There are many things that make being a technology entrepreneur in Japan challenging and not all of these challenges are unique to Japan, but they are absent from the USA. So when we look at the innovation coming out of the USA I think its important to keep these things in mind.

The first is the lack of new startups. In Japan there has been a lot of activity around incubators in an effort to encourage new startup activity and I think the effort is admirable but flawed. Its flawed because the hiring system in Japan is completely structured around new graduates. The brightest new graduates are eagerly recruited by Japan’s top government or business organizations in what is meant to be a long career track to top management.

As the CEO of Pulse8, John Criswell works with health insurance exchanges and long-term care facilities on big data and analytics, which gives him a purview into the back-end integration required for states and the federal government to setup HIXs. Yet, he’s optimistic that the gvoernment will meet the October 1, 2013 deadline.

Government Health IT Editor Tom Sullivan spoke with Criswell about the complexity of standing up HIXs, how the exchanges might fare come October, and the overarching opportunities that both HIX and health information exchanges will create as they amass mammoth data sets. 

A measure for a country’s innovation performance is provided by the Summary Innovation Index, a composite indicator obtained by an appropriate aggregation of the IUS indicators (see Section 6 of the Scoreboard for a brief explanation of the calculation methodology).

Based on the Summary Innovation Index, the Member States fall into the following four country groups:

• Innovation leaders: Sweden, Germany, Denmark and Finland, all show a performance well above that of the EU average. 
• Innovation followers: Netherlands, Luxembourg, Belgium, the UK, Austria, Ireland, France, Slovenia, Cyprus and Estonia all show a performance close to that of the EU average. 
• Moderate innovators: The performance of Italy, Spain, Portugal, Czech Republic, Greece, Slovakia, Hungary, Malta and Lithuania is below that of the EU average. 
• Modest innovators: The performance of Poland, Latvia, Romania and Bulgaria is well below that of the EU average.

Stress is a common side effect of almost any job, but entrepreneurs seem to have it the worst.

Causes of stress come from almost anywhere: Taxes, clients, reports, employees, emails, and much more. But what I’ve learned is that stress has a much more profound effect on business operations than most people think.

Most of the entrepreneurs I have met are smart, but many are not always wise. That means they may show great insights into a new technology that has marginal business value, their passion may motivate team members more than customers, or they may allow themselves to be pulled over the ethical line in their success drive. Wise leaders are authentic, timeless, and enduring.

Of course, experience is the ultimate teacher of the differences between smart and wise. But none of us can afford to make that many mistakes, so it helps to understand the basic principles that are key to making wise, as well as smart, decisions. In a new book on this subject, “From Smart to Wise,” Prasad Kaipa and Navi Radjou offer some great observations, based on their years of research and consulting experience with hundreds of leaders.

A European Commission initiative to tackle the 10 most burdensome regulations for small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) received backing from EU heads of states and governments at a summit last Friday (15 March).

The European Commission had asked around 1,000 SMEs and business organisations to identify the top 10 most burdensome EU laws in order to change or reduce them.

The European Commission has proposed rules aimed at reducing the cost of building high-speed broadband networks, in a move that shows how Brussels is seeking more power over the telecommunications sector.

The initiative is important because European leaders are worried that debt-laden telecom operators' slow pace of investment is saddling the region with weak infrastructure that over time could hobble its already recession-wracked economies.

New research shows that if you want to purge your mental muck, you should make like a tree and leaf.

Puns aside, a study published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine evidences that green spaces lessen "brain fatigue"--that familiar (urban?) feeling of being distracted, forgetful, and flighty, as Gretchen Reynolds notes for the New York Times.

It's good to sleep on it when there are tough choices to make, but you also need a strategy once you wake up--which is why you should employ the 10/10/10 rule.

It’s easy to lose perspective when we’re facing a thorny dilemma. Blinded by the particulars of the situation, we’ll waffle and agonize, changing our mind from day to day.

As readers of IP Watchdog are aware, Federal Circuit Chief Judge Rader recently delivered an important and noteworthy defense of the U.S. patent system the recent annual meeting of the Association of University Technology Managers (AUTM). I did not attend the event, but others have recounted that Chief Judge Rader’s remarks reminded attendees that the patent system is intended to promote innovation and asserted that patent litigation abuse is the main problem of our patent system.

Small, modular nuclear reactor designs could be relatively cheap to build and safe to operate, and there’s plenty of corporate and government momentum behind a push to develop and license them. But will they be able to offer power cheap enough to compete with natural gas? And will they really help revive the moribund nuclear industry in the United States?

VCs, I believe that the purpose of venture investment is to serve entrepreneurs.  Many of us, however, seem to regard investing as some kind of dodge or hustle. We have theories that are the worst kind of popular tripe, our methods are sloppy and our returns are highly questionable. Many of us, fellow VCs, are a poor investors. That is why some entrepreneurs have turned towards an alternative to getting investment from us...

How we judge a creative idea is affected by how we perceive its inventor. Without realizing it, we may overvalue or undervalue a new concept and make poor choices in the product development process as a result.

Researchers Izabela Lebuda and Maciej Karwowski1 studied how gender of the inventor and the uniqueness of the inventor's name affect one's perception of the invention itself. They divided 119 participants into five groups to evaluate creative products in four domains (poetry, science, music, and art). Each group evaluated the same, identical products, but the products were signed by different fictional names - a unique male name, a common male name, a unique female name, and a common female name. The fifth group evaluated the products with no names (control group).

Running a small business can be confusing and the path forward is often unclear. Many small business owners are hanging on the brink of being just successful enough to not go out of business.  In otherwords, many are just getting by.

If that’s the case, should you keep the business open in hopes of future success or just close up shop? And on the flip side, what if your business is doing well and profiting? What is that moment of truth that tells you, as a small business owner, that your company is a success in your industry? Below are 20 signs that you’ve got something beyond mere survival.

National contest to identify and recognize country’s best unknown business with $10,000 in cash and a $40,000 public relations campaign; Contest from Gregory FCA and Safeguard Scientifics to make unknown business known

Are you the country’s best unknown business? You know the kind. Maybe it’s that killer technology start-up that has yet to make the radar. Or perhaps it’s some new wonder drug that will increase life expectancy. Or could it be that new sustainable business that’s doing great financially while doing good for the world?

If so, you could win $10,000 in cash and a $40,000 public relations campaign from one of the country’s largest public relations firms, Gregory FCA. Together with Safeguard Scientifics, Gregory FCA is launching the “Best Unknown Business in America” contest and urging businesses from around the country to enter, win and make a name for themselves. Any business can enter by simply visiting Gregory FCA’s Facebook page, completing the entry form and submitting an essay on why your business deserves to be known by the world.

The biggest questions facing every executive are: How can we get there from here? How can we increase market share, revenue, and profit? What’s the best way to reduce costs, employee turnover, and bureaucracy? What’s the next “big thing” in our industry, and how do we get there first?

The answer to all of these questions comes down to a single word: innovation.

Many people—including a lot of senior executives I’ve talked to—think innovation is primarily a research and development function. But innovation should be understood to include the entire value chain: from R&D to engineering, manufacturing, distribution, sales, marketing, and even facility utilization and investment strategy. Only a few innovations will be blockbusters. Some will result in incremental changes, but that doesn’t make them any less important.

Venture investment in health care cratered in 2012. While others cut back, SR One charged ahead.

The venture arm of GlaxoSmithKline formed in 1985 and has steadily invested $30 million to $50 million annually. Seeing strong prospects at a time when many conventional venture firms had to sit it out, SR One invested more than $50 million last year, making eight new deals and eight follow-on investments, said Jens Eckstein, its president.

Surgical robots allow surgeons to perform a variety of less invasive operations because their miniaturized instruments can work through small incisions in the body and are more dexterous than traditional laparoscopic tools (see “The Slow Rise of the Robot Surgeon”).  The result is that patients leave the operating room with a smaller surgical wound with the promise of faster recovery and less scarring.  

In 2000, Intuitive Surgical’s da Vinci system became the first FDA-approved commercially available robotic surgical platform and has since been used on hundreds of thousands of patients. According to a report on Bloomberg’s news site, the FDA is now taking another look at the system in response to an increase in reports of adverse incidents. As reported by Bloomberg:

Google Glass, a compact computer fitted onto a pair of slim metal eyeglass frames, is an impressive technical achievement. But can it be a business?

Glass is the pet project of Google’s cofounder Sergey Brin. The compact frames have a boom on one side that hides a camera, a battery, motion sensors, a wireless connection to reach the Internet, and other electronics. That boom also contains a small display, the light from which is directed into a person’s eye by a thumb-size prism positioned just under his or her right eyebrow.

A significant and growing shortage of health information technology workers appears greater than previously estimated, according to a new analysis by PwC's Health Research Institute. The report, Solving the talent equation for health IT, finds that the healthcare industry is vying for a limited number of IT professionals - and many companies are scrambling to fill the talent void by recruiting technology specialists from other industries.

"The challenge for healthcare is not just a shortage of people with technical skills. It's also a shortage of people with the skills to marry technological savvy with business strategy as healthcare becomes more connected, coordinated and accountable," said Daniel Garrett, principal and PwC's Health Information Technology practice leader, in a news release. "Despite billions of dollars spent investing in HIT, the lack of qualified professionals could slow progress toward quality and efficiency. The benefits of HIT will not be realized until organizations can ensure information is unlocked and integrated in a way to best inform critical business and clinical decision-making."