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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.

Incubator

The National Business Incubation Association has again awarded the NBIA Soft Landings International Incubator designation to the University City Science Center Port Business Incubator in Philadelphia. This was the Science Center’s first renewal of the designation it first received in 2011.

Through its Soft Landings program, NBIA recognizes business incubation programs that are especially capable of helping nondomestic companies enter the incubator’s domestic market. “The University City Science Center Port Business Incubator program was selected for the program because of its slate of business services for nondomestic firms and its demonstrated success at helping these firms enter the U.S. market,” said Randy Morris, NBIA director of member services.

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The modern meltdown of the Antarctic Ice Sheet mirrors the frozen continent's big thaw after the last ice age ended 20,000 years ago, a new study finds.

New ice core records from West Antarctica show the huge ice sheet started heating up about 20,000 to 22,000 years ago, 2,000 to 4,000 years earlier than previously thought. But in East Antarctica, which was higher in elevation, colder and drier than the West, the continent stayed in its deep-freeze cycle until 18,000 years ago. The results were published today (Aug. 14) in the journal Nature.

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The most popular city for technology startups isn’t Boston or New York or San Francisco, according to one study released today. It’s Boulder, Colo., which has more tech startups per capita than any U.S. metropolitan area.

Colorado also took the second spot with the Fort Collins-Loveland area, beating the traditional California Silicon Valley cities of San Jose, Santa Clara and Sunnyvale. The Boston suburbs including Cambridge, Mass., are number four, and San Francisco is number seven—after Seattle and Denver. New York isn’t even in the top 10.

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I am so proud to have been a mobilizer and connector for Citizen Schools for close to 19 years. Now, with excitement and nostalgia, I'm moving to a new Role at the MIT Media Lab.

When I first rolled up my sleeves to help launch Citizen Schools in Boston close to half my lifetime ago, the US population was 50 million less than today, the world wide web was a few months old, and "Babe" and "Braveheart" were up for Oscars. Now, Citizen Schools is is an American institution that is changing the vector of education and community. I am so proud of where Citizen Schools has come from and where it is going, and I'm grateful to you for joining the movement to bring citizens into schools.

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Due to the global shortage of donor hearts, patients on the waiting list for a heart transplant can wait several months to several years for a match to be found. But for 36-year-old Frédéric Thiollet, who surpassed two years of support with the SynCardia temporary Total Artificial Heart on Aug. 5, he’s enjoying each and every day. “I feel well and I am confident, having been implanted now for over two years,” said Frédéric Thiollet. “I have recuperated all my physical functions, even my sexual activity, which I had believed was gone forever. In my own words, I have enjoyed an effective resurrection, a new birth. Physically I have no limit. I am as strong and powerful as before, even more so than before.”

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Rebecca O. Bagley

“I think we have to become more conscious of the kind of cultures that we create in organizations. We want to create cultures where human beings are empowered, they flourish and they’re able to self-actualize themselves.”

These are the words of Whole Foods Market Co-CEO John Mackey during an interview with Steve Forbes on his book “Conscious Capitalism: Liberating the Heroic Spirit of Business.” In the book, Mackey outlines four principles by which some of America’s most successful and highly regarded companies operate: higher purpose, stakeholder integration, conscious leadership, and conscious culture/management.

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FULLY A THIRD OF VENTURE-BACKED COMPANIES THAT WENT PUBLIC BETWEEN 2006 AND 2012 HAD AT LEAST ONE IMMIGRANT FOUNDER AT THE HELM. ARIANNA HUFFINGTON AND OTHER PROMINENT ENTREPRENEURS ON WHY THE U.S. NEEDS TO GET CREATIVE ABOUT IMMIGRATION POLICY. 

What do Google’s Sergey Brin, eBay’s Pierre Omidyar, and Tesla Motors’s Elon Musk all have in common? Each of these serial entrepreneurs who founded companies that have market caps in the tens or hundreds of billions--employing tens of thousands of workers--were born outside the U.S. From Yahoo to Facebook and LinkedIn, each of these innovative companies that have played such a large role in the U.S. economy had at least one founder that was born abroad and then emigrated to the United States.

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HOW USING 15 MINUTES OF DOWNTIME AT WORK CAN REALIGN YOUR WORK-LIFE BALANCE GOT 15 MINUTES OF DOWNTIME AT WORK? LEARNING HOW TO USE IT RIGHT CAN ULTIMATELY SAVE YOU HOURS SO YOU CAN LIMIT WORK TO, YOU KNOW, WORK HOURS, SAYS PRODUCTIVITY EXPERT LAURA VANDERKAM. BY: LAURA VANDERKAM 0 COMMENTS EMAIL

For years, my evenings have looked like this: After my kids go to bed, I go back to work. As soon as the last light goes out, I’m down at my laptop, generally working from 9 p.m. to 10:30 p.m. When I’m in crunch mode, having this extra time is key to making everything work.

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INSTEAD OF SCOURING COLLEGE CAMPUSES FOR THE NEXT FACEBOOK, FIRST ROUND CAPITAL IS GIVING GROUPS OF STUDENTS SMALL VENTURE CAPITAL FUNDS TO INVEST ON THEIR BEHALF.

As a student at Columbia Business School, Alex Ginsberg uses BuzzTheBar, an app that one of his fellow students created--it lets you order drinks with your smartphone and lets you know when they're ready. It might sound trivial, but the fact of the matter, Ginsberg says, is that “Part of going to business school is going to a lot of bars.” So when he landed a spot as a student partner at First Round Capital’s New York City Dorm Room Fund, it was the first startup he pitched to his fellow partners. And shortly later, it became the fund’s first investment.

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The East Coast has long lagged behind Silicon Valley and the Bay Area as a center for startups and venture capital investment.

The Route 128 corridor outside Boston remained a distant second to the Bay Area in the 70s and 80s because its stodgy, hierarchical culture was less able to adapt to new technology, University of California at Berkley's AnnaLee Saxenian has argued. Further south, New York City has been a source of venture capital finance since the industry's birth, but it mainly exported these resources to startups in the Bay Area and Route 128. And Washington, D.C., the southern end of the productive Boston-Washington corridor, has largely been known as a government town, with its modest tech scene clustered in the Virginia and Maryland suburbs.

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Johnson and Johnson

BioBoost, a consortium of OrbiMed Advisors LLC, Johnson and Johnson (NYSE: JNJ) and Takeda Pharmaceutical Co. Ltd. (TSE: 4502) has won the tender to establish the life sciences incubator as part of the Office of the Chief Scientist's incubator program. The franchise for the biotech tender, like the franchise for all incubators since the reform, is for eight years. The consortium members will receive NIS 6.9 million in financing over three years, more than franchisees of incubators in other fields, as part of the government's wish to provide special support for the life sciences. Most of the incubator's companies will develop drugs, and a few will develop medical devices.

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Having written the eBook “Taking the NO Out of InNOvation” and speaking on innovation and creativity topics for several years, I frequently hear about the impact of early NOs on people, especially those who tend to be perfectionists.

The Legacy of a NO to Creativity When a perfectionist hears NOs about efforts where the rules used to judge an effort don’t really have any lasting significance or a performance was actually fine (if perhaps not perfect) yet they were told it fell short, it can have creatively devastating impacts. This is especially true when the NO comes from an authority figure or is heard repeatedly.

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Over the course of its history, Massachusetts has been regarded as a hub of innovation and a leader in developing new technologies that improve the quality of life for people around the globe. Alexander Graham Bell, Guglielmo Marconi, and Amar Bose are three giants of innovation with Massachusetts roots whose brilliance and technological advancements shaped the world we live in today. These innovators helped to create a legacy of discovery and progress that is carried on by the brilliant men and women who make up our state’s diverse technology ecosystem.

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Career advice usually comes packaged in experience, but to be frank, my experience as a young software developer was vastly different from the world that faces the ranks of young software developers today. Software development, as an industry, is uniquely fast-paced. What was true five years or even one year ago may no longer be true now. Instead, my advice comes packaged from the other side: these skills are what I look for in young developers.

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As a growing number of Internet-connected home appliances hit the market, David Bryan and Daniel Crowley worry that digital ne’er-do-wells will get new ways to take control of these devices, unlocking your house, running up your heating bill, flushing your toilet—or worse—from afar.   

Bryan and Crowley, both security researchers at Trustwave Holdings, have been trying to sound this alarm since they heard about the Lockitron, a $179 gadget designed to fit on a standard deadbolt and allow you to lock or unlock your home from your smartphone. At the time, the device had not yet begun shipping to customers, but it piqued Bryan and Crowley’s curiosity. They figured they’d try out other “smart” devices while they were at it, and over the past several months they’ve found that nearly all of them, including lights, a scale, and a toilet, had significant security shortcomings.

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Entrepreneur Postdoctoral Fellowships Open Entrepreneurship org 2

Postdoctoral researchers bring new discoveries to the world, and the Kauffman Foundation is opening a door for them to do so through entrepreneurship.

The Kauffman Entrepreneur Postdoctoral Fellows program provides a unique opportunity for postdocs in science and technology fields to launch their innovative research from the lab to the marketplace.

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IBM is expanding its push to encourage the study of "big data" through a brace of new partnerships with prominent universities and a new round of grants to support data-analytics pursuits in academe, the company announced on Wednesday.

Georgetown University, George Washington University, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and Northwestern University are among the nine institutions and higher-education agencies worldwide that will introduce new curricula developed in partnership with the computer company.

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Just how important protégés are to a powerful person was made clear to me by this question, told to me by a Fortune 100 CEO. When choosing his direct reports, he asks: "How many blazing talents have you developed over the years and put in top positions across the company, so that if I asked you to pull off a deal that involved liaising across seven geographies and five functions, you'd have the bench strength — the people who 'owe you one' — to get it done?"

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