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innovation DAILY

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.

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Sometimes it takes more than the resources of just UNC-Greensboro’s Office of Innovation Commercialization to get faculty research and ideas into the marketplace. To tap outside expertise, the university has established an Innovation Commercialization Advisory Network it hopes will speed the technology transfer process.

Image: UNC-Greensboro Staton Noel, director of UNC-Greensboro Office of Innovation Commercialization 

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It's not just how much exercise you get, but also how much time you spend off your bottom that keeps your heart healthy

Another day, another study that confirms the dispiriting reality that sitting is bad for you. Fortunately, says that same study on heart health published in Mayo Clinic Proceedings, it doesn’t take much to offset the harmful effects of sitting.

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A few months ago, Daniel Vlasic visited a hand surgeon at Mount Auburn Hospital in Cambridge, Mass., to treat a finger injury he suffered during a pick-up basketball game. Both Vlasic and the doctor, James Connor, felt strongly that existing splint technology, which consists of a rudimentary metal rod surrounded by bandages, is ugly and ineffective.

Image: Osteoid Medical's cast, attachable bone stimulator by Deniz Karasahin IMAGE COURTESY OF DENIZ KARASAHIN 

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chicago

Degrees in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) fields are critical for supporting innovation, research, and growth in high-tech sectors that are driving the 21st-century economy. It is therefore crucial for Illinois to focus on increasing the number of STEM graduates and ensuring these individuals pursue careers within the state. Research indicates that employees with STEM degrees have a significant and long-lasting impact on cities: economist Enrico Moretti, a professor at UC Berkeley and author of The New Geography of Jobs, released last year, determined that every new high-tech position in a metro area results in an average of five additional local jobs—two in professional fields and three in nonprofessional fields. This virtuous cycle means that as innovation hubs attract talent, they trigger an increase in employment and investment, attracting even more talent.

 

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checklist

Some of the best ideas and products come from strong business partnerships. Partnering with a company your size (or bigger) can also supercharge your growth efforts.

But as with all relationships, it's important to do more than scratch the surface when vetting potential partners—and putting systems in place to guide the relationship as it develops is important too. Twelve entrepreneurs from Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC) explain the specific steps they took before signing on the dotted line, below.

 

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Tom O'Neal

All due respect to Forbes contributor Cliff Oxford and his Oxford Center for Entrepreneurs, but his post titled “Trouble in Paradise:  Why Business Incubators Don’t Work” shows a glaring lack of understanding about how incubation works.

I lead a team that runs what has been named the best incubator network in the country … the University of Central Florida Business Incubation Program that boasts eight incubators in communities surrounding Metro Orlando along Florida’s High Tech Corridor.

 

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The escalating conflict between Gaza militants and Israel hasn’t deterred tech giant IBM from moving ahead with pioneer programs in Israel. On Tuesday, the international company inaugurated its first-ever technology accelerator in the world at its headquarters in Petah Tikva, next to Tel Aviv.

Called Alpha Zone, the program teams IBM’s vast resources with start-ups, helping the newcomers develop their products and market them. IBM gets nothing material in return. Its program managers say their gain is contact with innovative minds and companies.  

Image: The Alpha Zone accelerator (Photo credit: Courtesy) 

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Starting a business is usually the result of a personal dream or need. Investors tell me that they invest in people more than the idea. Customers buy from people, not from a company, at least at early startup stages. That’s why it’s important to build a personal brand, in parallel and before your business brand. This will kick-start your business, and improve your odds of success.

 

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Maureen Down

WASHINGTON — Mostly, this July, I’m worrying about the jumping sharks jumping the shark.

But Syfy’s “Sharknado 2” trailer, this one about a shark storm hitting Manhattan, just went up and features chain saws buzzing, the Statue of Liberty’s severed head whizzing, Tara Reid kvetching, and Robert Klein barking “This is the Big Apple! Something bites us; we bite back!”

 

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Entrepreneurs get advice every day from their professional advisors and information they read. A lot of it needs to be ignored. Pay close attention to disregarding these platitudes and what to do instead. It Takes Money to Make Money

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Where does "entrepreneurship" belong on a university campus?   Some naturally say in the classroom, within the business school. Or the computer science school. Or the engineering faculty. Or the arts/media programs. In an internship program or the entrepreneurship degree, if there is one.

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1. Entrepreneurs are born.

There is no entrepreneur DNA. It’s true that there are people that are better fit to be entrepreneurs than others, but entrepreneurs aren’t born. It takes certain acquired skills to be a successful entrepreneur. There is no magic formula. They are learnable skills. Sales, negotiating, accounting, people skills are just a few important skills that make a successful entrepreneur. Nobody is born with great sales or accounting skills. You can learn all the necessary skills if you want to succeed. Don’t believe for one second if you weren’t born with some gift of entrepreneurship you have no chance of making it. According to a recent Fidelity survey, 86 percent of millionaires are self-made. Successful entrepreneurs come from all sorts of socio economic and educational backgrounds. To say that entrepreneurs are born is like saying that you have to have blond hair and blue eyes to succeed.

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You show up to the office on time, you’ve never missed a project deadline, and you always refill the coffee pot when you’re done.

What could you possibly be doing wrong?

Maybe nothing. After all, we don’t want to make you paranoid. But, just for peace of mind, check out this list to see if you’re unwittingly doing anything that could be derailing your full career potential. We spoke with career experts to find out the five biggest mistakes that employees make, as well as suggestions on how to fix them.

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It was the summer of 2006.

The past winter I’d left a mid-level startup job and applied to MBA programs. I’d gotten into Wharton, which was amazing, but I still had some reservations. In my mind, being an entrepreneur and earning an MBA seemed like opposing forces: entrepreneurship is risky, fast-moving, and exciting, while MBA programs felt academic, methodical, and unimaginative.

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

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Warren Buffett

Investment magnate Warren Buffett has famously suggested that investors should try to “be fearful when others are greedy and be greedy only when others are fearful.”

That turns out to be excellent advice, according to the results of a new study by researchers at Caltech and Virginia Tech that looked at the brain activity and behavior of people trading in experimental markets where price bubbles formed. In such markets, where price far outpaces actual value, it appears that wise traders receive an early warning signal from their brains—a warning that makes them feel uncomfortable and urges them to sell, sell, sell.

 

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We witness daily the impact of global knowledge exchange. Kaleidoscopic change is evident as we contrast the writings from the Agricultural through the Knowledge Age and now the Digital Era. Indeed, we have learned from the collective insights in our E100 Network…a symbiosis enabling us to build upon the practice of one another.  

Leadership is marked by deeds not words. Progress is measured by the courage to offer in writing one's insights and convictions. Proof of contributions of E100 is evident and seminal: just scan the E100 Author page on the website: http://www.entovation.com/books.htm. 54 expert authors from 22 countries.

 

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Learn

We tend to romanticize entrepreneurs, inventors, and great business minds. We have this notion that they are a rare breed of people who are lucky enough to be hit by strokes of brilliance that the rest of us can’t even fathom. In these moments, they dream up the next great idea — the light bulb, the automobile, the iPhone, Twitter — and then they wake up and execute their visions and become legends. But the truth is that science doesn’t work that way, and neither does business. To succeed, we really need to trade in our blue sky brainstorming sessions for some old fashioned trial and error.

 

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Despite starting as a "cancerous" and purportedly "anti-American" blight on the software world, open source has come to be as American (and capitalist) as apple pie. Everyone uses it, big companies like Facebook bake it into their standard development practices and practically no one questions its value anymore.

Which is interesting, because it's by no means clear that your software needs to be open source. Before you make assign your code to The Community, here are some considerations that should factor into your decision.

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Apps

 In April 1973, Motorola engineer Marty Cooper made the first call from a "real handheld portable cell phone," a point he made very clear during that historic conversation with Joel Engel, the head of rival research firm Bell Labs. Fast forward to June 29, 2007, and the iPhone was born. Now in 2014, innovation is showing no sign of slowing down.

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