Business Feeds

Will the next great tech company join Apple, HP, Google or Intel in claiming Silicon Valley as its birthplace? A new report brings the odds of that happening down several pegs from what most observers would have thought likely as recently as a few years ago.

The preamble to the annual Index of Silicon Valley states “The Silicon Valley has entered a new era of uncertainty, with a set of vulnerabilities that could compromise our long-term prosperity. Our continued ability to import and develop talent, fund innovation, and rely on state government for overall support are seriously in question. We are a region at risk.”

The report also warned Silicon Valley is “disinvesting in education and we’re not cultivating talent” and that a recommitment to investment in education is needed.

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Are you a good boss or a bad boss? Or, more to the point, do you care what your employees think about you?

Bosses are generally dictatorial because they know it’s the best way to get things done quickly. By contrast, an owner-manger who is too friendly with staff will often fail to command respect and that will be reflected in the running of the company.

Not so long ago, a report was commissioned by the Department for Business to look at the issue of employee/employer engagement. Quite reasonably, the report states that the more leaders and management engage with the rank and file, the more productive and efficient a company will be.

This doesn’t just mean being a nice person. It entails delegating tasks and talking with employees, rather than talking at them, to find out how they think things should be done. The

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The EconomistThe handful of firms that build nuclear reactors face new competition

THE nuclear industry got an unexpected boost from Barack Obama in his State of the Union address last month. The president pledged to build a “new generation of safe, clean nuclear power plants”. On February 1st he followed that up in his proposed budget for 2011 by tripling to $54 billion the value of loans for new nuclear plants the government is offering to guarantee. Els

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It’s not easy to satisfy Wall St. some times, as on-demand vendor NetSuite has found. Despite meeting projections, the company still got clobbered after reporting fourth-quarter earnings. Why? eCRM Guide gets to the bottom of things.

Shares of on-demand software provider NetSuite plunged more than 15 percent Friday as investors sold off the stock even though it posted fourth-quarter sales and earnings that were in line with analysts’ consensus estimates.

NetSuite (NYSE: N) shares fell below $12 a share in early Friday trading before regaining some ground to trade off $1.85 a share, or 13 percent, to $12.66.

In its fourth quarter, the San Mateo, Calif.-based Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) provider posted a profit of $0.02 a share, excluding one-time items, on sales of $43 million — exactly the results analysts surveyed by Thomson Reuters had predicted.

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Business WeekThe European aircraft maker, Airbus, seems to hold the long-term edge in China, whose ire over U.S. arms sales to Taiwan won’t help Boeing

The last thing Boeing needs now is a new China problem. Over the next two decades, Boeing (BA) expects China to spend $400 billion to purchase 3,770 planes from manufacturers, making China second in size only to the combined market of the U.S. and Canada. With airlines in other markets struggling—and Boeing still trying to recover from its much-delayed Dreamliner 787 project—the U.S. manufacturer could use a Chinese boost. One sign of China’s importance: Boeing, the world’s second-biggest aircraft manufacturer behind Airbus, is now sending a sales director to Beijing to become the company’s first China-based sales executive. Jim

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The new year is well underway and chances are, that you may not have accomplished all of the business goals that you had originally planned. If you are looking for your next step maybe it’s time to conduct a ‘productivity inventory.’

I already hear you groaning, “Not another instructional article telling me to how to break my tasks down into uninteresting, bite size tidbits that will kill me with boredom.”

You may be pleasantly surprised. This productivity inventory will actually help you to realize where your time sucks are so that you can either fine tune or entirely change the way you are running your business. Unfortuna

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Star Telegram

Secretary of Defense Robert Gates voiced strong dissatisfaction Monday with a lack of progress on the F-35 joint strike fighter program, publicly taking prime contractor Lockheed Martin to task.

Gates, at a Pentagon media briefing on the proposed 2011 defense budget, announced the firing of the top military officer managing the F-35. Gates said $614 million will be withheld from Lockheed to help the government cover rising F-35 expenses.

“Progress and performance of the F-35 over the past two years has not been what it should, as a number of key goals and benchmarks were not met,” Gates said.

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Strong earnings reports from Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) and Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) couldn’t prevent another losing day on Wall Street Friday, as stocks ended their worst month in a year on a down note.

Microsoft fell more than 3 percent despite much stronger than expected results, as traders fretted about the pace of enterprise spending.

Amazon also slipped despite another stellar quarter, but Juniper (NASDAQ: JNPR) managed to edge higher on its results.

But the day’s biggest decliners were in the chip sector, led by an 11 percent decline in SanDisk (NASDAQ: SNDK) on a disappointing outlook. Micron (NYSE: MU) and Marvell (NASDAQ: MRVL) were other decliners.

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Business Week
I mentioned in an earlier post that Davos can be a catalyst for great ideas, and one example is the GreenXchange conceived by Nike. This morning Nike formally launched the Xchange at a CEO breakfast in Davos.

The venue was a conscripted hairdressing salon that was pressed into service by the Forum as a meeting space. We were like sardines. But the energy in the tiny room was high.To recap: The Xchange is a Web-based marketplace where companies can collaborate and share intellectual property which can lead to new sustainability business models and innovation. Ten organizations have already signed on.

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