AngelList started as a website for investors looking to connect with fledgling startups and vice versa. Now, three years later, it increasingly looks like an indispensable part of the startup scene—and in recent months it has introduced new features that could give it an even more central role.

The site—a hybrid with functions similar to those of Craigslist, Match.com, and LinkedIn—has become a daily destination for wealthy “angel” and other early-stage investors, as well as for startup companies busy raising funds. Registered investors can see which companies are raising money, follow their updates, view endorsements, and ask for introductions. The platform still favors startups with some reputation—the AngelList team picks companies to feature—but putting this information on the Internet opened up the very early-stage fund-raising process beyond Silicon Valley’s insider realms (see “Venture Capital, Disrupted.”)

Innovation, mobile, tech and startups. These are Africa’s buzzwords. A continent that arrived late to the web revolution, Africa is catching up fast and leading the way in some aspects.

The continent is working overtime to build and create products, services and businesses that can rival that of the developed world. It is no longer the dark continent. According to a Daily Beast report, Africa is being heralded as the “new Asia” and the “home of the next Google”.

Mark Cuban is an investor in many startups. But there's a sure way not to get his money. Recently, a founder who collected money from another billionaire, Peter Thiel, wrote an email to Cuban with the subject line:  "Peter Thiel invested so you're lucky I'm emailing you." Cuban was dumbfounded by the arrogance.

Charleston, West Virginia-based BrickStreet Foundation has presented the West Virginia University College of Business and Economics with a $3 million gift, the largest corporate gift in the College’s history.

The gift creates the BrickStreet Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship, a financial commitment that will allow the College of Business and Economics to sustain its current programming and expand entrepreneurship education throughout West Virginia.

Business, or at least its study, is apparently booming at Mississippi State University.

MSU’s College of Business boasts about 2,700 students, its dean Sharon L. Oswald told Starkville Rotary Cub Monday at Starkville Country Club, and the college’s impact ranges from cranking out entrepreneurs that build their businesses in state to providing a strong outreach program that partners with company’s nationwide.

Oswald said the college had leaned heavily recently on promoting entrepreneurship, committing $60,000 in seed money this year for winners of the college’s entrepreneurship competition set for the first week in April.

The University of Notre Dame has established a $3.5 million program to help fund student-led entrepreneurship

The school says investments from the Irish Innovation Fund will be determined on an annual basis through a formal proposal and review process. Business plans will be accepted from any undergraduate or graduate student enrolled in the university and will be reviewed by the Engineering, Science, Technology and Entrepreneurship Excellence master's program.

DOES MANUFACTURING HAVE A FUTURE IN THE U.S.? A TWO-YEAR-LONG STUDY SUGGESTS IT DOES--ESPECIALLY IF COMPANIES WORK TOGETHER.

It’s been two years since a group of 21 scientists from MIT announced the creation of Production in the Innovation Economy (better known by the delicious acronym PIE), an initiative designed to reveal how manufacturing and innovation relate to each other in America. On Thursday, the group released its long-awaited report, and it couldn’t have come at a better time. With Obama calling for more funding for manufacturing innovation, there’s plenty of momentum behind those who make things in the U.S. But there isn’t much hard data, which is exactly what MIT is offering.

Small business and entrepreneurial conferences offer many benefits, including exclusive seminars, networking opportunities, and even product discounts. Regardless of where you may be in your project there is likely a 2013 conference to match you needs.

You Want to Grow Your Business

If you’re a small business owner that needs motivation on growing your brand to its true potential, consider The Small Business Summit in NYC. This conference, held in May, touches on everything from marketing to business technology. Case studies, keynote speakers, and panels are a few of the teaching methods used. If you yearn to not only learn more about growing your business, but also connect with fellow owners who may be facing similar challenges, this is the conference for you.

One frequent criticism of the Obama administration’s welcome conviction on economic regionalism—epitomized by its programs to stimulate regional industry clusters with small matching grants usually in the $1 million to $2 million range—is that it remains small bore. 

It’s true that the enormity of the nation’s economic problems calls for large-scale interventions that transcend the marginal.  After all, as we at the Metro Program keep stressing, the nation has a lot of work to do to reorient a drifting U.S. economy beyond consumption and more toward innovation, production, and exports. So no wonder we and others have hankered for more heft in Washington’s economic responses. Surely, for that matter, the desire for more weighty action explains part of the interest that has been generated by the administration’s $1 billion proposal (talked up in the State of the Union address) to create a network of 15 institutes for manufacturing innovation around the nation.

Faster, faster, faster—it seems the only constant in our lives is ever more rapid and seemingly disruptive change. Entire industries can vanish in just a few years, supplanted by new technologies or overrun by global competitors, and taking jobs, economic security and hopes and dreams with them. More and more, economic events half a world away have direct and often unanticipated effects that reverberate across Iowa, the Midwest, and the Great Plains. We are in the American heartland, but our economic ties extend around the world.

In this hyperconnected, frenetic world, how do we create and retain high-paying, rewarding jobs for Iowans? How do we ensure the global competitiveness of our local companies, large and small? Most importantly, how do we create an economically attractive future for our children and grandchildren?

GlaxoSmithKline encountered some stiff industry headwinds when it pledged to open up its data vault to outside investigators. But as of today it has a high-profile convert on its side. The biopharma giant Roche ($RHHBY) has agreed to follow in GSK's ($GSK) footsteps, saying that it will work with an independent group which will be charged with sorting out and approving requests for access to anonymized clinical trial data for all approved products. If regulators can't provide the data, says Roche, then the company will make it available.

"We understand and support calls for our industry to be more transparent about clinical trial data with the aim of meeting the best interests of patients and medicine," said Daniel O'Day, chief operating officer of Roche Pharma. "At the same time, we firmly believe that health authorities need to remain the gatekeeper for drug assessment and approval. We believe we have found a way in which patient data can be provided to third party researchers in a legitimate environment that ensures patient confidentiality and avoids the risk of publishing misleading results or giving rise to public health scares and consequences."

Puzzling figures – numbers cited as averages - in the angel investing infographic published by VentureBeat (and perhaps others):

"$90,000 AVERAGE ANGEL INVESTOR ANNUAL INCOME" "$750,000 AVERAGE ANGEL INVESTOR NET WORTH"

The numbers fail to clear either bar set by the accredited investor definition: $200,000 in annual income, or $1 million (of late, not including the value of the principal residence) in net worth.

If the $90,000 figure for average income is to be believed, then the angels in that pool must be exceeding the net worth threshold. But if the average angel net worth is $750,000, then the angels in that pool must be exceeding the $200,000 in annual income (or $300,000 in combination with your spouse) threshold.

This live infographic dynamically shows the number of pending patent expirations by year for the next ten years.

For more infographics, see the DrugPatentWatch Pharmaceutical Innovation Infographics.

If you’re trying to understand how existing intellectual property law applies to 3D printing, let me save you some time: It’s a complete mess.

From top to bottom, 3D printing raises more legal questions than it answers. There are lots of companies making 3D printing hardware, even more companies offering online repositories of 3D designs, plenty of services that will print things for you, and almost zero precedent for disputes among them. From a legal standpoint, 3D printing is the Wild West.

While that may sound liberating for such a young industry, it’s also potentially dangerous. There’s a very real chance that the lack of any regulation could be replaced with bad regulation. And that could have some dire effects on the whole industry.

We are excited to announce that the Hon. Gary Goodyear will be joining us for the 12th Annual RE$EARCH MONEY Conference. Minister Goodyear joins an exciting lineup of speakers including Tom Jenkins (Executive Chairman & Chief Strategy Officer, OpenText™ Corporation), Jayson Myers (President & CEO, Canadian Manufacturers & Exporters), Lanis Anthony (Chief Entrepreneurial Officer, CCINC Group of Companies), Ted Hewitt (Executive Vice-President, SSHRC), Helen Braiter (Director, Canadian Innovation Commercialization Program) and Darrell Bricker (Chief Executive Officer, Ipsos Global Public Affairs). 

Artists Mathieu Goussin and Hortense Le Calvez create innovative underwater sculptures out of jeans, streamers, and lawn chairs--to remind us that stuff doesn’t belong down there. 1 Comments

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A lot of environmentally conscious folks prefer to cut each plastic ring from their disposed-of six-packs. While the thought behind this act is certainly commendable--an effort not to entangle any fish that swim within bubbling distance of these sea shackles--it connotes a certain inevitability that is unsettling: the idea that all trash winds up in the ocean. Clearly sympathetic to the cause, scuba diving artists Mathieu Goussin and Hortense Le Calvez are making art to caution against this eventuality.

The world's most productive and successful people aren't superhuman. The biggest thing that separates superachievers from everyone else, says Camille Sweeney, co-author of The Art of Doing: How Superachievers Do What They Do And How They Do It So Well, is that they have found a way to overcome failure.  "Every successful person, just like everyone else on the planet, is going to meet with failure," says her husband and co-author Josh Gosfield. "Instead of blaming everything on employees, the weather, the state of the economy, they take a merciless clear look at their own assumptions and biases (which allows) them to revinvent themselves."

Seven Applied Research applicants were awarded $1,353,669 by the governing board of the Oklahoma Center for the Advancement of Science and Technology (OCAST). The award winners were chosen from a field of 39.

OCAST administers funds through the Oklahoma Applied Research Support (OARS) program. Proximity to commercialization and good science are the primary standards used to choose the top applicants who represent a long-term effort by the state of Oklahoma to encourage technology-based economic development.

Singapore is strangled with vegetation. Walking around the Asian city-state, the greenery is so abundant that it’s easy to forget you’re in a densely populated metropolis of 5.3 million people in an area smaller than Charlotte, N.C. Tall trees form canopies along roadways and their branches thread through narrow gaps between highway ramps and overpasses. Palm trees cluster everywhere, and exotic ferns and flowering plants adorn the exteriors of office complexes, government ministries and the ubiquitous public housing high-rises that are home to 80 percent of the citizenry. Median strips brim with lush green hues of carefully maintained flora. Rising above the downtown jungle are still more trees, these of an otherworldly height. They’re 18 man-made “supertrees,” some 50 meters tall, erected by the city last year as part of a new downtown development. The metal-frame sculptures are hung with vertical gardens, mimicking the fronds and blooms below. They’re futuristic and bold: a perfect encapsulation of the Singapore of the moment.