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innovation DAILY

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.

Zwilling

Everyone recognizes a great entrepreneur when they work with one, but most entrepreneurs don’t know what to look for in themselves that will drive that perception by others. In my experience, there is no magic gene involved, just simple good habits executed consistently and convincingly until everyone around you in a startup wants to follow your example.

This leading by example is easy to say, but not so easy to put into action. Most leadership gurus, including John Baldoni, have provided generic recipes, like his book from a while back, “Lead By Example: 50 Ways Great Leaders Inspire Results.” The points are great, but can be made even simpler and more actionable by adapting then to the world of the entrepreneur:

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Court

Earlier this week (August 6), a federal appellate court ruled in favor of Michigan’s Thomas M. Cooley Law School over the firing of a tenured law professor—a move that some believe is a challenge on the concept of tenure itself, The Chronicle of Higher Education reported.

Lynn S. Branham, former associate dean and professor at the Michigan private law school was fired in December 2006 after taking a leave of absence due to illness and refusing to teach a class she felt was outside her area of expertise. Branham challenged her termination in a lower court, citing a guideline from the American Bar Association that states, “tenure means a lifetime appointment or a guarantee of continuous employment.”

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Speed Sells

When does five seconds feel like an eternity? When you're lost, late and waiting for a company page to load on your phone.   A new study reveals that people are growing increasingly frustrated with mobile devices  that just aren't fast enough despite faster processors and faster data networks. Keynote Competitive Research, a consulting firm that improves website performance, surveyed 5,388 U.S. adults about their experiences and expectations while using mobile devices.  

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Tech Transfer Summit

TTS Ltd., the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and Johns Hopkins University Technology Transfer are pleased to announce that the 2012 edition of the TTS North America takes place at the world-renowned Johns Hopkins University in Montgomery County, Maryland.

Often immitated but never equaled, since 2007, and in North America since 2010, the TTS Global Initiative has been the original and leading international meeting for biotech sector Industry-Academia licensing, partnering  & technology transfer.  Designed to help all Tech Transfer Offices build the same expertise and relationships that enables the top TTOs to do the deals and sign the licensing agreements that have brought so much benefit to their universities, insitutes, departments and researchers. The TTS North America is the pillar of this key international inititiative and community of the leading technology transfer, licensing, IP and early stage biotech innovation and venture professionals world wide.

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Candy

Simple, possibly profane, and always memorable, a good mantra both guides your strategy and says everything about your culture. An overview of the best--and what's wrong with the rest.

At advertising agency 72andSunny's Los Angeles office, a giant wall covered in artwork beckons critiques.

Sixty feet long, the wall might one day host drafts of Kenny Powers hawking K-Swiss shoes and mockups of Call of Duty commercials the next. And if it's on the wall, anyone--from the receptionist to the creative director--is encouraged to weigh in.

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Women

I think it's time women have a candid conversation about power. It's a conversation that will impact men and needs to include them. Together, we've reached a population of 7 billion; in another 38 years, we'll rise to 9 billion. Women make up 52 percent of the global whole and control $20 trillion in annual consumer spending. Our decisions have a measurable impact on local businesses, regional economies, and the transnational marketplace. How we choose to conceive and exert power as a group has the potential to define the 21st century.

In recent years, we've seen calls for accountability, fairness, and openness galvanize revolutionary movements and thinking. Long-held assumptions about who has power have been radically disrupted by technology and the culture of a digitally native generation. Influence isn't just wielded from the corner office anymore--influence is wired, it's mobile, it's six thousand miles away, being transmitted via Twitter.

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Chart

Commercialization teams face tremendous challenges as they bring new pharmaceutical brands to market. Many of the decisions these individuals make ultimately determine a brand’s success or failure. With this great weight on their shoulders, commercialization teams invest a great deal on market research and competitive intelligence prior to brands’ launches.

Market research is necessary to understand the complexities of certain sales arenas. Companies spend money on market research to help understand the diverse subgroups of patients, doctors, nurses, caregivers and payer organizations present in individual markets. This research reveals unmet needs that, if addressed, translate into clear market opportunities.

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Telescope

In 2011, China became the world’s second largest Venture Capital/Private Equity (VC/PE) market behind the United States, surpassing the United Kingdom. From 2002 to 2012, the amount of investments and deals made increased exponentially (Picture 1). With this, both society and its government are creating a better environment for startups in China, which results in more and more entrepreneurs and innovative projects, which, in turn, is resulting in more entrepreneurs and more innovative projects. How can investors pitch the promising projects correctly? Generally, four important aspects of this pitching process should be taken into consideration.

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Brain

They’re everywhere — in magazines, on the Internet, on television—people with super-thin bodies who are presented as having the ideal body form. But despite the increasing pressure to be thin, more and more of us are overweight. Now, researchers from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) have found that normal weight teens who perceive themselves as fat are more likely to grow up to be fat.

“Perceiving themselves as fat even though they are not may actually cause normal weight children to become overweight as adults,” says Koenraad Cuypers, a researcher at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology.

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5

This summer's Olympics got us thinking: how do we as managers and leaders become coaches who elicit greatness in others? A study of the coach-athlete relationships that yield successful performance, released by the Canadian Olympic Committee in 2010, has some findings worth adapting to the coaching of corporate performers. Authored by Penny Werthner, an Olympic athlete herself, the reports reveals that, to produce Olympic champions, coaches must deliver in five critical areas:

help the athlete cultivate self-awareness

build a strong coach-athlete relationship

create an optimal training environment

provide financial and other support systems

manage the Olympic environment

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Crowd Funding

Upstart, founded by a U-M alum and former president of Google Enterprise, lets college grads and would-be entrepreneurs raise capital in exchange for a small share of their income for a 10-year period. Its goal is to give people the means to follow their dreams. Founder and CEO Dave Girouard, who received a Master of Business Administration degree at the U-M Ross School of Business in 1993, hit on the idea after many conversations with young people nearing the end of their college careers.

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A lab belonging to one of the 18 University of Michigan spin-offs sheltered at the school's 19-month-old Venture Accelerator.

For the past year and a half, Laura Schrader and her colleagues at the startup 3D Biomatrix haven't had to worry about their Internet and phone connection, getting access to specialized research labs or attaining expert advice on their next big business move.

It's all at their fingertips.

Schrader is one of roughly 50 people working at the University of Michigan Venture Accelerator, an incubator of sorts intended to give businesses that spin out of university inventions and patents a leg up in the increasingly competitive and risky startup world.

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Money

A new company lets recent college graduates sell a share of their future earnings in exchange for cash to help them start entrepreneurial projects.

The company is called Upstart, and it was founded by a former Google executive, David J. Girouard. It works by having investors give money directly to individuals in return for a percentage of future income from their ventures. Mr. Girouard expects it to be of interest to students who want to pursue any field that is entrepreneurial and high-risk, such as screenwriting or starting a technology company.

Five universities are participating in a pilot program with Upstart: Arizona State University, Dartmouth College, the Rhode Island School of Design, the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, and the University of Washington.

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Introvert

You can’t win as an entrepreneur working alone. You need to have business relationships with team members, investors, customers, and a myriad of other support people. That doesn’t mean you have to be a social butterfly to succeed, or introverts need not apply.

It does mean that you need to look, listen, and participate in the business world around you, and network through all available channels, like business-oriented social networks online (LinkedIn), local business organizations (Chamber of Commerce), and events or conferences in your domain.

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10

Many future entrepreneurs learn important lessons about life while playing sports in youth. Lessons about teamwork, winning and losing gracefully, and the importance of good leadership are all learned from little league through college football. But it’s easy to forget these lessons in our day-to-day business lives.

However, watching professional sports teams can remind us of those lessons we learned early on. Here are a few lessons we can learn from professional athletes to help us as entrepreneurs.

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Laptop Cash

One of the many benefits of buying online is that often the seller does not collect sales tax on the transaction (unless the seller does business in the consumer’s state).  In essence, it’s as if the cost of buying something is lower when no sales tax is collected, especially on big ticket items.

But some people — state tax authorities and brick-and-mortar retailers to name a few — see “no Internet tax” as just a loophole that consumers take advantage of because no one has stopped them yet.  They also see it as something that gives some sellers what they consider an unfair marketplace advantage over other in-state sellers that are required to collect sales tax.  Brick-and-mortar retailers have complained loudly, pointing to eCommerce behemoth Amazon.com as the prime example of what they consider having an unfair advantage.

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Ice

Every summer near-perpetual sunlight pours down on much of the ice-swaddled island of Greenland. On many parts of the ice sheet, especially at lower elevations, meltwater flows across the surface and collects in deep-blue ponds and lakes, such as the one shown here. Unlike the lakes we swim in, these water bodies can disappear in a wink: a lake that would fill the Superdome in New Orleans more than a dozen times can drain through a crack in the ice in just 90 minutes.

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iTecTalk

Richard Bendis and Nish Acharya will talk about the innovation and entrepreneurship programs in Federal Government today. Nish will also discuss briefly the status of the EDA i6 competition and the noticeable increase in the quality of the proposals.

They will speak about the paradigm shift in the EDA programs from a "Bricks and Mortar" focus (hard) to a more innovative programmatic focus (soft) on innovation, commercialization and entrepreneurship.

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