Oklahoma City's leading economic development and biosciences organizations are banding together to form a new coalition intended to take over the role of recruiting and growing bioscience companies.

The Presbyterian Health Foundation Research Park at NE 8 and Lincoln has served as the main incubator for such efforts over the last 20 years through subsidized rents. The foundation itself was formed with the 1985 sale of Presbyterian Hospital to Hospital Corporation of America.

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New Report from Battelle, AURP Outlines Research Park Contributions to Economic Growth

The Association of University Research Parks (AURP) and Battelle Technology Partnership's collaborative report "Driving Regional Innovation and Growth" was released today at the AURP 2013 International Conference in Philadelphia, PA.

Highlights of the report, based on a survey of North American university research parks, reveal:

• The creation of an environment that encourages innovation and entrepreneurship is the top priority of university research parks.
• Innovation-driving services are offered by nearly all university research parks.
• In the last five years, 963 new businesses have graduated from the responding research parks' incubators or related startup space. Only 19 percent of these startup companies were no longer in business, compared to the national statistic of over 50 percent.
• Average job gains for research parks over the period 2007 to 2012 were 27 percent, well outperforming the economy overall (as based on 85 university research parks who responded to a similar survey back in 2007).

A full copy of "Driving Regional Innovation and Growth" can be found at http://www.battelle.org and http://www.aurp.net. Sponsors of the report include and The University Financing Foundation and The University City Science Center.

Venice, the "floating city" of romance and gondolas, is slowly sinking into its watery foundations.

A new study using modern satellite data has shown the amount that Venice is sinking with an unprecedented level of resolution, allowing scientists to tease apart the influence of natural causes of the sinking, due to compaction of the sediments on which the city is built, versus man-made ones, such as building restoration.

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The success of MenAfriVac shows vaccines can be developed outside Big Pharma's walls, but, in most cases, the cost of late-phase trials is too great for charities. Recognizing this, JPMorgan Chase and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation have set up a Big Pharma-backed investment fund. 

GlaxoSmithKline ($GSK), Merck ($MRK) and Pfizer's ($PFE) foundation are among the investors in the fund, which will back late-stage development of technologies to fight disease in low-income countries. Having raised $94 million from its initial backers, the Global Health Investment Fund (GHIF) will now start trying to give vaccines and other technologies the financial clout to navigate Phase III trials.

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Mike Brown's date stared at him in shock as he told her he’d have to cut their evening short after only 30 minutes. She must have assumed the rendezvous had gone terribly wrong, but that wasn't it. Brown — a veteran of both Facebook and Twitter, where he built their corporate development teams — had just gotten a text message from his CEO. It turned out all of the major companies in Silicon Valley were after the hot startup his company was hungry to buy, and his CEO had just made a handshake agreement with its founders. He’d also promised that the acquisition would be done in 48 hours. Now it was up to Brown to make it happen. Fast.

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As I’ve noted, boredom is an occupational hazard for entrepreneurs. We tend to be a restless lot and need constant stimulation.

Boredom becomes problematic when it leads to bad decisions. But even then, mistakes can teach us quite a bit about who we are and what we want. That kind of self-knowledge is crucial to having a long and successful business career.

It must be a sign of the times: Now, even liberal-arts professors are talking about partnering with the “business community.”

Michael Mullins, who teaches German at the University of Minnesota Duluth, has created a new major called “Cultural Entrepreneurship,” which is trying to marry the worlds of business and the humanities.

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Studies show that 75 percent of the adult population has a strong to very strong desire to be self-sufficient, yet only five percent are ready, willing and able to act on that desire on their own. The Entrepreneur's Source says that, with proper coaching and guidance, the other 70 percent can also attain independence.

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It’s the classic success story. You finish school and get an internship, or low level job, at a big company. You work hard, network, and show dedication until you finally get offered a promotion. Then you wash, rinse, and repeat the process. Year after year you work hard in hopes of getting another promotion and jumping up to a new position in the company. Your goal? To be the boss. It’s a process known famously as “climbing the corporate ladder.” The idea that one must pay their dues before they can receive success or power. It’s a viable option and one many people chose to take. But is this the only option?

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Pricing your seed round is more of an art than a science.

Of course, there are some benchmarks and comparables, but every startup is unique, and it’s easy for entrepreneurs to feel a little confused. Most entrepreneurs understandably fixate on the dilution impact of pricing their startup. But price can have much larger ramifications (good or bad) for your startup.

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The SEC’s new rule lifting the ban on general solicitation became effective on Monday, September 23rd – changing the funding process for startups forever. General solicitation should increase funding opportunities for startups, but there are important issues and complications that entrepreneurs and the professionals in our ecosystem need to know to protect themselves in this new financing world. Join leading investors in this complementary Webinar to learn more about these rules and the challenges and opportunities they present:

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There’s still a lot of work required to create the European Research Area. The R&D landscape remains fragmented and even the best institutions have much to do to meet the 2014 deadline, says a progress report this week

Google on Monday announced the winners of its Science Fair, awarding three students for their innovative ideas in public health, alternative energy and app development.

The company's third annual competition drew contestants between 13 and 18 years of age from more than 120 countries. Google announced 15 finalists this summer, all of whom were invited to the company's Mountain View, Calif., headquarters last weekend to present their final projects to a panel of judges.

LONDON — The technology industry is expanding its fight against patent trolls to Europe.

In the United States, technology companies like Google, Apple and Microsoft have spent years and hundreds of millions of dollars to defend patent-infringement lawsuits by companies that make a business of buying technology patents primarily for suing software companies and makers of products like smartphones. Now they worry that Europe could soon become a broad battleground for similar court battles.

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Nature is full of animals with amazing abilities that scientists are trying to understand, and the torrent frog is one of them. True to its name, it lives stuck to waterfalls.

On the ground floor of The Mount Sinai Medical Center’s new behemoth of a research and hospital building in Manhattan, rows of empty black metal racks sit waiting for computer processors and hard disk drives. They’ll house the center’s new computing cluster, adding to an existing $3 million supercomputer that hums in the basement of a nearby building.

The age of wearable computing is upon us. Forget the debate over how capable or fashionable the first devices are, how popular they may eventually become, or even whether we fully understand what we’re getting into with these devices (see “The Paradox of Wearable Technology”). The big question is simply: what will they do? And the answer will have much to do with the apps that emerge.

Fundraising for your business is really difficult, no matter what route you take to do so. Convincing family and friends to translate their love for you into trust for your business takes work. Generating enough grassroots momentum to capitalize upon a crowd funding platform requires a lot of effort. In similar fashion, venture capitalists like me are trained to be critical, say “no” often, and make sure entrepreneurs are prepared for the big leagues. After witnessing thousands of pitches at Detroit Venture Partners, I’ve determined that the following list includes “must do’s” for raising money from a VC. If everyone did more things on this list in meetings with potential investors, the funding percentage might be higher than the current 0.3%.

Google is adopting a number of tech hubs across North America, and the locations may surprise you.

As part of the company's two-year-old Google for Entrepreneurs effort to empower startups and their founders worldwide, Google announced a new Tech Hub Network on Wednesday in an effort to connect entrepreneurs across the continent.

Have you ever wondered what the secret recipe to success is with popular Kickstarter projects? In an effort to tell the stories of the most successful crowdfunding projects on Kickstarter, entrepreneur Andrew Gale is currently raising funds for a book titled The People of Kickstarter .

The book features ten popular products from successful Kickstarter campaigns, such as the Pebble smartwatch which managed to raise more than US$10-million through its campaign. Ever since the cash and publicity injection was found via Kickstarter, it has become a popular piece of tech that is sold in stores across the United States.