There is no doubt that the Internet is changing the retail experience, and with it how we shop. Beloved stores are feeling the pressure of the prices and convenience e-commerce retailers offer.

An ongoing study by IPG Media Lab reveals that shopper satisfaction at retail stores is declining up to 15% per year. Stores that used to define the diversity of shopping centers, from bookstores and clothing to consumer electronics and home goods, are closing. Small and large brands alike are searching for strategies to react to the change in customer expectation, where online retailers win on prices and convenience. For the first time in centuries, the role of the storefront is changing.

In the first week at Singularity University, we were introduced to a team project called “Food for Cities.” The project was suggested as one way to meet a goal of Singularity University: to come up with solutions that can positively affect the lives of a billion people. It was only one of several projects that seemed interesting, but it aligned with our interest in organic gardening and sustainable food production. Coming from Vancouver Island in Canada (Derek) and Cambridge in England (Maggie), local food is a hot topic.

When it came time to make a final decision on projects, Food for Cities was our choice, along with four other students, two of them more business-focused – a Stanford MBA and a Danish businessman, a biotechnology student, and a guy with a background in bioinformatics. I (Maggie) come from a more academic background of history of science. I (Derek) am a computer science student at the University of Victoria and joined this team because I wanted to build a working prototype to take home and grow some food with.

Creating and building a business is not a one-man show. It requires a team effort, or at least the ability to build trust and confidence among key players, and effectively communicate with partners, team members, investors, vendors, and customers. These actions are the hallmark of an effective leader.

Behind the actions are a set of principles and characteristics that entrepreneurial leaders, like Bill Gates and Steve Jobs, seem to have in common. Look for these and nurture them in your own context to improve the odds of success for your own startup:

1. Clarity of vision and expectations. You must be able and willing to communicate to everyone your vision, goals, and objectives. Just as importantly, you have to be absolutely clear about who you are, what you stand for, and what you expect from everyone around you. People won't follow you if they are in the dark or confused.

David Barrett’s exit from his job at Akamai Technologies Inc. is notorious. But it’s really just the beginning of a better story.

Barrett joined the Akamai team when his company, file-delivery service Red Swoosh Inc., was acquired in 2007. He lasted only a year, reportedly fired for speaking to a journalist on the record about his opposing view of a $5 music tax Warner Music hoped to push on U.S. residents by tacking the fee onto Internet service bills.

As Warner Music is a major Akamai client, the remarks were apparently not appreciated - Barrett was shown the door. The incident went on to become the subject of an MIT ethics debate regarding the boundaries between personal and professional communications.

As President of a local inventors group I can’t tell you how many inventors I meet who have spent big bucks to procure a patent but never built a prototype. So they have no idea if the invention really works. Others who have a garage full of product, just collecting dust because they never tested the market before hand. However, most successful inventors and product development companies that I know, start off with a Proof of Concept Analysis BEFORE they start spending money. So if they do it, why not you?

A full Proof of Concept Analysis consists of three equally important parts: Business Analysis, Ownership Analysis and Product Analysis. These steps should be developed simultaneously or at least completed before moving on to development or you WILL certainly regret it later. I usually start with the one that I consider to be the weakest link in the chain. For example, if I think ownership might be an issue I will do a pretty strong patent, product and industry search especially if I think I have seen something similar.

Email marketing lists are only as effective as the number of your list members. One of your first goals should be to increase the members of your email list. Think about it this way - if you have a 1% conversion rate with your list, you’ll have 5 sales from your list of 500. If you grow your list to 5000, you’ll have 50 sales. Getting more members on your list should be your top priority. Fortunately, there are several different places you can grow your list.

1.    On your website

This is the first place that people think of when they want to grow their email marketing list. It’s a natural fit. Placing your opt in form on your website or your blog will encourage website visitors to sign up for your list. All they have to do is enter their email address and name in order to be included. You can encourage the sign ups by offering a free course, whitepaper or other incentive.

2.    Social media platforms

Twitter, Facebook and other social media platforms can help you introduce your list and promote your incentive. As you grow a following on these sites, you can increase your list as well. You can place an opt in box on your company’s Facebook page. Tweet about your list and encourage your followers to opt in for your incentive. Since you have already built a relationship with these people they’ll be more likely to opt into your list.

Madison, Wisconsin has always been known as a progressive town - in part because it's home to the University of Wisconsin-Madison. But over the last few years, the city has gained a reputation as an emerging technology startup hub in the Midwest.

Earlier this year, Forbes Magazine named Madison the 7th most innovative city in the U.S., ranking it ahead of the noted startup hotspot of Boston.

Like many cities that foster thriving startup communities, Madison benefits from strong university and government support (the latter in the form of a 25% tax credit for angel investors and a 2% forgivable loan for startups), as well as a number of entrepreneur-friendly events organizations.

A majority of the advice aimed at helping startups manage relationships with venture capitalists is tailored for when that startup is raising or has raised funding. Certainly a lot of the interaction between startups and investors takes place during and after financing rounds, but there is a lot entrepreneurs can be doing before they seek funding to set themselves up for success with VCs. In a response to a question on the Q&A site Quora, VC Mark Suster offered his advice to entrepreneurs on how to manage relationships with VCs before fundraising begins.

Suster's first point is to pick and choose which VCs you decide to build a relationship with very carefully. There's no point in spending time on a relationship with a VC who is irrelevant to your product sector or who you can't imagine actually working with in the future (for any reason). It's a lot like dating when you think about it - if you're seriously looking to meet your future spouse, why waste time dating someone you'd never consider marrying?

Marvels of evolution and adaptation, plants and fungi have developed myriad methods of spreading their seeds or spores. Some of these dispersal events happen with blinding speed, and researchers are exploring these dramatic behaviors in the world's fastest plants and fungi using ultra-high speed video cameras. Feast your eyes on our smorgasbord of fast-moving, spore-shooting, seed-spreading organisms.

Blob begets smaller blob -- meet Sphaerobolus stellatus

This is the Sphaerobolus stellatus, commonly known as the "cannonball fungus" or "sphere thrower" because of its exceptional ability to shoot its tiny spore ball from a balloon-like "expulsion sack." The fungus grows on decaying wood to a width of about 2.5 mm, and starts out looking like an innocuous white sphere, before it cracks open, revealing its brownish-black spore ball, which can travel up to 18 feet away and 14 feet in the air.

Unemployment in the United States is still at a brutal 9.6%, but for software engineers the job market couldn't look much better.

Everyone in tech knows that there is a serious engineering deficit, but apparently no one outside tech knows about it, so new talent isn't flooding in to fill the demand. We've heard from startups like HowAboutWe that have already secured series A funding, and are offering equity, and are still struggling to find good engineers. Paul Dix, a former Google engineer who is launching his own startup, Market.io, tells us he gets multiple job calls per week even though all his public profiles explicitly say not to bother him.

As chair of the business department at the law firm of Barnes & Thornburg, David Millard has spent decades helping high-growth companies secure venture capital. In this economy, it's much tougher for even promising small companies to attract interest from VCs. The key for entrepreneurs is to get to know investors early on and stay in touch with them before they need to raise capital, Millard says. The Indianapolis-based attorney spoke recently to Smart Answers columnist Karen E. Klein. Edited excerpts of their conversation follow.

Karen E. Klein: A new private markets study done by Pepperdine University shows that venture capital firms have pulled back on new investments and are instead putting more money into companies that are already in their portfolios. Is that what you're seeing?

David Millard: I am. Most VC firms are keeping their powder dry and doing tons of insider rounds. By and large, these aren't down rounds; they're typically at about the same price as the prior funding rounds. They are much more reticent and hesitant to make investments in new companies.

As summer draws to a close, for the millions of seasonal business operators across the country so does another peak selling period.

Whether you operate a hot dog concession stand on the Jersey shore or run a B&B establishment on the ski slopes of Vermont, choosing to make the bulk of your profits during certain times of the year requires a particularly innovative and tenacious small business owner who knows how to ride the highs and optimize the lows of running a seasonal business.

A forum of experts on EU-China economic relations said plans to open EU 'SME centres' overseas should be reviewed, instead arguing in favour of re-organising existing national structures in order to pool information in the European interest.

The China Advisory Council suggests rebranding business centres currently run by EU member states in China as 'European Houses' in order to boost business opportunities rather than opening new SME centres, as suggested by the European Commission.

Between club meetings, classes, hockey games, and study groups, college students have a lot of demands on their time.

Few entrepreneurs understand the scheduling chaos with which students must cope better than Jay Rodrigues. The Rhode Island native and founder of DormNoise is today starting his senior year at the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania. Rodrigues, 21, launched the company, which offers an online calendaring system for colleges, just after he finished high school at the Wheeler School in Providence.

I let out a laugh when I saw last week’s Onion article, 8.4 Million New Yorkers Suddenly Realize New York City A Horrible Place to Live. It seemed especially silly to me, as I’d just finished Elizabeth Currid’s, The Warhol Economy- a book that identifies the unique characteristics that have made NYC an international mecca of creative production. Despite the fact that the book raves about the benefits of NYC’s unique environment for artists and the career development of creatives, the Onion article got me questioning the future of this city.

Some of the key social and economic qualities that have made New York City so successful as a place for creative and cultural career development have been (and, I would guess, will continue to be) replaced by online social networks. “Every generation has its own neighborhood,” Zac Posen said of NYC to Currid during an interview mentioned in the book. I predict that for Generation Y, and perhaps increasingly for the generations following us, that neighborhood will not be Chelsea or the West Village. It will be online.

(KANSAS CITY, Mo.) Sept. 7, 2010 – Startups and young companies dominate net job creation in the United States – and have done so for the last 30 years. This economic phenomenon occurs because of the patterns of firm formation and survival, according to a report released today by the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation.

While the extraordinary contribution of jobs from new and young firms often is treated as something unique to these firms, this study, Neutralism and Entrepreneurship: The Structural Dynamics of Startups, Young Firms and Job Creation, reveals some measure of structural order behind that reality. However, the study points out that forces creating this structure are subject to change. Recent shifts – including the declining cost of company creation in information technology and other sectors, and lower investment thresholds for seed-centric acceleration programs – indicate that we could very well be on the cusp of one such change: an increase in new company creation in certain sectors of the economy.

Why is it that only writer’s seem to get “blocked” in a socially acceptable (at times even romantic) way. You never hear about mechanic’s block or line cook’s block, damn writer’s and their dramatic ways! Well I decided today that entrepreneur’s can get “block” also but unlike the pie in the sky literary elite, we actually have to get over ours… and fast.

My entrepreneur’s block set in days ago and with increasing rigor seemed to take up more and more of my time. Fear started to creep in and every time I made a move I either second guessed it or just plain lost my train of thought. The other night I drank 4 vodka/sodas one to unhinge my block, instead I just got a headache the next morning. I worked 12 hours one day to try to break through my block and that did nothing but give me a panic attack. So finally out of sheer exhaustion I decided to turn off the computer, put on my oh so professional sequined bikini (I’m from Vegas people) and go for a swim in a river of all places, note: I wasn’t in Vegas at the time.

Even ahead of the new proposed tax credits for research and development activities, smart businesses interested in sustainability have been funding activities that could be commercially viable for their own company’s future. One of the biggest examples of that to date is the GE ecoimagination challenge, which is offering up $200 million for ideas and technologies related to the smart grid. But there are many other companies doing their part.

Just heard about a new partnership, for example, that is being coordinated by business incubator Nidus Investment Partners out of St. Louis. Nidus has just announced that both agricultural products and technology giant Monsanto and agribusiness and food company Bunge Limited have put up $1.5 million (each) toward a new partnership to find and commercialize agricultural and energy innovation more quickly than the market might otherwise bear.

A is for AOL. B is for Bank of America. C is for Craigslist. Say what? Presenting the default search results of New Google -- in rhyming couplets.

 

The days of getting caught talking in class are over--and so aren't the days of even getting caught.

According to a new survey by app developer textPlus, which surveyed more than 600 of its users aged 13 to 17, texting is more rampant than ever in the classroom. A whopping 42.5% of teens admit to texting during class, and more than half of those say they text sometimes or constantly. What's more, nearly 80% of students say they've never gotten in trouble for texting during class, suggesting the eyes-down, cell-under-the-desk method is slipping past even your most yard-stick taunting school teachers.