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.
We like building things. It's the American way. We like it so much that for a very long time we confused economic development with real estate development.
But if we are going to create sustainable regional economic growth, our best option will be to hit the reset button on our government development programs. We must reconsider some of our fundamental assumptions and create a new paradigm, one squarely focused on business development and jobs rather than bricks and mortar development.
Venture capital investors are not like the rest of us. When regular folks buy a share of stock and the stock subsequently trades for a lower price, they take their losses. All of them. When a venture capitalist buys a share of stock, and the company subsequently sells shares at a lower price, the venture capitalist doesn’t usually feel the full loss. Sometimes, the VC doesn’t take any loss at all. Welcome to the world of “price protection.”
As a college sophomore, Elizabeth Holmes envisioned a way to reinvent old-fashioned phlebotomy and, in the process, usher in an era of comprehensive superfast diagnosis and preventive medicine.
That was a decade ago. Holmes, now 30, dropped out of Stanford and founded a company called Theranos with her tuition money. Last fall it finally introduced its radical blood-testing service in a Walgreens pharmacy near company headquarters in Palo Alto, California. (The plan is to roll out testing centers nationwide.)
Image: http://www.business-opportunities.biz
CHICAGO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Miller Lite Tap the Future is searching for great friends with great business ideas. Teams of entrepreneurs eager to grow their business can compete for a chance to win part of a $300,000 prize pool and receive expert advice from Daymond John of ABC’s “Shark Tank.” The competition launched today and the deadline to apply is April 6, 2014.
Image Courtesy of Gualberto107 / FreeDigitalPhotos.net
Fledgling businesses on the NYU campus will have access to a concierge and an "entrepreneur in residence" at a new lab funded by Veritas Software Corp. founder Mark Leslie and his wife Debra. The 5,900-square-foot facility on street level at 16 Washington Place, at the heart of the campus, will include a "fabrication lab" with 3D printers and other prototyping tools, along with co-working spaces. But more notably, it will be staffed by a full-time lab manager and experts dedicating to supporting entrepreneur users.
Image: Via Bloomberg News An undated company portrait of Mark Leslie, founder of Veritas Software Corp.
In startups, it's often all hands on deck, all the time. Unfortunately, not all members of your staff have the same level of commitment you do—and burnout is a very real phenomenon. And as a leader, it's not only your job to make sure your teammates succeed—it's your job to curb overwhelm too. How do you make sure everyone is putting forth their best effort without going overboard?
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A lot of start-ups hire fast and fire slow. A bias for speed combined with the pressure for high growth drives many leaders to be quick to hire (“We need to fill this role now!”) but slow to remove underperforming employees because they’re busy and would rather put off the awkward, hard conversations. It can lead to what Guy Kawasaki, when he was still at Apple, called “the bozo explosion.”
Image Courtesy of Stuart Miles / FreeDigitalPhotos.net
You have probably heard this story: A young visionary founder develops an idea, builds a team, raises funding, and begins the almost impossible journey of creating a company out of nothing. He is faced with incredible challenges, including deep technical risk which he overcomes, and sharp competition, which he beats on his way to a huge financial windfall, adoring media, and a happily ever after. The founder had a vision and he was so persistent that even when it seemed like no one else believed, he kept at it and proved everyone wrong.
Image: Eli Portnoy
There are 351 Division I schools with men's and women's basketball teams, yet there are only 30 NBA teams and 12 WNBA teams. There are 120 Division I football teams, and only 32 NFL teams. According to Business Insider, only 1.2 percent of all men who play basketball in college and 0.9 percent of all women go on to play professionally. Only 1.7 percent of all college football players go on to play professionally. The numbers are similar for all other sports, with baseball (11.6 percent) having the highest percentage of student athletes going on to ever getting paid for the sport they play.
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SPECIAL REPORT / Pharmaceutical companies hesitate before investing in brain research, as it is seen as an overly complex area, but a European Commission initiative is a step in the right direction, according to the European Brain Council (EBC). The direct cost of healthcare in Europe related to brain diseases has soared from €386 billion in 2004 to to €798 billion in 2010, according to data from 30 European countries, highlighting the need for research in that area.
Image: http://www.freedigitalphotos.net
The importance of cash flow management in business. With looming deadlines, urgent customers, growing priorities and narrowing margins robbing you of your sleep at night, I know how far down ‘proper’ financial management is on your list of things to do. For entrepreneurs, financial management seems like a luxury afforded to more-established businesses, and definitely not something we need to apply in the early days of business start-up.
Image: http://ventureburn.com/
What does innovation mean within the biopharma industry? How much you spend on R&D? How many products you bring to market? How many New Molecular Entities (NME) you have in research?
Within the biopharma industry, R&D output is at odds with R&D investment. Between 1950 and 2010, the number of new molecules (including both biologics and small molecules) brought to market by the biopharma industry, per billion dollars of R&D expenditure, fell by a factor of 100 in inflation adjusted terms. Innovation, it seems, is getting increasingly expensive while the prospect of blockbuster income to pay for it is getting rarer. Something has to change.
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Most startups dream of attracting a celebrity endorsement, and assume that it will take their startup to the stars. Startups such as Chirpify have managed to flourish and raise millions with endorsements from folks like Lil Wayne and Snoop Lion. Others go the way of 12Society, an LA subscription commerce startup with six celebrity sponsors, but still couldn’t get any traction.
Info on three roles for posting/consideration.
TN – ORNL – Commercialization Manager , $90-105k , - physical sciences deal experience needed
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Trend-spotting shop Sparks & Honey has given us ideas to watch in health care, jobs we might be doing in 2025, and the future of relationships. Here, the shop takes a deep-dive into the zeitgeist to identify cultural trends. They're themes that could affect business, and therefore how we live, in the next year or two.
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Kickstarter is one of the largest websites related to crowdfunding. According to Kickstarter’s statistics page, it is nearing $1 billion in pledged dollars. This morning, Kickstarter was around $999,209,752, meaning that they are at around $791,000 away from the $1 billion milestone.
Australia based crowdfunding platform Pozible has opened their doors in the most populous country in the world. Having recently launched country specific iterations of their crowdfunding portal in Singapore, Pozible has now launched a Mandarin version powered by an international team to support project creators in China. Pozible hopes to facilitate engagement between Chinese based projects with Western backers helping to bridge a formidable cultural gap. While several other crowdfunding operations exist in China, the new form of capital formation has lagged other parts of the world. Pozible has partnered with Shanghai based Ask Lab to aid in creating a foundation for their rewards based portal.
“Sustaining an audience is hard,” Bruce Springsteen once said. “It demands a consistency of thought, of purpose, and of action over a long period of time.” He was talking about his route to music stardom, yet his words are just as applicable to the world of customer experience. Consistency may be one of the least inspirational topics for most managers. But it’s exceptionally powerful, especially at a time when retail channels are proliferating and consumer choice and empowerment are increasing.
image: http://www.freedigitalphotos.net
AVONMOUTH, England — The ambition to be the fastest man on four wheels — the divine madness of it, as enthusiasts see it — had modest beginnings in 1898, at a village on what were then the outskirts of Paris.
A Frenchman, Count Gaston de Chasseloup-Laubat, driving what was little more than a streamlined horsecart with an electrically powered motor, achieved 39.2 miles an hour. Chroniclers in the Paris newspapers wondered if he had gone fou furieux, or raving mad, as the French put it when somebody fired by ambition or soaring imagination loses all grip on reality.
Image: An engine from a Typhoon jet fighter will be used in the seven-ton Bloodhound. Credit Andrew Testa for The New York Times
The recent federal mandates for healthcare information technology have increased demand on the field, boosting the need for educated and knowledgeable staff for health IT projects. But with the emergence and recent popularity of graduate education in healthcare informatics, we are seeing an influx of students entering these programs who do not have clinical or information technology backgrounds.
image: http://www.freedigitalphotos.net
