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 often share with me their frustration that things are not moving fast enough. I get it: You want to grow your company quickly. After all, you are convinced you will succeed. At the same time, you are worried a competitor might swoop in and capture a significant portion of the market before you do. The temptation is high to scale up your operations quickly. But be careful. While growth is important, scaling up effectively sometimes requires slowing down.
More changes are afoot at TechTown as the startup accelerator streamlines its mission and prepares to anchor neighborhood construction that could make North Midtown a serious hub of innovation.
Most striking to visitors is the $2.5 million renovation that TechTown completed in late November. The space has been transformed from a drab, nondescript office to one with bright colors and an open layout that could give the widely praised Madison Building a run for its money.
Image: http://www.xconomy.com
Long ignored in favor of enterprise software, social networking and other sexy Internet technologies, biotech has roared back in the past year.
With drug companies desperate to replace expiring drug patents, and President Barack Obama's new health care law demanding cuts in medical costs, Wall Street has shown a seemingly insatiable appetite for initial public offerings of stock. Last year's 35 IPOs, including seven in the Bay Area, represented the most in the sector in nearly a decade. In the first two months of this year, 17 others have launched -- shattering records.
image: http://www.freedigitalphotos.net
Startup work environments are always chaos, but they can still be great environments to work in, or they can be terrible. Whether yours is terrible or great, that same tone flows out to your customers, and regulates your productivity inside. You as the founder are the starting point and definer, so you need to get it right.
What does it take to create a positive workplace culture? I did some research on this, and compared it with my own experience. I’ve concluded and the experts agree that it’s all about understanding people, and overtly optimizing the factors that drive them at work.
In the Washington region and across the country, the number of government-backed business incubators and accelerators has grown as public officials look for ways to support entrepreneurs, spur innovation and bolster their local economies.
However, not every space employs the same business model, uses taxpayer dollars in the same manner or offers the same resources to its companies. And this leaves plenty of room for debate over what works and what doesn’t when the government tries to support start-ups.
Image: http://www.washingtonpost.com
To-do lists seem pretty straightforward: A list of all of the tasks you plan to accomplish during any given day or week. And, really, there are few things more satisfying than drawing lines through each entry. Progress!
But, many times, they balloon to unrealistic levels, and we end up feeling overwhelmed and ineffective. That’s usually because we’re using them as a catch-all for every task that’s thrown at us. Instead, our lists should be derived from our larger goals and include tasks that move us toward those big-picture endeavors, says Robert C. Pozen, senior lecturer at Harvard Business School and Brookings Institution senior fellow. Pozen, author of Extreme Productivity: Boost Your Results, Reduce Your Hours, says some simple tweaks can make your to-do list a better productivity tool.
image: http://www.freedigitalphotos.net
I’ve written about how creativity works in the brain before, and I found it really useful to understand this process. Or, I should say, multiple processes
There’s so much going on in the brain during creativity that science is still trying to pin down exactly how it all works.
What we do know is which three parts of the brain work together to help us create and come up with new ideas:
Image: http://www.fastcompany.com
Crowdfunding rules that would let ordinary investors back startups are moving closer to adoption by the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Agency staff are just starting their review of comments on a nearly 600-page proposal issued in October to implement a mandate in the 2012 Jumpstart Our Business Startups Act. Comments were due Feb. 3. SEC Chairman Mary Jo White has said that completing the rules are a priority this year.
image: http://www.freedigitalphotos.net
Take a look at the list below, and you get a glimpse of why boring corporate software is beautiful to investors.
On this list of top-performing stock debuts, six companies – Friday’s hot IPO Varonis Systems, plus BenefitfocusBNFT -4.23%, Rocket Fuel, Veeva, FireEyeFEYE -2.49% and MarketoMKTO -1.35% — sell software used in corporations. These firms aren’t cool tech darlings like Twitter, and they’ll never top the 450 million users of WhatsApp. But business-software firms are riding one of the biggest technology shifts since PCs went mainstream.
Image: Business-technology startup Varonis got off to a roaring start on its first day as a public company. It’s not the only unsexy software company that ha been alluring to investors. Nasdaq OMX
Many highly educated immigrants coming to the U.S. without a job lined up have been unable to find work at their level of education, leading to considerable “brain waste,” Purdue University researchers have found.
Agricultural economics professors Brigitte Waldorf and Raymond Florax were on a team of researchers who analyzed data from the U.S. Census Bureau and its American Community Survey to determine the prevalence and persistence of job-education mismatch among male immigrants in the U.S. from 1980 to 2009.
Sometimes, the startup environment feels like a lot of people mimicking Cuba Gooding Jr. in Jerry Maguire. That is, itching for someone to show them the money.
With the rise of accelerators and incubators, the prestige of seed funding has many entrepreneurs focused on wooing investors, rather than developing their business plan and strategy. Making the mistake of allocating a great deal of time and energy towards chasing down venture capital and accommodating the needs and desires of investors may ultimately detract a business from focusing on what’s actually valuable: a sustainable and desired product.
Image: http://under30ceo.com
We all have things that we want to achieve in our lives — getting into the better shape, building a successful business, raising a wonderful family, writing a best-selling book, winning a championship, and so on.
And for most of us, the path to those things starts by setting a specific and actionable goal. At least, this is how I approached my life until recently. I would set goals for classes I took, for weights that I wanted to lift in the gym, and for clients I wanted in my business.
Image: http://under30ceo.com
No one is an island. We all achieve success through our own skill and hard work, but also through a network of people who teach, hire, refer, and otherwise help us along the way. But what if you had to distill your thousands of contacts down to just five? Here’s how three top networking experts would make the cuts.
Harvey Mackay, CEO of MackayMitchell Envelope Company and author of several other bestselling business books including Swim with the Sharks without Being Eaten Alive
image: http://www.freedigitalphotos.net
Recently, the Financial Times published its annual study on European Cities and Regions of the Future for 2014/2015.
In this study, Eindhoven, located in the Netherlands, was ranked in the third position as European city of the future after London and Helsinki.
Image: Credit: Eindhoven.nl
Since 2005, startup accelerators have provided cohorts of startups with mentoring, pitch practice, and product focus.
However, accelerator demo days are a combination of graduation ceremony and pitch contest, with the uncomfortable feel of a swimsuit competition.
Image: Ranku CEO Kim Taylor Image Credit: Devindra Hardawar/VentureBeat
South Korea’s President Park Geun-Hye recently championed her strategy for a “creative economy” in a keynote address at the World Economic Forum in Davos.
At the heart of her initiative is a focus on innovation and entrepreneurship. She believes the country’s current economic model has reached its limits. To boost growth and employment, South Korea needs to foster an ecosystem to support startups.
False and misleading accusations have been made against eBay and against me in my role as an eBay director. This post provides my perspective on those accusations and their surrounding context.
On the accusations:
I dispute all accusations that I have violated any of my duties to eBay shareholders.
Specifically:
* Throughout the eBay board’s process of divesting Skype, I fully disclosed my potential interest and recused myself from all deliberations on the transaction, including all discussions, negotiations, and decisions. I was uninvolved in eBay’s decision to spin off Skype and in eBay’s decision to choose to partner with the Silver Lake syndicate.
Charlie Moret, managing director of technology-based entrepreneurship at Detroit's TechTown, has been chosen by the Michigan Economic Development Corp. as president and CEO of a new organization, Invest Michigan, which will run the Michigan Pre-Seed Capital Fund.
The fund, which typically invests $250,000 in promising startup technology companies, had been managed by Ann Arbor Spark.
Image: Charlie Moret, TechTown
Turmoil in Ukraine prompted me to take a look at the entrepreneurial health of some other post-Soviet nations in the region. This week, we take a look at Uzbekistan.
Tashkent, the capital city of Uzbekistan, reflects the many stages of economic history the country has undergone. Modern buildings are juxtaposed along historic ones with Islamic and Central Asian designs or Soviet-style apartment blocks.
Image: http://entrepreneurship.org
J
ust last year, New York University was advertising questionable (and possibly illegal) unpaid internship positions at for-profit companies as educational opportunities for its students.
Since then, though, the university has overhauled its advertising policies: It has incorporated reforms that screen out exploitative internships, improve the transparency of advertisements, and provide students with more information about the legal and economic considerations of unpaid internships. In doing so, NYU has provided a new model for transitioning students into internships. It’s time for other schools to take up the model—and to improve on it.
Image: https://chroniclevitae.com
