Since the passing of the FDA Orphan Drug Act in1983, there has been an increasing focus on the evaluation and development of products (drugs, biologics, devices, or medical foods) that demonstrate promise for the diagnosis and treatment of rare diseases or conditions. As more pharmaceutical pipelines get filled with products under this classification, it is important to understand the underlying need and opportunities as well as the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) regulations in the orphan drug development landscape.

New York Yankees legend Yogi Berra has died at 90 years old.

The catcher was a 15-time All Star and 10-time World Series champion, and was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1972, according to AFP.

He was also well-known for his goofy sayings.

In theory, the heart of Silicon Valley—towns like Mountain View and Santa Clara—should be the ultimate place to bike. It's usually 72 degrees and sunny; it's mostly flat. But it's also a classic example of suburbia designed for cars, bisected by 10-lane freeways and extra-wide streets filled withspeeding cars.

Google is hoping to help turn its home turf into something more like the bicycle paradise of Copenhagen, minus Copenhagen's snow and bracing Baltic wind.

Image: Flickr user Travis Wise 

Ooho is an edible water "bottle" that turns your disposable drink into something more like an overripe fruit. To make one, a blob of water is frozen then coated with a transparent, dual-layer membrane made of brown algae and calcium chloride. When it’s done, the water is held in the bag, and you just take a bite to drink it. The Ooho just won a $22,500 European sustainability award.

Image: http://www.fastcoexist.com 

When Morten Middelfart went searching for seed investors for Social Quant, his Twitter analytics company in Tampa, Fla., his banker suggested pitching Atlantic Merchant Capital Advisors, a local family office. One informal meeting with the private investment firm, which manages the wealth of individuals and their families, was all it took to land Middelfart’s venture a high-figure investment early this year, along with ongoing advice, customer introductions and part-time office space.

One of the least understood parts of the venture capital industry and venture capital firms is how investment decisions actually get made. The truth is that each firm is different and there isn’t one standard but over the years I’ve talked with enough of my peers to get sense of how many firms work.

When the gas pedal of her 2004 PT Cruiser jammed, causing her car to speed up to 60 miles an hour, Olivia Crooks knew she was in trouble. But even in the midst of panic, the 16-year-old made a smart decision that saved her life.

She called 911.

Lucky for Crooks, Green Bay emergency dispatcher Julia Robak picked up her call and advised her against following her original plan: circling a cul-de-sac until she used up her gas. Instead, Robak instructed the teen to shift the car into "neutral," and to press the brakes rather than pump them.

Long-awaited rules that would allow small businesses and startups to solicit private securities investments from the general public for the first time in decades will soon be enacted.

The rules would enable small businesses to raise up to $1 million in capital investments each year from virtually anyone in the United States through online platforms. To put it simply, companies would be able to sell shares of equity in their business to pretty much anyone willing to invest. 

Astrsk PR is in the business of making startups succeed. By working to craft the right image through media relations, partnership development and more, this boutique agency helps fledgling companies flourish into not-so-fledgling industry disruptors.

The man behind the curtain is 29-year-old founder and CEO of Astrsk, Elliot Tomaeno. An entrepreneur himself, Tomaeno has a solid grasp on what fellow founders need to succeed: Since its 2012 inception, Astrsk, with Tomaeno at the helm, has helped launch over 230 companies. Now-big-name clients like Squarespace, ClassPass and Trello can attribute their success in part to Astrsk’s guidance.

I hate crowdfunding. But I’m willing to have my opinion changed. Meantime, here’s a warning: It’s going to take a lot for me to stop thinking of crowdfunding as a pathetic plea for money from people who frankly ought to know better.

People will have to stop begging, for one. Because that’s what crowdfunding is; it’s cyber-panhandling. And while I don’t necessarily mind giving a handful of change or a sandwich to the homeless guy on the corner, I do resent being asked, by gainfully employed people, if I’ll help them achieve their personal goals by giving them money.

When hiring data scientists, people tend to focus primarily on technical qualifications. It’s hard to find candidates who have the right mix of computational and statistical skills. But what’s even harder is finding people who have those skills and are good at communicating the story behind the data.

At The Data Incubator, we run a fellowship identifying the top 2% of STEM PhDs looking to work with our partner companies, which range from larger firms like Goldman Sachs or Genetech to smaller companies like Betterment or Yelp. Here are three attributes our partners look for in data scientists, and specific questions they use to identify those attributes:

Ever get frustrated with the poor quality of your airplane's Wi-Fi connectivity? Noah Robischon and Austin Carr certainly have, which is why the company Gogo is their topic of discussion on this installment of The 29th Floor. Gogo Inflight Internet allows travelers to complete rudimentary tasks online while high in the sky. Without any real competition to keep airlines in check, premium costs and poor service for Internet connectivity are on the horizon for frequent flyers. Check out the video and see what Noah and Austin think the best solution to this problem could be.

Scott Jurek thought Ultramarathoners were crazy, until he tried his first one.

Twenty years ago Jurek considered himself an average runner, but after falling in love with the long distances of Ultramarathoning — any race over the traditional 26-mile marathon — he really found his groove.

The Harvard Business Review has released its list of the 100 best-performing CEOs on the planet. Lars Rebien Sørensen, CEO of Danish healthcare company Novo Nordisk, tops the list.

To compile the ranking, HBR considered total shareholder return and the change in each company's market capitalization. This year, HBR also added a measurement of each company's environmental, social, and governance performance (using ESG scores from investment research firm Sustainalytics). Ultimately, long-term financial results were weighted at 80% and ESG performance at 20% for each CEO/company.

Panelists from three of today’s most innovative companies spoke about building a culture of big ideas at Fortune’s Most Powerful Women summit.

Resources: Time, money, personnel. You’d think more would be better when you’re trying to innovate in a corporate setting. However, the consensus among panelists speaking on the topic of growth and innovation at the Fortune Most Powerful Women summit was that constraints were the key to new and exciting solutions.

Image: Left to Right: Regina Dugan, Beth Comstock, and Renee James Photograph by Stuart Isett

SPECIAL REPORT / The potential for information technologies to boost growth across all industrial sectors is still huge, according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) - but it calls on governments to think "strategically" in terms of education and employability.

The OECD Digital Economy Outlook 2015, published in July, forecasts that global trade for ICT (Information and Communication Technology) manufacturing and especially services will continue to grow in the coming years. The OECD is particularly highlighting the broadband market, which is still expanding, cloud computing services as well as different kinds of software for enterprises.

Put the sustainability policies you’d like to see under the noses of the new federal government front bench by pitching them for consideration at a one-day “innovation policy hackathon” being held in Sydney on 17 October. New assistant minister for innovation Wyatt Roy announced the initiative late last week.

Image: Wyatt Roy - http://www.thefifthestate.com.au

Can aging be slowed by using gene therapy to make permanent changes to a person’s DNA?

One Seattle-area woman says she has tried exactly that. Her claim has entangled some high-profile American academics in a strange tale of do-it-yourself medicine that involves plane flights to Latin America, an L.A. film crew, and what’s purported to be the first attempt to use gene therapy to forestall normal aging.

Image: http://www.technologyreview.com

Crowdsourcing and customer-focused innovation are very popular today. But by themselves, they're not a very good way to achieve breakthrough innovation, warns Jeffrey Baumgartner. A lot has been written on customer-centric innovation and there is an arguable case for taking this approach. However, customer-centric innovation is fraught with risk if done poorly – such as asking your customers for ideas  – and seldom actually leads to breakthrough innovation. I am not going to go into detail about customer-centric innovation here, but if you are interested in knowing more, I recommend the paper, “Manage Customer-Centric Innovation Systematically” by Larry Selden and Ian C. MacMillan.

Are private companies more innovative than public companies? What happens to an innovative start-up which goes public? Will the same team of people who were so agile and entrepreneurial in the start-up become even more innovative once they have some capital and recognition behind them? Apparently not. Shai Bernstein of Stanford University compared firms that went public with similar firms that stayed private. His 2014 report, Does Going Public Affect Innovation?, found that when companies went public the quality of internal innovation declined and firms experienced both an exodus of skilled inventors and a decline in the productivity of remaining inventors. However, public firms can more easily attract new human capital and acquire external innovations. Bernstein says that, ‘going public causes a substantial decline of approximately 40 percent in innovation novelty as measured by patent citations.’ At the same time, he found no change in the scale of innovation, as measured by the number of patents.