A trio of initiatives from the Michigan Economic Development Corp. aims to increase the flow of capital to startups and early-stage companies in the state.

By the end of the year, two separate but similar funds of $1 million and $2 million each could begin offering grants to university researchers and entrepreneurs seeking to validate innovations and prove out their concepts. A third fund, rather than providing direct capital, would pay to better coordinate activities among the nine angel investment groups in Michigan to leverage their strengths and share best practices on tasks such as due diligence and deal syndication.

Yes, Innovation is extremely difficult. That’s why I love it actually. My personal goal is to spark innovation by making it less complex so you, your colleagues and/or clients will be able to innovate yourself.

As blogger on innovation I have written more than 200 posts. I reread them to identify15 essential innovation messages. Being Dutch makes me kind of outspoken and bold. Please use them to put innovation on the agenda. Feel free to share them, of course.

Image: http://innovationexcellence.com

I know the title “I promise you one of the most meaningful days of your life” sounds grandiose but I mean it and I hope you’ll read through to the end and choose to take one small, totally free action, that will change your life and likely those of others. On September 10th of this year I spent an entire day in California State Prison at the California City Correctional Facility with people who had committed felonies and worked with them on business plans to help them create legal enterprise upon their release as part of Defy Ventures 6-month training program.

Did you know that it was Google engineers and not the auto industry that started the race to produce a self-driving car? While the concept of an autonomous car dates back to at least the 1920’s, it was Google engineers that matched a well-documented human pain: driver error causes millions of traffic deaths, with the building blocks to a solution: Google Maps, Google Earth and Street View. Granted, the technology still has a ways to go before you and I can safely hit the road hands-off, but the point I’m driving here is about innovation. How can today’s leaders motivate employees to embrace the kind of thinking that gives great organizations like Google the first-mover advantage?

The White House Frontiers Conference took place this week to "explore the future of innovation here and around the world." President Obama is also guest editor for the November issue of Wired where he discusses science and other advancements in both essay and interview form. Above is the president's writing on technology and more. There's also a joint interview with MIT's Joi Ito where the two discuss AI, self-driving cars and and other futuristic topics with Wired's Scott Dadich

Former BlackBerry CEO and current Chair of the Council of Canadian of Innovators Jim Balsillie claims that overall, Canada could be a better innovator.

The Canadian Council of Innovators aims to help shape public policy to help Canadian companies scale globally. Balsillie told Canadian Business that federal policy-makers don’t understand that competition in the tech space is “fundamentally different from how it’s done in traditional industries.”

A five point economic development plan is released by Congressman John Carney.

The Democratic candidate for governor's plan includes creating new jobs in old abandoned industrial sites.

"Those plants are closed, and we've lost those jobs and so we have got to re-purpose those sites to create new employment and lead the state to an economy that is going to be more about small business and more about innovation," said Carney.

Image: http://wdel.com

Venture capital is a hell of a drug. Used properly, it’s like adrenaline energizing many of the greatest companies of the past fifty years. Used incorrectly, it creates toxic dependencies.

The conventional wisdom in the startup community is that when building the very best companies, more capital can be leveraged to accelerate even greater growth. But does this “go big or go home” approach stand up to scrutiny? In the best case scenarios, do companies that load up on venture capital actually outperform those that more efficiently deploy capital? We looked at 71 tech IPOs from the last five years to find out.

It can be called an arrival of #DigitalIndia when ecommerce "marketplace" sales numbers and consumer log-ins become the bell-weather of the Indian economy and its growth trajectory.

Expectedly, the numbers this pre-Diwali sales have been impressive. Discounts, freebies, deals and savings: it has been all too overwhelming. In time, the complaints about logistics and delivery delays will also arise. But that is another story.

General Electric (GE), the largest industrial company in the US, says it has developed processes that more than double the speed of innovation and which have the potential to completely restructure its own business.

GE will next week launch its first business venture, called Fuse, that will test a hugely ambitious and radical approach to creating new companies through processes and technologies designed to harness the work of global crowds of experts.

Image: http://www.zdnet.com

For the Harvard classics professor Richard F. Thomas, who has been gently teased by colleagues for teaching a freshman seminar about Bob Dylan — as well as for the students who sometimes get double takes for choosing the course — the announcement of the newest Nobel laureate in literature was hailed as vindication. And cause to break out celebratory cupcakes at the fortuitously timed Thursday afternoon session.

Image: Prof. Richard F. Thomas teaching a class about Bob Dylan at Harvard. The seminar examines Mr. Dylan in the context of popular culture as well as literary culture. Credit Shiho Fukada for The New York Times - http://www.nytimes.com

Venture capital-backed investment activity peaked in 2015, but analysts don’t expect that 2016 will live up to last year’s record in terms of deals or dollars. In fact, the past three months saw the lowest activity of any quarter over the past two years. In the U.S., seed funding has become especially hard to pin down, according to Venture Pulse, a report released this week by KPMG International and CB Insights. A smaller proportion of deals are early-stage, though the median size of these deals is rather high. Meanwhile, large-sum late-stage deals are less common than they were a couple of years ago.

The supply of venture capital money for 2017 just more than doubled: Saudi Arabia and the Japanese firm SoftBank overnight announced a $100B venture capital fund, based in London, to invest in tech ventures globally.

That's equivalent to the total amount raised by US venture capital funds over the past 2.5 years, CNBC reports, citing NVCA data. What does that mean for venture capitalists and startups? Two things:

Image: SoftBank chairman Masayoshi Son. Bloomberg photo

Entrepreneurs and officials celebrated the grand opening of Delaware Technology Park's new laboratory incubator on the University of Delaware's STAR campus Friday.

The DTP expansion, named DTP@STAR, is aimed at creating jobs and innovation in Delaware.

The U.S. Department of Commerce, through the Economic Development Administration, is investing $500,000 over the next three years into DTP@STAR.

"It means a lot because it helps defer some of the operating costs of the shared services that makes the rent a little bit lower for the people that are here," said DTP President Mike Bowman.

Image: http://www.wdel.com

Electric cars are quick and quiet, with a range more than long enough for most commutes. If you want a car with extremely fast acceleration, the Tesla Model S is hard to beat. And, of course, electric vehicles avoid the pollution associated with conventional cars, including emissions of carbon dioxide from burning gasoline. Yet they account for a tiny fraction of automotive sales, mainly because the batteries that propel them are expensive and need to be recharged frequently.

Image: https://www.technologyreview.com

GCN has named the winners of its 2016 digIT Awards showcasing transformative technology in the government IT space.

The winners were picked from 36 finalists, all of which were recognized for their work in six categories including open data, cybersecurity, mobile and robotics.

GCN hailed them as “exceptional eamples of discovery and innovation in government IT.”

This video is probably every person's worst nightmare: a great white shark breaching the side of a diver's cage while he was still inside. 

"What might appear to be an aggressive great white shark trying to attack the cage, this is not the case," he explained.

"These awesome sharks are biting at large chunks of tuna tied to a rope. When a great white shark lunges and bites something, it is temporarily blinded."

Image: http://mashable.com

Think of the elite marathon runners who have bathroom emergencies and let it loose in the middle of a perfect stride while they grind out the race. Or Alex Honnold,  explaining how to go to the bathroom off of a 2,000-foot granite slab while conquering a mountain. Success is about the hustle and the grind, sure. But it can be hilarious too. So laugh at yourself. It’ll help you enjoy the journey.

Here are the top five reasons to not take your entrepreneur-self so seriously:

LOS ANGELES: The Walt Disney Company held a graduation ceremony for its in-house accelerator programme on Oct 13, giving nine companies the chance to pitch their plans to change the entertainment industry. 

Now in its third year, the Disney Accelerator gives startup companies access to Disney executives as they fine-tune their products. The companies are selected from a much larger group of applicants. 

Image: Win-win situation: Disney invests in the companies and gives them office space in Glendale for three to six months. Typically the companies emerge with a deal to serve some branch of the Disney empire. — Reuters

Trying to secure startup financing for your business can be an incredible uphill battle. How can you get lenders to see that you and your business are a viable bet?

One option for startup funding as well as proof of concept is crowdfunding.

Image: https://www.nav.com