Time represents the persistent, substantive constraint to being effective within an organization. Can you have a moment of a sponsor’s time to share the benefits of collaborative innovation? Does the sponsor and challenge team perceive you as respecting their time once you persuade them to pursue the practice with you? This article speaks to time. What does it mean for someone pursuing the practice of collaborative innovation to be effective in using their and other’s time?

Image: http://www.innovationmanagement.se 

As EU elections draw closer, reports measuring the social impact of the economic crisis in the EU are plentiful.

The EU agency Eurofound, the European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working conditions, published its latest figures about the social situation of young people in Europe. The study shows “worrying trends”: the number of young people, especially young men, living with their parents increased from 44% to 48% between 2007 and 2011. The trend continues until age 30, in almost all European countries, including Denmark and Austria.

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Contract research organizations make good money providing critical services to young biotech and drug development companies early on. But often, those companies are cash-strapped at the stage when they need a CRO. That’s why some CROs are becoming stakeholders in the companies they work with, offering cash or services for equity in life science startups.

“We fundamentally believe that we should be aligned with our clients,” said David Gee, strategic business development at Cato BioVentures, the venture capital affiliate of a CRO called Cato Research. “I think it’s reasonable, particularly with early-stage companies, that we have some skin in the game.

Image: http://medcitynews.com 

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When Javier Latorre wanted to invest outside Spain, he turned to a crowdfunding platform based in Sweden. A month later, Mr. Latorre had invested 4,000 Swedish krona ($625) in four shares of Eggs Inc., a new chain of health-oriented fast-food restaurants.

"I am looking for investments in other countries to split my risk, and these guys know what they are doing," the 36-year old Spanish entrepreneur said of his first investment in a startup outside his home country.

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What is the most important characteristic of a leader? Some might say it's integrity. Others may say that it's being a good motivator. But psychologist and author Sherrie Campbell believes that self-awareness — the ability to monitor one's own emotions and reactions — is the key factor in leadership success.

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From what politicians and commentators say in the media, the U.S. would seem torn asunder over the matter of climate change. Not so, according to an assessment of 21 surveys encompassing almost 20,000 people in 46 states, which found ample agreement about global warming and what to do about it. In each state, a majority of those polled believe that temperatures are rising and that human actions are part of the cause (first two questions above)—and this consensus holds for residents of states that voted strongly Republican in the 2012 presidential election (red). More than 60 percent of Americans in every state favor government-imposed limits on greenhouse gas emissions from businesses and power plants. “A huge percentage of the public supports legislation that politicians have yet to pass,” says Jon Krosnick, a senior fellow at Stanford University who led the analysis.

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Despite the benefits—too few entrepreneurs have one

Highlights

• Very few—6%—Canadian small and medium-sized businesses use an advisory board. 
• In fact, 57% of respondents without an advisory board felt that implementing one required too much work, time and effort. 
• Companies with an advisory board do better financially and get invaluable advice. 
• Companies that created an advisory board saw their sales grow almost three times faster in the following three years than in the previous three years.

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While the world economy continues to look shaky, the technology industry has never looked stronger. Now is perhaps a good time to stop for a moment and reflect on what the next decade will be all about for the industry.

My vision of what the technology industry needs to focus on is best described by the title of Michael Dertouzos’s book The Unfinished Revolution (Dertouzos was the head of MIT’s Laboratory for Computer Science, where I was a graduate student). The revolution that Dertouzos talks about is in “human-centric” computing. Indeed, today’s open problems are not so much in the domain of chips and networking as they are in the more human-centric domains.

Image: brunkfordbraun/Flickr 

You’re about to savor your first bite from a delicious candy apple when, just as your teeth are about to sink in, the fruit–candy combo slips from its stick and plummets to the ground. The clock is ticking. You quickly snatch the fallen morsel, well within five seconds—the acknowledged time limit for determining whether dropped food should end up in your mouth or in the trash.

Image: This scanning electron micrograph (SEM) shows a strain of Staphylococcus aureus bacteria. Courtesy of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Public Health Image Library, via Wikimedia Common 

It’s not unusual for startups to create a new concept in an established market space. But when you do it with an entirely new approach and try to shift the balance of power in the process, you can probably expect some blowback.

That’s what happened when Mountain View, California–based accelerator Y Combinator came on the scene in 2005 with a new approach to fostering new companies, trying to give founders more resources and negotiating ability to help them get better investment deals.

JIM KOCH FOUNDER, BOSTON BEER COMPANY, BOSTON, MASS. My day moves fast, and is often dictated by priority items from various internal teams. Each morning I keep myself on track by writing down three to five of my must-do items for the day on a Post-It note. (I used to use a small notepad but when I spilled beer on it, I wiped out a bunch of pages. If I wipe out one Post-it, it’s easy to grab another one.)

These are important, but not necessarily urgent items. Once my day gets going, I keep the list close by as a reminder--it’s easy to let these sit or delay and put them off for another day, but I make it a priority to cross them off my list before the end of each day.

Image: http://www.fastcompany.com - Jim Koch 

A new CareerBuilder survey found that a college degree is more valuable than ever — both for job applicants and the employers who hire them. According to the research, three in 10 American companies say they’re hiring college-educated workers for jobs that used to be held by high school grads, a trend that cuts across industries. Companies are also more interested in hiring people with advanced degrees.

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What are the largest venture capital and private equity firms in Tennessee? We ranked Tennessee's venture capital and private equity firms by total capital under management. To view the top five and see which one tops the list, check out the gallery with this story. For the rest of Tennessee's top venture capital and private equity firms, take a look at this week's print edition of the Nashville Business Journal. The full list is only available in print, and includes information about industry preferences, investment types, and the top executive.

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TORONTO, Mar 24, 2014 (Menafn - Canada NewsWire via COMTEX) --On March 20, 2014, a total of six (6) provincial regulators announced two main proposals for new Crowdfunding prospectus exemptions that would allow early stage companies such as start-ups and SMEs to raise up to 1.5 million of capital online through the issuance of securities.

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There's been a lot of attention on equity crowdfunding regulation in the UK, New Zealand, France, and elsewhere, but one country that's quietly working on its own crowdfunding rules is Japan. Indeed, the cabinet recently approved a bill that paves the way forward for equity crowdfunding to take root.

To find out a little more about the existing crowdfunding industry in Japan, we reached out via email to Kaz Ohmae of CrowdBank, a crowdfunding platform, and Crowd Securities Japan. He told us about how his companies got their start, and highlights some of the changes in the bill mentioned above makes. 

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The S&R Foundation is launching a new Washington, D.C- based incubator program aimed at social entrepreneurs called Halcyon Incubator. Successful applicants will live rent-free in a multimillion dollar newly- renovated 18th century townhouse in the center of Georgetown for four months. The 12-16-month fellowship also includes eight months of rent-free workspace, complimentary strategic, legal and PR resources, mentorship, as well as access to a network of potential funders from all sectors.

Image: http://www.forbes.com 

How will the incubator model continue? The past years in Berlin have not been very encouraging, especially since Xing Founder Lars Hinrichs’ decision to end his incubator HackFwd.

Masoud Kamali und Alexander Kölpin, the founders of the VC firm WestTech Ventures, which launched in 2013, still believe in the incubator concept — and now they have started their own, called Project Flying Elephant, a deep tech incubator.

Image: The founders of Berlin-based incubator Project Flying Elephant. Image Credit: Gründerszene 

Warning: This video is not for the faint of heights.

Professional YouTube free-runner Mustang Wanted is back with a dizzying new climbing video. This time, he's climbing up and down a derelict bridge with a GoPro mounted on his helmet.

To call the footage breathtaking would be a huge understatement. For starters, the climber balances on a wire no longer than his shoe and hangs down from bird poo-covered ledges with only one hand.

Image: http://mashable.com/