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innovation DAILY

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.

This Is Your Body on Turkey TIME

It’s that time of year again, when we loosen our belt buckles and prepare to eat a whole lot of turkey. And mashed potatoes. And gravy, and stuffing. And cranberry sauce. Eating turkey—and especially overeating turkey—has some very real biological effects. You’ve surely heard that turkey contains compounds that make you sleepy, but that’s not all that’s going on (and that’s not entirely true, either). We asked Matthew Hartings, an assistant professor of chemistry at American University, to break down all the things that happen inside our bodies when we feast:

Image: http://time.com/

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Bruce Bigelow joins Xconomy from the business desk of the San Diego Union-Tribune. He was a member of the team of reporters who were awarded the 2006 Pulitzer Prize in National Reporting for uncovering bribes paid to San Diego Republican Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham in exchange for special legislation earmarks. He also shared a 2006 award for enterprise reporting from the Society of Business Editors and Writers for “In Harm’s Way,” an article about the extraordinary casualty rate among employees working in Iraq for San Diego’s Titan Corp. He has written extensively about the 2002 corporate accounting scandal at software goliath Peregrine Systems. He also was a Gerald Loeb Award finalist and National Headline Award winner for “The Toymaker,” a 14-part chronicle of a San Diego start-up company. He takes special satisfaction, though, that the series was included in the library for nonfiction narrative journalism at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University.

Bigelow graduated from U.C. Berkeley in 1977 with a degree in English Literature and from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 1979. Before joining the Union-Tribune in 1990, he worked for the Associated Press in Los Angeles and The Kansas City Times.

When Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz founded their namesake venture firm in 2009, they laid out a clear-but-narrow vision for investing in a new wave of Web-based innovation.

Andreessen, in particular, espoused a net-centric view that was absolute. “No clean tech, no rocket ships, no electric cars. No China or India,” he told Fortune magazine at the time. Biotech likewise was out of the question. In the six years since then, Andreessen Horowitz has grown into a $4 billion VC, and established itself as a leading tech investor. Andreessen’s observation that “software is eating the world” has become an industry axiom, as Web-based services have invaded and taken over financial services, education, and a host of other sectors.

 

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Wikimedia Commons Office Space - Accelerator - Incubator

It is raining startup accelerators. In the last two years, we have seen accelerators sprouting up and taking root in Singapore.

Accelerators come in all forms: international accelerators like StartupBootCamp and Alpha Camp, both of which have conducted bootcamps globally; big local names teaming up with overseas accelerators like SPH Plug and Play; or DBS Hotspot Pre-accelerator which runs on its own; or a series of local players like Lithan EdTech Accelerator and UNFRAMED.

 

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Four essential questions for predicting whether an invention will really change our lives.

Nowadays hardly a week goes by without the announcement of yet another new technological development promising to make our lives easier, more exciting or at least healthier. Examples include Apple’s smart home technology for operating domestic appliances, Japanese robots able to read emotions for the elderly, wearable activity trackers like Fitbits and Fire, Amazon’s smart TV adapter for connecting TVs to the internet.

Image: http://knowledge.insead.edu

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When a bunch of us launched Start It Up Delaware in 2013 off the back of Wes Garnett and Steve Roettger‘s coIN Loft, I received strong advice from many who had come before us (and had more gray hair than I do) but failed to build a startup ecosystem: don’t waste your time.

Of course we didn’t listen and we moved ahead. That is what entrepreneurs do in the face of someone who says it can’t be done. We would say to ourselves, “this time it will be different.” And it has been.

Image: Two-dozen Delaware tech leaders talk over lunch. (Photo by Mona Parikh)

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The news cycle spins with tales of start-ups that accelerate from zero to $60 million.

And while that speed of success can seem dizzying, in reality, it doesn’t happen overnight.

What often goes unmentioned is the role that angels play—angel investors, that is—in providing the funds and advice that help some fledgling companies grow from an idea to a capitalized venture to a successful and salable business.

 

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ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Sandia National Laboratories is steadily laying the foundations for its new Center for Collaboration and Commercialization.

The lab announced plans for the C-3 last year to provide more access for entrepreneurs, investors and others to emerging lab technology and expertise to accelerate the transfer of innovations into the marketplace. The office will be located at the Sandia Science and Technology Park in southeast Albuquerque.

Image: Handouts/CHTECH/03.10.08/email from Andrew Webb/Sandia Science/ Courtesy Sandia Science and Technology Park: Aerial View of Sandia Science and Technology Park on Albuquerque's far southeast side. COURTESY HO

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ANTHONY JOHNSON

Most entrepreneurs don’t have a team of lawyers following them around to help make every decision. Just as entrepreneurs need to know the basics of accounting and marketing, they also need to understand the basics of business law to avoid the potential failure that follows costly litigation.

 

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Casey Wright is Founder, Owner and Chief Executive Officer at Wright Brothers, Inc. (WBI), a web development company that builds rapidly evolving web applications for the residential real estate industry. With almost a decade of experience equipping small business leaders with digital marketing tools and education, Casey is passionate about leading a new generation of technologically-empowered professionals. Under his direction, WBI has more than doubled its revenues for three consecutive years, earning the title of “4th Fastest Growing Privately Held Company in San Diego” from The San Diego Business Journal in 2014.

The media portrays entrepreneurship as a glamorous, jet-setting, Ferrari-driving lifestyle. It's all about Richard Branson kiteboarding with a naked supermodel or Mark Cuban celebrating the Dallas Mavericks winning the NBA Finals. Entrepreneurship is about young people in their 20s getting billion dollar valuations for companies that haven't even posted a profit yet.

 

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TRACY BYRNES

Once strictly for the rich and famous, wine cellars are popping up in homes across all income levels.

Thanks to America’s love of wine and the web, the ease of acquiring wines -- and as a result, showing them off -- has made wine cellars an integral part of the home. Heck, in some circles, the size of the cellar has even become competitive.

 

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An array of policies aim to support entrepreneurs through grants and tax breaks that make capital more easily attainable. However, entrepreneurs most often turn to two forms of private external financing: debt and equity.

Ask any entrepreneur about his or her greatest challenge, and the conversation will likely turn to capital. Finance is the lifeblood of every company, but for new firms, capital is especially critical.

 Image: http://www.kauffman.org

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BY DAVID RANII This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Real estate giant Alexandria Real Estate Equities has unveiled sweeping plans to transform a 56-acre Research Triangle Park site into a campus for life science and agricultural technology companies.

Plans for the campus call for more than 1 million square feet of space.

“This is aimed at creating a world-class campus, we think in the heart of RTP ... that will have an amenity-rich and urban-like environment,” said Joel Marcus, founder and CEO of Alexandria.

 

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I recently had lunch with someone newly promoted into management. I asked how it was going, and he confessed to feeling a bit overwhelmed, and struggling to find time to do what he termed “real work.”

That’s a normal reaction for new managers. Management work is fundamentally different from the work of someone classified as an “individual contributor.” It’s fairly common to feel like you’re constantly being interrupted — because you are. That is part of being in charge. You’re still doing real work. Making sure your team is functioning smoothly, and that team members are working on the right things at the right times, is real work. It’s just that your work product is much less visible.

 

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Canadian venture capital investment is on pace for another strong year, according to the Canadian Venture Capital & Private Equity Association.

VC investment was strong over the first nine months of 2015 with 410 completed deals, capturing $1.6 billion, says CVCA. This is a 31 per cent increase in deal volume, and 15 per cent increase in disbursements over the same period last year.

Image: http://www.techvibes.com

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Starting a business is not for the faint of heart.

According to the Small Business Administration, only about half of all new businesses will survive for five years. For those who do stick it out, dreams of getting rich quickly will be supplanted by the reality that sweat equity doesn’t translate to billions of dollars overnight. In fact, one study of 158,000 startups found that those businesses that did survive experienced plenty of growing pains as they became established.

 

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With a few exceptions, the long-promised revolution of gadgets that know stuff about you and use that data to do stuff for you has been running nowhere on a hamster wheel.

Yes, there are sexy, smart thermostats—for those who can afford them—that will automatically make homes toasty warm this winter before you leave work. Despite the rise of Nest, selling the general public on connected devices has not gotten much farther than smartphones and activity trackers. As seen with September’s fiscal implosion of New York-based Quirky, getting consumers onboard with the would-be Internet of Things trend is a hard sell.

Image: http://www.xconomy.com

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In this post, I will be sharing optimization tips for the time that it’s easiest to freak out: campaign optimization. If you didn’t have time to complete an exhaustive list of pre-launch activities, fear not: I have been there before and these tips below will help you achieve an equal amount of success.The core topics of campaign optimization include content, on-site conversions, and measurement.

Image: https://go.indiegogo.com

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The pace of China's growth as a major global trading economy over the past 30 years is almost unprecedented in economic history.

Countries have grown at a similarly rapid pace before, but they've never made up such a large portion of the global economy.

A research note from Deutsche Bank analysts this week explains how the "gravity" of global trade has tipped towards China over just a 10-year period.

Image: Soldiers of People's Liberation Army (PLA) of China walk past a sign of 2015 as they attend a flag-raising ceremony at the beginning of the military parade marking the 70th anniversary of the end of World War Two, in Beijing, China, September 3, 2015. - http://www.businessinsider.com

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