At last Wednesday’s Entrepreneurship 101 lecture, students heard Tammy Sturge of HR Transformations Inc. talk about the basics of HR management.

Start ups often find themselves building their initial team with friends, lab colleagues — people you know. At some point, an investor comes in and says, “I like the opportunity, but I think that x and y are just dead wood in the company — get rid of them if you want me to invest.” You suspect that they may be right. How do you resolve the conflict between a sense of personal loyalty versus business discipline?

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Once again, MaRS tenant Transition Therapeutics is making headlines with good news.

On March 13, Transition announced a licensing and collaboration pact with Eli Lilly and Co. where Lilly will acquire exclusive worldwide rights to its gastrin-based therapies program for the treatment of diabetes. This includes the lead compound TT-223, which is currently in early Phase II study testing by Transition.

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April ‘08 issue of Scientific American

As a journalist, I love wikis just as much as the next person when I’m looking for a starting point for information. But you have to take the information with a (sometimes giant) grain of salt. If anyone can edit the content of the article, who’s to say any of it is true? I usually skip right to the recommended resources and check out the sites that the article’s information is based on. I do appreciate the sites that are listed because they are sometimes full of insight.

As a journalist, I sometimes get upset at the thought that “anyone can be a journalist” ; if I had to go to school for it, why shouldn’t everyone else?

Now they are coming out with scientific wikis and blogs in which anyone can have their say — anyone can be a citizen journalist — but are they bound by any standards?

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Microloans: like throwing coins in a fountain?

Promoted by everyone from Nicholas Kristof to Natalie Portman, microfinance was a hot topic in 2007. In 2008, the New Yorker cuts through the hype to take a realistic look at both the potential and the limits of microlending. The problem, writes James Surowiecki, is that while microloans are highly effective on an individual basis, at an aggregate level they fail to make poor nations wealthier.

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John W. Baumstark and Suniva founder, Ajeet Rohatgi

Think you don’t know enough about business to be an entrepreneur?

Meet Ajeet Rohatgi, founder of Suniva, a company planning to make CD case-sized solar energy cells. Rohatgi was a scientist and researcher — he knew nothing about business. Enter John Baumstark. He knew nothing of science, but he knew how to run a business. Together they created an company aimed to spread solar power cells to rooftops around the world.

Read more at ajc.com: “Scientist, exec pool skills in sun power“

Reach Out by DIP

One of the things I am really passionate about is making sure that each of us takes the time to help others in their journey. Whether this is serving as a mentor for a budding entrepreneur or helping someone think through their ideas, we all can contribute to the growth of others.

That said, there are many factors that can inhibit what could be termed as direct mentorship, but, as I have alluded to in a past post, we need to expand our purview of where such opportunities can originate. But what can an emerging leader do in the absence of a mentoring figure?

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9th Annual Social Enterprise Summit

I had the pleasure of attending the Social Enterprise Summit in Boston last week at the regal Park Plaza Hotel.

The two days were packed with activities that were divided into two tracks: educational sessions led by leaders and practitioners in the field, or structured networking activities that were dialogue-based.

The agenda took a soup-to-nuts approach, covering everything from start-up to scale-up, from strategic partnerships to influencing public policy.

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Peter T’s observation (“The biggest year in venture capital investing since 2001″) that VC funds with specialized sector “practice groups” are outperforming “generalist” funds seems intuitively obvious. When venturing into the blue ocean of a new market opportunity, it is good to have the resources to buy a boat. Even better to have by your side people who can steer or row, as well as recognize impending danger from the subtlest change in weather patterns.

Creating an effective team is an imprecise but crucial success factor for any project. (In the world of venture-backed enterprises, it is probably the defining factor between business concepts that get financed and those that don’t.) This paper, “Exploring Depth Versus Breadth in Knowledge Management Strategies,” attempts to compare the effectiveness of generalist (breadth of knowledge) and specialist (depth of knowledge) in product development teams.

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For the “read” file

There are five sources that I read regularly; for entrepreneurs and business managers alike they provide perspectives on a range of topics from current global events to understanding the intricacies of markets, to learning more about the foundational social sciences that contribute to business like sociology, psychology and economics.

This content from the world’s leading minds comes to you free of charge.

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ENT 101 had a slightly different format last Wednesday. We had a “fireside chat” in which I acted as the host with two panelists. We discussed various aspects of raising capital in early stage companies.

Our two panelists were Kamal Hassan, CEO of Skymeter, a company in the automobile mobile payment services space who provided a view on raising capital from angels, and Ron McKenzie, CEO of Octopz, a company in the graphics collaboration space who is raising a round of financing from VCs and focusing on the US.

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