Success in a startup is not possible as a “one-man show.” An entrepreneur has to engage with team members, partners, investors, vendors, and customers. In my experience, the joy of positive engagement is sometimes the only pay you get in an early startup. Amazingly, many successful startups are built on this basis alone, with almost no money.

I will talk here primarily about building the internal team of a startup, but the same principles apply outside to your “extended team” and customers. I like the ten practical and transformative steps outlined by Bob Kelleher, in his book “Louder Than Words,” from his many years of experience in corporate environments. These are easily adaptable to the startup environment:

“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence then, is not an act, but a habit.” - Aristotle

Habits can be our greatest asset and can become our worst curse. We know in order to grow and maintain our personal and professional lives, we need to develop and establish effective, solid and sensible habits. We also need to keep them fun, fresh and motivating.

(EON: Enhanced Online News)--The Biotechnology Industry Organization (BIO) unveiled a report on the role of intellectual property rights in encouraging upstream research and development as well as downstream commercialization of biotechnology at the 2012 BIO International Convention.

“This report is further proof of the positive impact of intellectual property rights in both established and emerging economies, and will be a useful tool as we work with the many countries seeking to grow the biotechnology industry” “This report is further proof of the positive impact of intellectual property rights in both established and emerging economies, and will be a useful tool as we work with the many countries seeking to grow the biotechnology industry,” stated Joseph Damond, BIO Senior Vice President of International Affairs. “We felt it was important to provide empirical evidence and case studies for a more informed discussion on the role of intellectual property in global economic development and in commercializing innovative products for patients and other consumers.”

Stevenage Bioscience Catalyst is an independent facility that was formed as a joint venture between UK Department of Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS), GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), the Wellcome Trust, the East of England Development Agency, and the Technology Strategy Board. The site opened for business in February 2012, and this is the first academic tenant to join the community.

Are all the modern devices and digital conveniences we have at our disposal — from the web and social media to smartphones and tablets — making us more distracted and less able to concentrate? And is this harming our ability to think and be creative, and therefore by extension harming society as a whole? It’s a question that rears its head from time to time. One of the latest expressions of this fear comes from Joe Kraus, a serial entrepreneur who is now a partner with Google Ventures and gave a presentation recently about his concerns, offering an alternative concept he calls “Slow Tech.” But is this really something that we need to be afraid of?

During the recent presidential primaries, we heard a great deal, as we do every election year, about the founding fathers, and how their ideals, intents, and religious views were allegedly reflected in the policies and life stories of various candidates and opposed by their dastardly, un-American rivals. In a politically polarized America, it was—and still is—argued, we must consult the founders' writings, probe their biographies, contact them with our Ouija boards if need be to determine what they would have done if confronted with, say, a defense-allocation bill or a proposal to regulate traders of derivatives. If we only did so, we would find our lost sense of common purpose, restore our civic virtue, and return the union to unity.

But those arguments are frustrated by the simple fact that the men who came together to confront a common enemy in 1775 and to craft an enduring alliance in the late 1780s were not our country's founders, but rather the founders' great- or great-great-, or great-great-great-great-grandchildren.

The investment climate for tech start-ups has undergone dramatic shifts over the last few years.

Since roughly 2008, institutional VCs have taken a hit, as angels, super angels and – to a lesser degree – accelerators and incubators altered the investment landscape with fast-moving seed and early-stage deals that VCs typically didn’t want. 

As these other investors eventually began to compete for deals classically scored by institutional firms, the VC world became divided between the have’s and the have-not’s in terms of where LP dollars were flowing, with a handful of firms raising enormous rounds, with some unable to raise funds and being labeled the “walking dead”.

But times have changed, according to our just-released survey of startup company CEOs. 

Speaking to world leaders in Toronto, the UN Secretary Ban Ki-moon called on the G20 to invest more in a green economy in order to achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

"The risks—and costs—of inaction on climate change grow each year," said Ban, who urged governments not to rely solely on consumer consumption to get a sluggish economy back on track, and turn the capital investment flows towards three specific high-return investment areas: agriculture, green recovery and health systems.

Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa today formally launched the Los Angeles Mayor’s Council on Innovation and Industry (LAMCII). The new initiative is designed to spotlight the city’s growing and thriving community of innovators, entrepreneurs and venture capital activity, with a particular focus on digital enterprises.

LAMCII’s members are among those who exemplify what he’s talking about, as can be seen from the complete list below. Villaraigosa said that Los Angeles was too often – and unjustifiably – overshadowed by Silicon Valley and New York despite his city’s demonstrable successes, achievements and activity.

Almost half of all global executives polled believe that the technology innovation center of the world will move from Silicon Valley to another country in the next four years according to a survey published Wednesday.

Associated Press Convention participants use their laptops during a technology innovation conference held by Baidu Inc., which operates China’s dominant search engine, at China’s National Convention Center in Beijing, Friday, Sept. 2, 2011. KPMG’s global Tech Innovation Survey 2012 found 43 percent of respondents said Silicon Valley’s crown would be passed elsewhere by 2016. China was named as the country most likely to be the next innovation centre (45%), followed by India (21%) and Japan (9%) and Korea (9%).

Israel came in fifth while Europe barely featured.

Within just the next four years, Silicon Valley will no longer be the world’s “technology innovation center.” At least, that’s what a lot of people who are not from the valley think.

A new survey about “global technology innovation” from audit, tax and advisory firm KPMG released Wednesday asked 668 business executives worldwide whether the center of technological innovation would shift away from Silicon Valley in the next four years. The results are dramatic: 44 percent of respondents believe some other country will take Silicon Valley’s spot at the top of the tech heap.

A "Technology laggard," an "ole boys network" and, worst of all, "risk averse." Jeff Haynie hurled these insults and then some at Atlanta on his blog in 2008.

The post was titled "What's wrong with the Atlanta startup ecosystem and how to fix it." Founder and CEO of Appcelerator, Haynie asked his audience (the Atlanta tech community) to take his comments as a "constructive exit interview." The "exit" being his decision to move his mobile platform development company from Atlanta to Silicon Valley. To keep talent like him there, Atlanta would have to stop playing it safe, fail faster, recruit talent early on, and animate the community to reinvest in the system even after a successful exit. Only then could the city produce something that even remotely resembles a healthy startup ecosystem, an environment that holistically fosters innovations like Haynie's.

In the last decade, business startups launched by Arizona State University faculty have led to the formation of 55 companies, including 34 currently operating in Arizona, according to Arizona Technology Enterprises (AzTE), the intellectual property management arm of ASU. Additionally, companies and sub-licensees created, based on ASU technologies, have attracted more than $200 million in financing during that time.

In fiscal year 2011, 227 patent applications were filed with AzTE and 30 technology licensing agreements, including exclusive licenses and options, were completed. ASU faculty members were issued 18 patents and launched 10 startup companies. In addition, faculty submitted 170 invention disclosures to AzTE – 88 in the life sciences and 82 in the physical sciences. These inventions will provide the technology inventory for the next generation of new deals or startups.

“Patent Pending: How Immigrants Are Reinventing The American Economy" examines the contribution of foreign-born inventors to the American economy. From more efficient ways to purify seawater to metals that can be molded like plastic, the report highlights several immigrant inventors behind some of the most cutting-edge technologies. These foreign-born inventors are fueling patent awards at the top patent-producing universities, and their new innovations and new companies are advancing American industries and creating American jobs.

Key findings of the report include: More than three out of every four patents at the top 10 patent-producing US universities (76%) had at least one foreign-born inventor. More than half of all patents (54%) were awarded to the group of foreign inventors most likely to face visa hurdles: students, postdoctoral fellows, or staff researchers. Foreign-born inventors played especially large roles in cutting-edge fields like semiconductor device manufacturing (87%), information technology (84%), pulse or digital communications (83%), pharmaceutical drugs or drug compounds (79%), and optics (77%). The almost 1,500 patents awarded to these universities boasted inventors from 88 different countries.

The micro-entrepreneurship economy--an economy that allows people to make money off their skills and assets--is rapidly growing, led by an army of freelancers and fully employed workers who want to make extra cash on the side. What’s so appealing about delivering groceries for $20 on Taskrabbit, selling a sailboat tour for $120 on Vayable, or dancing in a hot dog costume for $5 on Fiverr? It’s the money, sure, but that’s not all.

Fiverr, a site that bills itself as "the world’s largest marketplace for small services," recently conducted a random survey of 1,100 of its sellers to find out what inspires them. The results:

Europe needs to do more to capitalise on its knowledge in critical technologies and prevent know-how draining abroad, warned Commissioner Antonio Tajani, as he launched a new action plan for Key Enabling Technologies (KETs) this week.

The plan aims to boost industry-powered growth in areas of existing expertise such as biotechnology, photonics and nanotechnology by adjusting state aid barriers, refocusing existing funds and promoting training in KETs.  EU patents are increasingly being exploited outside Europe, Tajani claimed at the launch event “We don’t want our know-how to leave the EU,” he said.

Feeling overwhelmed is extremely unpleasant, but when you think about it as a business owner, it is not necessarily that bad of a thing! Being busy means that you are either doing something very right or you are doing something very wrong. Taking a step back to decide which of these two may be the case as well as learning to prevent a stress-induced heart attack, here are 7 steps to prevent yourself from going completely bonkers.

1. Breathe! – Sit down, close your eyes and take one big breath in and out and just notice how much better that feels. Running around like a chicken with its head cut off will just make for a bigger mess than someone clearly organized with executable steps to complete. The road back to sanity starts with tuning back into you and what drives you as an entrepreneur.

Someone recently said, "the longer the crisis goes on, the smaller the ideas for fixing it get." While pundits and commentators on the left and right savage each other over short-term fixes -- tax cuts versus stimulus, budget cuts versus monetary easing (I could go on) -- our economy is still sputtering and Europe is teetering on the brink of economic collapse.

Policy-makers and central bankers have been able to stave off the massive economic dislocation brought on by previous crises like the Great Depression of the 1930s or the Panic and Long Depression of the late nineteenth century, but what we are going through is not any run-of-the-mill economic cycle. It's an enormous structural transformation -- similar if not larger in scale and scope to the shift from the Agricultural to the Industrial Age.

Need proof that interest in entrepreneurship is alive and well in the United States and around the world? Consider the 5,000-plus individuals who have already taken the “Are You An Entrepreneur?” survey, adapted from a Kauffman FastTrac questionnaire and posted on forbes.com since June 1, 2012.

While most survey respondents rated themselves high on many of the 17 personal characteristics, traits and skills that bode well for taking an entrepreneurial plunge, the results also clearly indicate areas in which aspiring entrepreneurs see themselves “needing improvement” – and underscore the perception that entrepreneurship is very much a social enterprise. The top five attributes to hone before starting a business, according to those surveyed, are: