Leaders from the University of Washington, Tsinghua University, Microsoft and other local organizations came together Friday to celebrate to kick off construction of the Global Innovation Exchange building in Bellevue’s Spring District.

The Global Innovation Exchange, or GIX, is a partnership between Tsinghua and UW to offer graduate technology degrees for U.S. and Chinese students. Microsoft is a key corporate partner and committed $40 million to the initiative last year.

Image: This building will house the Global Innovation Exchange in Bellevue, Wash., and it is expected to open next year. Credit: Bora Architects. 

This year, Microsoft purchased LinkedIn for $US26.2bn and Uber was valued at $US62.5bn. How is it that a handful of founders, starting out with little more than an idea, are managing to create multi-billion dollar businesses, when our largest companies with far greater resources, are struggling to replicate that performance? 

When it comes to enterprise, a poorly-defined innovation focus is the main road-block to company growth. Whilst successful start-ups are continuously innovating – their survival depends on it – too many of Australia’s largest businesses are simply running experiments on their innovation efforts.

The feature documentary Generation Startup premiered last week. Co-directed by Academy Award Winner Cynthia Wade and Cheryl Houser, the documentary follows six Venture for America Fellows and alumni for two years as they attempt to build businesses in Detroit. It's the finest movie about entrepreneurship I've ever seen. I believe it will touch and inspire countless people in the months to come.  And like most movies, it very nearly never happened.

Image: Generation Startup 

Billionaire rocket man Elon Musk says starting a company is like “eating glass and staring into the abyss.”

“It’s very difficult to start companies and quite painful,” Musk once told a group of students visiting SpaceX. Being an entrepreneur whose life goal is to save the human race and rocket it to Mars sounds painful indeed. “It’s not going to optimize your leisure time.” No, not when you run your own company, let alone three. There’s no time to unwind and lick your wounds.

The need to remember huge numbers of online passwords will be replaced by using fingerprints to unlock not just smartphones but also websites and services, according to a new report. Paul Lee, head of technology, media and telecoms research at Deloitte, said that using fingerprints to access email, online banking, streaming services such as Spotify and Netflix, and newspaper subscriptions would help consumers overwhelmed by the number of passwords they have to remember.

DUBLIN

The Pearse Lyons Accelerator seeks to attract inventors, entrepreneurs and disruptors for its inaugural term.

Set to run annually for five years, the program is a three-month intensive boot camp for food and agribusiness innovators with a proven technology that is ready for market. The program is designed to provide market opportunities for entrepreneurs to develop their fledgling agriculture, food and ag-tech plans.

Image: Alltech staff photo

The Biotechnology Industry Research Assistance Council (BIRAC) has organised its 5th Innovators Meet at the Mapple Emerald, New Delhi. The two-day event which is a part of BIRAC’s continuous efforts to foster innovation and entrepreneurship started on September 22, 2016.

The theme of discussion at the meet was ‘Biotech Innovation Ecosystem - Strategizing the Next Leap’. The event was attended by chief guest, Union minister for science and technology and earth sciences, Dr. Harsh Vardhan and guest of honour, minister of state (MoS), science and technology and earth sciences, YS Chowdary. There were over 350 participants including Yigal Erlich, The Yozma Group and Dr. Sarvajna Dwivedi, Global TiE from Silicon Valley and many other senior policy makers, industrialists, startups and entrepreneurs.

For many people, a large industrial boiler burning natural gas to produce steam for use in a manufacturing process is not the image that comes to mind when considering green energy technologies. Utilization of these systems, however, is an important component of domestic alternative energy policy.  As with other environmentally friendly sources of energy such as solar panels, wind turbines, or fuel cells, these combined heat and power (CHP) systems can be eligible for significant federal, state, and local incentives.

Just as a school teacher roots for his students, the Center for Digital Government is hopeful every two years that each respondent to its Digital States Survey will astound with reports of their technological feats. Though a competition of sorts, the Digital States Survey is more a showcase of state government's collective technology portfolio. And the outlook suggested by the 2016 survey is as strong as one would expect given the financial growth of the gov tech sector and the public's increasing interest in civic participation.

BENGALURU: GE Healthcare, the healthcare technology division of GE, has launched the company's first healthcare accelerator, five.eight, aimed at improving healthcare outcomes for developing economies. The accelerator will target global health startups who have atleast received a Series A funding.The startup needs to be aligned with GE's focus areas of mother and child care, cardiology, oncology, radiology, surgery and primary care.

Image: The four social impact investors include Acumen, Aavishkaar-Intellecap Group, Unitus Seed Fund and Villgro.

For senior executives, investing in organic innovation often feels like a triumph of hope over experience. They’ve seen initiatives from their own organizations over-promise and under-deliver year after year. Frothy headlines about startups disrupting virtually every industry increase their sense of urgency as well as unease about their ability to respond. Pressure from hyperactive investors to deliver near-term results makes it harder and harder to dedicate operating expense to longer-term priorities like innovation.

Angels love the thrill of the hunt. We like learning how entrepreneurs are going to change the world or which is the new Unicorn that will go public and bring a 100X return. Perhaps this is why many stories about early-stage investing focus on the first part of angel investing – finding good deals, negotiating good terms, and due diligence.

John Huston, Chairman Emeritus of the Ohio TechAngel Funds focuses even more on the second part of angel investing – what happens after the check is written.  John is a deeply experienced and sophisticated angel investor with 18 years of success in the game and has found that when angels help entrepreneurs grow their companies and also protect their investments, they are much more successful.

Fast Company senior writer Christina Farr keeps you up to date on the fast-moving world of health tech with her brand new newsletter. She'll email you whenever there's news—but never more than once a week. Sign up below!

A logo is meant to be a brand's most enduring symbol, a graphic totem that distills a company's essence down into a single graphical mark that is beautiful, flexible, and memorable. Crafting such a deceptively simple symbol is a massive undertaking, so it's no surprise that the majority of the world's logos are so disposable. But when a logo achieves those lofty goals? It's the design equivalent of what Robert Frost once wrote about great poetry: You never get over it.

Image: https://www.fastcodesign.com

Mobile devices are one of the weakest links in corporate security. Executives are wrestling with managing a proliferation of devices, protecting data, securing networks, and training employees to take security seriously. In our Tech Pro Research survey of chief information officers, technology executives, and IT employees, 45% of respondents saw mobile devices as the weak spot in their company’s defenses. (Employee data was cited by 37%, followed by wireless access of networks at 34% and bring-your-own-device efforts at 29%.)

The world tends toward continuums. We order everything from temperature (cold to hot, with tepid in the middle) to wealth (poor to comfortable to rich). Continuity along a linear line, like the inexorable laws of hydrodynamics, helps to capture and comprehend the complexities of science and society, and offers the promise of progress and growth.

Kansas City-area investors have committed $10 million to the KCRise Fund designed to funnel local capital into area startup businesses alongside experienced venture capital groups.

The KCRise Fund is called a side-car fund because it follows the lead of venture capital groups in deciding which new businesses to back.

Darcy Howe, managing director of the KCRise Fund, said it will “take several years for us to invest all the money.” Investing with the venture capital groups is intended to boost the likelihood that KCRise invests well.

Companies seeking money from the fund must reside or have substantial operations somewhere between Manhattan, Kan., and Columbia, and be seeking at least $1 million in financing.

There’s a bit of a chill in Silicon Valley. The reality is that snagging venture funding is getting much harder.

So what should an entrepreneur do? Well, Sash Sunkara definitely has some actionable advice. Keep in mind that she recently secured $10 million in a Series B funding.

Then again, her company, RackWare, is a top player in the fast-growing market for comprehensive cloud computing management. Oh, and she knows how to hit her numbers and milestones.

For freshmen taking writing composition at the University of Arizona, receiving a C at the end of the semester may no longer warrant a sigh of relief.

Instead, they may have to repeat the class.

Two years ago, Arizona hired Civitas, an education technology company that uses predictive analytics, to track student behavior in an effort to boost student graduation rates. One finding jumped out: students' performance in commonly required courses was linked to whether they would graduate or drop out.

The Need for New Business Models

As more blockbuster drugs tumble off the patent cliff, resulting in price competition and margin pressure, the pharmaceutical industry recognizes the need for new approaches. Armin Furtwaengler, the global senior medical director and contributor to the ‘Global Medicine Innovation Framework @ Boehringer Ingelheim,’ says he is tasked with taking his company “beyond the pill” and notes that “100% of my working time is dedicated to innovation.”

Image: http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu