As small business owners, one of our biggest strengths, especially when building teams, can be the ability to be clear. People can’t serve you if they don’t know what you want from them. Clarity is an ally and can seriously improve professional relationships.

Of course, the first conversation that we have begins within. You can’t build a successful team on a pile of confusion–it will always fall apart at some point. Here are three questions to ask yourself:

1. Who are you, professionally?
2. What do you want?
3. How are you willing to adapt to get it?

During the production life cycle of biopharmaceuticals, the manufacturing processes always undergo technology transfer. In large biopharmaceutical companies, technology transfer usually takes place internally from the process development teams to the manufacturing teams. Technology transfers can also take place from one company to another when outsourcing manufacturing activities. There are several motives for outsourcing biopharmaceuticals production to a contract manufacturing organization (CMO). Numerous companies start up with product and process development, but lack a GMP infrastructure to produce their drug products for clinical studies. Technology transfer also takes place from one CMO to another, for example, when the infrastructure of the initial CMO does not support further scale-up of the process required for the next phase of clinical study or commercial production. Finally, some large biopharmaceutical companies with in-house GMP manufacturing capabilities sometimes outsource their production for clinical studies or even for commercial supply due to their own limitation in manufacturing capacity. In many cases, a CMO can supply the product cheaper and faster than in-house production (1, 2).

This is amusing: Venture capital, the game. Call it “venture crapital”, but you get to play VC and fund teensy companies to fame, fortune & bubbles.

Drexel University has launched a new Master of Science in Creativity and Innovation. The 45 credit graduate program provides a strong foundation in creativity and innovation. There degree requires 33 credits of core courses and 12 credits of electives. From their website:

The Online Master’s in Creativity and Innovation is designed to develop student’s abilities to recognize problematic situations within various settings (e.g., corporate, educational, military, etc.), and generate a sufficient number of plausible, creative and innovative solutions to address them. Students will acquire the skills to conduct a methodical analysis of these creative solutions and devise and implement the best possible solution to problematic situations.

At the Rockefeller Institute, over the last two years we've closely studied the role of higher education in promoting economic development and creating jobs across the country -- in places as diverse as Georgia, Michigan, North Carolina and Nebraska.

But the best success story we found is right at home: the University at Albany's College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering.

As we reported in a study published on June 1, Albany Nano "is acknowledged as perhaps the single most successful example anywhere of university-led economic development, job growth and high-tech discovery rolled into one."

I have conversations with entrepreneurs and other VCs on a daily basis about fund raising, the prices of deals, how much companies should raise, etc. I’ve stopped talking about this as much publicly because it’s such a heated, emotional topic where the points-of-view are strictly subjective and for which the answers will only be revealed in the future.

I’ve decided to take all of my private points-of-view on the topic and make them public in a keynote speech at the Founder Showcase in San Francisco on June 15th.

I thought I’d post on one of the topics beforehand. It’s the one bit of advice I find myself giving to entrepreneurs most frequently these days, “raise money at the top end of normal.”

Huh?

If you’re into networking, you probably know that a laptop, tablet, or smartphone will allow you to connect with people even when you’re sitting in a lounge chair on a magnificent beach, any time of the day or night. And you have access to millions of people to do it with.

Whether you really enjoy social media, or it’s just a ‘to-do’ to you, there’s a better way. It happens when you make ‘social’ a team sport.

The social experience is different for different people. That’s because, optimally, each person has his or her own ‘mode’ of contribution to group effort. When those unique efforts combine – and recombine – effectively, they generate human synergy.

SANTIAGO -(Dow Jones)- Lack of entrepreneurship has prompted the venture capital industry to hold back from investing in Latin America more aggressively, venture capital investment firm New Enterprise Associates General Manager Patrick Kerins said Thursday.

As the venture capital industry shrinks in the U.S. and Europe, venture capitalists are increasingly looking at Latin America as the next region that could offer high-growth potential.

However, young Latin American entrepreneurs "need to be bitten by the bug and start creating big, fast-growth companies," NEA's Kerins said. If this condition is met, he added, Latin America could be the next avenue of growth for NEA.

Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook's founder, may be a poster child for entrepreneurship, but the stereotype he follows — young, incomplete formal education and no corporate experience — doesn't hold true in the real world, a new survey reveals.

Professional services firm Ernst & Young surveyed 685 entrepreneurs and conducted in-depth interviews with the winners of the firm's Entrepreneur of the Year award to gain insights into the shared characteristics, frustrations and career goals of some the world's leading entrepreneurs.

Although many of the entrepreneurs they surveyed started at a young age, nearly half (47 percent) didn't set up their own shops until they were 30 or older. And nearly 60 percent described themselves as "transitioned" entrepreneurs who started out in a corporate environment before setting out on their own.

Immigration, innovation, and the connection between them are hot topics once again. With the labor market in the doldrums, America's technical supremacy under challenge from abroad, and the political issue of immigration reform heating up, many argue that immigrants have a special propensity for innovation and entrepreneurship that can help spark badly needed economic growth.

President Barack Obama expressed this view in its purest form in his highly publicized speech on immigration in El Paso, Texas, on 10 May. "Look at Intel, look at Google, look at Yahoo, look at eBay," he said. "All those great American companies, all the jobs they've created, everything that has helped us take leadership in the high-tech industry, every one of those was founded by, guess who, an immigrant. So we don't want the next Intel or the next Google to be created in China or India. We want those companies and jobs to take root here." The president also quoted the native-born Bill Gates, a man, he said, who "knows a little something about the high-tech industry," to the effect that excluding those "able and willing to help us compete" will damage the nation's "competitive edge."

The top ten reasons for business failure are due to a lack of knowledge, not a lack of money. In fact, the lack of money is itself a failure of knowledge.

Top 10 reasons why businesses fail

1. Lack of an adequate, viable business plan?.

2. Insufficient sales to sustain business

3. Poor marketing plan: unappealing product, poor customer identification, incorrect pricing and lackluster promotion

4. Inadequate capital, misuse of capital and poor cost control

5. Poor management skills: lack of delegation, leadership and/or control

Let’s say you discovered a new process that could revolutionize your business. Lets say this process enables you to do more with less and allows you to engage all stakeholders efficiently. Lets say this new process holds the promise for the future of your business.

That being said would you simply use the process or plan to use the process effectively?

If you decided to simply use the process without planning for its use then the probability of achieving the potential it offers is slim to none. It would be like driving without a map, starting a trip with no destination in mind or defined routes to get where you want to go. Even if you know where you want to go without a plan you may end up going nowhere.

The vast majority of the people working in Australian businesses believe they’re being innovative. However, the nation’s Bureau of Labor Statistics says that only 40% of business actually are.

As this call-to-arms video posits, it appears someone is lying (it’s more likely that ABS has a tighter definition of innovation). The video goes on to make a case that until more companies light a fire under their imagination boilers, Australia will continue to be a middle-of-the-pack innovation nation.

Just posting what I found to be the most enjoyable piece of Groupon's S-1 document, filed today with the SEC. It's CEO Andrew Mason's letter to potential buyers of the Chicago company's stock.

But first, a few data points: Groupon said that it had revenues of $644 million in the first quarter of this year... 83 million subscribers who receive the company's daily e-mails offering discounts with local merchants...and 7,107 employees. (The fast-growing company still racked up a net loss of $146 million in the first quarter of the year, and $456 million last year.) Groupon hopes to raise as much as $750 million in its initial public offering.

In Boston, the second-oldest market that Groupon operates in (after Chicago), the company counted 778,000 subscribers to its e-mails at the end of March. In the first quarter of 2011, it sold 388,000 Groupon coupons, bringing in $9.3 million in revenue.

In my work at JumpStart, I hear stories like this a lot: “Our regional economy is declining, but it wasn’t always like this. Did you know that [insert name of large, successful company here] was founded here? It still employs thousands of people. Unfortunately, it’s been a while since we’ve had a success like that.”

With 14 million Americans out of work today, leaders in hundreds of regions across the country are in this situation. Knowing that all net new job growth in the past 30 years has come from high-growth, entrepreneurial companies, regions want to tap into their entrepreneurial legacies and once again become thriving centers of commerce by spurring the growth of new, technology-based, high-value companies.

In fact, a fellow Huffington Post blogger, Nick Seguin of the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, recently posted a blog titled “Building Entrepreneurial Communities: Lessons From ‘Big Omaha,’” which included a section on communities doing just that. He said communities need to focus on their advantages and I agree.

One of the best ways to get a premium multiple for your company is to build a deep relationship with your potential acquirer. It is only possible to build a limited number of such relationships and hence (all things being equal) it makes sense to focus on partners with a good track record of making acquisitions. That’s why this list is important.

The best soccer player in the world, Lionel Messi, plays for the Barcelona Football Club -- also considered the best in the world. The team just won the European Cup final at Wembley; and last year, its players helped Spain win the World Cup.

What is the secret of this team's success? Good management, according to the Economist. The team has doubled its revenues in the past four years, bringing in $488 million in 2010. Barca has mostly local players -- eight of whom attended its football school, La Masia -- and puts more emphasis on growing its own team members than any other major team (Messi made his debut at 16, after attending La Masia). Other teams look more like the United Nations.

Real fans of baseball understand that pitching requires a number of unique talents:

• Power: You can’t teach a 98 MPH fastball. It’s a gift that few people are lucky enough to have. But if you possess it, it gives you a huge advantage over the opposition.
• Variety: Even the guy with the 98 MPH fastball will get into trouble if he doesn’t have any other effective pitches. Nolan Ryan’s fastball looked a whole lot faster because he also possessed a devastating curve (check it out in Steven Ellis’s blog).
• Patience: If the batter fouls off seven of your best pitches, don’t get frustrated and throw one down the middle. Keep coming at him with your best pitches, and eventually things work out.

As the clean energy industry emerges from a challenging period caused by the global economic downturn, it is entering a stage of rapid change in which business models are being transformed against a backdrop of regulatory uncertainty. In several key sectors, the market is shifting back toward business structures and technologies that were once abandoned, but are now being revived. A new white paper from Pike Research identifies 10 key trends that are part of this transformation. The paper, which includes commentary and predictions about the state of the clean energy industry in 2011 and beyond, is available for free download on Pike Research’s website. [See Predictions for Cleantech in 2011]

“As the clean energy industry matures and as it simultaneously comes to grips with economic challenges, market leaders are experimenting with new business models, both at a large scale and on a distributed basis,” says senior analyst Peter Asmus. “At the same time, key industry players are utilizing an increasingly wider diversity of technology options, especially in the solar and wind sectors.”

Fast Company magazine recently reported that PayPal founder Paul Thiel is giving away $100,000 to twenty-four young men and women to finance startup businesses. The caveat is that these young entrepreneurs have to drop out of college to do it.

This move is indicative of the possibility that the traditional ways of going about making a living through a college education, an entry-level position at a firm, and steady promotion through the ranks is a dead model. Instead of following a proscribed course which may lead nowhere, entrepreneurial leaders such a Thiel are sparking a change in the way we think about success.