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.
Big trends in business and society tend to march along at a measured pace. When change happens fast in some area, it’s usually because multiple trends are converging to accelerate the process. This is what is going on now in community development. Three lines of progress are crossing, and rapidly reshaping how businesses and nonprofits together strengthen the locales in which they operate.
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The short answer is: it depends. It depends on whether you are an investor or an entrepreneur. And here’s why. Investors, get there early! On the surface, South Africa doesn’t seem to pose the most enticing investment case. Here is a comparison of the country’s GDP growth rate compared to some of its peers on the continent.
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I’m not much of a television person, but my family loves one of the popular “reality” shows, called “So You Think You Can Dance,” so I’m sort of forced to watch it every week. Over time, I’ve concluded that even startup entrepreneurs can learn a few things from this one. Of course, you must ignore the pomp and circumstance of the TV staging.
Making a snowman seems simple enough. You roll the balls of snow around until they are the size you want, and you stack them. Once they’re stacked, decorate your new snowman as you see fit. However, one inventor has decided his frosty deserves to be patented.
Even Jordan Levy, founder of Buffalo-based incubator Z80 Labs, admits that the post-industrial town is missing one very important ingredient for startup success: money. "It’s very challenging," says Levy, a western New York native who spends his weekdays in New York City as a partner at SoftBank Capital. "I’ve lived with this my whole life; it’s very challenging to get funds to invest in Buffalo companies."
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Ah, ideas. Who doesn’t want more great ideas? I know I do.
I usually think about ideas as being magical and hard to produce. I expect them to just show up without me cultivating them, and I often get frustrated when they don’t show up when I need them.
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The SEC Division of Investment Management has provided guidance regarding the application of the exemption from investment adviser registration available to an investment adviser that advises solely one or more “venture capital funds” as defined in Rule 203(l)-1 of the Advisers Act (the “VC Exemption”).
It looks like something out of a science fiction movie. But Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos seemed quite serious when he told 60 Minutes recently the company is working on the idea of air delivering packages by drone.
Few technologies make futurists salivate more than 3D printing. It almost seems like the replicator in Star Trek — anything you can dream of at your fingertips.
But does reality live up to the hype? AsapSCIENCE breaks down the abilities and possibilities of 3D printing in a quick and informative video.
It starts with the basics. So if you've heard of 3D printing, but still don't completely grasp the idea, this is a great place to start.
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Crowdfunding is one of the biggest buzzwords in entrepreneurship. The Securities and Exchange Commission just released a 585-page rulebook, a long-delayed document that effectively legitimizes its place in modern business. Sites like Kickstarter and Indiegogo are not just a cool way to help a friend launch a passion project or support the comeback of a cult TV favorite. They are established, regulated, high-potential, high-growth investment marketplaces with worldwide public access.
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Remember when someone older than you first got an email account? They probably sent you at least one joke, and it was likely to a long list of recipients. Actually, they probably sent a lot of jokes. There is a similar phenomenon with social media. While it may not be jokes, we are inundated with over-sharing of the same stuff.
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I ended Global Entrepreneurship Week 2013 last week in Moscow just in time to see a GEW-themed bus driving around different universities, schools and gatherings while testing young peoples’ entrepreneurial skills and engaging them in the world of founding businesses. Skeptics in the international community might want to take a closer look at what cities can do – even in environments where there are persistent national barriers to new firm formation.
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The fast-growing economies of China and India are driving a global increase in meat consumption, cancelling out decreases elsewhere, according to a comprehensive study of global food consumption.
Google supercomputers tackle giant drug-interaction data crunch Twenty tips to help you interpret scientific claims How oral sex can cause throat cancer by transmitting HPV The work, published today in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences1, takes a detailed look at what people eat, as well as trends from one country to the next. It is also the first time that researchers have calculated humanity's trophic level, a metric used in ecology to position species in the food chain.
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Nikolay Zheludev's voice in the U.K. traverses the Atlantic Ocean on wires, fiber-optic cables and microwaves and reaches me in New York City. The delay and noise make a conversation difficult. Speaking from the University of Southampton, he is describing man-made structures called metamaterials and how they will make almost any conceivable device or application faster, cheaper and more efficient. Our transoceanic conversation is a case in point, he notes: over a metamaterial-augmented all-optical network, the static, the awkward pauses and the cross-talk at the ends of our sentences would be eliminated. “We are no longer limited by what nature gives us or what we can cook with chemistry,” Zheludev says. “We can do better.”
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As an entrepreneur, VC, or investor (which can include private equity), you are continually faced with the challenge of performing due diligence in the most efficient, effective, and parsimonious manner possible, with the overall goal of determining whether or not to make an investment. You will perform due diligence many, many times over your career, any time, in fact, when you are contemplating an economic relationship with another business. While this article will focus on due diligence from the viewpoint of a purchaser or investor, it can be done by a potential supplier, customer, business partner, or more.
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As the day wears on, we tend to get weary. Now a study finds that as a result we may be more likely to cheat or lie in the afternoon than in the morning. But only if we’re usually ethical to begin with.
Scientists showed volunteers patterns of dots on a computer and asked them to tell which side of the screen contained more dots, the right or left. Here's the kicker: the researchers gave the subjects a higher reward if they selected the right side, even if it was incorrect. And with this incentive, subjects were more likely to cheat in the afternoon than in the morning.
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Apple's had several near-death experiences. As author, investor and now Google advisor Guy Kawasaki puts it, the company must have a guardian angel. And in the mid-1980s, that guardian angel was Aldus PageMaker.
“In the 1980s, we thought we had Macintosh all figured out,” says Kawasaki, who worked on Steve Jobs’ stealth Macintosh task force from 1983 to 1987. “We thought it would be a spreadsheet, database, and word processing machine. We were zero for three. The one bright spot in the entire Macintosh software universe was desktop publishing. Aldus PageMaker invented desktop publishing, and it saved the company.”
India has a unique opportunity to avoid repeating other countries’ mistakes. Khosla Ventures founding partner Vinod Khosla argues that the “leapfrogging” mind-set requires policies that foster innovation not imitation.
There’s a general tendency in life to want to do what others have done. It’s an understandable impulse but shortsighted. One of the great things about being a relatively poor, trailing, but rising power like India is that you have the opportunity to see what you want to imitate—and, more important, what you want to skip.
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Active listening is perhaps one of the most powerful things a person in sales or business can learn.
It’s rare in this world that one seeks to understand before being understood, as Steven Covey said. If we’re to create great products and services that our customers want, we have to listen — and listen carefully.
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With all the advice on the internet these days, it seems like there is a hack for everything. Your finances, relationships, and even your cellphone have secret and hidden techniques you have never heard of, that can make your life faster, easier, and more productive. But for all the shortcuts you see, there are certain things in life you cannot go around. You have to go through them.
