Innovation is all about creating products and services that make your company more competitive in the marketplace. Those actions typically include generating ideas, creating prototypes, building the business case, and getting alignment to launch. Marketers must develop a strategy to know where to focus their resources. They must segment, target, and position the offering. Finally, they have to execute their plan by developing a coordinated set of marketing tactics including what products and services to offer, pricing, distribution approaches, and marketing communications.

Travis Timmons of Fitness Matters is given advice all the time –and he rejects most of it because it doesn’t pass the test of the 4 lenses that he learned from studying the teachings of W. Edwards Deming.

What about you? Are you getting advice that really is reliable and useful, or are you getting advice that is just what people believe and accept to be true because, well, because it is “common sense” and “everyone does it this way”?!

Nairobi — President Barack Obama on Saturday announced that the United States will set up three entrepreneurship centers in Kenya, Mali and Zambia to support women entrepreneurs.

Speaking during the Global Entrepreneurship Summit (GES) at the UN headquarters in Nairobi's Gigiri, Obama said the Kenyan centre will be launched later in the year.

We keep to-do lists and try to stay on top of our schedules, yet no matter how hard we try, tasks continue to evade us. The to-do list gets longer and it feels like time is slipping away by the hour. In a recent survey by the online time-tracking tool Toggl, the following five mistakes were identified by customers as the top things that were standing in their way of time management success.

Most of us are familiar with the conventional wisdom about protecting our privacy online: Don’t enter personal or credit card information into sketchy web sites. Hide birthdates and other information scammers can use to steal your identity.

But, like a game of Whack-a-Mole, new privacy concerns pop up virtually every day. As the the senior vice president and general manager for the Intel Security’s Endpoint Security Business, it’s part of Candace Worley’s job to identify those threats and help people and enterprises avoid them.

Some of the most important lessons you learn during your first decade working in "the real world" come from one source: the school of hard knocks.

There are professional failures you can’t predict, opportunities that end up being too good to be true, and moments when you don’t live up to your potential.

Although they may seem career-ending in the moment, these workplace setbacks can prove their value over time.

The hardest thing about starting a company is that from day one you emerge as this completely vulnerable entity trying its hardest to project success, power, trajectory and inevitability while you secretly know that you’re one knock-out blow from extinction. Think about it: You start with nearly no money, you bring on some co-founders and if they quit it could completely derail your mission, you talk to journalists who if they decide to be cranky can ruin your reputation, you pitch investors who can change your outcomes by giving you cash that enables more forward progress but if they withhold it you can starve.

In 1936 in Berlin, Germany you could go to a television viewing station and watch the Summer Olympics which were happening at the same moment just across town. This was the World’s first live broadcast of sport. Fast forward to today and you can not only watch a sporting event live from the other side of the World, but you can now watch from virtually any place you please. Since Ancient Greece and before, humans have been extremely passionate about sport and want to be able to view their favorite event, individual, and team in action. With today’s technology, the global network of sports can be easily reached by the occasional viewer to the sports fanatic who needs to see every minute of play.

As Congress appears to be rushing towards a massive “patent reform” bill, inventors, entrepreneurs and defenders of Intellectual Property are becoming increasingly concerned about the direction of the debate.

Congressman Goodlatte’s Innovation Act (H.R. 9) is too broadly written and will penalize numerous inventors and companies who develop and commercialize patented innovation. Further, it is based on flawed and unreliable data about “patent trolls.” Rather than rushing to pass this legislation, we should slow down and ask more questions. Only by asking questions will we understand the potential downfalls, unintended consequences, and effects on all stakeholders of the innovation economy.

Jason Best, principal at Crowdfund Capital Advisors, says debt-based and equity crowdfunding have "taken off substantially" in the mainland over the past few years.

Maybe starting a new business isn’t your passion, but in these days of rapid change, where everyone is dealing with uncertainty, I believe that thinking and acting like entrepreneurs will help you get ahead in any profession. In simple terms this means taking control of your life, going after something you love to do, and taking action. Stop letting life decisions happen to you.

The shift from fully integrated pharmaceutical companies (FIPCOs) to virtually integrated pharma companies (VIPCOs) has made biopharmas more reliant on external R&D. Often, that external R&D comes from startups nurtured through the venture funds of biopharma giants.

This year’s List offers three significant changes since last year’s ranking of corporate venture funds. One is the exclusion of Novo Ventures and Novo Seeds from the list, since the funds do not invest for the benefit for Novo Nordisk, but for its holding company Novo A/S.  While Novo has significant stakes in Novo Nordisk and Novozymes, its venture investments are fully independent of the two major Novo Group companies, says Heather Ludvigsen, venture auditor with Novo Ventures.

RESEARCH: President Obama’s support for Kenya’s young entrepreneurs and general appeal for less corruption and a greater reliance on trade rather than aid across Africa raises the question: where do the countries of Africa sit in terms of business friendliness and entrepreneurship? In fact how do all countries rank?

Image: http://www.iedp.com

Varied explanations for the growing herd of unicorns — and predictions of their imminent demise — abound. But all can agree: Those who invest in unicorns are chasing returns they can’t get elsewhere. And while venture capital is widely perceived to be fueling the unicorns’ growth, a closer look reveals that not all venture capital is really venture capital.

GAITHERSBURG, MD, Jul 27, 2015 (Marketwired via COMTEX) -- Vaxin Inc., a clinical stage vaccine and immunotherapeutics company, today announced that it has enrolled the first patient into a phase I clinical trial of HepTcell(TM) (FP-02.2), the company's immunotherapeutic compound to treat people chronically infected with the hepatitis B virus (HBV). The multi-center trial will be conducted at seven sites within the United Kingdom, and aims to recruit 72 patients with chronic HBV infection.

The private equity markets are in the thrall of what mental health professionals call normalcy bias: A kind of denial that lets people underestimate the possibility of disaster and read warning signs in the best possible light.

For decades, the United States has remained at the forefront of game-changing innovation and scientific accomplishment, far ahead of all other nations. But countries around the world are actively seeking to compete with the next generation of American innovators and scientists. As China prioritizes major research and development projects and India graduates thousands more scientists and engineers, the U.S. faces significant challenges in the global marketplace.

The Michigan Economic Development Corp. on Wednesday morning will announce that it has named Fredrick Molnar vice president of entrepreneurship and innovation, effective immediately.

Since last September, Molnar had been director of the Michigan Life Science and Innovation Center in Plymouth Township, an incubator managed by the MEDC. 

We are in the midst of a shark frenzy.

In recent weeks, there has been a spate of reported attacks on both coasts of the United States. The frenzy, however, appears to be more a product of our fears than an actual uptick in the risk of shark encounters, according to a new Stanford-led study.

The study, to be published later this month in Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment, finds that despite increasing records of shark attacks – mostly by white sharks – in California, the individual attack risk has dropped by more than 91 percent during the past six decades. Rather than cull sharks – which research shows has no effect on the risks of an encounter – resource managers should promote safe ocean-going behavior by providing information on how risk varies among locations and times, according to the study.

So I’ve been investing “institutionally” as a VC for about 18 months now (maybe really only 12, counting from the first check that really mattered).  A little bit before that as an angel, but not that much.  ‘Cause I sort of needed to decompress for a little while after I sold my last company.

At first, I really did not know what I was doing.  I probably still don’t entirely.

And I haven’t yet returned a nickel of capital yet back to our investors, the “LPs”, which is the ultimate game.

Image: http://www.saastr.stfi.re/