t know what we want.

Ideation of new products and services happens ad hoc, usually at a time when a problem arises or the turnover decreases suddenly or when a competitor enters the market unexpectedly.  The question is then: What now? ‘Jack Smith create a list’, becomes the creed. At this moment it becomes clear that the existing strategic business plan hardly provides footing or direction for innovation. This lack of clear answers leads to random thought processes, which in many cases are interrupted because the management, after consideration, decided to concentrate on either a different market, product or target group or on another country. When you are suddenly confronted with this during the creative process, it causes a spanner in the wheels of the creative car, which then, under loud protest, comes to a screeching halt.

A dustpan called the Broom Groomer and the XC2V FLYPmode combat vehicle have something in common: both were created with the help of crowdsourcing, in which a community of people unite online to contribute anything from color recommendations to engineering designs.

Crowdsourcing has been around for nearly five years, mostly as a way for Web-savvy marketing departments to solicit design ideas and build online buzz around a product. But it also has promise as a way to inject fresh ideas into traditional manufacturing, speed up production cycles, and cut costs.

The U.S. government may be serious about supporting the role of manufacturing in creating jobs – especially those new, high-technology jobs that are supposed to abound in a growing, green economy – but it’s not maintaining funding for the kinds of programs needed to train the new green-collar technician.

A recent New York Times article says, instead, federal funding to provide such vocational and technical education is at risk. The government has made it a priority to raise overall academic standards and college graduation rates, and aims to shrink the small amount of federal spending for vocational training in public high schools and community colleges. That aid comes primarily in the form of Perkins grants to states.

The administration has proposed a 20 percent reduction in its fiscal 2012 budget for career and technical education, to a little more than $1 billion, even as it seeks to increase overall education funding by 11 percent.

These days, your online Internet reputation is your reputation. Of course, having no reputation is usually better than a bad one, but don’t wait for someone else to establish a good one for you. It’s time for every business and business person to proactively create a positive presence, before someone else puts you in a defensive mode that is hard to win.

The first step in the process is to claim your online identity. This is simple in concept, but requires real effort and can be time consuming, and even expensive, if someone gets there before you and tries to sell you the rights to your preferred business or personal domain name. See my previous article on “When to Pay a Premium for Your Company Domain Name ”

Michael Fertik and David Thompson bring this issue and many others together in their book “Wild West 2.0.” After you claim your identity with placeholder domain names, accounts in social networks, and common blogging platforms, your next challenge is to create enough positive content as a “Google wall” to keep negative info out of the top Google search results.