The entrepreneurial brain is a marvelous and dangerous tool. We tend to think creatively, and quickly, whether it’s in response to solving a problem or as a way to kill time in line at the grocery store. We also aren’t afraid to explore our options, which means we’re usually considering three or four things at the same time.

As part of a simulation game on innovation management we have been running at universities and in corporate training programs for over 4 years now, we have developed an integrative model for dealing with innovation management on a daily basis. Innovation Management is a strategic activity that isn’t necessarily needed to implement throughly for every company. Mostly large companies have included structured processes that include administrative stages to following the (large number of) project that are in progress and to be able to follow-up on them and calculate the effect of innovation management in general. For smaller companies however, that is not general practice: having such a formal process in place simply doesn’t weigh up to cost efficiencies will generate. But for them, innovation management is just as important – but they rather use a toolkit than a formal process. Our 8 Types of Innovation Processes model is a simple design that makes it easy to bridge the gap between a formal process and the tools available.

Image: http://www.openinnovation.eu 

Alexandria Real Estate (NYSE:ARE) is about as successful a Wall Street story as you'll find. Started in 1994 as what management fondly recalls as a garage startup, the company now is one of the most successful and unique REITs on the market today. What makes the company so special is that Alexandria was the first REIT to focus exclusively on life science and biotechnology clients, specifically in the most prime real estate markets: Boston, San Francisco, New York City, etc.

What do you call a highly innovative person who builds a product out of nothing and launches something that will change people’s lives? Everywhere besides Cuba, you’d call this person an entrepreneur.

You would never expect in the land of communism, censorship and classic cars that you would find a hotbed of entrepreneurship. Technically, it doesn’t exist. But in my eyes, entrepreneurship is thriving in Cuba. Indeed, I’ve seen some of the world’s best innovators in Havana who could win any hackathon.

Image: https://techcrunch.com

The word "innovation" has become so common that we tend to forget what remarkable leaps have been made in convenience and opportunity by the technology sector. Shopping, travel and daily communications can be handled anywhere using a smartphone.

Many significant advances come to market from big companies in the tech sector. Unfortunately, since the financial crisis, there has been a prevailing thought in America that "big" is bad. This sentiment started with financial institutes, but in Washington, some are starting to question whether the theory holds for other industries as well.

The Allen Institute for Brain Science has published the highest-resolution atlas of the human brain to date in a stand-alone issue of the Journal of Comparative Neurology. This digital human brain atlas allows researchers to investigate the structural basis of human brain function and is freely available as part of the suite of Allen Brain Atlas tools at brain-map.org.

“To understand the human brain, we need to have a detailed description of its underlying structure,” says Ed Lein, Ph.D., Investigator at the Allen Institute for Brain Science. “Human brain atlases have long lagged behind atlases of the brain of worms, flies or mice, both in terms of spatial resolution and in terms of completeness due to technical limitations related to the enormous size and complexity of the human brain.

Image: Allen Human Brain Reference Atlas image (credit: Allen Institute for Brain Science)

At FirstBuild’s headquarters there’s a sign reminding all who do work at the appliance-development factory that “A prototype is worth a thousand meetings.”

It’s an operating tenet for FirstBuild and other companies trying to change the way new products are created by liberating the process from the confines of slow-moving, bureaucratic research-and-development departments.

Image: At FirstBuild, amateur inventors, engineers and others design products that could become part of the GE appliance line. PHOTO: HUNTER WILSON

Deloitte’s chief edge officer, Pete Williams, didn’t hold back in his keynote presentation this morning at B&T’s DAZE of Disruption conference in Sydney, with KPIs, big data and blockchain all in the firing line.

Williams began his talk by emphasising the fact that businesses have to learn faster to move faster in these times of exponential change.

“The thing I’m finding a lot is that big companies, particularly in the digital space, have come from an environment we’re things move relatively slowly so they can take a long, considered look at scoping and planning, he said.

Humpback whales are actually just master pranksters.

Trevor Ryan was fishing off the coast of Langara Island, in British Columbia, Canada, on Sept. 3 with his father and a tour guide when a humpback whale suddenly breached the surface just a few feet from their boat. 

Image: http://mashable.com

The shrimp in your salad or tuna on your plate may have been caught illegally in areas threatened by overfishing. But tracing suspect seafood is a tricky task, given that many boats operate in unseen swaths of the ocean.

Global Fishing Watch, a new project from Oceana, SkyTruth and Google, aims to crack down on illegal fishing by training the watchful eye of surveillance satellites on the world's approximately 35,000 commercial fishing vessels.

Image: http://mashable.com

Since Apple announced the iPhone 7 to a resounding meh in San Francisco on September 7, the air has been filled with laments for the dearly departed headphone jack. Underneath these woeful cries can be heard whispers of a new rumor: next year, Apple may make an iPhone with a case made out of ceramic rather than metal.

Two things suggest the possibility. First, the company has started selling a watch with a shiny white ceramic case: the Apple Watch Edition, which costs $1,249. Second, the company has a handful of patents describing the design and manufacture of a “handheld computing device” with a ceramic case. Given ceramic’s potential to shatter, its limited color options, and the expense it adds to manufacturing, though, making such a phone would be risky.

Image: https://www.technologyreview.com

Perhaps you didn’t notice when Google updated its logo last fall. The changes were relatively subtle, with a cleaner, sans-serif typography replacing the original’s highly ornamental lettering. But the revamp was actually a big deal, and not just because the logo is viewed trillions of times a year on Google’s search page. It reconceives the logo as an interactive visual device that adds functionality, using a clever animation of dots to communicate various responses to user actions. We spoke to Jonathan Lee, a Google creative director who helped spearhead the redesign, about how he approached the changes.

Image: Palette cleanser: Google’s Jonathan Lee helped modernize the company’s colorful visuals. (Photo: Ina Jang)

Helen Phung, a communications consultant, had what she considered a brilliant Halloween costume. She couldn’t wait for her coworkers to give her knowing nods and make clever comments as they passed her in the kitchen. She was dressed as the Chicken Lady from Kids in the Hall, the Canadian sketch comedy show that originally aired from the late '80s to mid-'90s, and later as reruns on Comedy Central during the '00s.

Image: Flickr user dacian dorca-street photographie

Something’s afoot in the future of work, but it’s hush-hush. People don’t like talking about it.

"I know it is ugly to say ‘unicorn,’ but yeah, you kinda do have to be the unicorn," Chris Noessel, head of design for IBM’s transportation group, tells me. Before joining the tech giant, Mr. Noessel spent a decade at the design and strategy firm Cooper.

His former boss, Alan Cooper, who invented (and later sold to Microsoft) the core design for Visual Basic, is even more cautious around the subject. "I think we in the design profession do ourselves and our colleagues a disservice by even recognizing the argument that ‘unicorns’ exist."

Indianapolis made the top 10 in a new report that looked at 45 U.S. cities and measured an area’s attractiveness to tech companies based on how much space those companies are leasing.

The report, commissioned by commercial real estate company Jones Lang LaSalle (JLL) and titled “U.S. Technology Office Outlook,” found that tech companies signed leases for slightly under 985,000 square feet of office space in greater Indianapolis between the third quarter of 2015 and the second quarter of 2016. That resulted in Indianapolis being ranked 10th among the 45 cities. The total square footage included new leases, lease renewals, and renewals with expansions.

Reba Jaber could have gone in a few directions after graduating in 2014 from the University of Michigan with a trio of graduate degrees.

But rather than go into medicine or clinical research, Jaber opted instead to pursue a career in the venture capital industry. Jaber, who has an MBA, connected with Birmingham-based IncWell LLC, a venture capital firm that invests in early-stage startups where he’s now a partner.

Through IncWell, Jaber became a venture fellow in a program run by the Michigan Venture Capital Association that seeks to groom talent to work in the state’s growing venture capital industry.

Image: Reba Jaber, a partner at venture capital firm IncWell, attends the MVCAcademy in July. He’s one of 15 investment professionals who have participated in the Michigan Venture Capital Association’s Venture Fellows Program. Photo Courtesy of Leisa Thompson

Accurately measuring enterprise value (EV) has never been more important or challenging. Even more so because firms are confronted by growing volumes of data, and the stakes implied in misinterpreting the value of that data have risen to new heights.

Data is no longer the domain of tech companies or IT departments — it is fast becoming a centerpiece of corporate value creation more generally. Today most organizations are data-driven to one degree or another.

In corporate travel, extending a business trip for personal purposes is known as “bleisure,” an awkward term that’s only saving grace is that it’s less awful than the alternative, “bizcation.”

Bleisure travel has received considerable attention lately, with some traveler surveys suggesting that as many as 6 out of 10 people have tacked on personal time to a business trip. Those surveys suggest that bleisure emerged as a trend in response to increasingly demanding work schedules and because work and life lines have blurred because of technology in other ways, so it’s only natural that travel would follow as well.

There are so many exciting discoveries in scientific research that could be used to cure, feed and fuel the world, but there is a giant gulf between science and business. Tech transfer aims to bridge the gap! I interviewed a number of experts in the field to tell you how.

Since the first modern biotechnology company, Genentech, was founded in 1976, the biotechnology industry has grown to become one of the major engines of scientific innovation. The importance of innovation in biotechnology has brought the issues of intellectual property (IP) right and technology transfer (TT) into sharp focus.

When you do things is important to your health and wellness

In our relentless quest to live healthier, happier, longer, more productive lives, we often overlook a powerful tool that’s right within us: the human body’s internal sense of timing. When it comes to health and wellness, most of the literature focuses on the what, how, and how much, with little focus on the when. Have you ever noticed that there are certain times of day when you do things better than others?

Our bodies are designed to coordinate the timing of almost all the aspects of life—sleep, work, sex, communication, even having fun. The body has a master biological clock, which keeps the body’s other clocks in sync. This master bio clock relies heavily on external cues of light and darkness, delivered along a pathway that travels from the optic nerve.

Image: http://time.com