Angel investors are an essential component of the global economy, supporting ideas and innovators at their very earliest stages. In 2014, more than 200,000 American angels invested about $24 billion in 73,000 startups, according to the Angel Capital Association (ACA). Little data, however, exists on who these investors are and how they make their decisions. ACA, Wharton Entrepreneurship and the John Huston Fund for Angel Professionalism at Rev1 Ventures are launching a nationwide survey of angel investors to learn more. Angels who take the survey will be eligible to receive complimentary tickets for angel education events, including the 2016 ACA Summit, May 9-11, 2016, in Philadelphia. The survey is available at: http://www.theamericanangel.org/

Wait, can this be true? From a new report by 1776, “a global incubator and seed fund,” comes this startling claim: “Boston is the #1 city in the U.S. for fostering entrepreneurial growth.”

Boston, not Silicon Valley? Really? This chart from the reports seems to say otherwise:

Image: http://www.aei.org

Between 2011 and 2013, companies with a female CEO got only 3% of the total venture capital dollars available. That’s $1.5 billion out of the total $50.8 billion invested in that two year period—a tiny slice of the pie. This year’s Crunchies, the Oscars for the tech community, had a new award category: the Diversity Include Award. Silicon Valley is as guilty as Hollywood for its lack of diversity.

Image: Flickr user Erik Drost

Perhaps no sector in the U.S. economy generates more angst than manufacturing. Over the past quarter century, manufacturing has hemorrhaged over 5 million jobs. The devastation of many regional economies, particularly in the Midwest, is testament to this decline. If the information sector has been the golden child of the media, manufacturing has been the offspring that we pity but can’t comfortably embrace.

Yet manufacturing remains critically important. Over the period from 1997 to 2012, labor productivity growth in manufacturing—3.3% per year—was a third higher than the rest of the economy. Clearly manufacturing is no technological laggard, accounting in 2012 for 68.9% of all R&D expenditures by U.S. businesses and employing 36% of the nation’s scientists and engineers, the largest share of any industry.

Image: http://www.newgeography.com

Under President Obama’s leadership, America continues to be the world’s most innovative country, with the greatest potential to develop the industries of the future and harness science and technology to help address important challenges.

President Obama has relentlessly focused on building U.S. talent and capacity in science and technology; making the long-term investments that will continue to power American innovation; and setting ambitious goals that inspire and harness the ingenuity and creativity of the American people.  

PHOENIX--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Arizona’s bioscience industry has sustained its momentum and continues its long-standing trend of impressive job growth and high wages, a new report shows.

In addition, risk capital reached its highest figure in four years, and all measures of bioscience tech transfer at Arizona universities are on the rise, with increases in startups, invention disclosures, patents, and licenses.

Despite the current crop of presidential nominees’ xenophobic obsession with limiting immigration, a new study shows that American business would take a major hit without the innovation that immigrants bring to its shores.

Recent research from non-partisan nonprofit National Foundation for American Policy (NFAP) reveals that of the 87 American startups that are currently valued at $1 billion+, 44 of them (51 percent) were created by immigrants.

Happy New Year from the Innovation America team!

Tomorrow we will present our top 25 articles of 2016.  Stay Tuned!

World's Richest and Largest Student Startup Competition

The nation shed manufacturing jobs at a steady pace over most of the last quarter century. A combination of trade deals, automation and economic recessions sent the number of manufacturing jobs plummeting, with 6 million jobs being lost by 2011.

But since then, about half a million jobs have been regained.

They’re not the same jobs that left. They're not coming back everywhere, or even in the same places where jobs were lost. The map of where products are made in this country is being redrawn.

Image: https://www.washingtonpost.com

Today marks the first edition of our look back into 2016.  For the next twelve days we'll present the most viewed articles of each month followed up by our annual Top 25 of 2016.

Below are the top 10 articles from December, 2016.   Enjoy!

In the first 24 hours since the U.S. presidential election on November 8th, we saw the stock market dip and rip, the spike of gold, and the plummet of the peso. Investors and business leaders are all too aware that it's easy to read the signals wrong.

"Change generally means opportunity to those who are willing to take risks," says Amir Korangy, Publisher, The Real Deal, the largest real estate media and information outlet in the country. Korangy adds, "Right now, no one really knows how the new agenda is going to roll out. But, we can say that they're going to want to make changes and they're going to need help.

The Princeton Review and Entrepreneur magazine today announced the results of The Princeton Review's 10th annual survey that names the 25 undergraduate and 25 graduate schools best for entrepreneurship studies. Harvard University finished #1 on the graduate entrepreneurship programs list for the 2nd consecutive year. Out of more than 300 schools offering entrepreneurship studies that The Princeton Review surveyed, 36 institutions' undergraduate and/or graduate programs made the roster of top schools for 2016. Four schools are new on the graduate list: the University of Maryland – College Park (#18), Saint Louis University (#19), the  University of Rochester (#22), and Oklahoma State University (#23)

Deloitte made its forecast after surveying the opinions of manufacturing industry executives for its 2016 Global Manufacturing Competitiveness Index.

Deloitte says “executives expect the US to assume the top position before the end of the decade”. 

Currently, Deloitte says China is the most competitive nation, followed by the US in second, Germany in third, and Japan and South Korea placed fourth and fifth respectively.

Business schools spend a great deal of time teaching would-be entrepreneurs and managers about the differences between features and benefits and their importance. Differentiate your product by tinkering with it to make it better or cheaper. Get to know your customer so you can understand how to sell to them.

Not exactly, says Harvard Business School professor and innovation expert Clayton M. Christensen. In his new book, Competing Against Luck: The Story of Innovation and Customer Choice, he and coauthors Karen Dillon, Taddy Hall, and David S. Duncan says that customers don’t buy products and services as such. Instead, they’re hiring them to do a job.

Given the difficulties in developing and working with metrics and measures for open innovation and ecosystems, I have pulled together some inspiration and insights from several articles. 16 Metrics for Tracking Collaborative Innovation Performance

My good friend, Hutch Carpenter, looks into what he calls collaborative innovation, which he defines as “…activities organizations use to improve their rates of innovation and problem solving by more effectively leveraging the diverse ideas and insights of employees, customers and partners.”

DO immigrants take American jobs, or do they help our economy grow? Do immigrants drain our welfare funds, or can they help refill public coffers as our baby boomers retire?

Our recent research aims to address these questions. We have built a platform that uses restricted-access data from the US Census Bureau to explore differences in the types of businesses formed by immigrants and their medium-term survival and growth patterns.

How do we know if state economic development incentive programs are working?

A recent report from the Center for Regional Economic Competitiveness with contributions from Smart Incentives strives to help states answer this question. In this article we highlight a few key points from The State Economic Development Performance Indicators White Paper. You can also check out CREC's report summary here.

When pushing ideas forward into the unknown make sure you know where you are playing.

The rise of the “lean start-up” in the late 2000s revolutionised the way entrepreneurs developed their businesses. By highlighting the importance of experimentation and customer feedback it identified a means of effectively and efficiently creating and capturing value in the search process.

Surviving Alberta’s current economic crisis isn’t about who is strongest, says Jay Slemp, it’s about who can adapt.

Slemp is the chair of the Palliser Economic Partnership in central Alberta and his region will test that theory when the Hanna coal mine closes.

He wants workers to stay in the region, but that means figuring out how to diversify the local economy.

That’s where a new provincial government grant comes in.

The Community and Regional Economic Support program will see $30 million available over two years to communities, regions, municipalities, regional economic development alliances and four Rural Alberta Business Centres.