Next time you want to give your kid a Rolo, think twice. You could be either teaching your kid to become a criminal or a CEO.

There's research to back this up.

In the 1970s, psychologist Walter Mischel examined preschoolers' ability to delay gratification. Those who could wait longer before eating marshmallows became more popular, well-adjusted teenagers who scored higher on their SATs -- and were more likely to become CEOs.

According to psychologist Dr. Susan Albers: "In general, the amount of time a child could wait for a marshmallow was indicative of their ability to deal with stress and frustration. Kids who can wait longer periods of time are CEOs and doctors in the making. One must be able to tolerate high levels of stress and years of effort before obtaining a payoff."

Economic analysis reported by the Small Business Administration shows that small companies “create more than half of the nonfarm private gross domestic product (GDP)” and “employ just over half of all private sector employees.” That level of economic impact makes encouraging small business economically important to government officials.

Interest in how small business friendly states are has led a number of think tanks to rank states on the favorability of their small business policies. One example is the Small Business and Entrepreneurship Council (SBEC), which put out its Small Business Survival Index 2010 earlier this year.

According to the SBEC, South Dakota is the most small business friendly state. And to attract and nurture small business, other states should adopt South Dakota-like policies.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy opened up the eG8 Forum in Paris with a keynote speech and interview with Publicis Groupe CEO Maurice Levy and journalists.

His speech was basically a big smooch for the internet. The internet is a revolution and a new world, Sarkozy said, and he wants to do everything to help entrepreneurs make it awesome.

Sarkozy called the internet the "third wave" of globalization, and the most important: the first wave was that of explorers like Columbus and Magellan, the second wave was the Industrial Revolution and what came after, and the third wave is the internet

According to the latest BizExchange Index, the volume of businesses for sale has increased in the first quarter of 2011, potentially driven by an aging population. However, younger generations are not in a position to buy.

The volume of businesses for sale has increased during the first quarter of 2011 after a fall in the previous quarter, says the latest BizExchange Index. The rise in the volume of businesses for sale also means an increase in the number of companies with an EBIT ratio between two and three. However, over two thirds of them still have a EBIT ratio lower than two.

“There was a slight upturn in values under $500,000 turnover and over $5 million turnover, while values in between remained flat,” said David Bird, BizExchange Chairman.

I got a bunch of great suggestions in my kickoff post on this topic last week. Based on that feedback, the series is going to look like this:

1) Friends and Family

2) Contests/Prizes/Accelerator Programs

3) Government Grants

4) Customer Financing

5) Vendor Financing

6) Convertible Debt

7) Preferred Stock

8) Venture Debt

9) Capital Equipment Loans & Leases

10) Bridge Loans

11) Working Capital Financing

What is remarkable about comparing Hawaii with mainland states is that the atmosphere or climate here works against entrepreneurship, that is, it is difficult for folks who have a great idea about starting up a business or new enterprise to actually break into the market.

Bright people, both young and old, find numerous barriers placed before them before they can even open their doors for business. The first reaction would be that taxes are so high in Hawaii where the general excise tax is imposed regardless of whether or not a business or enterprise is profitable.

So while a start-up business may have to take a minimal mark up on its products or services in order to attract customers for the first time, the general excise tax eats into the mark up to the point where those start-up businesses have little left to reinvest in new products or services.

Last week, the X Prize Foundation announced a new $10 million contest to develop a portable device that can diagnose a wide range of diseases with the same accuracy as a panel of board-certified physicians.

The details of the contest are still being worked out, but the goal is likely to be a device that can perform a number of diagnostic tests and combine these with artificial intelligence to determine whether a subject has a particular malady. Such a device could help those who lack access to traditional medical services—and streamline access to specialty care in traditional medical treatment.

America’s fiscal health remains currently at the heart of most economic policy chatter. We are living in tight fiscal times. Congress has been focusing on reaching agreements on reducing spending and budget battles are expected to wage on throughout much of this year. Since balancing the budget is inseparable from tax policy, we take a quick look this week at how taxes shape incentives for entrepreneurs.

While I have yet to find a person that decided against starting a business because of unfavorable taxation, taxes can certainly act as an additional burden of risk-taking. Certain tax structures have been found to influence entrepreneurship negatively in research experiments. For example, in 2000, Glenn Hubbard and Bill Gentry found through tax records that higher progressivity lowers the probability of an individual choosing entrepreneurship over corporate employment. In 2001, Bob Carroll and co-authors found that entrepreneurial profits were lower in states with higher marginal tax rates. And in a recent Huffington Post article, Tim Kane explained that higher flat-rate taxes have been found to have no effect on entrepreneurial behavior, and argued in favor of adopting a flat tax with a relative high rate. In his blog post “Steeper Taxes, Fewer Entreps, Less Jobs,” Kane further suggests that the taxes entrepreneurs fear most are not corporate, but individual taxes (usually at the top marginal rate), since many of today´s startups are sole proprietorships or Limited Liability Companies (LLCs).

All across the Commonwealth of Virginia, biomedical innovators are pursuing a shared passion to help their fellow citizens live longer, healthier lives. These dedicated researchers, in nearly 200 biotechnology and medical device firms clustered around research universities such as the University of Virginia, Virginia Commonwealth University, George Mason University and Virginia Tech, are expanding the frontiers of modern medicine. They are pioneering new drugs, more effective therapeutics and life-saving medical devices. According to a new study by Miami-based Archstone Consulting, there were more than 1,500 active clinical trails conducted last year by Virginia researchers on new drugs, including those targeting cancer, diabetes, HIV/AIDS, mental health disorders and respiratory diseases.

In addition to the National Science Foundation (NSF) and biopharma companies with facilities in Virginia such as Pfizer, Merck, Novozymes, Abbott Laboratories, Boehringer Ingelheim, Teva Pharmaceuticals, ATCC and SRI International, the Commonwealth is also home to one of the most advanced bioscience research institutes in the world. The Janelia Farm Research Campus of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) opened in October 2006. Located on a 689-acre (279-hectare) property in Northern Virginia, the unique, world-class biomedical research complex represents a $500-million investment by HHMI, one of the largest biomedical research philanthropies in the world. Several hundred of the world's top researchers from diverse disciplines use emerging and innovative technologies to pursue biology's most challenging problems.

June's Harvard Business Review features a story by Procter & Gamble Chief Technology Officer Bruce Brown and me on "How P&G Tripled Its Innovation Success Rate." The article's core message is that P&G achieved that result by approaching the creation of new growth businesses in a highly systematic way, building what Brown and I call the "new-growth factory."

I hope that people find the article, which describes our journey and the lessons we learned, to be useful. I thought I would use today's post to answer three of the most common questions that people have asked me about the article's ideas.

Who is going to be a successful entrepreneur?

Prolific early stage investor Ron Conway's firm SV Angel gathered responses from 300 founders to try to answer that question. It's not an exact science, but it seems young co-founders doing their second startup tend to produce better results than older sole founders on their first company.

Or as Michael Arrington put it today, "Old people suck at startups."

Why is it that younger people have a tendency to succeed? Conway speculated that older founders are more cautious and will take earlier, cheaper exits for security, whereas a younger founder will let their company brew for a while, gaining value.

The business world has been watching this emerging generation with trepidation, and a lot of us haven’t been sure who would be the winners, and who would be the losers. Can they survive as entrepreneurs, and do they have the passion it takes to run a startup and attract investors?

My own perspective is that the recession has been good for Gen-Y (Millennials), because it has forced them to face reality, often for the first time in their life. In the last couple of years, even college grads with advanced degrees don’t have job opportunities waiting for them. But I’m happy to report that I see more and more of them impressively stepping up to the entrepreneurial plate.

As a recent graduate of the first TechStars NYC class, I thought I'd take a moment to share some of my thoughts. This blog post isn't going to sing the praises of TechStars -- Eli (Thinknear), Kevin (Red Rover), Matt (Nestio) and Vin (not even part of TechStars!) have already done that quite well. Instead, I'd like to reflect on some of the key differences in accelerator programs.

Most people talk about TechStars and Y Combinator and interchangeably. But most people don't understand that the programs are radically different accelerator models: In short, Y Combinator is an isolationist model (for lack of a better word I use isolationist, but the negative intention of the word is not intended). TechStars is a collaborative model. And what's right for one startup might not be right for another. (note: I haven't actually been through YC. My knowledge of that program is entirely second-hand.)

Rock star, folk singer, poet, and national treasure Bob Dylan turns 70 today, and just in case you haven’t made plans to mark the occasion, we’ve got a few options for you: If you’d like some company, you can check out this Google map of all the septuagenarian celebrations worldwide to see if there will be one in your hometown. Or you can re-read Joe Queenan’s brilliantly incorrect assessment of the rebel at 50 in Spy Magazine. And if you’re feeling solitary and reflective, there’s always Chronicles Vol. 1 and DylanRadio by candlelight.

AsianScientist (May 22, 2011) – With your papers published and your patent portfolio lined up, your new technology for green energy, curing cancer or vaccinating against nicotine is finally complete. Now, it is time for the world to recognize your genius and send your technology on the fast-track to market success.

But not so fast, the number of superb technologies at the bottom of the biotech start-up waste basket is huge and many if not most of them, all else being equal, were probably good enough to go commercial.

So why aren’t most academic scientists millionaires?

1. You may not have assembled the right team for this technology.

When asked, VCs will tell you that a technology’s likelihood of success is based on the team backing it up. The worth of a new company is essentially the sum of its capital minus its debt. Capital can be intellectual in the sense of licensed and patented technology, but it is also human capital. In some ways, the ability to draw in resources, generate investment enthusiasm and fix the thousands of problems that will be encountered along the timeline of commercialization is the ability of human, rather than physical or intellectual capital. Having the right level of seniority and accomplishment in the project, wherein the leaders of the new venture are senior and connected enough to convince the field of the internal value, but not having people so senior that they don’t actually do anything productive other than lend their names, is critical. Without it, many good technologies never get out of the gate.

NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- IBM's(IBM_) headquarters in New York may be thousands of miles away from Silicon Valley, but the company has still managed to maintain a strong presence among venture capitalists and entrepreneurs.

Big Blue, however, has taken a vastly different approach to promoting innovation than the approach of its West Coast counterparts.

Unlike other tech heavyweights like Intel(INTC_) and Cisco(CSCO_), IBM doesn't make direct investments in fledgling companies.

Rather, Big Blue has a special venture capital division that builds relationships with top-tier venture firms and their portfolio companies and advises them on the best ways to bring their products to market.

This morning, the NVCA released the Q4 2010 venture capital performance numbers from our partner Cambridge Associates and the news continues to be encouraging. As you can see in the press release, venture returns improved at the end of the year in nearly every time horizon, marking the second consecutive quarter in which we saw meaningful increases.

Based on current exit market activity, we feel that the venture industry is on a steady, upwards trajectory rather than experiencing a quarterly blip. In other words, barring any unforeseen market dynamics, returns hit bottom last year and are headed back up. Still, we do have a ways to go before the venture industry can boast the type of performance that compels limited partners to expand their venture capital allocation beyond what it is today.

Common: Doing everything or nothing under the label of "student" - often leading to either burnout or dropout.

Uncommon: As I mentioned in Part 1, "This week marks an important milestone in my life. I am no longer a full time student of conventional education." Since the last post, final grades were announced, and it looks as though I will graduate magna cum laude.

This comes as quite a pleasant surprise considering the demands of my "extracurricular" commitments. Of course there are always students that make me look like an underachiever, but my approach and my goals differed from many students and valedictorians.

I never set out to get perfect grades. In fact, I clearly intended to place business and personal preferences as a priority. This was rather unusual in undergraduate school. My competitiveness kept me striving for good grades, but my lack of time kept me focused on effectiveness. Unexpectedly, this illogical amalgamation served me well.

Siberia, of all places? Ernst-Detlef Schulze's wife rolled her eyes when her husband agreed to lead a major ecosystem study in the Yenisey region in the heart of Russia's eastern vastness. At first, Schulze, the founding director of the prestigious Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry in Jena, Germany, had been hesitant himself — but sensing a unique opportunity to study how the Arctic tundra and boreal forests store and release carbon, he decided to pack his bags.

The German carbon-cycle expert is one of 40 foreign or expatriate Russian scientists working in the West who last year received a new type of grant to bring their expertise to Russian universities. The 12-billion-rouble (US$428-million) 'mega-grant' programme is part of Russia's attempt to strengthen research at its neglected universities and modernize the country's science and economy at large (see Nature 465, 858; 2010).

FORTUNE -- Mark Zuckerberg launched Facebook from his Harvard dorm room; Twitter's Jack Dorsey and Google's (GOOG) Larry Page and Sergey Brin founded their respective companies in their twenties. All of them were young when they got their start, and that's not a coincidence according to a report released by SV Angel's Ron Conway and David Lee. Apparently, the younger you are, the higher your odds are at succeeding in an increasingly competitive area of the industry where skyrocketing valuations are the norm.

Conway is in a good position to know: he told Fortune earlier this year he fields 70% of all start-up deals in Silicon Valley. And at the TechCrunch Disrupt conference in New York City, he and Lee revealed early data from a report in which they queried more than 500 start-ups they've invested in over the last 15 years. Of the start-ups with potential or actual exit values of $25 million or more, 47% of those were run by founders who were under 30. But the higher those potential exit values got, the younger the founders became. Case in point: 67% of the companies that could sell for $500 million or more have founders under 30.