The demonstration of the power of a vibrant entrepreneurial community was not lost upon the rest of the world, either.  As news of TechStars, its results, and its community-transforming effects spread around the world, TechStars’ founder David Cohen began to get large numbers of inquiries asking if TechStars could help create something similar in their community.

At the end of last year, David asked if I would help lead the effort to help grow other entrepreneurial communities.  I thought about it briefly before giving a resounding “yes!” answer.  Here’s why I jumped at the opportunity:

Rarely in my career have so many things that I’m passionate about been so coincident in a single job, and I’m very excited about this opportunity!

Bring on the entrepreneurs!

Too Big to Fail: The Inside Story of How Wall Street and Washington Fought to Save the Financial Systems–and Themselves. By Andrew Ross Sorkin. Viking; 624 pages; $32.95. Allen Lane; £14.99
A riveting fly-on-the-wall account of the collapse of Lehman Brothers and what came afterwards.

Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke the World. By Liaquat Ahamed. Penguin Press; 564 pages; $32.95. Heinemann; £20
A history of the generation that invented the modern central banker. Winner of this year’s Financial Times/Goldman Sachs business book of the year award.

How Markets Fail: The Logic of Economic Calamities. By John Cassidy. Farrar, Straus and Giroux; 416 pages; $28. Allen Lane; £25
A sharp look at the roots of the financial crisis that turns into an excellent history of economic thought, by a British writer at the New Yorker.

Poorly Made in China: An Insider’s Account of the Tactics Behind China’s Production Game. By Paul Midler. Wiley; 256 pages; $24.95 and £16.99
A useful analysis by a consultant who advises Western companies on what to do about China’s manufacturing problems. Many laboratories protect their reputation by hiding, rather than revealing, what they test and whistle-blowing is punished rather than rewarded.

(re-blogged from Paul Kedrosky)

I wonder if, in their strategic planning, MS considers the long term damage to their brand caused by such consistently “evil” behavior. Even amongst non-technical folks, there is a not-so-subtle quiescent level of distaste for all things MS. It feels to me that as technical superiority and/or barriers to switching for the cash cow products erode, MS will find sales of these cash cows increasingly difficult to maintain.

This, after losing $17B in 2008.

No way.

Chrysler, you have products that nobody wants, that are obsolete, and are not price-competitive. The auto industry in general is broadly over-supplied. There is nothing out there that leads me to believe that you can or will be able to establish a profitable competitive niche again.

Story here.

First Question: How many people are actually going to sort electronics out of their regular trash stream, and make a separate trip just to dispose of some old electronics?

When I showed up at EcoCycle’s gate, the nice lady said, “that will be eight dollars, please.”

Second Question: How many people are going to voluntarily pay extra to dispose of electronics “properly”?

When I gasped, “eight dollars?!?”, the nice lady said, “Well, there are places around that do it for free, but they just ship it to China.”

Third Question: Why would I pay eight dollars extra to keep my junk local when somebody far away is voluntarily taking it for less?

- One of my favorite humor blogs, Long or Short Capital, has for the first time in memory bitten its own tongue in calling out Gettelfinger in his defense of the industry.

- The esteemed economist Greg Mankiw needs only a simple graph to illustrate (just one of) the industry’s huge challenges

- Evan Newmark in the WSJ states concisely that “Capitalism wants only three or four global car companies. And what capitalism wants, it eventually gets.” (OK, there’s not much substance there, but it is catchy!)

The problem is, most Americans are not economists. Furthermore, they don’t know any economists, and don’t read or understand any economics.

Hence politics, rather than economics, will rule the day. Now that we have a democratic president, democratic congress, and a popular mood that is screaming for the government to bail out everything that’s seen a drop of rain, I think that there will be quite an increase in government programs over the next few years.

The first of this is happening less than a week after the election. Nancy Pelosi, formerly a slobbering-but-caged rabid dog, now will get a pretty long leash. What does she do first? Pelosi wants the government to subsidize Detroit. I understand the pain that Detroit is going through, but the cold facts are that the word’s auto industry has too much capacity, and the high-cost producers are the ones that will (and should) go out of business first in order to reduce the excess capacity. Government subsidies, of course, don’t change this; they just prolong the agony at great (and wasted) expense to the taxpayer.

It gets worse. Not only will the taxpayers likely subsidize Detroit, but also, in the near future, don’t be surprised to hear claims of “unfair competition” from Detroit and Washington about lower-cost overseas producers, and the subsequent (re-)creation of import duties on cars. Import duties of course don’t change the fact that there’s too much supply, they simply hurt American consumers.

In the near future, even whilst economists wince, the politicians will smile (POTUS included).

Paul Samuelson, a Nobel-prize winning economist, writes about why the people’s anger towards investment bankers and CEO’s, and the politicians’ ubiquitous promises to regulate CEOs’ pay, are really misguided, and why they are actually harmful, in this wonderful article.

Hat tip to Paul Kedrosky for the find.

Juan Enriquez (2008) Pop!Tech Pop!Cast from PopTech on Vimeo.