MY FORMER editor used to frown and shake his head whenever I included exotic dancers in my column, but I saw a relevant example so I am going to brave incurring the wrath of the new management to get my point across.

One of the things I often see in small businesses is entrepreneurs who have a terrible inability to actually prioritise things.

You ask them what they actually do on a day to day basis and they tell you that they "updated Twitter" (to their 50 followers, 13 of whom are spam bots), updated their 250 friends on Facebook about what their business was doing, checked their email and "strategised."

• Why the first lesson of presenting is to go old school
• What's behind the rule of 3 in presentations
• How to distill your product description to 140 characters or fewer
• And more...

Are you aware that you can think not only with your brain, but also with your body? That your body plays a role in what and how you think? Have you ever noticed how your body affects your thinking? Today, let's get a better understanding of the mind-body connection and how you can direct your body to guide your thoughts.

Become aware of the body-mind connection.

In his two biographies of Leonardo da Vinci, Michael Gelb says that Leonardo's intellectual and artistic genius was complemented by extraordinary physical gifts. "His great personal strength was joined to dexterity" and "his great physical beauty and more than infinite grace in every movement." In contrast, Leonardo commented that the average human "moves without physical awareness". Clearly, da Vinci was acutely aware of the body-mind connection - of how our bodies affect our thinking, and vice versa. How aware are you?

Years ago I was contracted by Apple Computer to do a series of seminars in Japan, and they paid an expert (Dianne Saphiere, if you’re out there, take a bow) to help me with some cross-cultural fine tuning.

Dianne taught me the business power of silence.

In Japan, she said, a long pause during a negotiation was traditionally can a sign of respect. It was a way to show that the matter is important and the proposal just made is worthy of thought.

For many of us, our business website is structured to funnel people toward our contact form. That’s where we want them to go. We want potential customers to land on that page and fill it out so that we can take a relationship to the next level, whether that means someone is ordering catering services for a large event or looking to receive a quote from your lawn care service.

But have you optimized your contact form to increase your odds of conversion? Or are you letting confused or unsatisfied customers abandon the page completely?

A Dutch government-backed think-tank is studying the feasibility of a new financial institution to help promote the country’s green economy.

The Holland Financial Centre – which is funded by government and the finance sector – is developing a proposal for what it calls a “Green Investment Corporation”, said Ruud Nijs, an Amsterdam-based programme manager.

“The objective is to facilitate sustainable growth of the economy in the Netherlands,” he told Environmental Finance.

“Scope creep” (or feature creep) is an insidious disease that kills more good startups than any other, especially high-tech ones, and yet most founders (who may be the cause) never even see it happening. This term refers to the penchant to add just one more feature to the product or service before first delivery, just because you can.

The instigators are all well-intentioned – executives talk to potential customers who “must have” a few more things; or the technical team edicts some “technically elegant” options that they can’t resist adding before release. The result is a bloated first product which finally collapses under its own weight, or is too late and too expensive for the intended customer.

I’m moderating a panel at the upcoming Venture Shift event, titled "How angels and super angels/micro-cap VC funds are changing the stakes and making a new ecosystem."

This is a terrific topic. By way of background, you can see my comprehensive thoughts on launching new media ventures in a presentation I gave at the Haas >Play conference, called The Three Million Dollar Startup.

In the context of this panel, I believe the discussion will be generally focused on the internet and other digital businesses. It’s probably still tough to launch a new biotech company on a few hundred thousand (plus I don’t really know anything about biotech, so I’ll probably direct the panel elsewhere!).

If you have any thoughts or comments about how the proliferation of sources of early-stage capital has changed the startup game, please feel free to share below. I intend to use a lot of the feedback as questions I can pose to the panelists.

An unusual sea creature is emerging from Loch Ness in Scotland: a monster-sized floating doughnut.

Wave energy startup AWS Ocean Energy recently tested this novel wave power device on the surface of the famous lake. Now, thanks to a recent investment from Alstom, a large French power equipment manufacturer, a 60-meter-diameter version could soon produce megawatts of power as it bobs in the open ocean.

VCs are notorious for coming to meetings with entrepreneurs late and unprepared. This can be very frustrating for entrepreneurs for whom a meeting with a VC can be life or death, and who is contemplating a 5-10 year relationship with a guy who shows up late, flips through his BlackBerry during the pitch, etc.

Phin Barnes, a Principal at First Round Capital, has a solution: after each meeting with an entrepreneur, he will send them a feedback form so they can rate him.

Europe's first £1m startup accelerator is currently taking applications. Ten companies will come together in the North East with £100,000 each and support from mentors to push forward their startup ideas.

The programme, run by Ignite100, has a short application period of just three weeks and closes on July17th. The accelerator will start in Newcastle in September. There are four parts to the programme:

Shape: Through a series of mentor events with entrepreneurs, angel investors, venture capitalists and significant businesses each start-up is challenged to help the founders answer: are the underlying assumptions correct? Is the business proposition the best it can be or should it be re-shaped?

Build: Each start-up develops their product, their business model and their customer proposition. Concepts and prototypes are tested in sessions with potential customers under the guidance of the teams' mentors.

The annual Worldview Bio-Innovation Scorecard produced by Scientific American shows notable advances by Spain and Portugal in the development of their biotech sectors.

The Scorecard covers a number of measures including work force availability, education and intellectual property protection, and highlights what countries need to do to improve their capacity for creating biotech innovation locally.

“It’s fascinating to see the countries that have challenging environments in terms of innovation capacity, show consistent growth within our index,” said Jeremy Abbate, Publishing Director of Scientific American Worldview. “Some of the most notable gains come from Portugal and Spain. They have consistently climbed in their overall innovation score since we began this special report in 2009.”

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Join your colleagues in early stage capital formation and participate in lively discussions such as this: Emerging Best Practices in Entrepreneurship: Successful Approaches for a Changed Market

This panel will introduce cutting edge best practices with examples from the emerging areas of Social Entrepreneurship, peer mentoring from the Peer-to-Peer Collaborative, and Nail It Then Scale It for creating the right business model for start-ups. These emerging best practices have been gleaned by the panel from working with entrepreneurs in the US as well as in international markets. The panel will explore in more detail what these new best practices are and offer recommendations on how to practically implement them. The goal is to have a rich give-and-take session with the audience with plenty of time for Q&A.

The 18th Annual NASVF conference is coming to Arlington, TX, October 17 – 19, 2011.  The program agenda may be viewed on line:  CLICK HERE

Become a sponsor!  Join NASVF as a Member!  Get involved!  For further information, please visit our website atwww.nasvf.org or contact our VP of Programs and Membership Kelly O’Day at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

We look forward to seeing you there!

The NASVF Team

As companies start to incorporate technology into everyday practice, distance no longer prevents U.S. businesses from recruiting international vendors to help with sales, development and IT efforts. Despite this reality, there are still a lot of misconceptions about outsourcing and it’s benefits for U.S. businesses.

The emergence of new global IT hubs – particularly those in Latin American countries like Chile, Brazil and Argentina – has redefined the model for outsourcing and what it can bring to the table. However, most U.S. businesses are skeptical or unaware of the benefits of incorporating international IT companies in their business models.

With IT spending expected to reach $3.6 trillion this year, businesses can look to vendor specialists based outside of the U.S. for support as they grow and expand IT efforts.  This approach is especially important for small- and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) that want to effectively compete with the bigger players in their respective markets.

Kids may have a knack for predicting the future technology, according to a new study.

A report from international research consultancy firm Latitude found that kids are predicting that the future of media and technology lies in better integrating digital experiences with real-world places and activities, citing some initiatives that are already on the horizon.

Children across the world anticipate recent updates to Google image search, new applications for robots, real-world gaming and other cutting-edge possibilities for tech. They're also suggesting that more intuitive, human-like interactions with devices, such as those provided by fluid interfaces or robots, are a key area for development.

KC Chamber is compiling public input on strategic goals for KC region.

A couple of months ago, the Greater Kansas City Chamber of Commerce encouraged Kansas Citians to “think bigger” and submit ideas for strategic goals for the region.

The challenge followed up on a Chamber poll that showed 80 percent of respondents thought “the level of cooperation among political leaders” was the number one issue keeping Greater Kansas City from reaching its full potential. The state line was seen as a barrier to progress for the Kansas City area as a whole.

“One of the messages we consistently heard was an understanding of the importance of regional collaboration and the desire for decisive action,” said Jim Heeter, president and CEO of the Greater Kansas City Chamber. “People in both Kansas and Missouri talked a lot about looking ‘above’ the state line and working together on those projects that make sense.”

Just as the Web has brought us untold advances in innovation, collaboration and productivity, it has also given us things like this Tumblr blog curating animated GIFs of Tom Hanks portraying various animals, not to mention Farmville, Twitter or the 35 hours of video that are uploaded to YouTube every minute.

With so many digital distractions, it's a wonder we can get anything done. For those of us for whom being productive means stringing words together, whether we're bloggers, marketing copy writers or aspiring novelists, the Internet can be a mixed blessing. Fortunately, there are a number of writing applications that attempt to block out the distractions so we can finally focus.

“Innovation: Sparking the Flame”

Thursday, July 14, 2011

Location: H&R Block Headquarters One H&R Block Way Kansas City , MO 64105 RSVP online >>

Revitalize your team at The Chamber's 2011 Innovation Conference scheduled for July 14 at H&R Block World Headquarters. We can help you inspire great ideas from those around you and learn how to turn those concepts into reality.

Our high-energy, resource-packed, full-day conference begins with a keynote from Dennis Bushnell, Chief Scientist for NASA's Langley Research Center. He'll discuss the concept of IDEATION, the creation & evaluation of ideas.

While a number of limited partners are eschewing new venture capital commitments, the New Jersey Investment Council remains bullish on the sector.

So said Robert Grady, the council’s chairman who spoke during last week’s Dow Jones Private Equity Analyst Limited Partners Summit in New York on Tuesday.

After learning from the team at Hamilton Lane that “one-third of limited partners were reducing their commitments to venture capital, one-third were keeping the same allocation and one-third were planning to get out,” Grady, a former venture capitalist, said it was time to “get in.”

He said the investment council is looking to “graduate” top performing general partners from its fund of funds portfolio across the asset class, including venture capital managers.

What cities are best positioned to grow and prosper in the coming decade?

To determine the next boom towns in the U.S., with the help of Mark Schill at the Praxis Strategy Group, we took the 52 largest metro areas in the country (those with populations exceeding 1 million) and ranked them based on various data indicating past, present and future vitality.

We started with job growth, not only looking at performance over the past decade but also focusing on growth in the past two years, to account for the possible long-term effects of the Great Recession. That accounted for roughly one-third of the score.  The other two-thirds were made up of a a broad range of demographic factors, all weighted equally. These included rates of family formation (percentage growth in children 5-17), growth in educated migration, population growth and, finally, a broad measurement of attractiveness to immigrants — as places to settle, make money and start businesses.