It has now been more than a year since the United States Congress restarted efforts to overhaul the nation’s immigration laws. Despite expected resistance from conservatives, the effort looked promising initially, with strong support from business, labor and President Obama. It was disappointing news for many when John Boehner, Speaker of the House of U.S. Representatives, conceded last week in a news conference that it is going to be politically difficult to move the overhaul forward this year.

Image: http://www.flickr.com/photos/26476817@N04/6218045359 

In a recent special issue on digital startups, The Economist writes:

The exact number (of accelerators) is unknown, but f6s.com, a website that provides services to accelerators and similar startup programmes, lists more than 2,000 worldwide. Some have already become big brands, such as Y Combinator, the first accelerator, founded in 2005. Others have set up international networks, such as TechStars and Startupbootcamp. Yet others are sponsored by governments (Startup Chile, Startup Wise Guys in Estonia and Oasis500 in Jordan) or big companies. Telefónica, a telecoms giant, operates a chain of 14 “academies” worldwide. Microsoft, too, is building a chain.

Image: http://www.freedigitalphotos.net 

Todd Johnston was a designer before designing was cool.  For decades, he and his colleagues have practiced design to accelerate innovation for corporations and countries.  His team designs the collaborative sessions at the World Economic Forum in Davos, where they are often tasked to help leaders tackle the biggest challenges. Next week, Todd makes his debut as the Head of Design for our Global Innovation Summit in Silicon Valley.

If you have ever been retweeted by someone you admired, you know how much a small, simple gesture can mean. If you are going to take the time to thank your customers for their loyalty, you might as well make it count. Don’t have time for a three-course meal in the middle of the workday? No worries. We asked nine entrepreneurs from the Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC) the following question: “What’s a fun, entirely virtual way to reward loyal customers?”

After reading several postings the past few days on the toll of entrepreneurship and how to engage with a new generation of entrepreneurs...I felt compelled to post this response:

Over the past 12 months I have sat in four different sessions with leading entrepreneurial CEOs and their eco-system supporters - Austin, Washington DC, SE Asia, and NYC - and every one of these events have had panelists and keynote speakers say the same thing over and over: the way that entrepreneurship is being introduced and portrayed in the general public is through media such as "Sharktank" and online forums made of people that are mean spirited, overly ambitious, frightfully ego-driven, and frankly represent the smallest of the entrepreneurial mindset.

Microsoft Corp. should move to San Francisco because there aren't enough "innovators" in Redmond, according to a columnist. The Forbes columnist opines that "Redmond is far less attractive to innovators than San Francisco" and it should leave the Seattle area because "the lack of competing opportunity for its talent spurs complacency by employees and management."

In December 2013, the Obama Administration launched a national competition to designate up to 12 communities as “manufacturing communities” in the U.S. The Investing in Manufacturing Communities Partnership (IMCP) will help accelerate the resurgence of manufacturing in regions across the country. The IMCP will reward communities that best highlight their strengths and demonstrate they can combine their efforts around workforce training, infrastructure, and research centers to implement an economic development plan that will attract, retain and expand manufacturing investment.

The designation as a manufacturing community offers preferential consideration for up to $1.3 billion in federal dollars and assistance from 10 federal agencies. To determine which communities will be selected, EDA issued a notice in The Federal Register announcing a competition.

VACUUM TUBES, semiconductors and the internet have changed how we live; now nanotechnology promises a similar revolution. Nanocoatings that make it impossible for liquid to even touch a treated surface are transforming material science. Carbon nanotubes can help artificial muscles behave like the real thing, while nanoscale drug delivery can target cancer cells with deadly accuracy. Concrete infused with nanofibres can be self-sensing, enabling roads and bridges to be monitored remotely for structural weakness or traffic volumes.

Image: Wikipedia - Carbon nanotubes 

Q. Over the last few years, we’ve been seeing of the locus of innovation shifting to emerging economies within many multinational companies, such as GE, Philips and Cisco. Who to your mind is an outstanding example of a company that has done this really well?

A. I don’t think there is any company that I would call it an outstanding example. Every company is at a different stage of shifting their innovation architecture. And the companies that you mentioned are there earlier than the others. GE has reaped a lot of benefits of reverse innovation. But if you look at their portfolio of innovation architecture, it will not boast of more than 20% of innovation from the emerging markets. So they are at different stages. I would think that these firms have early experience, and but they’re still learning.

Image: http://knowledge.ckgsb.edu.cn - Venkatesh Shankar, Coleman Chair Professor in Marketing, Texas A&M’s Mays Business School Read More at http://knowledge.ckgsb.edu.cn/2014/02/11/china-business-strategy/venkatesh-shankar-interview-new-lands-innovation/, Written by Neelima Mahajan, Copyright © CKGSB Knowledge 

As the Sochi Winter Olympic Games get underway, I’m reminded of a project by documentary filmmaker Gary Hustwit and photographer Jon Pack called The Olympic City. You might be familiar with Hustwit’s work. He produced the awesomely nerdy design trilogy featuring Helvetica, Objectified, and Urbanized. These films looked at how design influences everyday life, from print on the page to how cities are designed.  The Olympic City extends the theme of how design and infrastructure impact factors into the legacy of Olympic host cities.

Image: Children play football in the abandonded ski jump in Sarajevo. Credit: The Olympic City Project 

In a recent post at In the Pipeline, Derek Lowe answers a reader’s question about how best to promote drug discover in India. Given my research on the matter, I figured I would try and provide an answer as well.

In Scientific American’s Worldview, I have been ranking national biotechnology industries for the past five years. When I was recently in New Delhi I presented the Indian innovation figures and asked the audience to guess where they ranked. Much to their amazement, India was ranked with the bottom five of the 50+ countries assessed. The issues are myriad — poor patent protection, infrastructure problems, an insufficient quantity (not quality!) of skilled workers, etc.

Image: http://www.freedigitalphotos.net 

Consumer choice has increased steadily since Henry Ford’s Model T, when buyers could pick any color—as long as it was black. After Ford’s single product came standard specifi­cations for different consumer segments, for example, clothes in different sizes and colors. In the last decade or so, we’ve seen features that allow each shopper to customize his or her product or service with a range of components, for instance, when ordering a car, computer, or smartphone. Such configured mass customization is bound to reach ever-greater levels of sophistication.

Image: http://www.freedigitalphotos.net 

It looks like Clarus Ventures is planning to reload with investment capital for life science companies.

The Boston- and San Francisco-based venture firm revealed in a SEC filing it’s looking to raise up to $375 million for a third fund.

Clarus invests mainly in biotech, with a few medtech and diagnostics companies in the mix.

Image: http://medcitynews.com 

Last year was the quietest year for medical-device investing since 2005, according to industry tracker DJX VentureSource.

But the troubled sector–made up of technologies that run the gamut from imaging machines that take up half a room to tiny implantable devices that prop open arteries–is not down for the count, device investors say.

Last year saw $2.5 billion invested across 261 deals, an approximate return to the numbers from eight years ago, when $2.4 billion was invested across 251 deals, VentureSource data said. Medical device investing began to climb in 2006, then began dropping precipitously after 2011.

 Image: Chris Ratcliffe/Bloomberg News

Difficulties in accessing traditional domestic financing brought on by the Great Recession, along with a rise in the number of wealthy investors in developing countries, have led to a recent spike in interest in the EB-5 Immigrant Investor visa program. Through this federal visa program administered by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), immigrant investors may eventually secure permanent residency for themselves and their immediate family by investing at least $500,000 in a U.S. business and creating or preserving 10 full-time jobs. The majority of EB-5 visas are currently administered through EB-5 regional centers, entities that pool investments and are authorized to develop projects across a large swath of America’s metropolitan regions and rural areas. The focus of this paper is on the regional center program.

Image: http://www.freedigitalphotos.net 

The driverless, or more accurately, self-driving car is widely predicted to revolutionize mobility by knocking humans out of the driver’s seat as soon as 2030. By acting as a sort of 21st-century car pooling mechanism, it has the potential to help marginalized populations get around and take large numbers of cars off the road, helping to speed up the country’s gradual move away the personal automobile. But this new technology is sure to face resistance from the traditional auto industry and other entrenched political interests. Meanwhile, matters of regulation are still up in the air. And what if the convenience of automated vehicles takes away from progress that cities have made on public transit, cycling and walking? Writer Jonathan Geeting explores what could happen when warm-blooded Americans no longer have an obligation to take the wheel.

Image: http://nextcity.org 

When astronauts first went to the moon, the sight of Earth as a tiny blue sphere was such a transformative experience that it was later given a name: The “overview effect.” Seen from a distance, surrounded only by a sliver of atmosphere, the planet suddenly seemed more vulnerable. Inspired by the same idea, a new website called Daily Overview also shows shots of Earth from above.

Image: http://www.fastcoexist.com 

If you Google the phrase "faith-based businesses," the results point to companies that pursue a religious agenda. But there's another kind of faith in business: the belief that a product or service can radically remake an industry, change consumer habits, challenge economic assumptions. Proof for such innovative leaps is thin, payoffs are long in coming (if they come at all), and doubting Thomases abound. Today, pundits fret about an innovation bubble. Some overvalued companies and overhyped inventions will eventually tumble and money will be lost. Yet breakthrough progress often requires wide-eyed hope.

Image: http://www.freedigitalphotos.net 

One of the old saws in journalism is to “follow the money” when you’re looking for a story. But sometimes you learn even more by following the people.

The people, in this case, are biotech venture capitalists. Regular readers of this column know that biotech VC has been going through a historic shakeout the last few years. The institutional investors who back VCs have gotten fed up with the long investment timelines, high degree of risk, and limp returns from this group of well-compensated asset managers. Not surprisingly, many VC firms have been unable to continue to raise new funds, and have turned into zombies.