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.
As an entrepreneur, your personal integrity is critical for getting and keeping the support of investors and team members, and your company’s integrity is critical for getting and keeping customers and vendors. But in a practical sense, what does that really mean?
Image: http://blog.startupprofessionals.com
Every day I meet people who dream about starting their own business, but wonder if they have what it takes. Some have been in corporate jobs for years and have great skills but not a great idea for a business. Or they may not be a big risk taker. But they still have the desire to do their own thing.
That's the benefit of franchising. I like to think of franchisees as being calculated entrepreneurs. That's because franchises are owned by business people who want to buy an idea and system that is already tested and proven. Here are some franchise basics.
image: http://www.freedigitalphotos.net
The business of teaching entrepreneurship is booming in Ontario and expected to surge further, but so far there’s been too little attention paid to results, according to a new study.
For-credit courses, business incubators and extracurricular activities in entrepreneurship are proliferating at the province’s 44 colleges and universities, notably in the past six years, according to the study for the Higher Education Quality Council of Ontario (HEQCO), a government advisory agency.
Image: http://www.theglobeandmail.com
When it comes to collaborating on something new, secrecy and tension can ruin a beautiful partnership.
In an era of increasingly complex and expensive technological development and shortened innovation cycles, Procter and Gamble’s Connect + Develop open innovation programme, is an excellent example of how external knowledge can advance innovation. Since its launch in 2001 the programme has formed more than 2,000 partnerships and been responsible for dozens of innovative products and new processes to increase the firm’s productivity.
image: http://www.freedigitalphotos.net
You may not realize you have an image. And the image that exists for you may not be ideal. The goal of reputation management and personal branding is to intentionally and authentically put together a business image that is coherent, consistent and compelling. What distinguishes your business image from your personal brand or reputation? Your image is more diffused. It encompasses much more about you, although it plays a big role in your personal brand and reputation.
image: http://www.freedigitalphotos.net
With just having received a job offer as of April 15, the paid internship is more important than ever before. According to a recent study conducted by InternMatch, students with paid internships are three times more likely to have job offers than students with unpaid internships.
There's a lot being said out there about the state of women in this country. The gender gap is alive and well when it comes to salary, confidence, happiness, and the number of women in the C-suite and science. Women aren't as happy as they were in the 1970s, research has shown, and their happiness relative to that of men has taken a nosedive.
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It helps to have a friend. And for several pharma giants scrambling to cut R&D costs, those friends are venture capital firms that co-invest in startups whose new drugs and platform technologies appear attractive. In some cases, these pharma-venture “alliances” launch the startups, using the expertise of VC firm partners and company executives.
image: http://www.freedigitalphotos.net
I’ve been running a startup accelerator program since 2012. The program has had six cohorts come through the three-month program at the University of Sydney and across our partner universities. To date, I’ve seen more than 200 startup applications of varying quality and sat through countless interviews. While each accelerator program is different (for example, we don’t take equity in their businesses) the same issues arise for program managers in other seed accelerators in Australia, Europe and in the USA.
Everyone seems to like the aspect of being an entrepreneur that goes with “being your own boss” and “able to do things my way.” But sometimes they forget that this kind of freedom comes with a price of personal accountability. Accountability means “the buck stops here,” and “all the failures are mine.”
Too many people seem to do whatever it takes to avoid accountability, both before and after the fact. I suspect that this is largely caused by a fear of the unknown, and a lack of confidence in their own abilities. People with confidence problems and fear problems should avoid the entrepreneur role, since success without accountability is rare.
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Over the last two years, much has been written about patent trolls, firms that make their money asserting patents against other companies, but do not make a useful product of their own. Both the White House and Congressional leaders have called for patent reform to fix the underlying problems that give rise to patent troll lawsuits. Not so fast, say Stephen Haber and Ross Levine in a Wall Street Journal Op-Ed (“The Myth of the Wicked Patent Troll”). We shouldn’t reform the patent system, they say, because there is no evidence that trolls are hindering innovation; these calls are being driven just by a few large companies who don’t want to pay inventors.
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A new study by the University of New Mexico’s Bureau of Business and Economic Research shows UNM’s technology transfer program is having a noticeable impact on the local economy.
BBER’s new report, published in June, estimates that 26 startup companies that formed with UNM technology since 2005 helped sustain 147 jobs with about $8.55 million in wages and benefits in 2013.
Image: http://www.abqjournal.com
LONDON—European startups have had a bumper few months, raising €2.1 billion (more than $2.8 billion) from venture-capital investors in the second quarter of 2014, the highest quarterly total since 2001, according to data from Dow Jones VentureSource.
The influx of funding into privately held European companies echoes a similar investment boom in the U.S., where private companies raised $13.8 billion in venture capital in the same period, according to Dow Jones Venture Source. And it came at a time when world financial markets rallied in sync, with stocks, bonds and commodities all rising.
Image: http://blogs.wsj.com
Winning the first time, every time and all the time is unrealistic and harmful to your continued success. Entrepreneurial delusion is a real thing. If it isn’t an official thing, it really should be. We (the entrepreneurs) believe that we will succeed no matter. We’re different, we’re unique, we’re in the top percentile of companies that actually make it beyond the first 18 months. We convince ourselves so intensely that this is the case that failure becomes the enemy. But it isn’t.
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EU funding worth €7.75 million will be given to 155 small and medium-sized enterprises from 21 countries, including Israel and Turkey, for innovation studies, it was announced yesterday (24 July).
2,666 businesses applied for the first round of grants under the EU's SME Instrument, submitting a business plan. Spain was the most successful, with 39 proposals selected, followed by the UK with 26, Italy with 20, Germany with 11, and Ireland with ten. Eight non-EU businesses will receive a total of €400,000 in EU money. While Israel (four proposals), Norway (two proposals), and Turkey (two) are not in the EU, they are part of the Horizon 2020 programme.
Image: Commissioner Máire Geoghegan-Quinn hailed the first wave of grants to SMEs. 5 March, 2010. (Lisbon Council/Flickr)
It wasn’t so many years ago that starting a new e-commerce business on the Internet was a complex custom development project, usually costing a million dollars or more. Now you can do it for free, or a few hundred dollars, with one of the many web building tools available, like Shopify or Weebly Store. A programmer can build a new smartphone app for a few thousand dollars.
Founders Fund already stands out for backing startups with radical ideas, including Counsyl, Hampton Creek, Planet Labs, and SpaceX. Now the venture firm is making a formal commitment to funding startups in aeronautics, life sciences, nanotechnology, and other geeky realms.
Founders Fund has dedicated a small percentage of its new $1 billion fund to a new initiative called FF Science, through which the firm will make seed-stage deals.
Image:: Founders Fund co-founder Peter Thiel. Image Credit: Heisenberg Media/Flickr
Kaiser is well known healthcare delivery model and outcomes, but, it turns out, it’s also among the best at engaging members via the web and mobile apps.
The organization says in its 2013 annual report (just released) that about 4.4 million of its 9.1 million members use its online health management platform My Health Manager.
Image: http://venturebeat.com
The New York Venture Summit I attended earlier this week, now in its 14th year, was packed with over 200 attendees from life sciences/healthcare, tech and education. Of the nearly 90 companies presenting, about 5% of the presenters were women. Only half of the 5% women were actually CEOs. Many of the women who pitched were in bus dev type roles. There is more Venture and Angel money being invested than ever – in 2013 alone $29B in Venture and $25B in Angel. Why are so few women entrepreneurs pursuing Venture Capital and when they do, why is their success rate so low? In the U.S. women founders own 30% of all businesses but receive only 13% of the Venture Capital “rocket fuel” that flow into companies each year. I spoke with women and men at New York Venture Summit to get a first hand insights about this gap and see if they think the number of VC-funded women-led companies will get into the double digits anytime soon.
Image: http://www.forbes.com/
The money journey continues. I’ve never been comfortable with money. Growing up we were poor, so money conversations generally involved things like “No, we can’t afford that.” Then, as my career and salary grew, I embraced abundance only to learn the lesson that no amount of money could buy you happiness and joy. As an entrepreneur, I’ve learned that if you’re not managing your business and your money, you don’t have a business. You have a job that pays an irregular income.
