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.
Virtually everyone has experienced or witnessed instances in which credit was assigned in an unfair manner: managers unabashedly took credit for the work of their invisible hard-working staff; quiet performers were inadequately recognized for their contributions; credit was assigned to the wrong individuals and for the wrong things.
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have an angel investor friend—let’s call this friend “Alex.” Alex has great deal flow and works hard to pick the best opportunities for investment. Alex has been frustrated over the past several years, however, because she doesn’t seem to be making any money. This is despite solid operational performance by several of the companies and several exits, including one that was quite notable.
There's a new top state in the obesity stakes, and the dubious honor goes to Mississippi. It now has the highest rate of obesity in the nation (35.4%), replacing West Virginia (34.4%), which had been top state from 2010 to 2012.
Montana has the lowest obesity rate, followed by Colorado and Nevada.
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The following answers are provided by the Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC) is an invite-only organization comprised of the world’s most promising young entrepreneurs. In partnership with Citi, YEC recently launched StartupCollective, a free virtual mentorship program that helps millions of entrepreneurs start and grow businesses.
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When you first launch your company, you have to micromanage to some extent – there’s little or no team infrastructure and, since you’re building a company from the ground up, every decision builds and shapes the future of the company. As you scale your business, however, there comes a time when micromanaging actually damages your organization. It also makes running and working in your business a lot less fun.
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Question: What’s the worst business advice somebody gave you when you were starting your business (and how did you prove them wrong)?
1. Don’t Do It
“Possibly the most heart-crushing, tear-jerking thing anyone has ever said to me was, “Don’t pursue your passion.” Not many people can make a living off their creative passions, but I proved them wrong by working hard and never letting other people’s opinions affect my life. Now, you can view my work in prominent places in the Washington, D.C. metro area — and on television. “
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Men who at the age of 18 years have poorer cardiovascular fitness and/or a lower IQ more often suffer from dementia before the age of 60. This is shown in a recent study encompassing more than one million Swedish men.
In several extensive studies, researchers at the Sahlgrenska Academy of Gothenburg University have previously analyzed Swedish men’s conscription results and were able to show a correlation between cardiovascular fitness as a teenager and health problems in later life.
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New statistics from the European Commission show that Switzerland far surpasses the EU in innovation. But it is uncertain how long the country can hold its top spot, as the Swiss continue to distance themselves from the EU, EurActiv Germany reports. Switzerland is the most innovative country in Europe, according to figures in the latest EU Innovation Union Scoreboard.
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If I had a dollar for every time someone has said to me, “One of these days, I’m going to start my own company,” I’d be rich. If this day ever comes for all these people, we will be overrun by startups. Yet I don’t lose any sleep over either of these possibilities.
Most people procrastinate from time to time, but I suspect that the challenge here is somewhat deeper than that. So I did my own informal survey of business books, to gather the key reasons why most people never start the journey.
In 2012, the share of the emerging economies in the rivalry for foreign direct investment (FDI) exceeded that of the advanced economies, for the first time. At the same time, the United States, through still by far the largest recipient of such inflows, has been steadily losing ground to emerging economies. The United States has failed to live up to its promise in the innovation game in the past decade, as evidenced by recent data on R&D expenditures.
Have you ever wondered what to do with those old flip-flops that you might wear at the beach, but are now useless because they have broken straps? Why not save them up and cash them in for 41 cents per kilo with Ocean Sole, a business making something useful out of these discarded items of footwear.
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It's that time of the year again — Daylight Savings has arrived, and as we "spring forward," we set our alarm clocks up one hour.
It can be tough to give up those precious minutes, but Dr. Christopher Winter, a sleep expert and spokesperson for health tracker Basis, is here for you. He shared his top six healthy sleeping tips with Mashable to help maximize your bedtime and quickly adjust to DST.
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The overall economy has been expanding slowly, but at least one sector is vibrant: nonprofits, which have been growing at a breakneck pace.
From 2001 to 2011, the number of nonprofits in the United States grew 25 percent while the number of for-profit businesses rose by half of 1 percent, according to the most recent figures compiled by the Urban Institute.
Image: Source: The Urban Institute
Put a few entrepreneurs in a room and you'll find the topic of conversation will inevitably gravitate toward startup faux pas. I've been in that room enough times to know that after a while it's the same record all over again. I share with you below the 10 most frequent, which also reflect my own experience:
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Entrepreneurs fight for that big first valuation just like job seekers fight for the biggest salary--figuring the more they get now, the bigger the payday will be down the road. It's inherent to the hustle. This fight over ownership and control pits entrepreneur against investor the minute talk of a company's valuation begins. The investor wants a bigger percentage of the company via a lower valuation; the entrepreneur wants the opposite. But why the hostility? The reality is that both parties could learn a bit from the smaller-piece-of-a-bigger-pie analogy. Here's why.
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Obesity doesn't make you less intelligent, but it might cloud your cognitive abilities.
In a recent study, conducted by researchers at Georgia Regents University, the blood of obese mice had especially high levels of a chemical called interleukin 1, a substance born from fat cells that can cause inflammation. When the researchers later examined the obese mice brains, they found that interleukin 1 had passed the blood-brain barrier--something that normally should not be possible. The substance had seeped into the hippocampus, an area responsible for memory and learning.
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By definition, most entrepreneurs are thought leaders. They have the ability to recognize a market need, the skills to design and implement a solution, and the drive to start a business from that solution. It all comes from within themselves. A business leader does the same thing and more through the people around them. Most entrepreneurs are not both.
In reality, a successful startup can be built by a thought leader, but growing a successful business requires a business leader. That’s why venture capital investors often replace startup CEOs as a condition of their scale-up investment. That’s why so many startups plateau after gaining some initial traction, and are run over or acquired by their competition.
l haven’t seen “Her,” the Oscar-nominated movie about a man who has an intimate relationship with a Scarlett Johansson-voiced computer operating system. I have, however, read Susan Schneider’s “The Philosophy of ‘Her’,” a post on The Stone blog at the New York Times looking into the possibility, in the pretty near future, of avoiding death by having your brain scanned and uploaded to a computer. Presumably you’d want to Dropbox your brain file (yes, you’ll need to buy more storage) to avoid death by hard-drive crash. But with suitable backups, you, or an electronic version of you, could go on living forever, or at least for a very, very long time, “untethered,” as Ms. Schneider puts it, “from a body that’s inevitably going to die.”
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The Netherlands has fallen from fifth to sixth place in the 2014 European innovation index, an annual report by the European Commission that ranks the European Union member states and compares the continent’s overall performance on a global scale.
Innovation is considered one of the key methods for economic growth and development and is especially important as nations struggle to climb out of the financial crisis.
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A fascinating new survey by the Pew Research Center finds that millennials (defined by Pew as Americans ages 18 to 33) are drifting away from traditional institutions — political, religious and cultural.
Before we make a value judgment about these changes, let’s lay them out and understand how fundamentally they will transform the structure of American society and our conception of societal norms.
