Innovate Calgary: approaching commercialization differently

We are where entrepreneurs, researchers, investors, industry and partners take innovative technology ideas from concepts and startup companies to growing enterprises. Succeeding in the commercialization of an innovation or discovery is best not approached as a solitary endeavour. Engaging the support of the innovation ecosystem can dramatically accelerate the development and growth of a new company, and dramatically increase the probability of success.

Image: Peter Garrett, president of Innovate Calgary believes they are focused on building Innovate Calgary as the hub of the innovation community in Calgary and southern Alberta. Photograph by: Adrian Shellard , Calgary Herald  

BETHESDA, Md. — The police arrived at the house just after breakfast, dressed in full riot gear, and set up a perimeter at the front and back. Not long after, animal rights marchers began filling the street: scores of people, young and old, yelling accusations of murder and abuse, invoking Hitler, as neighbors stepped out onto their porches and stared.

It was 1997, in Decatur, Ga. The demonstrators had clashed with the police that week, at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center at nearby Emory University, but this time, they were paying a personal call — on the house of the center’s director, inside with his wife and two teenage children.

Image: Dr. Thomas R. Insel is the longest-serving director of the National Institute of Mental Health since its founder left. Image By: Lexey Swall for The New York Times 

For the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia, tons of manmade snow will be used to create the courses that the athletes will compete on.

You’ve probably read dozens of articles about how to raise capital from venture capitalists. However, as a venture capital fund, we have the opposite problem: how do we find companies in which to invest?

It might appear that origination is becoming much easier because of new tools like AngelList and the SEC moving toward adoption of rules that will allow equity based crowdfunding.  Just do a search online and the VC’s job is done!  But in practice, these phenomena create a tremendous volume of startups, which investors then have to filter.  The easier it is to source, the more you have to work to screen.

Image: (Credit: Flickr) 

Venture capitalists often overlook Canada as a key market for technology investment opportunities. However, Mohr Davidow Ventures General Partner Katherine Barr wrote in a guest post at VentureBeat that Canada is now a key market to look out for as important changes have been made in its technology and regulatory ecosystems in the past five years. There is a new era of innovation taking place in the country which has supported the growth of standout firms like HootSuite, Kik and Indochino.

Here I am presenting opportunities to those engaged in research for electric and other advanced vehicles, to engage in research related to their own research, earning some money for their efforts, as well as helping their country.

The current DoD Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) Solicitation, 2014.A, will be open until April 9.  There is a large selection of topics available.  I have selected and rated many of these, to make it easier for readers to select topics of interest.  This time around, the highest-rated topics are mostly in the fields of electrical cells and batteries, and navigation.

Image: http://www.freedigitalphotos.net 

The University City Science Center is accepting applications for a new Digital Health Accelerator. The application period opens Monday, February 3, 2014 and runs through March 31, 2015.

Funds will support up to six well-qualified companies in the digital health or health IT sector. Successful candidates will receive funding up to $50,000, office space at the Science Center, professional mentorship, and warm introductions to a variety of healthcare stakeholders including insurers, pharmaceutical companies, and hospital and research institutions located in the Greater Philadelphia region.

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Ever walked into a small business and liked it so much that you thought, "I could make a bundle if I owned one of these!''

A Chicago-based yogurt shop owner says that shouldn't be a pipe dream.

Mandy Palara, co-founder and CEO of Forever Yogurt, has started an online business that allows ordinary people to buy ownership in a franchise for as little as $1,000.

Image Courtesy of Danilo Rizzuti / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

“Russia’s entrepreneurs are positive about the future,” says Ernst & Young’s (now known as EY) 2013 G20 Entrepreneurship Barometer report. Released in August 2013, the report amalgamates and analyses research from 1500 surveyed entrepreneurs across the world, including the BRICS countries. According to the report Russia falls into the third quartile, the same as Brazil and China, but below South Africa, and has made strong progress in its efforts to foster entrepreneurship.

Image: http://www.flickr.com/photos/33907867@N02/4353860378 

Raising funding for startups in Silicon Valley is a low probability game. Fewer than 1% who try actually succeed.

Outside the Valley, the startup eco-systems are mostly immature, and the probability gets even lower.

The bar to raise seed funding is getting higher and higher. Seed investors are mostly operating as growth investors, expecting that the entrepreneur will somehow manage to bridge the gap and bring a concept to realization. In fact, what these investors really want is to invest in businesses that have traction, not just validation.

Image Courtesy of renjith krishnan / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Smart companies recognize that both their marketing and their broader business strategy need to be informed by carefully gathered customer insight. But what do you do when your customers disagree—especially if their disagreement echoes throughout your various social media channels? What if their needs or desires are mutually contradictory?

That’s the situation the airline industry may soon face, thanks to the FCC’s reconsideration of in-flight mobile phone use. Customers have long been clamoring for in-flight phone liberation, but since its announcement the FCC has also been flooded with comments from passengers who dread the prospect of noisily chatting seat mates.

Image Courtesy of imagerymajestic / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

The journey from identifying a promising idea to building a thriving business relies on many components, such as talent, mentorship, capital, access to infrastructure, and connections to industry. As the Q4 2013 Index demonstrated, universities are in a unique position to aggregate these components to support the creation of new companies. Higher education institutions attract top talent to the state, offer vital programs, and cultivate valuable relationships with leading executives and venture capital firms.

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How does a leader address self-doubt? It arises is all types of situations but particularly in those in which he or she feels inexperienced with a topic or subject matter. -- Anonymous

Self-doubt is not an uncommon feeling when making decisions. Many leaders face such concerns; even experienced ones often don’t always know if they are making the right decision. Such doubt can intensify when making decisions in unfamiliar territory. But what can you do to address it?

Image: http://www.govexec.com 

’ I'm terrible at doing what people tell me I should do, but I still get things done. I’m not sure why this is, but here is my best guess:

I manage my desires more than my time.

In high school, I never seemed to find time to do homework I didn’t want to do. It got so bad that in 1969 my high school calculus teacher, Mr. Foster, told me that if I did one single homework assignment, he’d base my grade on my tests—meaning I’d get an A. But if I continued to do absolutely no homework, he’d base my grade on the homework and give me a zero.

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As email and other information services migrate to the cloud, colleges’ information-technology employees are spending less of their time running complex in-house systems and more helping faculty members and administrative colleagues—as well as students—make the most of services provided by companies like Google. That shift puts a premium on the employees’ “soft skills” in communication, relationship building, and project management rather than on technical expertise.

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PHILADELPHIA, PA., Feb. 3, 2014 -- Independence Blue Cross today announced it has created the Independence Blue Cross (IBC) Center for Health Care Innovation, an important milestone in the company's groundbreaking efforts to transform the Philadelphia area into a national magnet for health care innovation. At the 5,000-square foot center at 1700 Market Street in Philadelphia, the company's associates and external partners will innovate, collaborate, and implement path-finding new concepts in health care. The center will also be the home for the company's widening range of innovation initiatives, including its partnership with Penn Medicine and DreamIt Ventures on the region's first health care accelerator, DreamIt Health Philadelphia, which last year brought ten promising health care startups from across the country to Philadelphia and today eight are still located in the region.

On March 19 and 20, the National Council of Entrepreneurial Tech Transfer (NCET2) will be holding its “Global 1000: Meet | Partner | Deal Showcase and Conference” at the Washington Convention Center in Washington, DC. The GLOBAL 1000 Meet | Partner | Deal :: Startups Showcase + Conference is an important transaction-based conference for Global 1000 corporates, and for universities, angel investors, VCs, accelerators, incubators, state startup investment programs, and SBIR programs, who want to do deals with them. The conference has multiple showcases by Global 1000 corporates, state programs, universities, VCs and angel investors. Sophisticated meeting software allows for real-time meetings between conference attendees to facilitate deal-making at the conference.

Global Corporate Venturing is the fastest growing venturing activity in the world with already about $100 billion in venturing assets and more than $3.5 trillion in corporate revenues. According to NCET2’s Executive Director, Tony Stanco, the conference focuses on bringing deals to the Global 1000 companies. He said, “This is the major conference to do transactions with the Global 1000 corporates, including M&A, favored access to customers, early/late stage investing, partnering, joint venturing, co-developing products, incubation, product sourcing, white labeling, revenue sharing, and distributor agreements."

NCET2 is proud to have Innovation America as a media partner. Richard Bendis will be delivering a keynote speech on Thursday, March 20. Innovation America subscribers can get a $300 registration discount by using the code "innoam2014" 

Register By Clicking Here

By Rebecca Gilbert

College is an opportunity for self-discovery. It is the perfect place to develop your entrepreneurial skills. Entrepreneurs blaze trails, redefine the possible and upend the status quo to materially change our world. Entrepreneurs are goal oriented, and that goal is to make a difference, to do the world’s work better. Entrepreneurship is the road less traveled. Will this be your path?  

Image: Photo credit Startup Weekend Pittsburgh 

By Edward Wexler-Beron WG’14, 2013-14 Neff Entrepreneurial Intern Fellow at CommonBond

There were several factors that drove me to work at a startup over the summer. At the top of this list was my desire to experience culture and work environment at a startup (which admittedly can vary widely). Although I had launched a startup within eBay, as part of the Business Incubation Group, it was a little different – after all, my paycheck was guaranteed, we had the resources of a large company behind us, and we still had to deal with some of the bureaucracy and politics that comes with a corporate setting. I wanted to know what it was like to be at a sub-10 person venture, to have the continued existence and success of the company dependent on the daily contributions of the team, and to understand how culture was created in early stage companies. I felt that given my personality and desire to play a core role in shaping the growth and environment at my future workplace, smaller companies were the right space for me in the long run.

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Exercise has been touted to be a cure for nearly everything in life, from depression, to memory loss, Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s and more. At the same time, similar to the topic of sleep, I found myself having very little specific and scientific knowledge about what exercise really does to our bodies and our brains.

“Yes, yes, I know all about it, that’s the thing with the endorphins, that makes you feel good and why we should exercise and stuff, right?” is what I can hear myself say to someone bringing this up. I would pick up things here and there, yet really digging into the connection of exercise and how it effects us has never been something I’ve done.

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