The following were the top 7 countries in global competitiveness:  USA, Switzerland, Denmark, Sweden, Germany, Finland, and Japan.

Two of the world’s potentialy biggest and hottest economies, China was 34th, while India was 48th.

U.S. back on top in global competitiveness survey - Oct. 31, 2007

The United States has regained its status as the world’s most competitive economy thanks to strong innovation and excellent universities, according to a survey released Wednesday by the World Economic Forum.

This is an age old question - as akin to can leadership be taught?  Or can you teach somebody to be a great musician, or painter?  A lot depends on hard work, but a good amount also is about talent and natural affinity.

Here is a great article on this.

Can Entrepreneurship Be Taught?

Goossen came to the conclusion that while there are several elements that can be taught to enhance the knowledge and success of entrepreneurs, entrepreneurship is something one can learn only by doing. “With law or accounting,you can teach a set of principles that a student can master to become a competent practitioner,” he says. “But teaching entrepreneurship is tough. In a class it’s hard to predict who will do well and who will not.”

As a result of his research, Goossen has come up with three entrepreneurial elements that can be taught. The first is general business knowledge—what he calls “the nuts and bolts of management principles and strategic thinking.” Next, there are general entrepreneurial principles. “You can lean from what other people have done and where they made mistakes,” he says. Finally, he says one can learn to be alert to opportunities in certain fields in a general sense.

What can’t be taught, on the other hand, is what Goossen calls “venture specific opportunity principles.” By that he means the ability to understand and see specific niches in a market and recognize whether it will be successful or not. “You can’t teach someone how to know what will work and what won’t,” says Goossen. “You can’t even duplicate the set of dynamics of a past success.”

My wife and I have co managed some of our companies for 15 years.  We also know many friends whose companies are husband and wife teams.

It is a challenge, and the odds are bigger, but there are also areas which it will give advantage.

Why Co-founders Shouldn’t Share the CEO Title

TechStars (BusinessWeek.com, 9/26/07) founder David Cohen says he’s working with two companies that have founders sharing the CEO title, and he has concluded it’s a bad idea: “Often [it's] just a symptom of a deeper and much more important problem.”

Among his issues, which he posts on his Colorado Startups blog:

• He frowns on “the desire to make equal founders feel equally important,” arguing “they should be able to easily work as equals and assume different outward-facing titles.”

Eight personal finance gurus were asked in what is the best advice and lessons they learn on increasing the wealth.

The following advice I believe is most sound. I’d like to add another advice I think was best which I heard 2 weeks ago.

” You must distinguish the difference between your needs and wants.  You should spend only for what you need from the money that you actively earn.

The rest of the money should be saved and go to investments.  From the earning of your investments ( your money making more money) should come for spending from your wants…

IN short, you should build a nest egg, and if it earns extra income, that’s the time you should indulge yourself…  No matter how high your income, and especially if your income is high, you should continue to save.

For instance, you need a car.  A Ford would do. If you want a BMW, the extra money should come from the money you earn from your investments, not your income!

Yahoo! Personal Finance

- from Wayne Dyer.

The lesson “for me was, first, pay yourself,” Dyer says.

While in the Navy stationed in Guam, Dyer saved 90 percent of his pay over the last 18 months he was there. “So I came home with enough money to pay tuition for four years of school and a car. Even today I pay myself first. If you want to be financially independent by the time you’re 30 years old, pay yourself first.

In this list of top 100 Business blogs worldwide, we are number 64!

The Top 100 Business Blogs | Business Opportunities And Ideas

While there are many great business blogs about, they are not always easy to find amongst the legions of make money online blogs. So I’ve gathered together a list of what I believe are the Top 100 Business Blogs on the Internet.

There are generally three ways you can position your company – either provide products or services that are better, faster or cheaper.  Normally, you cannot be all three – and you have to choose which is your competitive advantage.  Faster is defined by UPS or Fedex where you can generally get your parcels delivered in a day, or McDonalds where you can go in and be eating your meal in a few minutes.  But for the moment, let us forget about faster, and concentrate on the other two aspects – either you can be better or you have to be cheaper.
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John Dvorak speculates that the way to unlock Microsoft’s potential and for it to remain agile is to make it a holdings company.

More evidence Microsoft’s going the way of Berkshire Hathaway - MarketWatch

I hate to revisit the same subject in this column two weeks in a row. But after thinking about last week’s column, combined with recent laments by Steve Ballmer and his thoughts about Bill Gates, I now believe that my earlier thoughts on the upside potential for the company haven’t gone far enough.

China’s GDP growth eases slightly in third quarter - MarketWatch

China’s economic growth rate eased slightly in the three months through September but remained above the 11% threshold for the third straight quarter, while inflation also rose to the higher end of the comfort zone of policy makers, likely keeping up pressure for an interest-rate increase in the near future.

There’s a lot of insight in this interview.

Former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina speaks out - Oct. 24, 2007

Carly Fiorina didn’t just break the glass ceiling, she obliterated it, as the first woman to lead a FORTUNE 20 company. But her fall from stardom was just as dramatic, and she remains a controversial figure, with opinion split on whether she deserves credit for HP’s success since her firing in 2005. Fortune’s Matthew Boyle talked to Fiorina - who now serves on several advisory boards, including the CIA’s - about CEO pay, Dell’s woes, and what she’s learned from her tumultuous time at the top and, more recently, on the sidelines.

These kind of things happen to companies.

first, the failure to plan — they did not foresee employees cashing in on free phones.

Second, when people make mistakes, whether you should make a stand, or go through the easiest way out.  Apple will have a lot of problems for 800 employees, but making a principled stand may send a message to its other employees and to its customers of where your stand is.

Apple may have fired greedy retail employees for cashing iPhone credit

Apple might be a little upset with some of its retail employees who scored free iPhones this summer. For those who didn’t hear, Apple promised a free iPhone to every fulltime employee and all part-timers who have been with the company for over a year—including retail associates and Geniuses. The company made good on its claim, and we never heard much of a complaint about the program.

 Unfortunately, we have now heard through two independent sources that a few of these lucky retail employees let their greed get the best of them. We’ve been told that as many as 800 Apple Store retail associates who received free iPhones have also cashed in on the $100 iPhone credit that Apple issued for early buyers. Apple understandably wasn’t too happy about shelling out an extra ~$80,000 to employees who already scored free iPhones, so pink iSlips have apparently been issued to the bunch.