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.
Extreme weather events. Climate change. Cyber-attacks. Mounting rates of unemployment and under-employment. Growing income disparities. More than ever before, corporations and governments all around the globe are deeply concerned about enacting strategies that address and mitigate the sorts of occurrences that can cause significant negative impact for countries and industries for as long as ten years.
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A reader wrote:
What business should I start? I have lots of hobbies and am sure I can find something, but how do I narrow it down to one that I w
ill really love to do day in and day out.
Many people start businesses because they enjoy doing something a recreationally. Since we’re all told to do what you love, what makes more sense than to start doing as a business something that you love to do as a hobby?
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Daniel Isenberg has several roles, including professor of management practice at Babson College, founding executive director of the Babson Entrepreneurship Ecosystem Project, and founder and chief executive of Entrepreneurship Policy Advisors. He has just published “Worthless Impossible and Stupid: How Contrarian Entrepreneurs Create and Capture Extraordinary Value”. Here, he uses his experience to set out what he would do if he planned to be an entrepreneur:
If I were setting out as an entrepreneur today, I would buy an existing company to scale up rather than build a start-up from scratch. I would make incremental tweaks of improvement rather than innovate, exercise cool judgment rather than hot passion and build my departure plan from day one.
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Ever misplace your keys, forget someone’s name, or lose your train of thought? Of course you have. Everyone struggles with their memory from time to time.
While they can be frustrating, these little slips are common and normal, says Gary Small, MD, director of the UCLA Longevity Center and author of The Memory Bible.
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CHINESE INTERNET COMPANY TENCENT TAPPED U.S.-BASED NBBJ, THE ARCHITECTS OF AMAZON'S ZANY BIOSPHERE HEADQUARTERS, TO DESIGN A SUBURBAN CORPORATE CAMPUS INSIDE A SET OF URBAN SKYSCRAPERS. THE TOWERS COULD BECOME A MODEL FOR OTHER TECH COMPANIES LOOKING TO CREATE A CAMPUS FEEL WITH A SMALLER FOOTPRINT.
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Back in 1956, an engineer and a mathematician, William Fair and Earl Isaac, pooled $800 to start a company. Their idea: a score to handicap whether a borrower would repay a loan.
It was all done with pen and paper. Income, gender, and occupation produced numbers that amounted to a prediction about a person’s behavior. By the 1980s the three-digit scores were calculated on computers and instead took account of a person’s actual credit history. Today, Fair Isaac Corp., or FICO, generates about 10 billion credit scores annually, calculating 50 times a year for many Americans.
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You don't need a Sand Hill Road address to bring venture capital to your area -- and IT executives who nurture a vibrant startup ecosystem reap big benefits.
If asked to pinpoint the geographic center of venture capital activity, knowledgeable people get rather specific: the legendary Sand Hill Road in Menlo Park, Calif. Ray Rothrock, former chairman of the National Venture Capital Association, leaves no room for doubt about the area's importance: "Entrepreneurs are everywhere, but most of the venture capital is on Sand Hill Road."
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Pittsburgh Life Sciences Greenhouse (PLSG), the region's only pure life sciences investment firm, and managing member of the PLSG Accelerator Fund, announced today it has made a $65,000 investment into Cohera Medical, Inc.® (Cohera) which launches the organization into a $20 million milestone in total investments since the company's inception in 2001.
"With the latest investment into Cohera, PLSG reaches a significant landmark in direct investments into our region's life sciences companies," said John W. Manzetti, Pittsburgh Life Sciences President and CEO. "As we kick off the New Year, we'll strengthen our position by focusing on what we do best -- providing experienced advice to our local entrepreneurs and offering unmatched programs, like the world-class Executive Program, ultimately working to unlock the full potential of life science companies in our region, bringing their concepts to commercialization."
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As federal legislation remains in the works on Capitol Hill, Governor Rick Snyder has added Michigan to the list of states establishing their own Equity Crowdfunding guidelines via a set of intrastate exemptions outlined in Public Act No. 264.
The new guidelines allow for businesses organized under Michigan law to seek up to $2 million in investment from Michigan investors/purchasers. Non-accredited investors, however, are limited to $10,000 per 12 month period and raises over $1 million will require audited financial statements or reviewed financial statements for the most recent fiscal year prepared by a CPA.
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Kickstarter is crowdfunding with training wheels. Now the sourcing of capital is getting turbocharged with equity crowdfunding for businesses: the Securities and Exchange Commission's newly authorized and democratized angel investing program.
Who can invest?
For now, the table stakes are not penny ante: you’ve got to be an accredited investor, meaning you're flush with a $200,000 annual income or a net worth of a million bucks. But once you're at the table, an easy minimum, usually around $5,000, can allow you to buy in to exotic startups in virtually any field. A flying car is one notable example. There are many others, like organic Icelandic yogurt and wine on tap.
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KITCHENER — Open Text Corp. announced Tuesday it will create a $100-million fund for enterprise-app developers on its platform in a bid to massively grow the technology ecosystem in this region and across the country.
Just prior to that groundbreaking news, the provincial and federal governments announced the establishment of the $217 million Northleaf Venture Catalyst Fund that will invest in venture-capital funds across Canada.
The two funds, announced at the Communitech Hub in the Tannery, are very different even though both will support the tech sector, which is worth an estimated $30 billion a year to the region's economy.
Image: David Bebee, Record staff - anny Yaroslavski,(left) of Lightbot Inc has Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne try a game he designed as Minister of Research and Innovation. Reza Moridi watches during a tour of VeloCity at Communitech.
While the economic recovery has marched steadily along, job growth continues to be anemic (see the latest Bureau of Labor Statistics report). So there are still plenty of people out there looking for work. How can they find the right match in this market?
Finding a new job is a lot like finding a new girlfriend or boyfriend, I would argue. Just as modern romances often begin on big websites nowadays, so do new jobs. While you might not think an economist’s input is going to help you find romance (though see my tips here), I would argue the same principles hold if you are looking for a job.
"Is SEO dead?" It's a common question within the online marketing world today.
If you're an entrepreneur relying on a strong online presence to connect with customers, you're right to pay attention. It's undeniable that the SEO landscape is changing.
For instance, Google is taking a hardline approach. Shady link-building tactics (think Rap Genius), poor quality content and bad design are just a few of the factors causing websites to get penalized. So what's worked for your business in the past may no longer work, and in fact, could actually hurt your business now.
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Entrepreneurship has become faddish of late, and business school students are not immune to the fervor. I have devoted more than 30 years to the study and practice of, and investment in, entrepreneurship, and here’s my advice: take a gimlet-eyed look at what the entrepreneurial life entails before you take the leap.
Entrepreneurship is almost never about working in flip-flops in an incubator; it is tough work that requires extraordinary effort. It is super full-time and super risky. In today’s tough job market, “doing a startup” may sound better than “unemployed,” “getting my third master’s degree,” or “staying with my folks awhile.” But entrepreneurship is for those who are laser-focused on building a company that will scale; it is a marathon, not a sprint, usually requiring a decade or longer of commitment.
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According to Cloudera Co-Founder Mike Olson, the quality of the people in the organization is really all that matters. Olson talks about who he looks to work with and his lack of interest in being the 'A' player on a 'B' team.
Astia CEO Sharon Vosmek shares research on what factors really increase group intelligence on teams: 1) Social perceptiveness of the team members, 2) Evenness of conversation over ideas between team members, and 3) The proportion of women on the team.
"Awesome teams are the secret ingredient of every success," says Cyriac Roeding, co-founder and CEO of Shopkick. Here Roeding describes his keys to building awesome teams: individual brilliance, inflexible shared values, extreme diversity, and a collective mission that everyone can believe in.
While some pessimistic notes are being struck, some of the most active angels in India are bullish as ever. This year, however, startup funding will get tougher as the demand for early stage funding far outstrips the supply.
“Cautiously optimistic,” is the word you will hear from most industry watchers, if you quiz them on the growth of angel activity in India.
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The Internet is a driving force behind the dramatic changes in our lives, but there are still billions of people without access to it, said a seasoned Internet expert in a recent interview.
The Internet has become a boundless platform for global innovation and economic growth that is having a positive impact on the world, said Lynn St. Amour, former president and chief executive officer of the Internet Society, a non-profit group promoting an open and transparent Internet.
"Today more than 2.5 billion people are online," she told Xinhua in a written interview. "However, we must not forget the billions of people who still have little or no Internet access."
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If you have a sneaking suspicion that your passwords are bad, we have some upsetting news: They probably are.
Luckily, SplashData is here to help you change your lazy ways with its annual list of the worst online passwords.
I mean, we wear computers on our faces now. Using "password" as your password just seems out of place in a world where you can wear computers on your face, doesn't it? We should know better by now. Looking at SplashData's findings, it's pretty incredible to learn that many of us don't.
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