Several years back, while talking on the phone with a friend from college, I was also going though my pile of things-to-fix-up-and-reuse.  When she asked what I was doing, I told her and her reply was certain and final enough to get my full attention:

“Don’t keep broken things around you.”

She went on with what she was talking about, but her statement stuck with me.

In “The Upside-Down Approach To Innovation,” Anita Campbell asks a core question:

“What if we approached innovation from the opposite direction – by getting rid of what isn’t working before we try to come up with something that works.”

THE REAL LESSON THAT MAYER SHOULD TAKE FROM GOOGLE IS THE FAILURE OF ITS SCATTERSHOT INNOVATION STRATEGY, ARGUE JENS MARTIN SKIBSTED AND RASMUS BECH HANSEN.

Most business pundits share the opinion that Marissa Mayer, the newly appointed CEO of Yahoo! and a former Google engineer, will bring an open-innovation agenda to the struggling Internet giant. They have good reasons for thinking that. Mayer has been an advocate for openness. As a fellow “young global leader” and a co-panelist at Design Life Digital, we’ve had a firsthand chance to hear her thoughts on the virtues of open innovation.

There are many similarities between a company in trouble and an individual who has been in a horrible accident. The accident victim may have several broken bones, which will require setting and perhaps even surgery, but the first job of the emergency room doctor is to ensure that the victim lives long enough to have those bones set. After all, if his bleeding goes unchecked and he bleeds to death, the broken bones are rather immaterial. So what do we do first for the sick company? We stop the bleeding.

We know that accident victims hemorrhage blood, and the emergency room doc must keep that blood from leaking out. Similarly, we know that sick companies hemorrhage cash, and we must stop the cash from leaking out or the company will cease to exist.

How to turn the most vociferous of complainers into raving fans and brand advocates who are even more convinced in their positive views than other, more satisfied customers.

If you put one pot of boiling water and another pot of lukewarm water into your freezer at the same time, guess what happens? The boiling water will freeze first! This phenomenon has been known since the time of Aristotle, but apparently even today no one understands precisely why it happens. The UK’s Royal Society of Chemistry, in fact, recently put up a £1000 prize for the first person who can offer a satisfactory explanation.

Venture capital investment into Chinese companies plunged in the first half of the year to $1.9 billion on the back of slowing economic growth and a frosty reception, both in the mainland and abroad, to Chinese initial public offerings.

The value of venture-backed deals declined 43% to $1.9 billion from January to June, compared with the same period a year earlier, according to data from Dow Jones VentureSource, an industry tracker owned by VentureWire publisher Dow Jones & Co . The number of deals fell 38% to 103, which far outpaced a decline in the U.S., where transactions fell 5% to 1,595. In the U.S. , investments also totaled $15.3 billion in the first half, 7% off from the year before.

Does your productivity ever get hampered by your desire to find the best possible solution? As you seek the easiest or fastest route to your goal, you may find yourself stopped entirely. Sometimes you may even do this on purpose, to keep from having to make a leadership decision.

However, there’s a work-around. Maybe you’ve heard of the term, “heuristic.” Heuristics are rules that allow a solution to be found more quickly. With a heuristic, a resolution can be found even when the entire path isn’t clear from the onset.

ARPA-E’s Principal Deputy Director Eric Toone today announced funding for 19 new projects that will focus on innovations in battery management and energy storage. The projects seek to advance electric vehicle technologies, help improve the efficiency and reliability of the electrical grid, and provide important energy security benefits to America’s armed forces. 

Widespread corruption, government hurdles, lack of funding  and poor technology and training have resulted in low efficiency and high start-up costs in India, making the country the worst for entrepreneurship in Asia, according to a Gallup poll.

Willingness to take the risk of running a business is not a common trait among  Indians

The survey, however, noted that India has an abundant reserve of entrepreneurial talent. It found that business thinking, optimism and persistence – all important for entrepreneurs — are common traits among Indians. But it found that the willingness to take the risk of running a business is not a common trait among a majority of Indians.

It’s a fortunate man who can blow through $35 million one week, only to be offered $12 million the next.

For serial entrepreneur Steve Blank, this story sums up the ethos of Silicon Valley. The day he experienced the most monumental failure of his career, upon the demise of Rocket Science Games back in 1997, Blank bumped into an old friend at a Palo Alto coffee shop.

“His first words to me were, ‘Steve, when do you start your next company?’” Chuckling, he added, “Where else do you hear that?”

Research has always been a challenging and creative venture—requiring some luck and a lot of hard work. But in recent years, as the National Institutes of Health budget has failed to keep up with inflation, even established researchers with successful labs are having a hard time securing funding for their work. To add to these pressures, the past decade has seen institutions, especially in the university setting, burdening researchers with larger administrative staffs, which see research as a means to an end—money from the commercialization of products—rather than the pursuit of knowledge.

For the past 10 years, The Scientist’s Best Places to Work in Academia surveys have followed changing trends as reported by academic researchers, asking them to highlight the aspects of work they value the most—such as support, access to great research, and collaborations—as well as areas they wish their institutions would improve, such as appropriate family-care policies. Back in 2003, researchers around the world valued relationships with their colleagues and collaborators above all else; next came a desire for strong core facilities. In this year’s survey, while collegiality and core facilities remain highly important, the second most desirable factor is good health-care coverage; the first is the personal satisfaction their workplace offers.

On July 16, NVCA submitted formal comments on SBA’s proposed rule on SBIR-STTR. Overall, NVCA is encouraged by the Proposed Rule’s treatment of participants owned by multiple Venture Capital Funds and believe it will facilitate investment in technology as well as the flourishing of research and innovation in the United States by allowing more small businesses access to the SBIR/STTR programs. The Proposed Rule will help to provide a level playing field for all small businesses interested in applying for SBIR grants.

As reported earlier, the proposed rule takes the first step in implementing the provisions of the new law, which amends SBA’s regulations governing size and eligibility standards for both the SBIR and STTR programs including new ownership, control and affiliation rules for participants in the programs. SBA is supposed to finalize the rule by December 31 of this year. Majority VC-backed companies will be able to apply for SBIR grants once the rule is finalized.

I have been using this line a lot lately. It is a bastardized version of Field Marshall Helmuth von Moltke's "No plan of operations extends with certainty beyond the first encounter with the enemy's main strength."

I always encourage entrepreneurs to get on with the business of putting their product in the market. All the planning and designing and strategizing and grand plans of taking over the world are no match for reality.

I often hear the qualms of business-smart but non-technical entrepreneurs, wondering if they really have a chance in this high-technology marketplace. I tell them that if their idea or solution is technology intensive, they clearly need technology strength on the team. Then the question becomes “How do I evaluate and attract the best technical talent?”

The simple answer is to find a business partner, not an “implementer,” who already has the technical experience you need, and is willing and able to run that side of the business. Finding that person is not a hiring challenge, since neither of you really get paid until you both succeed. Here the principles of finding any top executive apply, as I’ve covered in a previous article.

A new study shows that startups do better when they’re launched in the place where their founders were born or have lived for a long time. Makes sense, but the reasons why are surprisingly complex and modern.

Our first guess was that the key to startup success is the founder’s ability to go to their parents’ house to cadge a hot meal. And that’s not entirely wrong. But there’s more to it than that.

The study, by Professor Olav Sorenson of the Yale School of Management and Michael Dahl of Aalborg University in Copenhagen, Denmark, is titled “Home Sweet Home: Entrepreneurs’ Location Choices and the Performance of Their Ventures.” It looked at data from 13,166 Danish startups founded between 1995 to 2004 and discovered that companies launched by founders with an average tenure of 6.4 years in a region had a 9% lower failure rate and took in $8,172 more in annual profit than companies launched by newcomers. Each additional year of tenure reduced the failure rate by nearly 2% and increased profits by $1,362.

The business world is abuzz with trend stories about unlimited vacation time. At Netflix, for example, they abolished their policy in 2004 and instead allow employees to take vacation whenever they need time (and as long as they get their work done). Gilt Groupe, a fashion-oriented deals site, offers up a similar policy, a sure way to attract talent in the competitive tech space.

However, thanks (or no thanks) to handheld devices and widespread Internet access, the reality is that for many workers it's hard to turn off. According to a recent Good Technology survey, 57 percent of respondents checked work emails on family outings. This is particularly true for entrepreneurs, like myself, who run small businesses.

For nearly a generation, pundits, academics and journalists have written off suburbia. They predict that the future lies in the cities, with more Americans living in smaller spaces such as the micro-apartments of 300 square feet or less that New York and San Francisco are considering changing their building laws to allow. Even traditionally spread out cities, such as Los Angeles, are laying out plans to create greater population density, threatening the continued existence of some neighborhoods of single-family homes.

Yet wishing something dead does not make it so. Indeed, the suburbanization of America is likely to continue over the next decade. The 2010 Census — by far the most accurate recent accounting — showed that over 90% of all metropolitan growth over the past decade took place in the suburbs.

When you are looking to raise venture capital for your startup, you will likely have a better chance if you are in an industry that VCs are hot to invest in. Right now, that means mobile technology, cloud-computing technology, and social computing companies, according to the most recent MoneyTree Report from PricewaterhouseCoopers and the National Venture Capital Association.

These types of tech startups have a number of advantages from the investor perspective: they can reach a lot of customers, industry regulation is relatively minimal, and they are relevant, says Mark Cannice, professor of entrepreneurship with the University of San Francisco School of Management.

Maybe it was because of that terrific idea that you couldn’t put off any longer.  Maybe it was the fact that you couldn’t stand your boss. Maybe it was because you were fired and you had no choice.

Maybe you decided if “I don’t do it now, when will I?”

Whatever the reason—and the reasons are as varied and as different as the founders themselves—you’ve decided to start your own business.

India has one of the fastest growing economies in the world. It also has a significant youth population. So why doesn't the country have a substantial number of entrepreneurs?

A 2011 Gallup study of 20 economic entities in Asia showed that India ranked in the bottom quartile on several important indicators of a well-functioning entrepreneurial ecosystem. Although cross-country comparisons may not be ideal because of Asia's economic, governmental, and cultural diversity, ranking in the bottom quartile across a majority of indicators does arouse major concerns.

Every startup founder feels the pressure of the thousands of things that need to get done, all seemingly at the same time. There is just not enough time! The real solution is better productivity and less procrastination, to put you back in control of your business. You need to spend time on important things, as well as the urgent. Many entrepreneurs waste too much time on low-priority administrative tasks, procrastinating on higher priority but tougher tasks, resulting in last minute crises, and failure to complete the critical work that people are really expecting of them. We all know people who profess to be stressed out and “so busy” that they never have time for anything – yet they never seem to get things done.