Facing increasingly dynamic and unpredictable environments, firms are required to develop convenient innovation strategies, constantly adapt them to changing conditions and properly implement strategically aligned initiatives throughout their organizations. Innovation portfolio management (IPM) can act as the pivotal tool to translate strategic objectives and priorities into project-based innovation activities. Furthermore, it provides a framework to convert raw ideas into real investment opportunities, based on their risk profile.

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Innovation has commanded our attention for the past decade with an intensity matched by few other subjects. It offers us one of the most dynamic canvases to be found anywhere in the business realm.  

How fascinating, then, to see that innovation itself is changing.  It’s taken me a few weeks to wrestle with ‘what new stuff’ has begun impacting the innovation landscape so profoundly. Why are our heads turning anew to conversations around innovation, and what makes these conversations so fundamentally important for executives today? 

mHealth advocates are giving good early reviews to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's final guidance document on the regulation of mobile medical apps, with one expert calling it "an expansive document that truly seeks to deregulate our nimble and innovative industry, while ensuring patient safety."

I get demos every day. Multiple times a day. I don’t want to see a powerpoint deck – I want to play with something. I don’t want to hear a description of what you do – I want to see a demo. I don’t want you to tell me your background, where you went to school, or where your grew up. I want to see what you are working on.

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Q.What’s one personal expense you’ve cut out of your budget completely to save money and not missed?

The following answers are provided by the Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC), an invite-only organization comprised of the world’s most promising young entrepreneurs. In partnership with Citi, the YEC recently launched #StartupLab, a free virtual mentorship program that helps millions of entrepreneurs start and grow businesses via live video chats, an expert content library and email lessons.

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Earlier this summer, together with some of my partners within DLA Piper (Christopher Paci, Jason Harmon, Darryl Steinhause and Wesley Nissen), I wrote an article about new SEC regulations concerning private offerings. The final rules issued in July 2013 by the SEC went into effect on September 23, 2013. Below is a summary of the changes with respect to the disqualification of certain "bad actors" in connection with private offerings. Also, attached is a sample Rule 506 Covered Person Questionnaire seeking information about potentially disqualified individuals and entities. The full article also contains a discussion of new rules allowing general solicitation in certain private fundraising as well as a discussion of certain proposed private offering rule changes that are not yet final. That piece may be found here.

Nominations for ICF's 2014 Intelligent Community Awards Program are now due Friday, September 27. Click here to download the nomination form.

Communities large and small, urban and rural, in developing and industrialized nations are invited to apply for the international award program. There is no cost to submit a nomination. On average, ICF tracks the progress of 400 communities each year through its own research as well as nominations submitted by communities.

Venture capital for early-stage medical device companies is drying up. At Advamed 2013, I was able to sit down and talk to Paul Grand, managing director at Research Corporation Technologies Ventures, a life sciences firm focused primarily on medical devices. When I asked him what the three main mistakes startups make when pitching him, he sighed. His first response: “Only three?”

With the enforcement of the HIPAA Omnibus final rule starting this week, health IT companies face liability for breaches of patients’ protected health information that they may never have faced before. It’s also making issues like Bring Your Own Device even mores stressful for CIOs as they figure out how to make any instances of PHI on these devices secure enough to withstand an audit if the devices get lost or stolen. Although the strategy is not without risks, providers and payers are turning to cloud-based solutions from data security companies to ensure HIPAA compliance.

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Covidien President and CEO Joe Almeida said in a little more than a decade, sub-Saharan Africa could be the big opportunity for medical device companies’ solution investments.

“It is a 10- or 15-year play. . . . The middle class will rise and you will have an opportunity,” Almeida said during the CEOs Unplugged series at Advamed 2013.

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Drexel University's Laurence A. Baiada Institute for Entrepreneurship Presents

2013 Entrepreneur Conference

Cultivating the Entrepreneurial Ecosystem

Incubator Competition Finalists' Presentations

October 9, 2013

World Cafe Live

3025 Walnut Street

Philadelphia, PA

8:30 am – 3 pm    

The City of Brotherly Love and its surrounding region is experiencing an innovation and entrepreneurship renaissance, and the momentum and energy is palpable.  Such a renaissance requires more than great ideas, innovations and enterprises.  It requires an entire ecosystem, comprised of inventors, innovators, educators, entrepreneurs, service providers and capital sources all working toward a fertile habitat for success. Universities are a vital component in cultivating a vibrant entrepreneurial ecosystem, and Drexel University has assumed a leading role.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission is moving to propose rules that would allow companies to raise money through equity crowd-funding and more lightly regulated offerings, Chairman Mary Jo White said. The regulator considers it a “very high priority to get those rulemakings done” and hopes to do so this year, White said at the Bloomberg Markets 50 Summit in New York today.

Before you can decide whether it’s time to submit an application to your top choice tech accelerator program, there’s something you really need to know: your company. Take it from Bow & Drape CEO and Founder Aubrie Pagano.

Since beginning work on Bow & Drape, an ecommerce fashion brand that lets shoppers customize garment details and has been making headlines this week with the launch of a new 3D printed accessories collection created in collaboration with Shapeways, Pagano has considered multiple accelerators and become a part of two programs at two very different stages in the life of her startup. In the early days of her company, Pagano participated in Mass Challenge, an annual competition and accelerator program that gave her structure and a tangible goal as she launched a Kickstarter campaign that was eventually funded to the tune of more than $30,000.

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On September 16, the Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning (MSIP) held an opening ceremony for the Born Global Startups project at the Future Global Business Start-up Support Center in Sangam-dong, Seoul. The twenty selected global startup teams, three accelerators (startup incubation centers), and two business incubation centers participated in the event. 

The Born Global Startups program is a support program for businesses to plan strategy, attract investment, and enter the global market by discovering good ideas. Numerous business products with high barriers to entry were selected, including 3D printers, sensors for diseases diagnosis and analysis, and active-touch screens.

Leaders of early-stage mobile technology companies from across the United States now can apply to be in the inaugural class that will work in the Kansas City area at the Sprint Mobile Health Accelerator, powered by Techstars. Those who are selected will participate in a 3-month intensive mentorship program starting in March 2014 and receive up to $120,000 in funding.

"I can't tell you how many times we've met with early-stage companies, and they start by telling us their big vision. They say, 'This is what we're about and what we want to change.' But when we ask them what they actually do, they can’t tell us. If you can’t answer that question, don’t do anything else until you can. Nothing else matters."

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If you’re looking to sell off your old smartphone for a bit of spending money or to fund the purchase of a new phone, cashing in on old electronics is easier than ever. Take your smartphone to a retail store for an immediate trade-in, or sell it online if you don’t need the cash immediately.

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Health IT groups and mobile application developers' reaction to FDA's release of final guidance for mobile health apps is mixed, the Baltimore Sun reports (Wells/Clarke, Baltimore Sun, 9/23).

Details of Final Rule

According to the final guidance issued Monday, FDA will focus oversight on apps that:

• Were developed to be used as accessories to regulated medical devices, such as apps that allow health care providers to make diagnoses by viewing medical images on smartphones or tablets; or 
• Can transform mobile devices into regulated medical devices, such as apps that allow a smartphone to be used as an electrocardiography machine (iHealthBeat, 9/23).

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Culture.  That’s a word I’ve heard a lot over the past two days here in Rio de Janeiro at the US-Brazil Innovation Summit.  But what does it mean?  And how does culture actually cause innovation?

I attend my share of conferences, and sometimes I notice trends.  This time, I observed a sea change: the willingness to speak openly about culture as a driver of innovation.  A few years ago, talking about the economic role of culture might have gotten someone in trouble as an arrogant American.  Now, it’s a consensus opinion. That’s a huge shift.

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When we reached the depths of the recession, one prevailing thought was that we needed to innovate our way out of it if we were ever going to get back to economic health. After all, that's what we've done before.

In the '80s, the birth of the computer helped pull us out of recession, and in the '90s it was the Internet boom that drove growth after another recession. In the early 2000s, it was a boom in housing that drove GDP growth instead of a boom of innovation, although we found out later that housing was a bubble -- and we all know how that ended.

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