Hang on to your wallets and purses. In the constant search for the next thing to disrupt, Silicon Valley's entrepreneurs and venture capitalists believe that lugging around all that plastic and cash is a cumbersome system ripe for reinvention.

But listing the problems with the current system is one thing. Revolutionizing it is another.

I got a pretty good sense of those daunting challenges while moderating a panel last week at the Future of Money and Technology Summit in San Francisco. The panel included several venture capitalists and entrepreneurs who are taking aim at this tantalizing opportunity.

There seemed to be a general agreement that somehow, some way, everything about how we pay for stuff is going to change. You'd expect to hear that from the wide-eyed optimists from Silicon Valley.

I deal often with early-stage startups, and many of these don’t have any customers yet (but wish they did), so it’s not surprising they still don’t think of customers as their friends. More disturbingly, others do have customers, but the customer service program consists of an informal focus on “problems,” rather than a proactive effort to establish a positive relationship with friends.

The right time to put a formal customer service program in place, with measurements, is before the first sale of your product or service to a customer. You can’t manage what you don’t measure, and customer satisfaction these days is one the most critical success factors to every business.

BEIJING - Premier Wen Jiabao on Saturday unfolded the road map for China's social and economic development during the next five years, setting targets for the quality and efficiency of economic growth and speaking about the transformation of the growth mode and economic restructuring.

While delivering his annual government work report, he also listed other priorities that include improving people's well-being, advancing education and healthcare, conserving natural resources and protecting the environment.

What happens when funding dries up, investors are uninterested and grant requests are denied?

It comes down to money: whether it's a creative project in search of funds, a start-up business hunting for investors, or a charity venture raising money for their cause, the bottom line is that each requires cold hard cash. Instead of relying solely on government grants and investors, though, entrepreneurs are turning to crowd-funding to see their project to fruition.

A new way to finance

Crowd-funding relies on the general public to make micropayments in order to fund a project. Many Canadian artists, entrepreneurs, charities and small businesses are getting in on the trend, posting their projects on websites like IndieGoGo.com. Once a project is posted, the public can donate in any amount to help achieve "success" (a predetermined goal amount).

The Office of Sponsored Programs announces the 2011 Grow Iowa Values Fund Technology Transfer Grant Competition. The purpose of the Technology Transfer Grants is to provide seed money for late-stage product or process development with the greatest potential for commercialization. Proof of concept projects will be considered but priority will be given to projects closer to commercial application. Priority will be given to projects in Iowa’s targeted clusters: Bioscience, Information Technology (including educational technologies), and Advanced Manufacturing. The request for proposals and application guidelines are available at: http://www.uni.edu/osp/2011-grow-iowa-values-fund

What kind of genius creates a product and brand that is so strong and so powerful that people will wait outside the handful of retail outlets that distribute the product, even though …

* The product has some technical features which are less desirable than the alternative?
* It has basic functions that actually cause developers and design firms to design around them?
* Hackers break into the device so that desperate customers from certain wireless providers can use it?
* It has an audience that’s so loyal they will beg and plead with their cell phone carriers for access to the exclusive device?

Washington -- Six states and a New England organization will receive $241 million in "early innovator" grants to develop the technology Americans will use to purchase insurance through exchanges operated by states.

"Beginning in 2014, states will provide private insurance exchanges to pool purchasing power," said Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius. "Exchanges will make finding health insurance much easier by giving people a one-stop shop where they can compare and choose a health plan that's right for them."

Kansas, Maryland, New York, Oklahoma, Oregon, Wisconsin and a multistate consortium of individuals and businesses led by the University of Massachusetts Medical School will share the funds. The groups will build the consumer interfaces and other online technology that individuals will use to access the health insurance exchanges mandated by the national health system reform law.

PHILADELPHIA, Mar. 04 /CSRwire/ - GoodCompany Ventures (GCV) is pleased to announce that it is now accepting applications for the 2011 Social Impact Incubator.

GCV was the first to adapt the venture industry's incubator model to the needs of social entrepreneurs and its Social Impact Incubator has developed the most rigorous program and an unequalled record of success.

Applications will be evaluated on a rolling basis through our Early Decision Deadline of April 15th. For more information about the program and the application process, please visit http://www.goodcompanyventures.org.

Mar 04, 2011 (Congressional Documents and Publications/ContentWorks via COMTEX) -- March 4, 2011 Contact: Richard Carbo, (202) 224-3655 Chris Averill, (202) 228-6516 Landrieu, Snowe Re-Introduce Landmark Reauthorization of SBIR and STTR Programs Senators push for eight-year reauthorization.

WASHINGTON - U.S. Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship Chair Mary L. Landrieu, D-La., and Ranking Member Olympia J. Snowe, R-Maine, today introduced comprehensive legislation to reauthorize the Small Business Innovation and Research (SBIR) and Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) programs for the next eight years. They were joined by former Chair John Kerry, D-Mass., and Committee Members Senators Scott Brown, R-Mass., Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., Kelly Ayotte, R-N.H., Ben Cardin, Md., Mark Pryor, D-Ark., and Carl Levin, D-Mich., in reintroducing the bill, which is a version of S. 4053 that passed the Senate unanimously late last Congress.

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner recently announced a conference on March 22 that will focus on finding ways to "expand access to capital" for small business owners. The Treasury Department conference aims to “reduce challenges of raising capital at each stage of growth for a small business—from seed capital, to growth equity, to accessing the public markets.”

Washington has become very good at announcing panels, lending programs and initiatives, but not a lot seems to be happening and there is now clear direction.

Why do I say this?

Love this fascinating look at the filament inside standard light bulbs. As "Engineer Guy" Bill Hammack points out, this type of light is on its way out. But the history behind it is still really interesting, especially if you want to see how scientists take a good idea and make it better, one step at a time.

In a hospital somewhere, a patient falls out of bed. A loud alarm goes off, and nurses rush in. Then three blood pressure monitors and a crash cart go missing from the ER. Operations managers quickly locate them in other parts of the hospital via a GPS-like function loaded into the software on their computers.

The key to all this is sensors. The aforementioned hospital isn’t really a hospital, but a demonstration lab at IBM’s campus in Austin, Tex., (pictured below). But the software and technology are real and are being deployed in hospitals today, and not just by IBM.

Computers mimic human reasoning by building on simple rules and statistical averages. Test your strategy against the computer in this rock-paper-scissors game illustrating basic artificial intelligence. Choose from two different modes: novice, where the computer learns to play from scratch, and veteran, where the computer pits over 200,000 rounds of previous experience against you.

Helpers do what you say, while good help does what you need, without you saying anything. People who can help you the most are actually smarter than you, at least in their domain. Top entrepreneurs spend more time putting the right team in place to accomplish their objectives than they spend on any other components of their job.

Some entrepreneurs are so in love with themselves (narcissistic) that they insist on answering every question, and making every decision. That’s not only impossible, but also counterproductive. Effective entrepreneurs team with or employ people who can provide the answers directly, pertinent to their particular area of expertise.

Imagine that at your next routine check-up at your doctor’s office, you are given a new shirt to wear during your appointment. When the nurse comes in to check your vitals, she doesn’t bring a thermometer, or a blood pressure gauge. In fact, she doesn’t have to touch you at all. Instead, she finds your heart rate, blood pressure readings and body temperature on a computer and tells you that the shirt you are wearing transmitted the information.

On the top floor of an ugly office building in Mountain View, Calif., a dozen entrepreneurial dreams are taking flight. Raissa Nebie, a 31-year-old former investment banker from Ivory Coast, is putting the finishing touches on Spoondate, her top-secret dating site for food lovers. Andrew Maguire, a recent Columbia University grad (who talks really fast), is racking up listings for InternMatch, a Web service that pairs college students with paid internships. The airy space, with few walls, a panoramic view of Silicon Valley and a gaggle of first-time CEOs like Maguire and Nebie, is home to 500 Startups Accelerator, the latest high-tech incubator.

If all this seems a bit 1999, it is. Technology incubators, which invest in and nurture new tech businesses, proliferated during the last dotcom boom but then got a bad reputation in the bust, when firms like CMGI and eCompanies lost billions of dollars on countless start-up failures whose names have long been forgotten.

After years of tight credit, funding is beginning to trickle back into small business.

Unfortunately, that trickle won’t necessarily reach everyone. If you’ve had past credit issues, for instance, conventional funding may be almost impossible to obtain. Or you could be an entrepreneur with an idea that banks won't touch with a 10-foot credit line.

The good news is that investment firms, websites and other resources offer a variety of alternative funding sources. Here are three that may be new to you.

Business incubators, known as business "accelerators" in Europe, serve as homes and training grounds for new companies, providing them an affordable start-up environment and a variety of administrative, consulting and networking services.

When President Obama came to Cleveland on Feb. 22 to talk about ways to help small businesses, Sen. Sherrod Brown used the opportunity to tout legislation he has written called the Business Incubation Promotion Act, which would help create more business incubators in hard-hit regions of the country.

In an opinion piece he penned for The Plain Dealer, Brown said: "For every $10,000 invested in business incubators, up to nearly 70 local jobs are generated."

The formation of a new venture fund in Grand Rapids begins, at least on one level, filling a gap in the availability of capital in West Michigan for startup businesses.

The organizers of Michigan Accelerator Fund I, which just finally received the $6 million in seed money awarded last fall by the state, hope the venture can spur the creation of subsequent funds — both their own and funds by other prospective investors in the region.

The fund will invest in early-stage companies that are pursuing commercialization of a product or service and need capital to beta-test or validate their concept or develop a prototype. It’s an area where entrepreneurs, after going through their “friends and family” for backing, often find a lack of available capital.

Making the decision to become an entrepreneur is a major commitment, with huge implications for skills and lifestyle. Yet there is no standardized testing or certification required or available anywhere to help you decide if you are a good fit for entrepreneurship, or entrepreneurship is right for you. An MBA or other academic credentials just don’t do it.

Therefore, the least you can do is take advantage of some of the self-assessment tools around, and follow a new guide on the subject, “The Entrepreneur Equation,” by Carol Roth, which highlights personal characteristics and skills required. Some day, I expect there will be a more formal certification required, like lawyers and accountants have to pass, to hang out their shingle.