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.
Chances of obesity twice as likely for individuals at highest genetic risk
The results show that eating fried food more than four times a week had twice as big an effect on body mass index (BMI) for those with the highest genetic risk scores compared with lower scores. In other words, genetic makeup can inflate the effects of bad diet, says an accompanying editorial.
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“I need capital, Eric.”
Sitting in my archives are hundreds of emails with the same plea.
And although my comeback tells entrepreneurs to bootstrap and run lean for as long as possible, there does come a time to seek the almighty buck.
Image: http://www.forbes.com
Need to start or grow your business? Crowdfunding is an attractive alternative to traditional funding. Take it from music legend Neil Young who blew away his crowdfunding goal of $2.4 million in just one day! Sure, star power was likely what kicked this Kickstarter up a notch so quickly, but crowdfunding is hot – and continues to make positive impacts to the entrepreneurial ecosystem.
Image: http://www.forbes.com
Image: http://www.adafruit.com
Whether you’re a virtual team leader or team member, there’s no honeymoon period anymore. The pressure to be productive from Day 1 is enormous.
We can certainly do a better job of on-boarding people to teams, especially when teams are not co-located. Too often on-boarding plans consist of a dozen or more documents that team members are supposed to read and digest on their own.
image: http://www.freedigitalphotos.net
What executive skills are most prized by companies today? How has that array of skills changed in the last decade, and how is it likely to change in the next ten years? To find out, I surveyed senior consultants in 2010 at a top-five global executive-search firm. Experienced search consultants typically interview hundreds (in many cases thousands) of senior executives; they assess those executives’ skills, track them over time, and in some cases place the same executive in a series of jobs. They also observe how executives negotiate, what matters most to them in their contracts, and how they decide whether to change companies. (For more on how executives set their work-life priorities, see this.)
image: http://www.freedigitalphotos.net
A group of budding entrepreneurs gathered at Tuesday morning’s Coffee & Capital event at the University City Science Center. Their main goal? To talk funding with a pro.
Ellen Weber, the executive director of Philadelphia angel investment group Robin Hood Ventures, was the expert. An entrepreneur herself, Weber was full of informative responses during the question-and-answer session.
Image: bestdesigns Ellen Weber, executive director of Philadelphia angel investment group Robin Hood Ventures, shared some tips (and deal-breakers) for getting venture capital.
SMITTEN, THE SAN FRANCISCO-BORN PURVEYOR OF ICE CREAM MADE BEFORE YOUR EYES, IS EXPANDING WITH TWO NEW LOCATIONS AND ALGORITHM-DRIVEN, SMART MIXING MACHINES. BUT FORGET ALL THAT HIGH-TECH, SAYS FOUNDER ROBYN SUE FISHER, HER COMPANY IS OLD-SCHOOL AT HEART.
Late on a weekday morning in San Francisco’s Hayes Valley neighborhood, Eliza Bennett is at Smitten Ice Cream, chatting into an iPhone. She stands behind a counter outfitted with four, new-to-the-shop stainless steel machines that look like space-age, industrial versions of your mom’s old KitchenAid mixer.
Image: The patented double helical fixture on the Brrr machine keeps ingredients in constant motion as liquid nitrogen freezes the bowl's contents in seconds. Plus, it puts on a good show. PHOTO BY ALEX LOSCHER
This is Google’s new interface for Android Wear--a platform the company announced unceremoniously on YouTube today--that connects an Android phone to a watch to bring Google to your wrist.
But what exactly is Google on your wrist? What does it tell you? How do you control it?
Image: http://www.fastcodesign.com
Efforts to strengthen San Diego’s tech startup community by working more closely with the innovation ecosystem in Tijuana has led to the formation of HardTech Labs, a cross-border accelerator program intended to give startup founders access to low-cost manufacturing.
HardTech Labs would initially operate as a kind of virtual umbrella group to help entrepreneurs shape their early stage startup ideas and business models, create prototype products, and move to full-scale manufacturing.
Image: http://www.xconomy.com
Research vice presidents at some computing giants, such as Microsoft and IBM, rule over divisions housed in dedicated facilities carefully insulated from the rat race of the main businesses. In contrast, Google’s research boss, Alfred Spector, has a small core team and no department or building to call his own. He spends most of his time roaming the open plan, novelty strewn offices of Google’s product divisions, where the vast majority of its fundamental research takes place.
image: http://www.freedigitalphotos.net
I usually enjoy making fun of people who walk around wearing Bluetooth headsets, seemingly talking to themselves. So of course I felt like a hypocrite last week wandering around downtown San Francisco doing exactly that.
I had an excuse, though. The rise of wearable gadgets means touch displays are getting ever smaller, and in some cases they may not be the best way to interact with these new devices. Voice-activated assistants like Siri and Google Now, meanwhile, are becoming increasingly popular. So I wanted to see how easy it would be to control both an iPhone and an Android smartphone with my voice, without having to touch them (spoiler: not very, but voice control does show promise).
Image: http://www.technologyreview.com - So controlling: There are plenty of things you can do on your smartphone via voice control. Texting isn’t always that easy, though.
The man who made the lean start-up approach a movement, Steve Blank, says asking if entrepreneurship can be taught is the wrong question, the question that matters is who can it be taught to.
The serial entrepreneur and author spoke to the Melbourne startup community via video conference coordinated by the Melbourne University Accelerator Program.
Image: http://www.startupsmart.com.au
In case you haven’t realised it (um, hello?), the days of ‘business as usual’ are over. In addition to having to deal with shifting from the physical world to the digital one, companies are having to cope with an onslaught of acronyms and buzz words from BYOD to Big Data and ORM. And it’s not over yet.
In the latest edition of its annual Tech Trends report, Deloitte has rounded up five emerging trends it says will begin to impact businesses over the next 12 to 24 months. The report highlights the technology enabled practices it has seen successfully implemented by early adopters on a significant scale, and explains how the trends will become less sci-fi and more right-now for businesses in Africa and beyond.
Image: http://memeburn.com
During the last two years, the public and some academic insiders crowned Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) as the amazing disruption that was going to transform education. One of the founders of Coursera has, on multiple occasions, proclaimed that its “innovation” was no less radical than the printing press.
Really? If you have ever taken a MOOC course, you will know that a statement like that might qualify as among the most significant hyperbole of the decade.
Image: http://www.forbes.com
Boston is brimming with entrepreneurial success, as many startup founders have strategically chosen this urban hub for their small business' home. Mayor Marty Walsh recently declared his utmost confidence that Boston will become the "tech capital of the world," and judging from the city's current startup surge, Walsh's prediction may come to fruition.
image: http://www.freedigitalphotos.net
I often hear the popular notion that successful entrepreneurs are built from a single heroic insight or a single innovation. This is just plain wrong. The business world is a symphony of players and elements that only works when everything interconnects harmoniously. Continuous innovation and continuous learning are required for any sustained connection and success.
I’ve long believed these principles, but I’ve never been able to explain them as well as my friend Faisal Hoque, with Drake Baer, in their new book “Everything Connects.” Hoque’s great insights on how to transform and lead businesses in this age of creativity, innovation, and sustainability are based on his own serial entrepreneur experiences, as well as his study of Eastern philosophies.
I wrote this on my flight home from f.ounders & web summit in Dublin, Ireland late last year. I think I was too hung over to finish it, hit publish and move on. So here is attempt two now that the alcohol is mostly out of me.
The Magic of the Irish.
Scenes from my counter-top on my last night in Dublin. I recently returned from a 5-day visit to Ireland, my first time back in 10 years and the start of what I hope will be a more regular travel schedule there. Between 1995-2002 I visited often – especially since I founded my first company there.
Image: http://www.bothsidesofthetable.com
WASHINGTON, March 13, 2014 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ The U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) announced today that it will award grants to state and local economic development agencies, business development centers, colleges and universities to support programs for innovative, technology-driven small businesses under SBA's Federal and State Technology (FAST) partnership program. Applications for the grants are open now through April 11.
image: http://www.freedigitalphotos.net
