Via The Wall Street Journal: a list of other entrepreneurship blogs worth checking out. Of course, that means alongside ours.

A recent story via Forbes.com tells how some of today’s self-made billionaires, such as George Soros, Sandy Weill, J. K. Rowling, and Oprah Winfrey, built their successes from very small beginnings.

Robert I. Sutton, Professor of Management Science and Engineering at Stanford’s Engineering School, illustrates two “weird ideas that work”. This presentation is based on his book Weird Ideas That Work: 11 1/2 Practices for Promoting, Managing, and Sustaining Innovation, of which a preview is available here.

Are family businesses more or less successful in the long term? Robert Frank comments on the trials and tribulations of family businesses pointing to a U.S. Trust study of “ultra-high-net-worth” family businesses. That study finds that “[w]hile these families are highly successful in building and managing their businesses, they are often less successful when it comes to transitioning their companies from one generation to the next, with only 15 percent of family-owned companies lasting past the second generation.” The study identifies lack of succession and estate planning, and failure to implement asset protection strategies as core problems affecting family businesses’ inter-generational survival.

On the flip side, in his book Dynasties: Fortunes and Misfortunes of the World’s Great Family Businesses, David Landes tells the story of eleven successful family businesses and argues that “dynastic businesses offer a proven route to developing emerging markets, while companies managed by unrelated professionals and funded by public investors offer mostly bad jobs and slim profit shares to local employees” (Amazon.com).

A great story of international entrepreneurship: At Risky Business, Matt Bandyk writes about how one entrepreneur used his time working in China after college to establish connections with Chinese artists. Back in the United States, he founded Photolimn, a service that lets customers submit their favorite photographs online and have them transformed into paintings by Chinese artists.

Two terrific talks: George Dyson gives a quick and entertaining overview of the birth of the computer, and Robert Full shows how engineering can solve problems by taking inspiration from nature.

How much do you know about entrepreneurship? Take this quiz to find out. It was developed by Scott Shane, Professor of Entrepreneurial Studies at Case Western Reserve University, and based on his recent book The Illusions of Entrepreneurship. Shane gives a quick overview of the Top 10 myths here.

The Tax Foundation’s 2008 State Business Tax Climate Index (PDF) lists the ten best states as: 1. Wyoming; 2. South Dakota; 3. Nevada; 4. Alaska; 5. Florida; 6. Montana; 7. New Hampshire; 8. Texas; 9. Delaware; 10. Oregon. These states made the top due to an “absence of a major tax… . Wyoming, Nevada and South Dakota have no corporate or individual income tax; Alaska has no individual income or state-level sales tax; Florida and Texas have no individual income tax; and New Hampshire, Delaware, Oregon and Montana have no sales tax.” (5)

The ten worst states are: 41. Maine; 42. Minnesota; 43. Nebraska; 44. Vermont; 45. Iowa; 46. Ohio; 47. California; 48. New York; 49. New Jersey; 50. Rhode Island. According to the study’s authors, “Rhode Island has the worst unemployment tax system and the third worst property tax and individual income tax systems. New Jersey has the second to worst individual income and property tax systems and the seventh worst sales tax system. New York’s individual income, sales, unemployment and property tax systems all rank in the bottom ten, and its sales tax system is second worst. California has the worst individual income tax system, the ninth worst sales tax system and a poorly ranked corporate tax system. The remaining states in the bottom ten suffer from the same afflictions that plague these four bottom states: complex, non-neutral taxes with comparatively high rates.” (5)

A good summary article by George Mason University economist Bryan Caplan of his “The Myth of the Rational Voter” thesis. (Thanks to Frank for the link.) The full book was published in 2007 by Princeton University Press.

Growthology’s Tim Kane wonders what Schumpeter would think about the changing face of innovation promotion: “If Schumpeter had lived to see the development of the IT revolution, the Internet, and google, what would he have thought? He probably would be incredibly encouraged to see the acceleration of innovation and the constant re-spawning of innovative small firms. This is the start-up culture, and my sense is that it is the one big idea Schumpeter missed.”