Working RemotelyRemote working is a topic that’s been on my mind a lot lately. First, because of a project I’ve been working on with Microsoft to develop an e-book, “Work Without Walls,” that examines the best practices of small and midsized businesses with remote-working policies. A survey conducted by 7th Sense Research that we used in preparing the e-book had some interesting results.

Among the small businesses surveyed:

• 60 % of employees said they could do their jobs remotely, and 72 percent prefer to work at home;
• 73 % of companies surveyed didn’t have a formal policy allowing employees to work remotely;
• just 14 % of employees said their employers were “fully supportive” of remote working.

By comparison, more than 50 percent of big companies in the survey had formal remote-working policies in place.

We recently covered the mobile web traffic of India (which stands next to US) and the emergence of non-US geographies has simply added to the fact that emerging economies will drive the next wave of web consumption.

A UK mobile analyst firm has predicted that there will be more than 1.4 billion mobile Internet users in Asia by 2015. The announcement indicates a significant growth that mobile industry is likely to witness on Asia’s developing landscape. Even the Telenor Group – whose investments include DTAC in Thailand, Uninor in India and DiGi in Malaysia – said at a press conference last week “Asia is the future”.

From the end of 2009 to the end of 2015, the number of mobile Internet users will increase by 233%, making mobile the primary Internet access channel for brands and businesses to communicate with customers. Asia has long been regarded a market with much potential for mobile internet. mobilesquared

There's a great post on the Harvard Business Review blog called "Should Entrepreneurs Lie?"

Chris Dixon tweeted it, saying "is this a joke? of course they'd shouldn't."

But everyone knows the reality is more complex, so I'm calling this "When Should Entrepreneurs Lie?"

Many times entrepreneurs lie because they expect that the people they're talking to will discount what they're saying in any case. This seems to be generally considered acceptable. The first time I did work for a startup I helped them sell advertising. I was shocked (shocked!) to discover that we weren't actually charging what we claimed we would charge. Our rate card was just a guideline, or rather a basis for a negotiation (and never negotiate up). And in fact, this is standard practice for selling online ads.

And of course there are many more businesses where nobody pays the list price. Consultants and investment bankers, especially in the wake of the econopocalypse, don't get paid what they claim to charge. Some of the big hushed stories are about the heavy discount such or such veeeery prestigious firm took to get a gig that would supposedly be beneath them.

In states across America, higher education institutions and systems are working to become key drivers of economic development and community revitalization. They are:

• Putting their research power to work by developing new ideas that will strengthen the country’s competitive edge in the new economy — and then by helping to deploy those innovations into commercial use.
• Providing a wide range of knowledge-focused services to businesses and other employers, including customized job-training programs, hands-on counseling, technical help, and management assistance.
• Embracing a role in the cultural, social, and educational revitalization of their home communities.
• And, most fundamentally, educating people to succeed in the innovation age.

Together, these trends suggest a new paradigm for economic development programs — one that puts higher education at the center of states’ efforts to succeed in the knowledge economy.

Download the PDF

Authors: David F. Shaffer and David J. Wright

Meet the new guy on the venture-capital block: Steven A. Cohen of SAC Capital Advisors, a billionaire hedge-fund manager whose net worth is estimated at $6.4 billion.

Cohen is looking to hire a general partner to run his own, personal venture-capital fund, according to sources who spoke to VentureBeat confirming DealBreaker’s earlier report. DealBreaker suggested that the fund will be around $100 million in size. But it’s our understanding that the fund will invest Cohen’s own money, not SAC’s.

If that’s the case, it will be more open-ended than the traditional venture-capital fund. Cohen could end up spending nothing on startups. He could — in theory — go all-in with his entire fortune. Anyone need $6.4 billion?

We recently posted a piece about Dwayne Spradlin’s participation in The Economist’s The World in 2010 Event.  One of the commenters on this piece pointed us to a video created by the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Enterprise and Industry.  The video is a charming illustration of, literally, breaking down fences in communication and opening new channels of communication to accelerate innovation and problem solving.  Enjoy!

As an entrepreneur, what do I need from an incubator?

Of late, there has been a lot of discussion in this forum about incubators, what measures they use for their own success, their business models, and so forth. In this post I discuss five things that I, as an entrepreneur, need from an incubator.

I fully understand that there are incubators sponsored by a state, county, or city, sponsored by a university or a country, or that non-profit or for-profit. In this case, I am only talking about a for-profit incubator that does not take any subsidy from any government or university. Its sole agenda is to enable the companies that it incubates become “successful.”

By an incubator’s success I mean precisely this: to enable the incubated company raise enough money either from organic growth or by raising additional investment monies from angels or venture capitalists to move out of the incubator. I also define an incubator is some entity that helps an entrepreneur or a team to develop a business out of ideas on paper and then send it out to face the world on its own.

This credit is based on a certificate issued by Finance Authority of Maine, which is equal to 40% of qualified investment (60%, if the investment is in a business located in a certain high- unemployment area). Limitations: the taxpayer can only take 25% of the credit in the year of the investment and 25% in each of the following three years. The amount of the credit taken in any one year cannot exceed 50% of the tax otherwise due. The credit cannot be carried back, but can be carried forward up to 15 years.

This guy should star in Kill Bill 3. But he would probably be more effective working for Joel.

We’re guessing the out-takes run considerably longer than this clip.

Augusta National keeps one eye on history, the other on the future

If you asked any longtime observer to associate one word with the Masters Tournament, it would probably be "tradition."

Is there another sporting event in the world so bedecked with so many enduring traditions? From the legends who act as honorary starters, to the pimento cheese sandwiches to the green jackets and more.

Those are all enduring. But perhaps the most endearing tradition is the Par 3 tournament on Wednesday of Masters Week. Set amidst scenery too beautiful to be a painting, the Par 3 is an unequaled opportunity to see the world's greatest golfers in a competition so lighthearted that many have their smallest children or grandchildren finish the holes for them. It makes for great laughs and crowd roars approaching what you might expect for a player's hole-in-one.

To question whether social entrepreneurs can achieve large-scale change is to doubt the existence of Florence Nightingale, Maria Montessori, William Wilberforce, Fazle Abed, Jimmy Wales, or the 2,700 Ashoka Fellows!

After all, what defines the true social entrepreneur is that he or she simply cannot come to rest in life until his or her vision has become the new pattern societywide. Scholars and artists are satisfied when they express an idea. Professionals are when they serve a client well, and managers are when their organization succeeds. None of this much interests the entrepreneur. The life purpose of the true social entrepreneur is to change the world.

Ashoka creates detailed life histories of every serious candidate it considers for election into its world community of leading social entrepreneurs. We have learned to look for this central, gyroscope-like quality because it is so predictive of who will ultimately meet our standard for election, which is to create at least continental-scale pattern change in an important field such as the environment or human rights. This gyroscope kicks in as far back as childhood and continues to define the social entrepreneur’s life decade after decade.

Some people act as if they know it all. In reality when people “act” like they know it all they are acting out a part in life they wish they had.

Collaboration can be difficult because it is centric to people sharing knowledge about something or someone. The sharing of knowledge can sometimes create conflicts when some people sharing think they know it all.

Ever witnessed someone sharing something grounded in knowledge only to be confronted by someone who thinks they know more? It happens all the time and especially in the ecosystem of business.

The ecosystem of a business is built around the hierarchy of power by influence, not by knowledge. Just because someone carries the title of CEO or King doesn’t mean they know it all it just means they have more influence, power.

Vanderbilt and ICOS have been locked in an inventorship dispute for several years over patent rights to tadalafil, the active ingredient in Cialis. The University argues that its scientists should be listed as inventors on the patents because they provided provided the building-blocks that Glaxo used in its discovery of tadalafil. (ICOS now holds the patent rights).

The district court ruled against Vanderbilt – holding that the Vanderbilt researchers could not be inventors because they did not have an independent understanding of the "complete compound claimed." On appeal, the Federal Circuit rejected that misinterpretation of the law of joint inventorship, but affirmed the final holding based on its conclusion that Vanderbilt had not provided clear-and-convincing evidence that it contributed to the invention.

Most technology startups seem to be founded by three types of people: product managers, engineers or biz dev types (MBAs and the like). Very few of them are started, in my experience, by sales people and very few early stage companies really understand sales. That’s why I started the Sales & Marketing Series and at one point I will do a bunch of posts on the sales methodology we developed at my first company called PUCCKA.

Today I want to talk about sales executives and a model for thinking about them. If you ever have to interview, hire, judge the performance of, decide whether to promote, assign clients/regions to them or have to decide whether to fire sales people, I think having a framework for thinking about them is helpful.

There are no direct financial fruits from merely owning a patent. There are a lot of patents and products which are lying useless in federally funded universities and research laboratories across the country. A patent or product must be adopted, purchased or leased by a corporation for development.

The Technology Transfer Agents are present to complete the cycle of innovation by bringing to the market, products and services resulting from federally funded research institutions. They are also considered the catalysts for innovation.

The only reason for being a transfer agent is to make federally funded research available to private industry, for discovering new applications for new inventions, technologies, and products. To return royalties and revenue back to the research agency.

There was an interesting story in today's New York Times entitled China Again Hopes to Drive U.S. Rail Construction

Nearly 150 years after American railroads brought in thousands of Chinese laborers to build rail lines across the West, China is poised once again to play a role in American rail construction. But this time, it would be an entirely different role: supplying the technology, equipment and engineers to build high-speed rail lines.

Specifically, Chinese companies have signed an agreement with California and GE to build the system using Chinese technology and Chinese banks would finance it.

Ceramic, glass and other small tech businesses, take notice! The National Academy of Science’s Board on Science, Technology and Economic Policy is hosting a free, day-long symposium on April 16, 2010 on getting the most from the federal Small Business Innovation Research program.

The meeting is organized around the theme, “Early-Stage Capital in the United States: Moving Research Across the Valley of Death and the Role of SBIR.” The STEP Board says meeting “will highlight the role of federal innovation programs, like SBIR and the Department of Commerce’s Technology Innovation Program… and will be complemented by an examination of some of the leading technology-based development programs underway at the state level.”

Angel investors in Silicon Valley are nervously eyeing a bill in the U.S. Senate, saying the legislation could crimp investments and harm their industry.

The bill, proposed in March by Democratic Sen. Christopher Dodd of Connecticut, is designed to overhaul regulation of financial services companies and provide more consumer and investor protection.

But buried deep in the 1,336-page bill, sections 412, 413 and 926 have alarmed some valley angel investors, who sink their cash into young, unproven startup firms.

MUMBAI: Early stage funding for promising start-up firms appears is set to receive a boost with local and foreign venture capital (VC) investors lining up investment plans as the economic recovery gains strength both in India and abroad.

Over 30 new VC funds have started putting money in start-ups across various sectors such as clean technology, micro finance, rural technology and genomics apart from conventional segments, a marked contrast to the bleak days of 2007-08 when the global financial crisis hit these investors hard.

The pace of economic recovery now coupled with factors such as higher investment returns and easier exit options have triggered off fresh interest among both domestic and foreign VC firms to invest in India. Amongst foreign VC (FVC) firms, funds such as Artiman Ventures, BAF Spectrum, ATEL Ventures, Blue Orchard, Mercatus Capital and Foundation Capital have already made the initial investments in Indian start-ups.

What's better than a volcano? A volcano with the Northern Lights behind it.

Photographer Albert Jakobsson took this awesome shot of Iceland's Eyjafjajokull (gesundheit) volcano. In the full series of photos, you can see Icelanders entertaining themselves by hanging out and roasting hot dogs on the glowing embers of the active, but "lazy", volcano.