Yesterday I wrote about how to talk to investors about your competitors.  In short, acknowledge they exist, be transparent about strengths & weaknesses and use your differences to talk about how you want to position yourself in the market.

But more important than how you talk about them, how should you actually treat your competitors?

Conventional wisdom in most companies is that “the competition is the enemy” – it’s the rallying cry to dig deeper, get more features out the door, issue press releases citing differences and attack the competition’s weaknesses in sales presentations.  I understand this instinct – it’s tribal, like rooting for sports teams.  And there are actually some benefits to having something that galvanizes your team.

BOULDER–Clues to future climate may be found in the way that an ordinary drinking glass shatters.

A study appearing this week in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences finds that microscopic particles of dust, emitted into the atmosphere when dirt breaks apart, follow similar fragment patterns as broken glass and other brittle objects. The research, by National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) scientist Jasper Kok, suggests there are several times more dust particles in the atmosphere than previously believed, since shattered dirt appears to produce an unexpectedly high number of large dust fragments.

For some great leadership advice, see “Leadership Lessons of the White House Fellows: Learn How to Inspire Others, Achieve Greatness, and Find Success in Any Organization”, by Charles P. Garcia. He says, “Too often businesses assume that offering more money is the only way to motivate employees. The reality is that employees value having strong leaders, who motivate them to do their best, just as much if not more.”

Here are a few tips derived from his first-hand discussions with some of the nation's greatest leaders that apply to every entrepreneur as we recover from tough economic times:

1. Energize your team. Instead of being the type of leader who sucks the energy away from others, resolve to be the kind of leader who strives to bring passion and positive energy to the workplace every day. Your employees have just helped you pull your company through one of the nation's worst economic periods. It's time they had a source of positive energy.

Is your imagination in a rut? Has your muse gone on vacation without you? If it feels like you haven’t had a fresh idea in months, here are 11 ways to get your creative mind moving again in 2011:

1.  Change your tune.

Music has the power to fire up the brain’s emotion and reward centers, and to form new connections between ideas. When we open our ears to new music, a host of random associations, perspectives and emotions can float up to the surface to help get those creative juices flowing again. Stream other people’s music at Blip.fm,  or play radio routlette – that’s the roadtrip game where you hit the search button repeatedly, surfing through all available radio stations with the commitment to  listen to one complete song before you move on to the next station. (Sure, you’ll hate some of the tunes you hear, but a bad song is, what, three minutes out of your life?)

1. "The most important thing in communication is hearing what isn't said." - Peter Drucker

2. "The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place." - George Bernard Shaw

3."Think like a wise man but communicate in the language of the people." - William Butler Yeats

4. "We have two ears and one mouth so that we can listen twice as much as we speak." - Epictetus

“If you’ve never failed… you’ve never lived” is a popular video on YouTube describing the failures of people like Thomas Edison, once called “too stupid to learn” by his teacher and Walt Disney, who was fired from a newspaper for “lacking imagination”. Not every idea succeeds, and indeed, some of America’s most triumphant inventors, artists and entrepreneurs have most likely failed at some point in their lives. But without risk and the possibility of failure, there can be no Innovation and no success. That is precisely one of “Robert’s Rules of Innovation” imperatives: No Risk, No Innovation.

Is Harvard Business School giving Stanford and Wharton a run for its money? It seems that yes, the prestigious business school is finally driving its own tech-focused, start-up movement. Harvard’s existing entrepreneurship center, the HBS Rock Center will be complemented by the Harvard Innovation Lab, opening in fall 2011.

And who’s driving the movement? The students are, reports BostInnovation writer Cheryl Morris. The school recently announced its $50,000 “Minimum Viable Product Fund” (MVP Fund), which was initiated by a very dear friend of mine, Dan Rumennik, HBS ’12. The fund’s name plays on the lean startup methodology that emphasizes working on customer development in tandem with product development. As reported by Morris, the HBS Rock Center contributed the $50K and will be awarding winners. The fund aims to award ten teams with $5,000 each, but teams may request up to $10,000 in funding.

It's December again and the year is coming to an end! How do you feel? Excited? Eager to see what's in store for the new year?

For myself personally, I love Decembers because it's the time when I take a breather, look back and see how the year has been.

I just did my year end review yesterday, and I'm extremely excited to get started on year 2011. In this article, I'll share with you 7 powerful questions to ask yourself as you close off your year.

This is that time of the year when your mind is ruled by the thoughts of the upcoming year and what it might bring for you. You start making plans and resolutions to make the most of the next 365 days.

Most of us fail to achieve even half of our resolutions and goals. If we could be more productive in what we do every day, and understand how to get the most out of our professional and personal lives without stressing ourselves out, I think only then we might come close to achieving the targets we set for ourselves.

Peter Nijkamp, "Innovation, Growth and Competitiveness: Dynamic Regions in the Knowledge-Based World Economy (Advances in Spatial Science)"
Publisher: S***r | 2010 | ISBN: 3642149642 | PDF | 390 pages | 2.9 MB

This book investigates dynamic regions in the context of greater global interaction in a world economy increasingly driven by knowledge and innovation. It offers novel empirical evidence on the underlying factors of the growth performance of these spaces. In particular, the following questions are addressed: What role is there for research, education and innovation in the development strategies of the dynamic growth regions? What are the risks and consequences of dynamic growth on patterns of world growth and development, competitiveness, inequalities, and convergence? What development strategies should be promoted at national and international levels to promote a growing and more sustainable world economy? What are the implications of the emerging new competitors for Europe’s competitiveness? Using an innovative, integrated framework of analysis, the contributions in this book combine a wide array of complex theoretical and methodological approaches.

Stagnant economy and low valuations and “right-sizing” of VC industry… oh my! 2010 could have seemed like just another tough year for entrepreneurs. But there are always glimmers of light and this year, those glimmers were more like fireworks. What’s more, the fireworks aren’t going to die down anytime soon, and I think they reflect a new momentum in America that will only grow bigger over the course of the next several years. Here’s my list of the top 10 reasons that made it so:

10. Investment dollars are coming back. The year isn’t finished yet, but in Northeast Ohio, venture capital investment will have almost doubled from last year’s lackluster investment levels. Nationally, venture capital investing is up over 30%, with a particular focus on companies creating transformational innovation in medical devices, social media, cleantech, cloud computing, and biotechnology. While we still have a long way to go for all the worthy, venture-backable companies to be able to access the capital they need, it’s encouraging to see activity bouncing back from the most dismal of years.

9. Entrepreneurial education has never looked so, well, entrepreneurial. Like entrepreneurs, entrepreneurial education has expanded its wings to provide students with exposure, contacts, and skills beyond general entrepreneurial studies. Interested specifically in Digital Entrepreneurship? Check out the degree program at Neumont University near Salt Lake City. Interested to start your own non-profit? Check out Social Entrepreneurship programs at Duke, Stanford, or Babson, among other B-school heavyweights. Regardless of your entrepreneurial interest, there are now over 1,000 entrepreneurial studies programs at colleges and universities across the country to provide educational tools and more importantly, confidence.

In recent years, doctors, scientists, and experts who consult with pharmaceutical companies and hedge funds have come under increasing scrutiny from the media and their fellow professionals. The truth is, it’s a case of caveat emptor—both for the experts and for the organizations hiring them.

Biotech or medical device companies that are trying to promote new products, for example, could undermine a medical expert’s perceived objectivity if financial ties are not clearly disclosed up front. Experts providing information to hedge funds must be particularly careful not to disclose non-public information about publicly traded companies and run afoul of insider trading restrictions.

For us it would be in the area of vaccines first.

The approval of the first cancer therapeutic vaccine from Dendreon in prostate cancer establishes the concept that immunotherapy is a conceptually achievable and clinically useful approach for treating cancer. This allows us and others to develop novel concepts of immunotherapy for cancer.

On another vein is the approval of GlaxoSmithKline’s human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine both for the continued demonstration of the importance of infectious disease-related cancer and the ability to intervene with a vaccine to prevent such a cancer. The GSK HPV vaccine also includes the first novel adjuvant in a vaccine in the U.S. in the last 30 years and thus allowing the ability of novel adjuvants to enhance immune responses for candidate cancer vaccines or vaccines that are directed at infections in the elderly.

The Iowa novation conlci(IIC), the 29-member advisory group of the IDED, Governor and legislature, and comprised of top Iowa business leaders, and university representatives, met on October 22 to advance the council’s main goal of promoting and spurring innovation-based economic development in Iowa. In an effort to aggressively pursue this goal, the council moved unanimously to support the transformation of the current Council to not-for-profit corporation status. Corporation status will enable the IIC to shift from simply an advisory role to an entity that engages in commercialization of projects, investments and portfolio management. The Council plans to introduce legislation during the upcoming legislative session to achieve this status.

Competition.  Unless you’re Microsoft selling an OS for a PC you probably have some.  And even then Microsoft has substitute products as anyone who has taken Econ 101 will tell you.

So if you’re raising money – from angels or VCs – you’re going to have to address the question of whom you’re competing against.  And the reality is that if you have no competition it will likely be perceived as a negative, not positive.  Why? Because if you’re truly that early / novel there’s a good chance that you’re too early and will spend lots of time / money educating the market.  Remember: being too early is the same as being wrong.

More likely if you say you have no competition you’re either not thinking hard enough or you’re being coy and avoiding the question.  With VCs my strong suggestion is that you be open & realistic.  Leaving your real competitors off of you presentation to a VC is not recommended.

Just as most sources of small business financing have slowed down in the recession, angel financing has gone through some changes, too.

Like all investors, angels became more cautious about their investments. But what long-term effect will this slowdown have? A recent study holds some useful news for small businesses that are seeking this type of financing.

Conducted by the Center for Venture Research at the University of New Hampshire, The Angel Investor Market In Q1q2 2010: Where Have All The Seed Investors Gone?, surveyed angel investment during the first half of 2010. First, the good news: Angels are investing in more businesses. The number of businesses that obtained angel capital in 2010 grew three percent compared to 2009 numbers, reaching 25,200.

At the end of 2010, GM and Nissan each began selling cars that run on electricity most or all the time. The Volt and the Leaf are only the first of dozens of new electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids to come: every major automaker has promised to start selling such cars over the next few years. Toyota, which has led the world in its development of gas-electric hybrid technology, plans next year to introduce a new version of its Prius that will be able to run on electricity alone for short distances. Meanwhile, startups such as Coda Automotive are trying to break into the auto industry with plug-in hybrids and all-electric cars—following the lead of Tesla Motors, whose electric sports car may have helped set the new wave in motion when it was introduced in 2006.

In October, 12 years after human embryonic stem cells were first isolated, a therapy derived from such cells was tested in humans for the first time (First Human Tests of Embryonic Stem Cell Therapy Underway). The therapy, developed by Geron, is designed to treat spinal-cord injury with an injection of differentiated neural cells into the injury site.

Because the clinical trial is the first of its kind, Geron has had to forge a new path forward with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration as the agency figures out how to regulate embryonic-stem-cell therapies and assess the safety of these cells. The company initially won approval to begin clinical tests last year, but a few months later these were put on hold because animal tests raised new safety concerns.(FDA lets stem cell trials resume)

In 1989, Phil Burgess, President of Denver’s Center for the New West (now defunct), gave a presentation called “Expanding Choices in America’s New Economy.” In his talk, Burgess, who is credited with first coining the phrase “economic gardening,” argued that “new hope, increasing wealth and expanding choices are the universal goals of economic development.”

These goals “invoke themes with deep roots in American culture: faith in the future, the desire for freedom, and the demand for choice. They resonate with most people….Perhaps most importantly, though, they are good standards by which to measure progress at any level—the family, the firm, the community, the region or the nation.”

More than 20 years later, these goals are more relevant than ever. Thriving communities—whether small or large, rural or urban—have citizens who believe they have options for their future, that they can make their lives (and those of their children) better in some way. People have hope instead of fear. They believe that they can find – or create – jobs for themselves. They are confident that their fellow community members and political leaders will support their business enterprises and address their social needs. They support local entrepreneurs, who in turn create or expand their businesses and give back to the community in many tangible ways.