The golden age is over.

For decades, the local economy was driven by three big companies whose gargantuan manufacturing facilities employed generations of Rochesterians, making products we were proud to send across the world.

Now that we’re no longer cranking out rolls of 35mm film by the truckload or building a photocopier for every office in the developed world, some folks think it’s over, that Rochester is no longer a major player in the business world. They say our fortunes are sinking, bound to get even worse due to the downsizing of those cornerstone employers.

A few days ago, I posted a dispatch from the Millennial Train Project, a cross-country voyage carting young social entrepreneurs across the American South. Throughout the journey, an impressive array of social scientists, entrepreneurs, and innovators jumped on and off the train, mentoring and dispensing knowledge to the project's participants.

Image: Leslie Carol Roberts

One of the world’s best-known hospitals has a problem.

The Mayo Clinic is located in the small city of Rochester (pop. 111,000), about a two-hour drive from Minneapolis, Minnesota. And it is, right this minute, competing fiercely for a small-but-extremely-lucrative slice of the global medical tourism industry. The wealthy American, European, east Asian, and Gulf Arab patients who have been the clinic’s bread and butter have been instead choosing to get treatment abroad or at domestic rivals like Baltimore’s Johns Hopkins University or the Cleveland Clinic. But that may be changing—and the reason, if not the construction, is simple: the Destination Medical Center.

For as long as humans have formed groups, there have been business opportunities and entrepreneurs taking advantage of them, which have rather tremendously evolved from early barter and trade into highly organized companies and other worldly technologies.

As the millennia have passed and we've evolved, competition has increased. This is particularly true in recent times where someone with limited experience or training in advanced technologies (programming) can build both highly successful and valuable tech businesses. As in any competitive environment, there are winners and there are losers -- no shock there -- but what is it that about the two opposing outcomes that separates them?

A new programme is looking to see the creation of reporters in residence (RIR) across the entrepreneurial space. The idea would be to create something similar to entrepreneurs-in-residence – an advisory position adopted by many Venture Captial (VC) firms such as Sequoia, Benchmark and Foundation Capital.

There are many questions a company must answer when it comes to accelerators. Is this the right accelerator for us? Is now the right time? How do we stand out in the application process? The answers to such questions are nuanced and varied — and they’re not always easy to come by.

Learn more about Jeremy on NerdWallet’s Ask an Advisor

More than 10,000 people filled the eMerge Americas technology conference in Miami earlier this month as exhibitors displayed emerging technologies, developers faced off in a “hackathon” and networking events matched entrepreneurs and investors.

Startups are usually so focused on selling more of their branded product or service to their own customer base (organic growth) that they don’t consider the more indirect methods (non-organic growth) of increasing revenue and market share. Non-organic growth would include OEM relationships, finding strategic partners, “coopetition,” as well as acquisitions.

Engineers at MIT successfully tested their robotic cheetah's ability to autonomously jump over obstacles up to 18 inches tall, becoming the first four-legged robot to do so.

The cheetah-inspired robot beat its own previous record of 13 inches, running at a speed of 5 miles per hour.

Most companies suck at innovation because they suck at change.

There you go, there is the entire article in a single sentence. Please click the like button or leave a comment on your way out, and I’ll turn out the lights.

I’m actually serious, but I didn’t come to this single sentence overnight, but through decades of research and experience. It coalesced however this morning in an interview with Chad McAllister that will air next month.

Change doesn’t come easily to large organizations. Over time they have established a firm set of core business processes to give  them the structure to manage massive workforces, which makes sense, but it also means they lack the agility of smaller companies.

They have created systems to provide safe and effective ways of doing business, which protects companies from chaotic decision making and running willy nilly toward every market whim.

Few if any of the most successful local captains of industry ever set foot in the entrepreneurship programs now dotting universities around the world.

Shopping mall magnate Herb Simon, tech patriarch Don Brown, surgery toolmaker Jim Pearson and many others have fared spectacularly without professors teaching them things like innovation in formal entrepreneurship classes.

Meryl Moss is the founder and president of Meryl Moss Media, which just celebrated its 22nd anniversary. Meryl and her dedicated staff of publicists work with authors, both new and established, to advance exposure of their books to a wider audience in traditional and unique ways. She is passionate about writers, and even more passionate about finding original and innovative directions to introduce them to new and larger communities of readers.

While about 43% of American kids and adolescents say they plan to start their own businesses, just 13% of adults in the US are engaged in entrepreneurial activities.

So what are the qualities of individuals whose entrepreneurial ambitions survive the transition to adulthood? 

Boston-based venture capital firm SV Life Sciences is working on its sixth fund, with a fundraising target of $400 million, according to a Form D filing on the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s website. The firm invests in biotech, medical devices, health IT and healthcare services.

In a phone interview, CFO Denise Marks told MedCity News the firm’s previous fund closed out in 2010 with $523 million. The initial target then was also $400 million. Although it’s done making initial deals with the fifth fund, it has a reserve for any follow-on deals for companies that haven’t yet exited, Marks said.

Image: https://www.flickr.com/photos/76657755@N04/6881485010

The new economy is a creative one, with knowledge workers increasingly powering innovation and growth. And while creativity is theoretically a limitless resource, a new study finds that a relatively narrow group of metros have emerged as winners in America’s creative economy—and discovers how much ground other metros must gain to catch up with them.

Image: https://www.flickr.com/photos/stemonx/15317064136/in/photolist-4ANPiQ-axTbcx-5i3Tcf-5kSF9J-pkvXwG-dvdbPz-5i3Ztm-cn6iVb-oPW8MD-acdTCm-5i3ZsG-cUgsgm-oQJsCz-snWptg-nWRxhj-eac2de-5nGKfK-bVBTqi-aEUSJ6-5kFxRz-9qQ2ss-iv7eDg-qR1kJQ-dkW7nx-oema92-nUViec-pp7Mv1-hRu

During the last twenty years, there have been many academics, politicians and policymakers (including yours truly) who have looked over to the innovation developed in Silicon Valley, California and wondered if we could ever emulate that success here in Wales.

Whilst the former First Minister Rhodri Morgan proposed only last week that South Wales could become the “UK’s answer to Silicon Valley”, he is not alone in the world with such a suggestion for his local area.

Image: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_San_Francisco,_California#/media/File:Southsanfrancisco.jpg

Regulatory incentives, like 21st Century Cures, while well-intentioned, actually have the reverse effect on medical innovation. Yet, we continue to see more and more of these programs, rather than what is truly needed – a serious root cause analysis of the dysfunction at the FDA, which cripples medical advances. Moreover, a system of evaluating new regulations relative to their effect on medical innovation is sorely needed. 

Oxfordshire has the most innovative economy in Britain, while areas such as Merseyside and Teesside outperform London and Manchester, according to the first “innovation map” of the UK. The findings by the Enterprise Research Centre (ERC) challenge the commonly held view that Britain is dependent on London for innovation and growth.