It’s time for more entrepreneurs to reset their focus, and shift their thinking to completely different ways of doing things. Everyone talks about innovation, but the majority of business plans I see still reflect linear thinking – one more social network with improved usability, one more wind-farm energy generator with a few more blades, or one more dating site with a new dimension of compatibility. Serious changes and great successes don’t come from linear thinking.

In searching for ways to get this message out, I came across a no excuse, no apology, new book by Brian Reich, called “Shift and Reset,” which makes some excellent points on ways to increase the range of change in a person’s thinking, or an organization’s results. Here are some key principles that he espouses and I support:

1. Force and expect change. Everyone knows change is hard and messy, and occasionally painful. But unless we force ourselves to change, innovate, and experiment with different ways of addressing serious issues, we won’t find solutions that are needed. Major innovation won’t happen without real commitment, sacrifice, and hard work.
2. Measure ability and results, not experience. Move to a model where people are measured on their deliverables, not how hard they are working, or how many years of experience they have. For entrepreneurs, this may mean more learning from experiments, and for organizations it may mean dumping a stagnant team to start over.
3. Don’t settle, demand the best. If you want to perform at the highest possible level, you need to hire the best people, who have produced consistent exceptional results. More energy needs to be spent on how the teams are organized and how the individuals work together. Leading an organization or a movement requires skills not taught in school.
4. Launch fast, fail quick, and learn more. Indeed, even the most capable, passionate, and well-supported entrepreneur will succeed only if he or she has a clear plan to follow. But don’t believe that any plan will develop and must remain unchanged throughout the execution process. Plan in your plan for constant change, with learning.
5. The time is now to think bigger. Great new ideas are emerging from the massive and frenetic coordination of people online and through connections. Let’s make sure they aren’t lost or ignored as we head into the future. Now is the time when smaller, yet dedicated groups can communicate and work to bring together disparate ideas.

Reich makes the point that everyone has a role to play in solving major issues, and driving greater innovation. The Internet and social media facilitates cooperation and collaboration, which is what we need to shift our thinking, then reset our goals and ways of attaining them. It’s much easier to challenge everything we know, and turn them on their sides.

Especially for change in serious social issues and infrastructures, it’s now easier to motivate people to care enough and take action. We will never innovate quickly by following the same, old, tired patterns. We need to realize what being connected really means, and makes possible. Now is the time to change.

Innovation begins with knowing your customer, so that’s always the first place to focus. The shift and reset in thinking applies to finding the solution, more than in defining the problem. Linear thinking on the solution can doom a startup or an entrepreneur. A good step in the right direction is to build a team with diverse backgrounds and perspectives.

This helps break linear thinking, and greatly reduces the probability that you’ll solve a problem in the same old way, or just like your competitors. Another approach is to bring in team members from outside your domain to challenge your thinking. You as an entrepreneur can either take the lead to make real change happen, watch it happen, or wonder what happened. You decide.

For some reason, I haven’t heard much about the next generation of the Internet (Web 3.0) lately, which probably means it isn’t happening as fast as everyone predicted. It’s already a couple of years behind schedule from my perspective. I suspect the real challenge is not the semantic web technology, but new attractive business models from smart entrepreneurs.

After some work, I’m still convinced that much of the Web 3.0 buzz has always been hype, but things are changing on the Internet, and bits and pieces of Web 3.0 are appearing. According to Michael Tasner, in his book “Marketing in the Moment: The Practical Guide to Using Web 3.0 Marketing to Reach Your Customers First,” here are the five key components to watch:

1. Micro-blogging. This is the ability to share your thoughts with a minimum number of characters. People are busy, with limited time, so why not get right to the point of the story, in 140 characters or fewer? Examples include Twitter, Plurk, and Jaiku.
2. Virtual reality worlds. These are places users visit to interact with others from around the world in a 3-D setting. Meetings are conducted in these spaces, and trade shows are being replaced with virtual reality shows. Examples include Second Life and Funsites.
3. Extended personalization. Web 3.0 will allow visitors to create an ever more personal experience. They are starting to expect their name to appear at the top of Web sites, personalized e-mails, and even advanced checkout options that suit their habits. Examples include SendOutCards, Google, and Amazon.
4. Mobile smart phones. There are billions of cell-phone users throughout the world, a number much larger than those who use PCs. Consumers are surfing the Web, purchasing products, and becoming instant photo journalists from their iPhone and Blackberry.
5. Real time on-demand collaboration. Users can now interact in real time on documents, collaboration, including making changes. Many software-as-a-service (SaaS) applications now allow on-demand collaboration. Examples include Google Docs, Salesforce.com, Slideshare.net, and Box.net.

According to Tasner, who is a marketing guru, business models and marketing in the Web 3.0 environment will need the most dramatic changes to be consistent with the new culture and technology. These include:

• Adapting to mobile, the largest and fastest-growing Web 3.0 trend. Marketing messages have to be adapted and directed to the smart phones, which all have web access, e-mail, video, texting, as well as voice.

• Accommodate the resistance to sharing all information with everyone. People are more and more worried about personal privacy and identity theft. This is driving a trend towards micro-community sites and smaller, more specialized social sites. Marketers need an effective presence on these sites for credibility and trust.

• Facilitate virtual communication versus face-to-face meetings. It’s too expensive to fly across country for marketing trade shows and big sales meetings. Virtual trade shows, GoToMeeting, and WebEx are attracting new customers like crazy.

• People on the Web now include everyone. Twelve-year-olds are running million-dollar-social networks, your grandma is tweeting, and your long-lost cousin runs a popular tribe on Second Life. This trend is escalating, and will not change.

The key driving factors to Web 3.0 include mobile and residential phones with high quality video, virtual shows surpassing live events, more intelligent semantic search information, and the openness of the Web. If you are a true entrepreneur, by now your head should be spinning with the possibilities. What do you see as the throttle?

I still get business plans, looking for an investor, that say all too clearly that the first goal of the new business is to do research and development (R&D) on some promising new technology, like superconductivity or cancer research. Investors are looking for commercial products to make money, rather than R&D sunk costs, so your investment hopes are sunk as well.

In fact, the term ‘research and development’ covers a continuum of activities, so you need to use a more precise term to optimize your funding considerations. There are opportunities all along the continuum, and they need to be mapped to the right academic environments and public- and private-sector development organizations before a funding source can be determined.

Let’s consider the six stages normally associated with R&D, and the boundaries and project-specific activities interwoven therein:

1. Basic technology research. The first stage is basic research on a technology that shows a potential for solving a difficult or expensive problem. Look only for grants, universities, and enterprise sponsors at this stage. Real products are only speculation at this stage, and mentioning a large list of them won’t help get outside investors.
2. Technology development. This stage is the transition to pilot-scale research on the technology. It may entail a number of false starts, but no products. A successful result is a one-of-a-kind technology that shows enough promise both technically and economically to warrant demonstration. Funding sources are still the same as stage one.
3. Prototype development. Now we are ready for demonstration tests conducted on first-time or early-stage products. The demonstration stage usually implies substantial redesign and debugging until final robustness can be established. Angel investors are definitely interested at this stage, but VCs usually wait until stage five or six.
4. Verification. Verification is testing and publicly reporting the performance of a commercial-ready technology using specific standards (EPA, FDA, etc.). Results, if positive, are used for marketing a product directly to customers. If these required tests are common and low risk, VCs may jump in at this stage.
5. Commercialization. The fifth stage includes preparing for, financing, and implementing full-scale manufacturing and marketing activities. The technology can be reliably replicated and produced. This includes entering into partnerships, arranging for manufacturing facilities, and developing channels for distribution. All is definitely fundable now.
6. Diversification. At this point the technology is ready for implementation with a full-scale marketing plan for an array of products, including interfacing with appropriate partners, and commercialization. The term research and development should never be mentioned, even though ongoing efforts for the next product are always required.

While I certainly applaud basic research, I try to remember that people buy solutions and products, rather than buying technology or a new platform. There is even a small group of customers, called ‘early adopters’ who seek out new technology solutions. However, we all need to remember that the mass market tends to wait for the product image to supersede the technology.

So investors, looking for a near-term large and growing market, see technology development as a big red flag. They defer to others, like government agencies, universities, and large corporations to take that risk. You can participate, of course, with private funds and grants, but don’t expect venture money to be thrown your way just yet. Get used to the message, “We love your proposal, so come back when you have a real product and a real customer!”

Even though I love technology, I always cringe when an entrepreneur starts his pitch by touting his new technology. He has forgotten that new technologies are perceived by most customers as causing more pain than the problems they hope to eliminate. I chastise these startups to highlight the solution created by the technology, rather than highlight the technology itself.

I usually get pushback about the success of all the great technology companies, like Intel and Apple. Let me be clear – technology and market-driven need not be mutually exclusive! The best companies find a way to drive the market with a solution based on their technology, rather than push their new technology as the solution for the marketplace.

Yet we all know that many customers delay their adoption of the latest software platform, and fancy new hardware, for a year or two until all the “kinks” are worked out of them. In reality, new technology alone is often assigned a negative value, as startups push out alpha and beta products earlier and earlier in the competitive rush.

Of course, there are always a few early adopters who love change and need to have the latest technology, but early adopters don’t make the market. Here are a few thoughts on a process that will keep you on the right track for the majority of your real customers:

• Get real customer input. Is your product tempered with actual market and customer feedback? Everyone’s personal perspectives and interests are different, so the key is starting from market problems, and going from there to technology – not vice versa.

• Quantify the pain points. What are the major points of pain experienced by the intended users of your product or service? Users with no pain who say “nice to have” will not likely pay money or endure change for your product.

• Keep it simple and easy to use. Are the user problems being solved in the simplest possible way, with the fewest possible features? Or have many features been thrown in, just because the technology can deliver them?

The easiest way to start this process is by starting from the market drivers and working forwards, not backwards. Don’t make the mistake of looking at market needs or requests as an afterthought to verify what’s already been planned.

Companies that are market-driven are externally focused: they identify opportunities and then capitalize on them. Technology-driven companies are internally focused: they identify what is possible with the technology and then look for customers who might like the results.

Market-driven also means knowing the overall dynamics and forces in the marketplace and understanding how those forces might impact the business – marketing and sales driven. A technology-driven business is driven by engineers. A great company finds a balance between these two forces, but makes the business side the driver.

In fact, technology is neither intrinsically good nor intrinsically bad. We all know that very few customers will buy technology, simply for the sake of technology. Technology tools and platforms are hard to sell, because the people who love and understand them are not usually the decision makers, or the budget owners.

But how do you manage “disruptive” technologies, where people don’t even know they have a need? Many entrepreneurs are convinced that they have the greatest invention ever, and others will believe when they see it. Investors know better, since dramatic changes in technology historically take a long time and lots of money go gain a foothold – with a few rare exceptions.

If you are looking for external investors, my advice is to take a hard look at your business plan and investor presentation. If they highlight your technology first, you will likely be tagged as a solution looking for a problem. Start by quantifying a customer problem, and show how you are using technology innovatively to solve this problem. That’s market-driven technology providing solutions, and every investor and customer will want a piece of that action.

I always advise software startups to file patents to protect their “secret sauce” from competitors, and to increase their valuation. The good news is that a patent can scare off or at least delay competitors, and as a “rule of thumb” every patent can add up to $1M to your startup valuation for investors, or for M&A exits (merger and acquisition).

The bad news is that patent trolls can squeeze the lifeblood out of innocent and unsuspecting entrepreneurs, as exemplified by the current mess around Lodsys patent No. 7222078. This patent holding company is charging infringement and demanding royalties from every app developer for the iPhone and Android, for a feature most agree has been in apps for many years.

Yes, the software patent process is a mess. I say this with conviction even after I survived the process, and have a software patent pending. Consider this list of commonly recognized software patent flaws, as summarized from my research, Paul Graham’s “Are Software Patents Evil?” essay, and the most recent “Enough is Enough” article by VC Fred Wilson, sparked by the Lodsys case.

• Process is onerous, expensive, and time consuming. Count on spending $10K to $20K per patent just for a USA application today, unless you do most of the work. Even after your application is accepted, the issuing process takes a lifetime in today’s technology (4-5 years). Then you need to repeat the process for every country of interest.

• Patents have become a tax on innovation. A lot of companies, like Lodsys above, buy up software patents that are over-broad, and hold startups hostage, after the fact, through royalties and litigation. They know that these entrepreneurs don’t have the skill or resources to defend themselves. Patents only help the big guys who want no change.

• Software technology changes rapidly. Software changes fast and the government moves slowly. The USPTO has been overwhelmed by both the volume and the novelty of applications for software patents, and they can’t maintain a qualified staff. Patents currently last 20 years, which is way too long in the software business.

• Patents granted that don’t meet the criteria. To be patentable, an invention has to be more than new. It also has to be “novel” and non-obvious. Moreover, patent law in most countries says that software “algorithms” aren’t patentable. So lawyers routinely frame a software algorithm as a “system and method” to meet the criteria.

• Valid patent can be overturned by unpatented prior art. The USPTO operates on the doctrine of “first to invent,” rather than first to patent. This is ugly, as it means that a valid patent can be overturned by another inventor with a preponderance of evidence of prior art. This happened to RIM (Research In Motion), and cost them nearly $650M to recover.

• Applying for a patent is a negotiation. As a result, lawyers always apply for a broader patent than they think will be granted, and the examiners reply by throwing out some of the claims and granting others. They don’t insist on something very narrow, with proper technical content.

• Different rules around the world. What I have described so far is the situation in the US. In Europe, software is already deemed not patentable, and other parts of the world are somewhere in between. In some countries, software patents are not recognized, and in others they are not enforced. We need a global solution.

So what’s the answer? I would argue to simply eliminate the software patent – since software is an implementation and is already covered by trademark and copyright law anyway. Another argument is that software by itself is information, not physical. It is in the jargon not “technical.” It is like a piece of music that is loaded into an iPod, or a record placed on a record player.

New computational technology algorithms would still be patentable, as long as the algorithm meets the defined requirements for novelty, usefulness and inventiveness. I’m a big supporter of building and protecting a portfolio of real intellectual property, and maximizing your startup’s valuation, but it shouldn’t be just a legal game.

Entrepreneurs are usually highly creative and innovative, but many innovative people are not entrepreneurs. Since it takes a team of people to build a great company, the challenge is to find that small percentage of innovative people, and then nurture the tendency, rather than stifle it.

A while back I read a book titled “The Rudolph Factor,” by Cyndi Laurin and Craig Morningstar, which is all about finding the bright lights that can drive innovation in your business. The story most specifically targets big companies, like Boeing, but the concepts are just as applicable to a startup with one or more employees.

The core message is that real innovation and competitive advantage are more people-based than product or process-based. Every good entrepreneur needs a people-centric focus to ferret out creativity and innovation in his team, and to build a sustainable competitive advantage.

The authors observe that people who behave as mentors tend to have an uncanny ability to recognize and nurture people who have innate capabilities along these lines. Here is a summary of the characteristics they and you should look for:

• Thinkers and problem solvers. Innovators are naturally creative and love new challenges. Some may appear a bit eccentric to people around them. They generally promote unconventional ways to solve problems and have an easier time than most at identifying the root cause of a problem.

• Passionate and inquisitive. These team members are passionate about their work and light up when talking about their role or a particular project they are working on. They often ask “Why?” even when it is not the most popular question to be asked.

• Challenge the status quo. They believe that questioning is of value and benefit to the organization. This is also how they discover what they need in order to solve a problem, so they aren’t rocking the boat just for the sake of rocking the boat.

• Connect the dots. Innovators have the ability to quickly synthesize many variables to solve problems or make improvements. To others, it may appear as if their ideas come out of the blue or that there is no rhyme or reason behind their thinking.

• See the big picture. They tend to be natural systems thinkers and see the whole forest rather than a single tree … or just the bark on the tree. They may express frustration if people around them are having conversations about the bark, rather than the forest.

• Collaborative and action oriented. They are not loners, and have the ability and confidence to turn their ideas into action. They act on their ideas, sometimes without knowing how they will accomplish them. The “how” is always revealed in time.

Your challenge is to go forth with this new awareness and thinking, to find and mentor those bright lights that will drive innovation and competitive advantage. The next step after finding innovators is to integrate them into your team. A key aspect is establishing a team-based culture that is a safe environment to share and execute ideas.

In fact, this safe and nurturing environment has to extend beyond a single team to the highest levels of the organization. It should embody a style of leadership that is essentially a commitment to the success of the people around you. That opens the door for anyone in the organization to lead from where they are, rather than waiting for management to “do something.”

Innovation is at the very heart of every successful startup. Everyone wins when you look at things very differently and wonder “why”, not “why not.” What better way to extend this power than to surround yourself with more highly creative people? Then you can make the world a place of possibilities, as well as probabilities.

Cloud computing is still all the rage in the business world these days. Yet I find that most business people don’t understand and fully trust it, and I defy even the technologists to define it in ten words or less for business people. Many say it’s just marketing hype applied to old principles that have been around for a long time.

A typical definition (from Wikipedia) is that “cloud computing, is Internet-based computing, whereby shared resources, software and information are provided to computers and other devices on-demand, like a public utility.” That’s about 25 words which I’m certain doesn’t paint a very precise picture to the entrepreneurs I know.

Putting aside the acronyms and technical jargon, I think I can distill the essence of the cloud computing vision to the following five key points:

1. Buy service from a central utility, rather than buy assets. Now you can pay for a metered service delivering compute power, data, and storage, based on your business demand, through the Internet. No need to buy and manage these as assets. This is a great cost leveling advantage to businesses, which used to be called time sharing.
2. Maintenance and support are provider responsibilities. Small companies no longer need an IT staff, with the inherent costs and management responsibilities. That allows them to focus on their core competencies, reduce overall costs, and be more agile in responding to market changes.
3. Access to new services and data is instantly global. Employees don’t need to come to an office to do their job, and customers don’t need special software installed access a new application. International standards and localizations are assumed from the beginning, rather than added much later.
4. Availability is 24/7, just like your electric utility. No more down time on weekends, or during the nightly backups. The Internet is a huge power grid that services computing needs (cloud computing) of businesses and consumers, just like the electricity grid services power needs (cloud power).
5. Easy integration of customized applications. People have traditionally bought their own computers simply to provide a common platform where all their applications could talk to each other, even though customized, and share data. The cloud provides these transformations with security and integrity.

Make no mistake about it, these are the dreams, not the reality today. Even the pundits agree that cloud computing is still for “early adopters,” meaning it’s not all there yet. Many people can quote cloud computing successes, like businesses using Amazon Web Services for huge scaling, or failures, like the Google App Service major outage a while back.

Other gray areas include how to do secure credit card transactions in the cloud, tax considerations for international operations, multiple virtual machines in one cloud, and properly addressing differing geographic regional requirements in a single cloud. Then there is the connection problem of sharing data with standard applications not in the cloud.

When a vendor starts talking about his paradigm shift to a dynamically scalable and virtualized solution in the cloud, with SaaS (software as a service), PaaS (platform as a service), MSP (managed service provider), or web services in the cloud, tell him to skip ahead to the chart which shows you how well he does on the five points above, and the five gray areas outlined.

Even though “the cloud” is a familiar cliché for the Internet, cloud computing is still very much an opportunity for startups, with lots of room for innovation and better solutions. Now is the time to jump on board, but a cloud usually means you should expect a few storms ahead before you see the sunshine.

It seems to be an accepted fact these days that big companies normally innovate by buying a startup with innovative products, rather than focusing on in-house innovations. This is a good thing for entrepreneurs and investors, who can win big, but it’s not a given. I see many startups who seem satisfied with a “me too” approach, building yet another social network or e-commerce site, rather than being truly innovative.

Much has been published on this subject, including a new book “Look at More: A Proven Approach to Innovation, Growth, and Change” by Andy Stefanovich, which is really a guide to established companies for unleashing creativity within their organizations. He asserts that the problem is lack of inspiration, and he supports this with twenty years of real case studies from his own experience.

The good news is that most entrepreneurs and startups have more inspiration than almost anything else, and it sometimes leads to success despite their lack of resources and business skills. Yet even entrepreneurs need to focus on the most effective way to unleash innovation, and maximize their chances for success.

Andy offers a simple mantra for innovation, expressed as “Look at more stuff; think about it harder.” This mantra is complemented by a framework known as the five M’s, which are five key principles for unleashing creativity in any environment:

• Mood. Inspiration and creativity requires the right context of attitudes, feelings, and emotions. Every business leader who wants innovation must constantly monitor and set the proper mood for the environment. You can set the right mood by purposefully disrupting the status quo, initiating change, asking provocative questions, and listening.

• Mindset. This is the intellectual foundation of creativity, the baseline capacity each of us has for getting inspired, staying inspired, and thinking differently. Four thinking disciplines which produce a creative, inspired mindset include changing your perspective, taking risks, finding your passion, and challenging assumptions to embrace ambiguity.

• Mechanisms. These are the tools and processes of creativity that help you engineer inspiration into the way you work and empower your organization to embrace the kind of behavior that fosters innovation. Four key steps include building a context, generating ideas, filtering ideas, and building a blueprint for implementing the best ideas.

• Measurement. Even creativity needs guidance and critical feedback on the qualitative and quantitative performance of individuals and organizations. Measurements send a strong signal of what is important and where people should focus their passion and energy. In addition to measuring results, you need to measure mood, mindset, and the mechanisms above.

• Momentum. This is accomplished by the active championing and celebrating of inspiration and creativity that foster a self-reinforcing cycle for increasing innovation. Momentum is an organizational priority for inspired leaders who have a clear understanding of the other four M’s.

Not everyone has to be a leader for innovation to work. Research has indicated that followers are just as important to consider as leaders when thinking about creating the mood and momentum for creativity, inspiration, and innovation. Likewise, the right mindset alone isn’t enough. You have to be able to convince others and sell your ideas.

Thus, even entrepreneurs must not assume that their efforts and their team will be creative and innovative. “Me too” startups don’t get funded, and they certainly don’t get bought for a premium by the sleeping giants who are looking for outside innovation to kick-start their growth again. Thus I suggest that every entrepreneur and every startup review their own environments for the five M’s, to avoid getting tagged as a “has been” before they even “have been.”

Entrepreneurs are always looking for “the next big thing,” when maybe in fact it’s a lot of little things that are only recognized after the fact as components of a big evolution or revolution. In my view, the Internet “connectivity anywhere” has already spawned several of these, but the global change has only begun.

Emily Nagle Green, in her recent book “ANYWHERE,” argues effectively that the future of the world and business is ubiquitous connectivity, the total interconnection of people, ideas, and products through a global digital network. Every person will have access to virtually anything in the world from virtually anywhere he or she happens to be at the moment. Key vehicles already include wireless for communication, and RFID for product location.

The implications for startups in this context are huge. On the hardware side we need better technology to provide a common digital network around the world, better broadband to satisfy the demand, and wireless ubiquity for connecting people, devices, and businesses. The needs for new software and services are just as pervasive.

So how do entrepreneurs train to lead the Anywhere Revolution, rather than be dragged along by its wave? Here are some principles I have adapted from Emily’s work:

1. Be eternally curious. You need to be an eager investigator, avoiding the temptation to write things off before you’ve opened your eyes to all the possibilities they offer. Don’t let yourself be talked out of powerful ideas. Develop a keen sense of customer appetites, as well as current solution strengths and weaknesses.
2. Be a ubiquitous connector. Some people are naturally “connectors,” using their links with others to create or promote opportunities between them. The Internet dramatically reduces the cost of being a connector. In fact, now we can all be connectors, and should be.
3. Be an analytic thinker. Already today, your skills in searching for information and then synthesizing that information, looking for patterns, and interpreting it, can be more valuable than the actual information you’ve amassed in your experience as a person and as an employee.

Entrepreneurs should be asking themselves for every consumer and business product, how can we add “anywhere” connectivity to this item? This is called the connectivity diffusion.

• If you can enhance the user’s experience with sending, or getting, real-time information, you should.

• If you can add value to the product with connectivity – perhaps contributing to the cost, too, and thus defraying the price of the product for the customer – you should.

• If you can extend the life of the product in the customer’s hands by providing service or updating it with new features, you should.

• If you can partner with a firm that can do any of these things to bring your service or message to more “surfaces” in the customer’s life, you should.

Also, put your marketing hat on and realize the wealth of new potential opportunities to create more awareness and consideration of your product or service in the future of ubiquitous connectivity. Whether it’s coupons, or advertisements on the mobile, the connected device with geo-location that’s always in a pocket or purse is literally a whole new world for marketers.

As an entrepreneur, don’t apologize for your self-interest and profit motivation. Be an optimistic adopter of connectivity. Be a connectivity evangelist and embrace the connectivity future that is opening before you. That’s a win-win for everyone anywhere.

In a second, with Google, I can find a phone number that was assigned to you ten years ago, but it takes me an hour to find your phone number on that business card you gave me last week. That’s just wrong. We need instant access to the most important of all resources, current contact info.

Too many of us have piles of business cards scattered around the office and home, as well as additional contacts on your cell phone, PDA, Outlook, LinkedIn, and Facebook. The result is we can’t find that key name and phone number quickly when we really need them.

The solution is simple to define. What we all need is a digital tool that can extract data from business cards, as well as sync it with your cell phone, your email, and the social networks you use. It needs to have great search and display capabilities as well as spreadsheet-like sorting so you can look at the information in various ways. Finally, we want it cheap (of course).

My old rolodex for 100 business cards doesn’t do the job any more. So I’ve been scouting around for something better, looking at the pluses and minuses. There are a wealth of alternatives, but no universal solutions:

• Bump. Here’s the latest technology. A new smart phone app that allows users to simply tap their smart phones together, and with the right setup, they will exchange contact info. This is great and it’s free! Of course, you both need to have compatible smart phones with the software already downloaded.

• CardScan Personal. Here is the old standby low-end hardware-based solution, a simple business card scanner for $150, with software to synchronize the data with Outlook, Windows mobile devices and smartphones. That doesn’t address social networks and other lists you may have. The scan hardware here is required for all software solutions.

• Sage ACT! If you prefer the software and data be all on your own computer for security and privacy, ACT! has been the standard for businesses and individuals for over 20 years (base $200). The cost goes up if you want to synchronize with Outlook and your PDA, but most of the features you might be looking for are available.

• Salesforce.com. In business, contact information management is a key part of customer relationship management (CRM). Salesforce.com is the most popular online service offering, meaning no software to install, and accessible from any computer. For individual entrepreneurs, it’s a high-end alternative (entry $5+/month), and it’s definitely a candidate for your business sales force. Basic sync functions are available.

• Shareware. I found dozens of software packages available on the Internet for free download, or a nominal price. Several of these have good reviews, including PIMEX, Diasho, Enhilex, and Advanced Contact Manager. Yet my experience is that shareware software is usually worth what you pay for it.

• Commercial software. There are hundreds of other alternatives and add-ons out there, like Quickbooks Customer Manager, Personal Information Manager, Beyond Contacts, and Goldmine. They range in price from $150 to over $4000, but check each for the features important to you.

Social networks have added additional layer of complexity to this challenge. LinkedIn supports the export of connection contact information to Outlook and Gmail, with no special software required. Facebook, however, does not provide this interface, and has specifically prohibited applications from being offered to solve the problem. They consider such data proprietary.

Even email is a problem. You need to capture contact details beyond the email address from email contents, including signature blocks. I did find a package named Copy2Contact, which can save you lots of cutting and pasting. Now if everyone included contact information in every email, I wouldn’t need to bump into you periodically to stay current.

Founders almost always cite lack of money as the reason for failure, but if you look deeper, I believe the reason is more often about dysfunctional people and leadership. Sometimes it comes right back to the founder, in terms of a malaise often called “Founder’s Syndrome.” A few years ago I was intimately involved with a promising startup that taught me about this issue.

I’ll be short on specifics here, to protect the guilty, but I hope you get the idea. It’s not a disease, but it can kill your startup. You can find a more complete discussion of Founder’s Syndrome on Wikipedia, but here are a few of the “symptoms” I observed in the Founder and CEO in this case:

• Advisors and staff hand-picked from friends and connections. Personality and loyalty are apparently the key criteria, rather than skills, organizational fit, or experience. The executive is looking more for cheerleaders, rather than people with real insights and ideas.

• Reacts defensively and talks constantly. Sometimes it’s time for quiet listening rather than talking. A strong and confident leader will always realize that a defensive response before the input message is complete does not impress investors, nor anyone else on the team.

• Staff meetings are for one-way communication. This Founder holds staff meetings only to report crises, rally the troops, and get status reports on assignments. There is no concept here of team strategy development, and shared executive agreement on objectives.

• With no input and no “buy in” from the team, sets extremely ambitious objectives. These objectives are set based on the desires and dreams of the Founder, with no recognition of technical realities, costs, or time required.

• Over time, becomes more and more isolated and paranoid. The first clue is some veiled comments about the motives of staff members, advisors, and investors. These become more specific as the situation gets more dire, to the point where key members begin to desert the ship in disgust.

• Highly skeptical about planning, policies, and advisors. Claims “they’re overhead and just bog me down”. Founder perception is that his experience is more applicable than the input of others, and formal planning and policies are just a way of introducing unnecessary bureaucracy.

In the beginning, we all found our startup Founder to be dynamic, driven, and decisive. He had a clear vision of what his organization could be. He seemed to know his customer’s needs, and was passionate about meeting those needs. Just the traits one would expect for getting a new organization off the ground. However, he had other traits, including the ones listed above, which became major liabilities.

The undoing of the company began when a potential investor, after months of search, was ready to put up $1M, but made it clear that his firm would likely need to replace the Founder with someone with more credentials and experience in this industry. With that revelation, the Founder killed the investment deal, and every other potential deal which raised the same issue.

Of course, no situation is this simple. There were product development problems, pricing problems, and early customers who demanded more features and delayed contractual payments. The ultimate result was a startup founder who exhausted his personal funds, drained the investments capability of friends, and drove away the team one by one.

For me, this is a most frustrating and difficult problem for any advisor or team member to deal with, since communication and learning can only occur when someone is open and listening. If any of you out there have seen this, or have some experience or ideas on how to deal with this situation effectively, let me know. You can be a hero if you have the cure.

For all you Founders out there, if you find this article anonymously taped to your computer, it might be time to take a hard look at yourself in the mirror. We can’t change you, but you can change yourself. It could save your startup!

Being a risk taker in business is not the same as being reckless. Nevertheless, the word “risk” has a negative connotation to most of us, implying danger and possible loss. For true entrepreneurs, risk is viewed as a positive, with its implied challenge to overcome the unknown and hitting the big return.

In fact, risk is an integral part of life, as well as every business, yet so few people learn to manage it properly, or even want to think about it. One way to learn is to understand better how successful entrepreneurs approach risk, and look at actual strategies they use for success.

I found a great summary of key strategies used, with life stories, in a book titled “The Risk Takers,” by Renee and Don Martin. Here is their list, with a little prioritizing and comments of my own:

1. Spot a new trend and pounce. Often, a shift in cultural or economic trends will create new entrepreneurial opportunities. The challenge is to recognize the shift early, and then act on it, despite the risk. This is the origin of the “first movers” competitive advantage.
2. Go on a treasure hunt and find an under-served niche. Even a huge multi-billion-dollar company can’t offer everything for everyone. There is nothing more exciting than finding a lucrative market that everyone else has failed to spot or target.
3. Exploit your competitor’s weakness and make it your strength. The sharpest entrepreneurs have a knack for viewing the world from the perspective of their customers. That quality can help you capitalize on competitors vulnerabilities and shortcomings.
4. Hit ‘em where they ain’t. Whenever possible, set your sights on areas that your competitors have neglected or ignored. It’s easier than dislodging well-recognized existing products, and waiting for customer change, even if your solution is better.
5. Buck the conventional wisdom. Many entrepreneurs profiled in the book succeeded in large part because they veered away from established formulas and ways of thinking. Challenging convention can open the door to competitive advantage.
6. Save your bucks and get notice without expensive advertising. If your startup business is on a tight budget, there are creative ways today to get customers’ attention without traditional advertising. Start with social media, blogging, and word-of-mouth.
7. Never let adversity or failure defeat you. The ranks of successful entrepreneurs are filled with men and women who refused to stop believing in themselves, despite the derision of others or heartbreaking failures. Persistence and resiliency lead to success.
8. Trust your gut. An expanding body of research confirms that intuition is a real form of knowledge. It’s a skill you can develop and strengthen – one that’s particularly valuable in the most chaotic and fluid business environment. At such times, intuition often beats rational analysis.
9. Never stop reinventing your company. Top-performing entrepreneurs make it a point to give their business a major overhaul now and then to keep pace with changes in the marketplace. Complacency in business is like a slow leak in a tire. By the time you notice it, the damage is done.
10. Just start! The “perfect” time for a business launch will never present itself. More often than not, waiting just gives would-be competitors the opportunity to beat you to the punch. If you truly believe your idea will succeed, then take the risk and just get started.

We have always been a world of entrepreneurs, and if we are to rebuild our economy, we must reinvigorate the culture and mind-set that have built that tradition. Believe in the power of your ideas and just start the pursuit of you own entrepreneurial dream. With intelligent risk, you too can succeed.

In my experience, inventors aren’t interested or aren’t very good at building a business, and entrepreneurs aren’t usually good scientists. These people need to find each other, and can jointly make a great team for a new startup.

Historically, it’s also not often that a good inventor was also a good entrepreneur. Some now argue that even our entrepreneur heroes, like Thomas Edison, really cheated on the invention side. Only a few great entrepreneurs of today, like the young Bill Gates, seem to have elements of both sides. Even he had some great help from Steve Ballmer, a real marketing guy, and others.

I’m convinced that this is because the personal characteristics required for these two jobs are quite different. For example, here are a few of the attributes that come to mind for a good inventor:

• One idea, one focus. They have perseverance, based on strong personal conviction that something is possible. An inventor has to know precisely how things work. Inventors build solutions to a problem, and they relish in the success of having solved the problem.

• Good with details. If you have ever written a patent application, you know it’s all about details, linkages, and causes vs. effects. Good inventors love to diagram out all the details, algorithms, and get their reward from finding new ways of getting things done.

• Creative and artistic. You have to give the creator some resources, time, and throw in some food once in a while, and a “completed design” will appear in due time. Then they are done. They hate sales, and don’t understand what making a profit even means.

• Realistic if not pessimistic. Every inventor, programmer, musician, and artist will tell you that you can’t schedule invention. They won’t commit to a completion date, and always dream of an unlimited budget. They expect many attempts will be required.

Entrepreneurs, on the other hand, have a complementary but different set of strengths and weaknesses:

• Lots of ideas, can’t focus. Most good entrepreneurs are idea people, and can flood you with ideas. The reason they can’t focus is that they haven’t yet flushed out all of the half-baked ones. When teamed with someone who can focus, things work, and a lot of wasted effort is avoided.

• Likes the big picture, not good with details. An entrepreneur always has a “vision” of a bright future. But many fail, or have lots of stress because they don’t like to deal with the details. They tend to leave the details to others, who don’t have the vision or the skill, so the business suffers.

• Good at starting a business and selling. Every entrepreneur reads everything they can find on running a business, maps out all the steps in their head, or explicitly on paper (business plan). They love talking about their business and their product, and dream of having millions of customers.

• They exaggerate and are too optimistic. Exaggeration, pipe dreaming and denial are the tools and comforts of the trade of entrepreneurism. The psychological source of this “always at the edge” may be an addiction to adrenaline, the pleasure/high of “pulling it off” at the last minute, or the high that victory brings.

For a successful business, it takes the discipline and creativity of an inventor, as well as the vision, planning, and optimism of an entrepreneur to create customer value. So if you’re an entrepreneur, find yourself a frustrated inventor and likely both of you can find more success and happiness.

It’s a long way from an entrepreneur’s “idea” to a working product with a real market and paying customers. A necessary intermediate step for proof of concept, credibility with potential investors, and communication with your team, is a working prototype. Building a prototype should be an early and high priority task for every startup.

A prototype doesn’t need to look great, or be built to scale, but it better accurately translate your vision into something real and tangible. For less tangible products, like software, it should simulate the look and feel of the final product on relevant base hardware. Here are some key objectives to keep in mind when designing your prototype:

1. Validate the customer need and opportunity. I always hate it when I see startups invest millions of dollars in technology before they validate their ideas in the market, only to find that customers seem to be looking for something slightly different. Test your idea early in a form that is easy and inexpensive to modify.
2. Demonstrate to you and your team that your idea is implementable. No matter how strong your vision and theory, you won’t know for sure until you see it, that it really works. Even the best ideas often fail. Even when it works, key members of your team may not understand it all until they can touch and feel it.
3. Leverage the technology to change directions as needed. In these days of rapid change, almost every startup has to adapt their solution, business model, or target customer. A pre-production prototype will allow you to be adaptive without dire consequences.
4. Convince potential investors to take you seriously. Angels and venture capitalists are all about reducing the risk. Per the above points, if you have a validated a working prototype, investment risks are dramatically reduced. These days, if you don’t have a proven prototype, investors probably won’t even talk to you.
5. Early start on testing performance, materials, and quality. Work with the prototype will help you determine the best materials, like metal versus plastic, to assure acceptable performance and durability. Don’t wait for the final production model to find out that your product has a weak link in one of the common environments.
6. Basis for working with vendors to finalize costs, manufacturing, and marketing. After the market and product have been validated, the real challenge comes. You need to find vendors who can deliver in less cost and time than competitors, and build distribution and support channels. A prototype is the three-dimensional version of your vision.

There is nothing wrong with starting simple, engaging a friend who does mechanical design, or a student at a local industrial design school. In fact, many universities have expert professors, graduate students, and laboratories in all the key technologies, and they may be happy to do the work for you, if they can use it for class projects and Government Grant applications.

If you are ready for the next stage, it’s easy to find commercial resources on the Internet, like ThomasNet, a one-stop database of 650,000 manufacturers, distributors, and prototype developers, covering every state and country. There are new methods of prototyping, like stereo-lithography, which allow plastic prototypes to be made directly from computer drawings for a few hundred dollars, rather than waiting for injection molding at more than $10,000 per item.

Even at early stages, you can get invention support services from sites like Invention Home in Pittsburg. Just don’t get carried away here, and remember that the invention process is risky, with only a small percentage of inventions or products succeeding on the market. There is no magic, so don’t spend all your money assuming that these companies will guarantee your success.

Don’t skip the prototype stage for all the business reasons listed, and because it is a great way to explore possibilities, and have fun using your creative juices. The prototype is where you really bring your product idea to life, for yourself, as well as for everyone else.

It seems like only a few months ago when I wasn’t sure if Twitter was relevant to my business, or if it would be a waste of time. Now I have almost 300,000 followers on Twitter as StartupPro, and the business is fun as well as profitable. I’m now convinced that any entrepreneur can use it to kick-start their business, and build their brand as well.

First, I’ll try to answer the most common question I still get from business people “What is Twitter, really?” For business people, it’s a way to put out “sound bites” or tiny ads on the Internet, much like you see them in the mainstream media on TV, but without the cost, to your prime audience.

Actually they are “txt bytes,” like cell phone text messages in length, and they are broadcast to all your followers, or directed at select recipients. People can respond in the same fashion with personal requests or general comments. The important responses are real “business leads.”

A lot of people are doing some very innovate things with Twitter. I won’t cover those here, but I’ll offer some practical tips to get you started:

1. Offer something of value. Make the relationship a win-win. That means give before you expect to get – free advice, special promotion, pointer to useful information, or sometimes just friendly conversation. Show that you are a real person, sincere and trustworthy.
2. Search tweets for business leads. With Twitter Search, and a host of free tools on the Internet, you can mine the universe of all tweets for people needing your product or service. Set up filters to find them, and follow-up diligently and politely on every lead.
3. Use free tools to improve efficiency. Twitter’s native user interface is arcane. Use tools like TweetDeck to set up your control room, SocialOomph to spread out your responses, and WeFollow to find key players in your domain. There are many others.
4. Create separate account for business. If you like Twitter for personal notes to your friends, use another account for business activity. Your business account should have a name, picture, and tone that reflects your business brand and logo.
5. Become an authority in your area. One of the challenges of buying things on the Internet is to identify the quality sources from the scammers. Use Twitter to personalize your business, knowledge, integrity, and your leadership. People still buy from people.
6. Stay top-of-mind with experts. Seek them out, offer interesting links, respond to tweets, and post thoughts for conversation at least a few times a day. Twitter is not like email, where people diligently save and respond to every message. Stand out in the stream.
7. Follow potential clients. That’s how you tell your potential clients and customers that you exist. They will see you following them, check out your profile, and if you have something they can relate to, they will follow you back. This is “pull” marketing.
8. Increase size and quality of following. Never stop working to increase your following, by finding others, and improving your offering. A larger following means more credibility, which iteratively attracts more followers. Don’t be afraid to un-follow people who don’t fit.
9. Re-tweet for double impact. Adding ‘RT @username’ in front of the original tweet forwards it to your followers, and is a double win, if used selectively. It improves your value to your followers, and increases the audience and credibility of the original sender.
10. Cross link all your web profiles. Make sure people can find you from all directions on the Internet. Your website should have a link to your blog, your Twitter profile, LinkedIn profile, Facebook, and vice versa. This also improves your Google search ranking.

Twitter is merely a constant stream of absolutely current public communication. The good news is you can turn it on or off as often as you like, and mine the database at very low cost for useful information. Even big companies like Dell and HP use it to find customers, and claim million dollar returns. It’s a valuable resource for every startup. Tweet me if you need help.

Smart people only visit and buy from credible and memorable websites. In the past, if your startup had a website presence, the company was credible by definition. In today’s world, a website is necessary but not sufficient for credibility. Dreamers and gamblers have found out that if the website isn’t validated as credible, it’s probably a scam, and everyone loses.

Yet most startups I know experience the same shock of disappointment when they first open up their website to offer their “million dollar idea” product, and nobody comes. What validates credibility and makes your site memorable in the minds of consumers, and how much does it cost?

1. Put yourself on the site. People buy from people. Until the company name is a famous brand, you are the brand. No name, picture, address, or business history only convinces customers that you are hiding, located in an untrustable country, or don’t have a clue. They will exit quickly.
2. Show evidence of your expertise. Publish a daily blog, contribute to relevant social networks, and write a “white paper” on your technology. People respect people with relevant experience, so highlight your accomplishments, and the credentials you have.
3. Highlight personal and product testimonials. Third parties are always more credible sources than you are. Highlight interviews and reviews from recognized industry sources, and popular news sources. Include links to other sites showing your positives.
4. Create a positive online image. Show your visitors some evidence of community involvement and charity efforts. Offer something that is really free – with no strings attached to cause them to lose their trust. Set up an award, and show winners.
5. Link to recognized brands. If you can have an affiliate relationship with any recognized brand names, or any connection to publicly recognized experts, highlight these and provide links to their websites.
6. Advertising presence. The presence of a few related advertisements can actually improve your site credibility, since most credible sites have them. Of course, too many or obnoxious advertisements are especially harmful to a site’s credibility.
7. Join relevant business associations. Most will give you a membership graphic for your website, and an association link to give your business extra credibility. Don’t forget the local Chamber of Commerce and Better Business Bureau.
8. Provide a privacy and security statement. Display a logo like McAfee Secure or Privacy Label, in addition to specific policy statements on these subjects, to persuade your visitors and prospects to trust you.
9. Offer support assistance and guarantee. Publish the terms of your support, return, and replacement policies. Be consistent is their application, and provide contact information for both phone and email access. Follow-up for customer satisfaction.
10. Professional user-friendly site design. Studies have shown that consumers gauge credibility in large part based on the appeal of the overall visual design, including layout, typography, font size, color schemes, no broken links, and correct language usage. Don’t forget basic Search Engine Optimization (SEO) so search engines improve your ranking.

These are all minimal-cost survival marketing efforts. Beyond these, you will likely need to budget time and dollars (up to $50,000 is not unusual) for real marketing efforts to enhance your visibility and credibility, which include branding, promotions, give-aways, and free services.

In summary, a startup with no website, or a website with no credibility will kill your business. Use the tips outlined above during the first three months to get in the game, and count on much more time and money if you intend to stand out. Make your website not only credible, but incredible!

The conventional wisdom is that “early adopters” are the ideal target for startups, to get business rolling. I see two pitfalls with any concerted focus on early adopters; first, the size of this group may not be as large as you think, and secondly, their feedback may lead you directly away from your real target market of mainstream customers.

The term “early adopters” relates to the people who are eager to try almost any new technology products, and originates from Everett M. Rogers’ Diffusion of Innovations book. Early adopters are usually no more than 10%-15% of the ultimate market potential, and marketing to them is quite different from marketing to the mainstream.

The good news is these people will readily provide candid feedback to help you refine future product releases, and push towards new features, increased control, and interoperability. The bad news is that they hardly ever push towards simplicity and increased usability needed by the masses.

The result can easily be the classic startup death spiral, driven by a small but vocal portion of your market, for more and more features, when you can least afford it in time or money. Equally bad, implementation of input from a few early adopters can actually prevent your products from being adopted by the majority, as follows:

• Minimize value of usability features. Features you designed for average users, like wizards for configuration, and simple buttons to eliminate complex processes, will get no feedback, or removal recommendations. Early adopters like to see tricky and elegant details, rather than general usability.

• Increased control and flexibility. Product suggestions by early adopters often ask for increased user control over details of the technology. However, each increase in control that you hand over to the users also increases user interface complexity, and the opportunity for pitfalls for the average user.

• Emphasis on engineering robustness. Early adopters love the technology, sometimes to a fault. Technical issues like execution speed, file size, and memory usage are typical examples that always need further optimization. At some point it becomes compulsive engineering, rather than engineering to increase value for the average user.

• Higher product price. They want new features automating complicated but obscure tasks. These features will likely be used by only a tiny fraction of the entire user base, but increase complexity for everyone. Early adopters are normally less price sensitive, so may mislead you in finalizing your pricing model.

The dilemma that we all face is that the most valuable customers might be the least vocal (silent majority). The users who scream the loudest are usually a minority segment. The challenge of every business is to proactively seek out a cross section of core users and ask them for feedback, rather than responding to random noise.

I’m certainly not suggesting that you ignore early adopters. Simply recognize them as a specific and important small market segment, and treat them with respect. Early adopters have money, and if they like your product, they’re generally very vocal about it and provide invaluable word-of-mouth press. You need their evangelism and passion to get enough momentum to start attracting mainstream consumers.

So don’t be lulled into complacency by early adopters as your first customers. Temper your feedback assessments, product changes, and marketing strategy to the mainstream market. Ten percent of your projected market won’t make either you or your investors very happy.

A lot of executives have noticed that the workplace is being flooded by a new generation of workers, and they are questioning who will be the winners, and who will be the losers. In reality, Gen-Y is here, and they are already inheriting our businesses, so let’s figure out how to make them winners, or we will all be losers.

By definition, Gen-Y is the generation born between 1977 and 1995 (synonymous with Millennials). There are about 80 million of them, and nearly two-thirds of them are already in the work force with full- or part-time jobs. They will inevitably be taking over after Gen-X from the baby boomers, who are now running most companies, but pushing 60.

Morley Safer of CBS News 60 Minutes fame, has long been the negative voice with his tongue-in-cheek quotes like “They were raised by doting parents who told them they are special, played in little leagues with no winners or losers, or all winners. They are laden with trophies just for participating and they think your business-as-usual ethic is for the birds. And if you persist in that belief, you can take your job and shove it.”

At the other end of this thought spectrum is Jason Ryan Dorsey, who last year published “Y-Size Your Business ,” on how Gen-Y employees can save you money and grow your business. Naturally, he is a member of Gen-Y himself, and he presents an insider’s perspective on how these career starters bring tremendous potential to the workplace.

He argues that the generational disconnect that many employers are experiencing with Gen-Y is pretty standard. Every new generation that enters the workforce causes criticism, frustration, and stress for the generations already employed. I think it’s pretty obvious that he is right.

Although every new generation causes friction and head shaking in the workplace, Ryan points out three factors converging on our current workforce that are extraordinary – factors that are radically raising the stakes for companies to figure out how to best utilize Gen-Y:

• The economic downturn is still affecting the national and global economy. At many companies, employee costs are the largest operational expense. Gen-Y is often the least expensive employee to hire, especially when you factor in benefits. The challenge is knowing how to employ them, and how to manage them.

• Gen-Y’s have a fundamentally different attitude toward work. Gen-Y is the first generation to enter the current workforce without any expectation of lifetime employment. Earning their loyalty means doing things differently, but not necessarily paying more. Gen-Y has to feel a fit, and then they are intensely loyal.

• A four-generational collision is happening in the workplace. For the first time ever, four distinctly different generations are working side by side – Matures (born before 1946), Boomers (1946-1964), Gen X (1965-1976), and Gen-Y. When generations don’t work well together, operational costs go up and effectiveness goes down.

Safer and many others are convinced that the workplace has become a psychological battlefield and Gen-Y has the upper hand, because they are tech savvy, with every gadget imaginable almost becoming an extension of their bodies. They talk, walk, listen, and text – sometimes all at the same time.

I don’t believe it should be viewed as a battlefield, and I’ve written previously about how to productively lead Gen-Y, and how to capitalize on the change they bring to the workplace. In fact, I’m convinced that the current tough economic times will be the reality check that many of them need to balance their idealism, and solidify their work ethic.

You have an opportunity to make an entire generation of 80 million people your competitive advantage early, or just wait until they take it away from you. Why not make it your strategic initiative, and a positive legacy for yourself? I’m accepting the challenge. How about you?

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.

The hot areas of research today are cancer, AIDS, diabetes, heart disease, neurological diseases, immunological diseases, viral infections and tissue regeneration, where there is a high degree of incidence in the population.

Success in these areas will ensure a faster return on investment in R&D and licensing efforts. An alternative is to start a niche company with an orphan drug that, if successful, is protected from competition for several years. There is always money around for the right team and the right plan, and I believe biotech is a good area to start from.

If you are looking for the ideas on top of the list, I recommend you start with one of the following hot areas of biotech. Each one has the potential of annual sales more than $1 billion, which puts it in the new “blockbuster” drugs category:

• Metabolic disorders. “Metabolic syndrome” is the politically correct term for patients who are obese, diabetic, and face increased risk of heart disease. Now that half of the U.S. population is technically obese or overweight, an effective diet pill has become the Holy Grail of drugs.

• Vaccines. With new products to prevent cervical cancer, avian flu, and the common cold, vaccines are back in vogue. There are many other novel vaccines now on the table for development, ready for entrepreneurs who can license and commercialize them.

• Infectious diseases. Now that HIV has been transformed from a death sentence to a chronic disease has turned the infectious-disease-drug market into a multibillion-dollar industry. The next frontier is an effective treatment for Hepatitis C. Current drugs have terrible side effects and only “cure” 50% of patients.

• Lowering blood cholesterol. Drugs in this category are commonly called “statins.” They not only control blood cholesterol, but also stabilize plaque and prevent strokes through anti-inflammatory and other mechanisms. This is a huge need as the population ages.

Another biotech subcategory with opportunity is new medical devices. A friend of mine, a distinguished physician and surgeon, happens to manage a small private investment fund seeking early stage companies with new medical devices that have an established market. If you know a hot new startup in this area, I’m interested.

There’s never been a more exciting time to be a biotech startup. People tell me that “Big Pharma” companies have nearly $100 billion in cash that will keep buyout offers large. There are plenty of Holy Grail areas to focus on. How can you argue with this logic? Now is the time to jump in.

Many of the investors and entrepreneurs I know still don’t realize that they need to use and understand the Internet, even if their business is not e-commerce. Maybe you have also heard a lot of Internet terms, but are not sure you can explain how, when, and why they are relevant to your business success. Here is a quick test of your real Internet savvy.

See how many of the following “new” Internet concepts you recognize, and can explain in terms of value to your business. Believe me, the business implications are already critical to your success or failure as an entrepreneur:

1. Blog. A blog is basically a journal (“web log”) that is published on the web. Business blogs are an extension of your website and can effectively communicate the value of your business. You are now reading one of 50 million out there already. Blogs composed of video clips are called “vlogs.”
2. Social networks. These are communities wrapped around a website, like Facebook or Twitter. They became popular for socializing, but now are prime sources of business networking, customer service, and client leads. Facebook alone has 500 million members. Do you have a business presence there?
3. Search engine marketing (SEM). This popular form of Internet marketing seeks to increase website ranking in search engine results. Techniques include search engine optimization (SEO) and paid result placement. No SEM plan means you are missing a huge marketing opportunity.
4. Streaming video. Watching video has now surpassed text searching, so you see more video ads – in banners, news lead-ins, and site placements. Most videos are now in-stream (no download first), and new ones can be interactive, with clickable hot spots.
5. Internet radio. Sometimes called blogtalk radio, this is essentially the same as regularly broadcast radio, except it is streamed (realtime) on the Internet from websites such as AccuRadio. People simply log on and listen. Use them to deliver a business message.
6. Podcast. This is a variation on Internet radio, named from iPods and broadcasting. A pod-caster creates music and/or business material and makes it available for Internet download to iPods or other devices, where users may then listen at their convenience.
7. Pay per click (PPC). This is how you make money from advertising – someone else runs ads on your site or your blog, and you get paid for everyone who clicks on the ad. Rates per click are very low, so don’t try to live on ad revenues until visit rates are very high.
8. Viral marketing. This is a marketing program on the Internet that you make so popular it spreads like a virus, like “word of mouth.” Examples include give-aways, contests, and celebrity stunts that grab attention. Viral marketing costs real money, but is often worth it.
9. Crowdsourcing. This is a term indicating the use of “crowd wisdom” to get a task done free by interested people on the Internet. Wikipedia started this, but it is also used for technical support, software, and product reviews. You can use it for your business.
10. Wiki. This is an Internet website that allows the easy creation and editing of interlinked web pages via a web browser text editor. Wikis are used to create collaborative websites on a given subject, maintain corporate intranets, and build simple data bases.

Just for fun, I’ve come up with a scoring system based on my own non-scientific survey to help you rate yourself on your level of Internet business acumen. How many of the terms defined above have you personally used or explained in the context of your business?

• 8 to 10 – Excellent business savvy (or a Gen-Y)
• 5 to 7 – Average, keeping up with the crowd
• 2 to 4 – Beginner, struggling to catch up
• 0 or 1 – Wake up, the business world has moved on

The Internet is here – there is no going back. It’s probably the biggest source of change and innovation in business today. As entrepreneurs and business people, it behooves us all find and adopt changes which can improve our startup. These days, a static business is a dying business.