R&D investments in Europe were less affected by the crisis than in the US but EU firms are lagging behind their rivals in key sectors for innovation, the European Commission warned on Tuesday (26 October).

The crisis saw the profits of top EU companies fall by 21% last year, according to the Commission's R&D scoreboard, published on Tuesday.

But despite this, the amount European firms invested in R&D only fell by 2.6%, significantly less than the 5.1% drop of US companies, the Commission said.

Meanwhile, the worldwide reduction was just 1.9%, largely thanks to growth in the Asian 'tiger' economies.

"What’s the deal flow look like?"

"What are you seeing in general?"

"What’s the breakdown of Alley vs Valley deals you’ve been contacted on?"

"What themes and patterns are developing?"

These are the typical questions we get from the VC’s, Angels, Founders, and Executives with whom we work.

The questions seem to be coming much more frequently these days.

Daversa Partners is a leading executive search firm focused on building teams for venture backed, emerging growth companies. We have 40 people in the firm and offices on both coasts.

In our most recent quarterly venture capital report for Q3 2010, Texas overtook NY as the #3 spot for venture capital funding. We didn’t talk about this change in rankings in our report because Texas which has healthcare and green tech companies can jump in the funding league tables quite dramatically with a large deal or two while NY is largely a small deal, internet focused state (and is also largely concentrated in NYC). Their venture capital profiles are drastically different suffice it to say.

But for anyone who reviews the five pages (starts on page 54) we dedicate to Texas in our report, you will see that the Lone Star state is doing well in the venture capital deals and dollars landscape.  It doesn’t get the attention of California, Massachusetts or New York, but here are some highlights as gleaned from our Q3 VC report.

Everyone can recognize a great manager a mile away, so why is it so hard to find one? We all remember a few that are “legends in their own mind”, but that doesn’t do it. In fact, the clue here is that the view in your mind is the only one that matters, rather than the other way around.

Almost every one of us in business can remember that one special manager in their career who exemplifies the norm, who commanded our respect, and treated us like a friend, even in the toughest of personal or business crises.

I’ve asked many peers for the traits or attributes they saw in that person, and most will list the following positive functional traits of a good manager:

1. Leadership. Shows outstanding skills in guiding team members towards attainment of the organization’s goals and the right decisions at the right point of time. As Drucker said, "management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things."

The burn: Inaction due to self-hypnosis through seemingly innocent excuses.

The diagnosis: “I can’t exercise today.”  “I can’t ask her on a date.”  “I can’t start a business.”  “I can’t make more money.”

You’ve probably heard these claims quite frequently (perhaps even escaping from your own mouth). Personally, I’ve been guilty of such claims many times.  But the simple awareness of our tendency to conveniently mask our hypocrisy can be liberating.

I’ve noticed how one word specifically has subtly squirmed its way into countless, well-meaning, personal declarations.  I’m sure you’re familiar with the four letter word I am referring to: Can’t.

The South is hotter than most of the rest of the U.S. in more ways than one. The map on this issue’s cover could just as easily be a mid-summer temperature map as one depicting, in general terms, the states with the best business climates in 2010. The top five states — with North Carolina at the top of the list for the ninth time in 10 years — are solidly southern, and three more are, for a total of eight, in the top 10 (see the chart).

Site Selection evaluates the states annually using a four-part index of criteria linked to the magazine’s proprietary New Plant database of new and expanded facilities and a survey of corporate site selectors indicating
their preference for state business climates. The index and the survey each weigh 50 percent in the final point score and ranking.

Jobs and economic growth are every state’s Holy Grail in 2010, with unemployment well into double digits in some states and on the threshold of that measure nationally. On average, businesses were reluctant to expand during the year as energy and healthcare costs were debated and legislated in Washington. But many did expand, and many announced new facilities, especially in those states whose governors and economic development teams kept their eye on the ball.

All eyes were on Northeast Ohio entrepreneurs at the JumpStart Annual Community Meeting last week. Some entrepreneurs presented their companies at the JumpStart Angel Fair, while many more displayed their technologies in the Showcase of Entrepreneurs. Even as JumpStart CEO Ray Leach took the stage to give the annual update, he kept the spotlight on the region's entrepreneurs with the announcement of a new network.

One would guess illegal immigrants are so desperate that they would do anything and live anywhere to stay in this country. Surprisingly, the numbers paint a different picture.

Illegal immigrants have started deserting this country during the past 2 years. But they began deserting these 10 most undesirable states since 2005.

With the economy slowly getting better you try to stay on your feet and do your best to overcome the tough times. As a hard working entrepreneur you need some inspiring quotes that will make you work better and focus on your success. Today we have gathered some amaing quotes from the best entrepreneurs in the  industry! Startupquote.com is an amazing niche website dedicated only to startup quotes. We have gathered some of the most inspiring sayings on the website and decided to share them with you. We hope you enjoy this collection, and work harder. I’m not going to lie, after i read these it made very confident!

Google will now pay you to find and report vulnerabilities in its various Web properties. The company made the announcement yesterday, and it applies to sites like google.com, youtube.com, and orkut.com. Should you report a qualifying bug, you can expect to walk away with at least $500.

The program echoes an earlier program Google had launched for its Chromium project. Find a bug, report it, walk away with cold hard cash.

So you’ve got this idea for a product. You pull a few friends in and you start working at the local coffee shops – or, if you’re frugal, your home office. You plug in your Mac and camp out all day drinking the free refills and bumming the wifi. You’re nimble. Not tied down to a space, free to enjoy the flexibility that comes with being an entrepreneur. Cool!

You and your team check-in regularly on Skype, you use Basecamp and Pivotal Tracker and you get together a couple times a week on a video conference or in-person. You’re saving a fortune by not having an office, right? You’re doing everything right to bootstrap, right?

Wrong.

The “working from home/working from Starbucks” bootstrap is one of the great fallacies of start-up life. Here are five reasons why your start-up needs to find some proper office space right now:

In addition to the “green” sector, which I outlined a few weeks ago, I see biotech as one of the places where startups can always go for real opportunities. Recession-proof products with innovation continue to come from the biotechnology industry. Plus, it was the top industry attracting VC money in the most recent quarter of 2010, with a total of $944 million.

In its most general sense, biotech is used to refer to any sort of technology that uses biology or other medical technology to accomplish its end. It includes the use of microbes, or life processes, to produce materials and products that are useful to mankind.

Two top-notch analysts in this area, Eric Schmidt and Ross Muken say in Forbes “True innovation and products with a more durable revenue stream are coming from the biotechnology side of the industry,” They argue that biotech drugs treat life-threatening diseases - so recessions barely dent sales growth.

Bloomberg announced Thursday the winners of the 2010 America’s Best Young Entrepreneurs, a competition among startups founded by entrepreneurs under 25.  Also on Thursday, Kiip.me (pronounced “keep,” as in “wii”) announced the closing of a $300K round of financing, making Kiip.me founder Brian Wong, age 19, the youngest entrepreneur to receive venture investment.  The tech world is powered by young adopters, so who are the hot up-and-coming (and already here) young entrepreneurs?

Mark Zuckerberg, 26

I know it’s obvious—but it has to be said.  In 2008, at the age of 23, Mark Zuckerberg topped Forbes’ list as the youngest self-made billionaire in the world four years after creating Facebook.com.  To be clear, he isn’t actually the youngest billionaire in the world.  That title goes to his former roommate and Facebook co-founder, Dustin Moskovitz.  But in terms of numbers, Zuckerberg beats out the competition.  Worth $6.9 billion, Zuckerberg is now worth more than Steve Jobs.  What does he do with all his oodles of cash?  Nothing.  He rents a house in Palo Alto, California and recently donated $100 million to public schools in Newark, NJ.

Over the last 2.5 years I made 15 angel investments with my own cash. Although I have made a decent amount of investments, I don’t consider myself an “angel investor” because I don’t search for companies to invest in, I don’t lead financing rounds, and I don’t know how to read term sheets.

When I first started investing I did it because I wanted to make more money, but I started enjoying investing in startups because it was teaching me a lot about entrepreneurship.

For the last 9 years I have been an entrepreneur and over the years I heard both good and bad stories about investors. But I never really understood what investors went through until I started investing my own cash into companies that weren’t mine.

One criticism leveled at New York City’s fledgling tech scene is that it’s hard for entrepreneurs to find investors in their backyard. But increasingly that argument doesn’t hold water.

The latest numbers from PricewaterhouseCoopers and the National Venture Capital Association show third-quarter investment in New York rose 22 percent over the last year to $335 million. More than 60 percent of those deals were early or seed stage investments, which came from the city’s active Angel community and a new generation of VC firms like Betaworks and Union Square Ventures.

Many of New York’s hottest companies have also seen their latest rounds led by outside investors. Last month advertising platform AppNexus secured a $50 million round led by Microsoft, and in June the location-based service Foursquare received $20 million in Series B funding from the California-based Andreesen Horowitz. Boston VCs have been especially active with Matrix Partners, Spark Capital and General Catalyst, aggressively adding New York companies to their portfolios.

According to the Angel Capital Education Foundation only 1 to 4% of angel investor applicants successfully raise capital. This means that entrepreneurs must develop strong business plans and executive summaries. There are a number questions you must ask yourself before submitting your business plan or executive summary.

1. Is it 2 pages or less?
2. Does it include your contact information?
3. Does it include your logo?
4. Is it intriguing?
5. Does it include a call to action for the reader to take a next step?

I love to vote. From the buzz of an engaged citizenry, to the sanctuary of the voting booth, to surfing channels and web sites to stay on top of exit polls and real time returns. I love everything about Election Day. Voting is at the heart of what makes our American experiment exciting. Voting is the gateway drug to civic engagement. I always look forward to Election Day. It energizes me when our community comes together around the sanctity of the polling place. I love seeing the faces of the many volunteers at the local senior center where I vote. What other civic process brings together elders, boomers, and millennials as volunteers to ensure that everyone who chooses to can exercise their vote? I am always one of the first ones at the polling place in the morning as if the great privilege of voting is fleeting and it might go away if not used immediately. Voting is one of the most important things we do as citizens. Voting is a celebration of human freedom.

As an innovation junkie I believe there is always a better way. The biggest challenges of our time, education, health care, energy, and economic prosperity are systems challenges that require solutions that cut across the public and private sector. Finger pointing across sectors will not work. Engagement and collaboration works. We need to get below the buzzwords of innovation and public private partnerships to co-create our future. We need public sector leaders that get innovation and who are willing to work across boundaries to help design, prototype and test new systems with citizens at the center. Tweaking our current systems won’t work. We need system transformation and that requires government leaders who inspire us and who we can collaborate with us to co-create our future. Election Day is where civic engagement starts. We have to make our votes count.

Rich Bendis and the folks behind innovationDAILY would like to encourage you all to get out and vote.  Remember, every vote counts.