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.
The National Institute of Standards and Technology and the General Services Administration are creating a process for identity exchange in cloud computer networks, Federal News Radio reports. The new system would get rid of passwords and move to secure online identity exchanges.
The two agencies want the government to be an earlier adopter of the National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace standards, said Naomi Lefkovitz, a senior privacy policy adviser at NIST.
When it comes to attracting the best business students these days, Ali Mallekzadeh knows what it takes.
“Very astute students walk through the doors of your college with a check list,” said Mallekzadeh, dean of Kansas State University’s College of Business Administration. “They are asking: ‘Do you have an entrepreneurial center, and an international business center, a financial trading center, a place to start a new business? And by the way, do you have an espresso machine?’
“And the answers need to be ‘yes’ if you want to stay competitive.”
It’s good to be back blogging! I’ve been buried for the past month finishing a book I’m co-authoring on 3D printing (called Fabricated — it’s due out in February because it takes the publisher 3 months — yes 3 months! — to format an ebook). I am writing an SBIR commercialization plan for a tech startup (data analytics software) in Boston. I can’t say enough good things about the SBIR program and the process of applying for Round I and Round II funds. But I’ll write about that later.
Lately I’ve been researching the Big Data marketplace. Big data is the new natural resource. Here’s some interesting facts:
What do honeybees and startup companies have in common?
Biologist Edward O. Wilson has spent a lifetime observing ants, bees, and other social critters, and how they function together in groups. In contrast, my own profession—as a practicing venture capitalist—seems to be worlds away. Surprisingly, I have found that the ideas of Wilson, my former college professor, are profoundly more relevant to my work than those of traditional fields like economics or business.
On the surface, biology and technological innovation seem distinctly different. But if we adjust our perspective slightly, it’s remarkable how useful Wilson’s ideas are to understanding Silicon Valley and America’s startup economy.
The Obama administration today announced that 10 public-private partnerships across America will receive $20 million in total awards to help revitalize American manufacturing and encourage companies to invest in the United States.
The 10 partnerships were selected through the Advanced Manufacturing Jobs and Innovation Accelerator Challenge, which is a competitive multi-agency grant process announced in May 2012 to support initiatives that strengthen advanced manufacturing at the local level. These public-private partnerships consist of small and large businesses, colleges, nonprofits and other local stakeholders that “cluster” in a particular area. The funds will help the winning clusters support local efforts to spur job creation through a variety of projects, including initiatives that connect innovative small suppliers with large companies, link research with the start-ups that can commercialize new ideas, and train workers with skills that firms need to capitalize on business opportunities.
Everyone knows that the United States is in a terrible business slump, and there's no shortage of opinions about how to get out of it. But there hasn't been much in the way of notable improvement. So our organizations -- Gallup and Operation HOPE -- have been looking deeply into the science of human nature to find an answer and a solution.
But before getting to the science, some salient facts: In the U.S., there are 6 million small businesses, about 100,000 mid-sized companies, and only 1,000 really large enterprises. In total, they generate right around 100 million real full-time jobs and just over $15 trillion in sales and production. The problem is, this huge economic engine is stalled.
Start-up funding by angel investors reached $9.2 billion in the first half year of the year, climbing 3.1 percent compared with the same period in 2011, according to the Center for Venture Research at the University of New Hampshire.
The amount of money flowing from wealthy individual investors into early-stage companies still fell short of levels prior to the 2008 economic collapse when angel investments hit $12.4 billion in the first half of that year.
But the sector is recovering, and more angels around the country and in the Boston area are investing, said Jeffrey Sohl, director of the Center for Venture Research at UNH, which puts out the semiannual report on angel spending. The sector is undergoing “steady and sustainable growth,” he said, as individual investors “enter the game cautiously.”
With creative funding schemes picking up steam and nontraditional funders taking an interest in biotech, what can universities and start-ups expect in their right first-round financing structure? At the BIO Technology Transfer Symposium, a panel examined various funding sources as well as the factors that influence investment decisions and the ins and outs of early stage financing deals.
William Tucker, executive director, Innovation Alliances and Services, University of California Office of the President, moderated a discussion with:
Ron Lennox, partner with CHL Medical Partners; and Dr. Heather M. Snyder, senior associate director with the Alzheimer’s Association.
Generating ideas is the easiest part of creating a presentation. The hard part is deciding what to keep. Many of your ideas may be fascinating or clever, but you can't squeeze them all in — and no one wants to hear them all, anyway.
The people in the audience are the stars of your show. If they don't buy what you're saying, it won't go anywhere. To keep them engaged and make your case, you'll need to focus on what matters to them. If you don't, they'll have to work hard to figure out why they should care about your presentation and what it'll help them accomplish, and they'll resent you for the extra effort they've had to put in.
Cancer immunotherapy research has once again topped the R&D charts as one of the hottest fields in biotech. And now MedImmune, the biologics arm of AstraZeneca ($AZN), has teamed up with some prestigious research teams to come up with some revved up combo therapies using a few of their most promising antibodies.
The Cancer Research Institute and the Ludwig Institute will collaborate with MedImmune on new clinical trials of next-gen combo hopefuls, concentrating on pairing the MedImmune antibodies with agents in their own portfolios or outside programs that can be partnered on. MedImmune is contributing its CTLA-4 blocking antibody tremelimumab, an OX40 receptor agonist antibody, and a B7-H1 (or PD-L1) blocking antibody dubbed MEDI4736.
As lawmakers in Brussels frantically look for ways to break the stalemate over the Single EU patent, Science|Business takes a closer look at the political and legal dispute.
The controversy over the single European Patent is raging once more, with the European Parliament’s Legal Affairs (JURI) Committee meeting in Brussels earlier today, (11 October), while their colleagues of the Council of Ministers convene in Luxemburg to discuss the stalemate. “It is now up to the Council of Ministers to act and provide a solution for the problem the European Council has created,” Klaus-Heiner Lehner MEP (EPP- DE), Chairman of the JURI committee, tells Science|Business. Meanwhile a spokesperson for the Council says, “In a way, the ball is in the Parliament’s court.”
What is the state of R&D, funding, and infrastructure in Europe? A Science|Business Policy Roundtable
Regenerative Medicine is one of the most exciting and promising fields of biomedical research today. Europe currently leads the world in therapeutic applications and medicines in this technology, and has successfully seen the first companies working in the field to spin-out from research universities with EMA approved products currently in the market.
Concerns about job security and a relentless lifestyle are holding back would-be biotech entrepreneurs. Academics need to be shown the fun and energy of being in the start-up world says Kevin Johnson of Index Ventures.
The venture capital firm Index Ventures is having trouble finding enough premier quality assets in which to invest the €150 million in its first dedicated life sciences fund, unveiled in March in 2012. Part of the problem believes Kevin Johnson, a Partner at Index, is that academics are simply scared to step into the unknown world of the start-up.
“Too many people are thinking of security rather than opportunity. They seem more afraid of life than death,” Johnson says.
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UBAI — On a recent Thursday evening, ahead of the Islamic weekend, the newest cafe-office space in Dubai, Make business hub, was busy and buzzy. About 60 guests from the United Arab Emirates and nearby countries were being courted by seven international start-ups, who were presenting their business plans in the hope of attracting angel investors and venture capital funding.
The start-ups had been discovered by SeedStartup, a venture capital fund and start-up accelerator program based in Dubai. “We invest between $20,000 and $25,000 in businesses we believe have potential and take a 10 percent equity,” said Rony el-Nashar, the founder of SeedStartup. “It’s a higher risk we’re taking, because we’re investing in essentially nothing.”
Angel investors funded 27,280 entrepreneurial ventures in the first half of this year, up nearly 4 percent from the number of businesses funded during the same time a year ago, The Business Journals reported.
That's according to the Center for Venture Research at the University of New Hampshire. Angel investments in the first six months of 2012 totaled $9.2 billion, a 3 percent increase over the same period a year ago. The average deal size was $336,390.
LISBON – Is the "entrepreneurial city" something that can be created and, if so, is it something that can be sold? Lisbon has answered "yes" to both questions. If it can be sold, is there something that Boston can learn that it doesn't already know? Are we open to that learning opportunity as a great city?
To remain a world-class city, Boston must actively embrace the spirt of the entrepreneur through goal-oriented policy, simple but relevant incentive programs, and workable and practical partnerships between all municipal, educational and private stakeholders.
This is the sixth and final post in my series on the six shifts presented in my new e-book, Associations Unorthodox: Six Really Radical Shifts Toward the Future, created in collaboration with CHIEF. (Please check out the previous posts in the series.) As always, I invite your feedback in the comments below, or you can join the Associations Unorthodox conversation on Facebook or Twitter using the hashtag #auxsix.
The Problem
The true nature of the orthodoxy surrounding association boards is often hard to understand. While the size, method of selection and composition of boards, the role of executive committees and the nature of CEO-board relationships can look very different depending on the association, all of these choices connect back to certain deep-seated beliefs about how boards are supposed to function. Meanwhile, building a genuine commitment to future-focused stewardship remains one of the most intractable governing challenges facing most associations. It is a challenge associations must resolve to overcome. The failure of boards to prepare their associations for the future may well constitute a passive form of moral hazard. For their organizations to succeed over the next decade and beyond, therefore, association boards must reassert their strategic legitimacy, or risk losing the support of the next generation of stakeholders.
I have long been an advocate of regional economic development. I believe that when it comes to economic development, the whole is greater than the sum of all its parts.
We, in Southeast Missouri, have several inherent roadblocks when we compete with other states for opportunities in economic development. Free land, large extra incentives, right to work and other factors create fierce competition for that job-producing company looking to expand its organization.
A while back I received a discouraging note from an entrepreneur with a patent and a medical software application who couldn’t find a dime of investment, and was grousing that seed funding just wasn’t available anymore. After exchanging a couple of notes, I concluded that she was more likely a victim of item #1 on my reject list below, rather than a drought on seed funding.
Too many people still believe the urban myth that you can sketch your idea on a napkin, and people will throw money at you. Fundraising is indeed brutally tough at all stages, and the seed funding is the hardest to find. The simple answer is that if you need funding, do your homework early and completely.
The academic year may have just barely begun, but for many career centers, the focus is on getting students ready for post-graduate employment.
The University of Pittsburgh this year is promising that any student who completes a fairly extensive internship preparation program will get the staff’s help to land an internship or other experiential learning opportunity before graduation.
The program will give the 18,000 undergraduates at Pitt’s main campus a path to a critical component of career preparation, university officials say. And while other experts generally praise the idea, they also note it will only benefit students if the learning experience remains as good as it would if there were no guarantee.
