Wealthy investors tend to look for inventors with strong, patented ideas that can lead to the production of commercially-viable products. Unfortunately, many inventors do not understand this, or the fact that the shortest path to success of their invention goes through the pocket book of wealthy investors.

Paul Swamidass’ new book, “Engineering Entrepreneurship From Idea to Business Plan: A Guide for Innovative Engineers and Scientists,” provides the roadmap inventors need.

A life sciences incubator formerly run by Montgomery County is now being managed by a public-private partnership that focuses on helping central Maryland scientists and bio-health startups bring their ideas to market. Rockville-based BioHealth Innovation Inc. at the start of October began managing the Germantown Innovation Center, which is part of the Pinkey Innovation Complex for Science and Technology at Montgomery ...

Companies everywhere are making investments to build their digital businesses. Decisions about digital platforms can make the difference between high growth and high margins or limited growth with declining margins. Unlike other technology and business investments, the digital business gets to the core economics of the company: revenue, growth, and margins. The right digital business investments are of paramount interest to the CEO, who is charged with asking the right questions and guiding the right decisions.

An exceptional leader we know would occasionally get a question from his direct reports in a variety of forms but with the common message, “Do you want this done fast or right?” His answer was always the same: “Yes!” He chose not to compromise on either dimension. For this leader and for most highly effective leaders we know, making mistakes is not an option. But neither is slowing down.

U.S. small businesses are stronger today than they were before the recession, and entrepreneurs are now more likely to reach their fifth year of operation than businesses established any time in the previous three decades.

The Kauffman Main Street Entrepreneurship report, which tracks overall small-business strength on an annual basis, showed many positive signs for entrepreneurs in 2016. (They define a small business as any firm with less than 50 employees.)

Today, Canada, Denmark, the European Union, Germany, Italy, Japan, Korea, Switzerland and the United States announced over $23 million USD to provide a major scale-up of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) Climate Technology Centre Network (CTCN) as it delivers tailored capacity building and technical assistance at the request of developing countries across a broad range of mitigation and adaptation technology and policy sectors. As the implementation arm of the Technology Mechanism, the CTCN is a key institution to help nations realize their commitments under the Paris Agreement.

Stanford students, faculty and health professionals, as well as designers and entrepreneurs from across the United States, teamed up for a weekend of health care innovation at the inaugural health++ Hackathon.

Participants pitched their projects, formed teams and went from idea to prototype in 36 hours. The goal: create a design, app or business plan that improves health care affordability and access.

Health care systems can be slow to embrace new technologies, said Clinical Associate Professor of surgery Oliver Aalami, who was a faculty adviser for the event. Aalami said many doctors already rely on smartphones for sharing diagnoses and prescribing advice, making that a good platform for innovations.

SAN FRANCISCO, Nov. 16, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Deloitte today released the 2016 Technology Fast 500, an annual ranking of the fastest growing North American companies in the technology, media, telecommunications, life sciences and energy tech sectors. Loot Crate claimed the top spot with a growth rate of 66,661 percent from 2012 to 2015.

Based in Los Angeles, Loot Crate delivers monthly curated mystery boxes of entertainment and pop culture themed collectibles to fans. Founded in 2012, Loot Crate has more than 650,000 subscribers worldwide in 35 countries. Loot Crate's position at the top of this year's list showcases how innovation isn't always about new technology and invention, but also about ingenuity, the recombining of existing assets and know-how in new ways to maximize value.

BioHealth Innovation CEO Richard Bendis has always loved the health care industry. His winding career — which has taken him from Kansas City to Philadelphia and now to Washington, D.C. — could always be tied back to that industry no matter what role he held.

That's why he feels so passionately about finding great talent and creating opportunities in the DMV to keep entrepreneurs here. In 2015, BioHealth Innovation, along with a few partner companies, launched their five-month healthtech incubator in Rockville, Md. Bendis isn't too concerned about the future of the biohealth field in the DMV, but he does hope that one day more serial entrepreneurs will stay in the District.

Practical advice from some of today's top early stage investors and entrepreneurs TechStars is a mentorship-driven startup accelerator with operations in three U.S. cities. Once a year in each city, it funds about ten Internet startups with a small amount of capital and surrounds them with around fifty top Internet entrepreneurs and investors. Historically, about seventy-five percent of the companies that go through TechStars raise a meaningful amount of angel or venture capital. Do More Faster: TechStars Lessons to Accelerate Your Startup is a collection of advice that comes from individuals who have passed through, or are part of, this proven program. Each vignette is an exploration of information often heard during the TechStars program and provides practical insights into early stage entrepreneurship.

There's no shortage of reminders of Obama's soft spot for tech. Upon being elected, he fought to keep his Blackberry. (Presidents traditionally hadn't been allowed to use email.) The Obama administration has hosted an annual global entrepreneurship summit since 2010. This fall, the White House hosted South by South Lawn, an event about new technologies and innovations. It mimicked the popular Austin tech conference South by Southwest.

California, the nation’s birthplace of biotechnology, continues to add jobs in that sector and the life sciences in general, a trade association reported Wednesday.

While growth is slow, the life sciences remain a potent economic force, especially in San Diego County and the San Francisco Bay area. There are also signs of expansion in Los Angeles County, which has long been overshadowed by its neighbors to the north and south.

One of the reasons that now is the time to be an entrepreneur is the explosion of startup assistance organizations, usually called incubators or accelerators. According to the National Business Incubator Association (NBIA), there are over 7,000 of these locations worldwide, and new online versions springing up all over the place, like Founders Space in Silicon Valley.

NEW DELHI: Microsoft founder Bill Gates today said that India needs to develop innovation ecosystem to build product for future and meet the challenges facing the world.

"The world is looking to India not just to solve its problems but to address global challenges through innovation," Gates said while giving lecture at NITI-Lectures: Transforming India -- the first part of this event was inaugurated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in August.

Image: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bill_Gates_June_2015.jpg

The reasons for becoming an entrepreneur are widely known and extolled, but there are some of you out there right now who might be considering becoming an entrepreneur for all the wrong reasons. So in an effort to impart some of my meager wisdom on the subject, I submit to you the top five reasons for not becoming and entrepreneur:

India is witnessing a major growth in entrepreneurship — not because of its X factor but out of the need for its citizens to create their own job. With more than 65 percent of the population under 35 years of age and a record-breaking growth in smartphone adoption and data services across the country, there has been a rising demand for next-generation services with simplified solutions.

BATON ROUGE, La. -- Today the Economic Development Administration (EDA) announced a new partnership with Research Park Corporation to fund The Louisiana Deal Flow Accelerator. This initiative accelerates the ability of innovative early stage companies to capture seed and angel capital by achieving investment readiness as quickly as possible. It will also facilitate hackathon-based business challenges for Louisiana’s Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU) to increase the diversity of the deal flow pipeline.

NexusLA, a wholly owned subsidiary of Research Park Corporation, will lead the Louisiana Deal Flow Accelerator. Partners include Southern University, Innovation Catalyst, NO/LA Angel Network, and the Opportunity Funding Corporation, a division of the Thurgood Marshall College Fund.

Washington, DC – NACFAM Chairman and CEO Robert “Rusty” Patterson announced today major manufacturing-related policy priorities that NACFAM is recommending to President-elect Donald Trump and the members of the new Congress that will be sworn in next January.

If enacted and signed into law, these policies will go a long way in strengthening the nation’s advanced manufacturing sector by stimulating greater innovation, increasing productivity and expanding the competitiveness of American companies in ever-changing markets, both domestic and foreign.

Launched last week at The Competitiveness Institute’s (TCI Network) 2016 Global Conference in Eindhoven, Netherlands, the Handbook provides practical guidance for experienced cluster practitioners, those new to cluster development and for policy agencies.

The author, Ifor Ffowcs-Williams, is a Founder and Past President of the TCI Network and CEO, Cluster Navigators Ltd, New Zealand. This reference book is based on Ifor’s two decades of hands-on experience with hundreds of clusters.

HOUSTON — The skyscrapers at the Texas Medical Center are filled with hospital beds. The commuters waiting in the heat for the train wear scrubs. The young woman dodging traffic on a bicycle may be studying to be a doctor, a nurse or a dentist.

Houston is known for its energy jobs, but registered nurses are the most in-demand workers in town.

“Whatever jobs we have, we keep expanding. And our competitors are doing the same,” said Thomas Vernon, a human resources director for Houston Methodist, which has a large hospital at the medical complex here. Last year the health system hired about 1,200 nurses across its seven hospitals.