My blog rank is in the drain. I have been busy creating a new startup company, the fifth I’ve done at Polaris and the second (after Plinky) I’ve co-founded since I shifted roles to spending 100% of my time on working with entrepreneurs to help launch new companies.

I’m taking the opportunity to blog this while at the Future Forward’08 event put together by Scott Kirsner and the tireless team from Future Forward Events. I enjoy the event because of the intimate atmosphere and the chance to engage in deeper conversations that what’s possible at larger venues.

A comment caught my attention. Thornton May, who moderated an interesting panel with of the heads of IT for the Sox, Pats, Celts and Bruins, made a side comment about the role of government in innovation and technology. He was at the IBM Business Leadership Forum in Istanbul last week. Apparently, in past years, when times were better, the message with respect to government had been, essentially, “please, stay out of the way of business”. This year, the tone had changed dramatically and multiple speakers pushed for a greater government involvement. It’s even in Sam Palmisano‘s speech:

So leaders will need to:

• Hone their collaboration skills, because we will need leadership that pulls across systems.
• We will need to bring together stakeholders and experts from across business, government and academia, and all of them will need to move outside their traditional comfort zones.

For instance, governments know how to wield power—how to regulate, how to provide stimulus and incentives.

I guess in good times business is happy to go it alone but in down markets everyone looks for an extra hand… Now, it’s time to test the new polling features of WordPress.com…