Funding and Building your Business

The IT industry has begun to realize that being environmentally responsible is not an “add on,” but rather it is a key factor in running a smart business in today’s market.

A bad name has seldom been more expensive, especially when there is a war for talent and customers can look at your supply chain in Vietnam on YouTube.

You define a problem, take measurements to be crystal clear on what you’re trying to improve and analyze the data using statistical tools to sort through the noise. The last piece is control, so that once you fix something, it’s fixed for the last time. The idea is to create output so predictable that there are only three defects per million.

"With regional offices and regional stores, long-distance telephone costs run into the hundreds of thousands of dollars a year," said Connelly, who labeled the Microsoft programs "extremely cheap" when compared to other options.

Who Wants to Be a Millionaire the experts do a reasonable job: they get the answer right 65 percent of the time. But the audience is much closer to perfect: it gets the answer right 91 percent of the time.

Dependency drives profits, the ultimate arbiter — for some — of an innovation’s success. Look how Apple has converted the mania for the iPod into record profits — and a record stock price.

What’s the single biggest change I have spotted in those 2 1/2 years? The invasion of highbrow technology into the once low-tech world of small business

As a company, you have to change your DNA, and you also have to change your leaders. It was a shock to me that probably 15 to 20 percent of my leaders just could not make the transition. Very good people, but they were command and control

Your true worth is determined by how much more you give in value than you take in payment; your influence is determined by how abundantly you place other people’s interest first; and the most valuable gift you have to offer is yourself.

Software, health sciences and clean-tech energy led venture investments in 2007.