Here we highlight selected innovation related articles from around the world on a daily basis. These articles related to innovation and funding for innovative companies, and best practices for innovation based economic development.
Entrepreneurs and business executives seem to be even more focused on their technology than the rest of us, and less inclined to listen to the voice of the customer, even if they remember to ask. Real two-way conversations with real customers, including the all-important body language, are unheard-of these days. Being connected to the Internet many hours a day is not enough.
When it comes to getting funding for your latest business venture, crowdfunding may seem like a no-brainer. Crowdfunding websites raised more than $5 billion in 2013, and to get a piece of that wealth, all you have to do is set up an online profile and watch the dollars roll, right? Not so fast. While crowdfunding can be a viable way for entrepreneurs to raise capital, it’s more complicated than many people realize, and it might not be right for every business.
Image: David Gray/Reuters/File
In 1952, a group of surgeons performed the world's first successful open-heart surgery at the University of Minnesota. They knew they had just a few minutes -- 10 at the very most -- after cutting off their patient's circulation to slice into her heart and sew up a hole inside, before risking damage to her brain. If left untreated, the hole could have killed her within a few years. It took them five and a half minutes to do the procedure -- and the patient lived.
Image: http://www.foreignpolicy.com/
BROOKINGS, S.D. (AP) — South Dakota State University in Brooking is one of 14 recently designated as an innovation and economic prosperity university. It comes from the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities and its Commission on Innovation, Competitiveness and Economic Prosperity. The group says the honor is for working with public and private sector groups to support economic development through a variety of activities, including innovation and entrepreneurship, technology transfer, talent and workforce development and community developmen
Image: http://www.freedigitalphotos.net
As an entrepreneur, you have some very specific skills and attributes that drive you and make you successful: an eagerness to try new things, a passion for success, and a willingness to take risks and break the rules when necessary.
However, as your company grows, those same attributes and skills are not always suited to building a solid, stable company. For that, you need complementary skills, not just more of the same.
Image: http://www.freedigitalphotos.net
I have a confession to make . . . I’m only an intern at MedCity News. I just graduated high school and even though I’m young, I’ve already gotten a jump on my future as a journalist. Like many high school graduates, I want to change the world someday.
Image: http://www.freedigitalphotos.net
On a recent tour of the latest addition to University City Science Center’s campus in Philadelphia – an innovation hub in an established building on its campus set to officially open next week — I unexpectedly came across an office belonging to Merck.
It’s all the more interesting because it’s just a few doors down from DreamIt Ventures and its accelerator DreamIt Health, which has a second class of health IT entrepreneurs moving in next week. The Science Center’s own digital health accelerator will also be working in the building.
Image: http://medcitynews.com/
(Ping! Zine Web Tech Magazine) – The future of the Internet faces many problems, but the issue that concerns most experts is commercialization.
More than 1,400 technology experts and analysts were asked about their thoughts on Net Threats as part of the Pew Research Center’s Digital Life in 2025 series, resulting in four major predications.
I live in the future. My body, pockets and home are festooned with smart gadgets that can command nearly everything in my life with a phrase, gesture or tap. It’s a cool and exciting experience—or at least it would be, if it didn’t constantly shackle me to power cables.
Lisa Kurek is a nationally recognized trainer and speaker on the federal SBIR/STTR programs. She has trained thousands of entrepreneurs on how to prepare winning proposals for R&D funding and coached hundreds of companies one-on-one through the rigorous process. The "girl with the curl" joined BBC Entrepreneurial Training and Consulting (BBCetc) as managing partner in 1997 when the company was known as Biotechnology Business Consultants.
Since the dawn of aviation, Americans have dreamed of buying a flying car and opening up the skies to everyone. The utopian dream is embodied in the opening credits of The Jetsons, in which a relaxed George commutes to work and plops his feet on his desk for nap. There’s a more pessimistic example of what happens when anyone can fly in the (true-life) opening of The Wolf of Wall Street, when a stoned Leonardo DiCaprio crashes his helicopter while trying to land it at his home.
Image: http://www.fastcompany.com/
Many small businesses owners won't be spending much time relaxing this summer, a new study finds.
One-third of the owners of small and medium-size businesses say they don't plan on taking any vacation in the coming months, according to research from Office Depot.
Image: VISIT ST. PETE/CLEARWATER
People, even entrepreneurs, tend to ignore what they are afraid of. Having your intellectual property (IP) stolen is scary; but that shouldn’t prevent you from identifying and protecting those valuable assets early on, especially if crowdfunding is part of your fundraising strategy. Crowdfunding can be challenging for those who haven’t protected their IP because once you reveal your company’s ideas to the public, it is often too late to protect yourself.
Equity crowdfunding, where companies offer equity in return for financial investment, is a new and relatively unchartered means for raising capital in Canada. It’s an attractive proposition – businesses capture a wider market of potential funding and investors get access to more interesting investment opportunities.
Image: http://www.freedigitalphotos.net
The Brookings Institute, one of the nation’s most influential and quoted nonprofit public policy think tanks, named University City an “innovation district” in its May report. Brookings is dedicated to high-quality independent research and is based in Washington, D.C.
Image: Credit: Miranda Shroyer
What sort of person is it who can shape new ideas and bring them to life as businesses? Put another way, is an innovator's temperament born or is it built?
We say it's built.
Several years ago, Clayton Christenson and his colleagues argued in The Innovator's DNA that habitually inventive people share personalities in common -- a taste for networking with other smart people, a quality of intense observation, a reflex for asking questions and a comfort with experimentation.
ARE we ever going to figure out how the brain works?
After decades of research, diseases like schizophrenia and Alzheimer’s still resist treatment. Despite countless investigations into serotonin and other neurotransmitters, there is still no method to cure clinical depression. And for all the excitement about brain-imaging techniques, the limitations of fMRI studies are, as evidenced by popular books like “Brainwashed” and “Neuromania,” by now well known. In spite of the many remarkable advances in neuroscience, you might get the sinking feeling that we are not always going about brain science in the best possible way.
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oung rising stars helping young rising stars – what may sound like a cheesy slogan from a dubious self-help group is, in my opinion, the best description of the work that is done by the students, staff and supporters of Wharton’s Small Business Development Center (SBDC). One of the oldest institutions of its kind, the SBDC supports locally-based entrepreneurs and small businesses of all kinds and sizes: freshly launched start-ups, highly growing ventures and established small businesses.
Image: https://beacon.wharton.upenn.edu
The problem with analyzing California's economy — or with assessing its vigor — is that there is not one California economy. Instead, we have a group of regions that will see completely different economic outcomes. Then, those outcomes will be averaged, and that average of regional outcomes is California's economy. It is possible, even likely, that no region will see the average outcome, just as we rarely see average rainfall in California.
Image: http://www.newgeography.com/
Over the next 15 years, the U.S. will have a problem that plenty of other countries would love to have: too many workers for the jobs available. That’s according to a report released today by the Boston Consulting Group.
Idle labor isn’t a good thing, especially for the unemployed workers. But you could argue that it beats the alternative, which is having so few workers that jobs go unfilled and economic output falls short of potential. That’s the problem that most other major nations, from Germany to Brazil to South Korea, will face between now and 2030, according to the BCG report.
Image: Photograph by T.J. Kirkpatrick/Bloomberg - Workers complete truck engines on the assembly line at the Toyota Motor Corp. manufacturing facility in San Antonio, Texas, on March 24
