innovation DAILY

Last year 5.5% of jobless managers and executives launched a business, up 31% from 2012 and the highest level since 2009, says outplacement firm Challenger Gray & Christmas.

Confidence in the economy and access to individual health insurance via Obamacare help fuel the trend, says CEO John Challenger.

Image: http://money.cnn.com 

Traditionally, the majority of entrepreneurs have been logical thinkers, problem solvers, and pay attention to details. These are the stereotypical left-brain engineers. Yet I see a big shift from the knowledge age, with its left-brain foundation, to a critical focus today on visualization, creativity, relationships, and collaboration, which are more in the domain of right-brainers.

We meet so many people in our business activities at events, conferences, meetings, workshops and even randomly. I have found that if I invite and attract someone to me by my energy, attitude and self confidence all wrapped up in a big, warm smile and a firm handshake, it’s worth a thousand words.

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Crowdfunding is becoming increasingly mainstream, recently tied to social giant Facebook after their recent acquisition of Oculus VR, a successfully crowdfunded gaming headset. With the skyrocketing adoption of crowdfunding and the incredible success that crowdfunded companies are having, there is little doubt that it is truly an industry on the rise. Crowdfunding websites raised a staggering $5.1 billion dollars last year alone and crowdfunding campaigns of all types are getting funded on a daily basis.

Mel Gravely says his construction company might not exist today if he didn't have mentors to guide it.

Gravely's company, TriVersity, joined a program called a minority business accelerator even before he bought a controlling interest in the Cincinnati-based company in 2006. It helped the company get started and win contracts that have helped Triversity's revenue double.

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MidAmerica Healthcare Venture Forum, to take place April 22-23 in Chicago, unites active investors with corporate business development executives to facilitate investment opportunities with promising Mid-America based startups.

The event showcases emerging innovation and technology dealflow originating in the Midwest, and has earned the reputation as the premier healthcare investing conference.

Image: http://medcitynews.com/ 

IT may be an improving picture for European seed capital, but for many entrepreneurs vital startup cash is still hard to come by.

Reluctance by the banks to lend to businesses with no trading history, fierce competition on the crowd funding platforms, and the selectiveness of the private equity market, continue to leave many early stage companies in the starting blocks.

Image: http://www.forbes.com/ 

Recently I had an interesting discussion with an attorney who works with entrepreneurs. As we were discussing venture capital, he made a comment about how one of his clients, a successful physician, had invested $100,000 in a new company that had developed a software program, and that he deserved venture capital.

Image: http://www.forbes.com 

For nearly a year and a half, there has been word that Cambridge Innovation Center (CIC) — the Massachusetts-based coworking space and business incubator for early-stage startups — would expand and open an office in Baltimore.

As Technical.ly Baltimore reported in July 2013, current plans for CIC Baltimore situates the incubator at 873 W. Baltimore St. near the University of Maryland BioPark. At the time real estate consulting firm Cross Street Partners told Technical.ly Baltimore that the Baltimore-based innovation center — a development project of Wexford company — would be roughly 44,000 square feet when construction is completed in late 2014.

Image: The coworking facility inside the Cambridge Innovation Center. Photo courtesy of the Cambridge Innovation Center. 

Sarah Bergbreiter is an assistant professor of mechanical engineering at the University of Maryland, and she and her team build tiny robots.

Just how tiny? Bergbreiter calls it “ant-scale,” but said, “That’s really just a PR term. Our robots are built on the millimetre scale, less than 1 centimeter.”

Image: http://www.businessinsider.com.au 

Over the course of many years working in venture capital and the video game business, I’ve listened to hundreds of pitches for new companies and products.

After almost every one of those pitches, once the entrepreneur has left the room, a post-game review ensues. There are consistent patterns in those discussions; aspiring entrepreneurs, pay attention.

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Deval Patrick is making headlines across the country for what Fortune titled a “clever immigration reform workaround,” aimed at keeping high skilled techie foreigners in the commonwealth — and in the country.

Under the Global Entrepreneur in Residence program, foreign students who attended universities in Massachusetts can apply to enroll in the GER program that will be administered by the Massachusetts Tech Collaborative, an independent state agency aimed at developing technology in the state, Fortune reported.

The most fundamental way for a nation to build its strength in innovation is to invest in its research universities because this investment brings forth new knowledge and human capital – two key aspects that help accelerate innovation, according to Dr. L Rafael Reif, President of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

Image: Dr. L Rafael Reif, President of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) 

Earlier this month, Governor O'Malley held a video chat with students from UMBC and UMUC through Google Hangouts. During the stream, the Governor announced Maryland schools have increased STEM graduates by 37% since 2006, climbing from 9,500 to over 13,000. Most recently, new STEM education programs – which include science, technology, engineering, and math – have been announced, including technology entrepreneurship at UMD and biotechnology and management at Mount St. Mary's. The Governor's STEM Task Force, created in 2008, is on track to meet its goal of increasing STEM graduates in Maryland by 40% by 2015.

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Venture capital investment continued to trend upwards in the first quarter of 2014 with $10.74 billion raised by U.S. based companies, up 18% from the fourth quarter of last year and the most raised since the first three months of 2001.

Venture investment was flat last year, but fourth quarter numbers from Dow Jones VentureSource signaled growing investor confidence. The latest VentureSource data show that continuing with a much stronger first quarter – 44% higher than the first period of 2013 when equity financing for U.S. venture-backed companies was $7.48 billion.

Image: http://blogs.wsj.com 

1. "The most important thing in communication is hearing what isn't said." - Peter Drucker

2. "The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place." - George Bernard Shaw

3."Think like a wise man but communicate in the language of the people." - William Butler Yeats

4. "We have two ears and one mouth so that we can listen twice as much as we speak." - Epictetus

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The chronic procrastinators of the world know that the struggle to find a way to get themselves motivated is real. We block distracting websites. We try meticulous to-do lists to help us prioritize the tasks we don’t really want to do. And — perhaps most commonly — we give ourselves fake deadlines to pressure ourselves into doing said tasks.

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If you’re in government, ignoring or cracking down on tech can come at a massive cost. While some have questioned the idea that social media was vital to the success of the Arab Spring, there can be no doubt that it was an important organising tool. In the Ukraine meanwhile, the one of the first things the protesters who recently overthrew the government did was set up Wi-Fi so that they could continue communicating with the outside world.

Image: http://www.freedigitalphotos.net

Google has come one step closer to making its balloon-powered Internet initiative, Project Loon, a reality. The tech giant recently acquired Titan Aerospace, a New Mexico-based company that builds drones for high altitudes, the Wall Street Journal reports. Though the price of the acquisition hasn’t been released, Business Insider estimates that it must be higher than the $60 million offer Facebook made earlier this year.

Image: http://smallbiztrends.com 

Sales of electric vehicles in China, the world’s largest auto market, have been minuscule despite government incentives meant to put five million of the cars on the nation’s roads by 2020. Tesla Motors hopes to begin changing that as it makes its first deliveries of Model S sedans to customers in China this month.

Image: http://www.technologyreview.com 

“Stories are the way our teams get excited, aligned, and rallied around the same goal,” says long-time IDEO Project Lead Nicole Kahn. “But more importantly, we know that our designs don’t live on with our clients without a good story attached to them. This is something we wanted to shift — to ensure that all of our designers would also see themselves as storytellers.”

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We’ve all read the stories about successful and iconic CEOs with volatile personalities--about leaders who use fear to drive performance, like Mr. Burns in The Simpsons, ruling over the Springfield power plant with an iron fist.

A few of these executives are better known for their bad behavior than their business achievements. And while in some cases their antics may be their downfall, many others go unpunished by their boards and shareholders as long as they’re delivering results.

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For academic achievement, ability is not enough. What’s also needed are mindsets and strategies for overcoming obstacles, staying on task, and learning and growing over the long-term. According to Gregory Walton and colleagues, academic tenacity is not about being smart, but learning smart.

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Here’s something gruesome to consider: More than 200 people are killed every year when cars are reversing—most of these deaths are children. Back-up accidents also injure more than 15,000 people each year.

These factoids get more tragic when you consider that it’s usually a parent behind the wheel, and the cost of preventing nearly all of these accidents is a cheap piece of technology: A $50 camera.

Image: The Volkswagen XL1 concept car doesn't have side-view mirrors or a direct window view to the side. Drivers rely strictly on a camera and monitor. - http://readwrite.com/ 

Sharks are usually thought of as primitive creatures, sometimes called "living fossils." But a new study of a 325-million-year-old shark fossil — the most complete of its kind — suggests modern sharks have evolved significantly from their bony ancestors.

The ancient fossil has characteristics of both bony fishes and modern sharks. But its gill structures more closely resemble those of bony fishes, challenging the notion that modern sharks have remained unchanged over evolutionary time.

Image: The exceptionally well-preserved fossil of Ozarcus mapesae from two different lateral views. The scale bar is 10 millimeters AMNH / F. Ippolito  

NEW YORK – Ford Motor Co. Chief Operating Officer Mark Fields discussed the automaker’s future by first discussing its past – starting with the 1964 World’s Fair in New York.

Fields talked about how that event 50 years ago marked a key time for innovation – from Apple introducing a new computer to Ford creating the pony car segment with the Mustang – and how the same basic characteristics of innovation play a key role in successful companies today.

Image: 2015 Mustang 50 Year Limited Edition (Curtesy image) 

The Kauffman Index of Entrepreneurial Activity is a leading indicator of new business creation in the United States.

Image: http://www.kauffman.org 

Chinese e-commerce titan Alibaba is widely expected to set the record for biggest tech IPO — and it may file next week.

The Hangzhou, China-based company is expected to file the prospectus for its U.S. IPO next week, reported Reuters, citing anonymous sources. Alibaba could file as soon as Monday.

The IPO will likely surpass $16 billion, which is how much Facebook scooped up in its 2012 IPO. That’s the current record for a technology share sale.

Image: Opening of the Alibaba Group's Taiwan branch. Image Credit: Rico Shen 

Every year there’s a list of cities that have been researched to be the best of some category. There are the “most livable,” cities and the “happiest,” the “Best for VC Capital” and more, but can you put a measure on the cities with the most possibility?

image: http://www.freedigitalphotos.net 

Small business owners fret over what their logo looks like. They want it to be clean, cool or fancy. What they should really focus on is how it makes a customer feel since logos play a large role in their purchasing decisions. Researchers at the University of Amsterdam found that children as young as two years old could recall a logo and its product 67% of the time. By eight, 100% of children tested could associate the logo with the product.

Somehow, the words "incubator" and "accelerator" have somehow become interchangeable. They're not. They're two different things.

Business incubators have been around for decades—they're the original. Accelerators, the new kids on the block, started popping around the turn of the millenium.

Image: http://www.techvibes.com/ 

Microsoft has today released a report calling for an urgent review of how the Australian innovation ecosystem works, in order to make the most of the burgeoning tech innovation movement.   Joined-Up Innovation outlines seven steps Australia can take to boost the fragmented innovation workforce.

Image: http://www.startupsmart.com.au/ 

SELF-APPRAISALS DON'T HAVE TO BE STRESSFUL IF YOU KNOW WHAT YOUR BOSS IS AFTER AND HOW TO TOOT YOUR OWN HORN IN THE RIGHT WAY.

BY SAMANTHA COLE

Taking stock of your own professional worth is no easy task. Studies show that we’re poor judges of our own performance; underachievers often believe themselves to be all-stars, and overachievers are their own worst critics.

image: http://www.freedigitalphotos.net 

WASHINGTON, April 15, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- The Spring National SBIR/STTR Conference will take place June 16-18, at the Gaylord Hotel & Convention Center at Washington DC-National Harbor. The conference provides entrepreneurs, universities, and businesses with important information about competing for SBIR/STTR grants and contracts, which amount to approximately $2.5 billion in available funding each year. Attendees can meet one-on-one with federal program managers; hear from industry-vetted SBIR funded innovators; and learn successful commercialization strategies through business and government experts.

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Much to many entrepreneurs’ chagrin, having an idea is not enough to start a company. Being able to fundraise is just as important as the big idea.

I’ve been very frank in sharing how one of my startup companies failed because I did not have sufficient funding to compete, so I know how long and arduous the fundraising process can be. Most of my entrepreneur friends and I agree that we do not find pitching to investors particularly enjoyable, and at times, it can be wasted effort. But, it remains a necessary evil.

Image: http://www.xconomy.com/ 

DURING A RECENT TALK AT THE COLUMBIA BUSINESS SCHOOL, ARIANNA HUFFINGTON OUTLINED FOUR WAYS TO ACHIEVE WHAT SHE CALLS THE THIRD METRIC FOR SUCCESS: THRIVING.

BY RACHEL GILLETT

Arianna Huffington believes we are living in a brave new world--today's work environment is somewhere between the dark ages and the renaissance.

The dark ages, she says, include environments and a culture fueled by stress, but she maintains that in order for businesses and individuals to thrive we must transition to a "renaissance" time of mindful living and w

Image: http://www.fastcompany.com 

It’s hard enough for 30 year-olds like me to find any job in today’s job market. Finding meaningful work is even more challenging. One in four adults between 18 and 34 years old say they have moved back in with their parents after living on their own and according to the Pew Research Center, only 54% of American adults ages 18 to 25 are currently employed, the lowest percentage since the government began collecting data 60 years ago. Breaking from tradition, my generation may grow up to be less wealthy than our parents’ generation.

Image: http://www.fastcoexist.com 

When Kathleen Sebelius took the helm of one of the largest civilian departments in the federal government, the first thorny issue on her desk was responding to the H1N1 flu virus, a new pandemic flu strain that seemed to target otherwise healthy young people. After less than week on the job her first public speech focused on how the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), which oversees the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Food and Drug Administration, was responding to the public health emergency. She released millions of antiviral drugs from the national stockpile and warned against fake flu cures while calling for continual investment into research to stay ahead of future flu outbreaks. Talks about women’s and children’s health, obesity and AIDS soon followed.

Image: http://www.scientificamerican.com 

The Google Fiber bunny is finally hopping closer to Kansas City businesses. After nearly two years of insisting they "hang in there," Google Inc. is recruiting Kansas City companies to test a Google Fiber small business product. Kansas City will be the first city to test the product, which Google said still is taking sha

“The Polar Vortex Didn’t Stop Us!” might have been an apt title for this year’s February jobs report: Despite the cold weather — which tends to put a damper on hiring trends — the economy added 175,000 jobs. The good news continued into March, during which nonfarm payroll employment increased by 192,000, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

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