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.
“I like your creativity and where this is going, but…”
It doesn’t even matter what your boss says next—she’s already decided that your idea is awful. Your fate was sealed the moment she uttered ‘but.’ The praise before that dreaded conjunction does nothing to soften the blow. As the old adage goes, everything before the ‘but’ is BS.
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David Peebles works in a glass tower across from Houston’s Galleria mall, a cathedral of consumption, but his attention is focused on the city’s highly industrialized ship channel 30 miles away. “Houston is the Chicago of this era,” says Peebles, who runs the Texas office of Odebrecht, a $45 billion engineering firm based in Brazil. “In the sixties you had to go to Chicago, Cleveland and Detroit. Now Houston is the place for new industry.”
Image: http://www.freedigitalphotos.net
Top pharmaceuticals face a dilemma in that many blockbuster drugs are losing patent protection and existing pipelines may not compensate for lost revenues. The choice for many is layoffs, office closings, downsizing or to innovate with new products. Most companies will do the former if they must but prefer the latter. Rather than the megamergers that achieve big cost savings through layoffs and factory closings, most drug companies are aiming for transactions that grow their bottom line. In the last few years, this trend has resulted in a complex series of deals and transactions, ranging from complete buyouts to licensing transactions to a variety of collaborative arrangements.
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Nearly every debate about the “value” of a college degree is based on two questions: “Is college worth it?” and “Does someone with a degree earn more than someone without one?” Both of these questions come up year after year as headline fodder despite the fact that at a macro level, the answer to both of them is an unequivocal yes.
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Gerd Gigerenzer, director of the Max Planck Institute for Human Development, on how to know when simple rules and snap decisions will outperform analytical models. For more, read Risk Savvy: How to Make Good Decisions.
Analysts argue outdated infrastructure and home-rule laws -- as well as few successful private-public undertakings -- keep NJ from being a player
It may sound more trite than true, but "think globally, act locally" is an apt -- though oversimplified -- assessment of what New Jersey needs to do to thrive in what's being called the "innovation economy."
Image: http://www.njspotlight.com/ - The former Bell Labs office building in Holmdel, the largest empty office building in the world, has sat vacant since Alcatel-Lucent left eight years ago.
Mike Woods from Oscar-winning VFX company Framestore discusses the creative and technical issues to confront before entering the virtual world.
Virtual reality is here to stay. Facebook confirmed that with its mega purchase of Oculus. But now that the dust has settled, how do we educate brands, content creators, and marketers how to use it?
Image: Flickr user BagoGames
Hiring the right people is one of the most important parts of running a business. Think about it: Employees shoulder a lot of the responsibility for the success of their employers, so it pays to find someone who fits the bill from the very start.
But many companies just can’t seem to do it, with 46 percent of new hires “failing” within 18 months of landing a job.
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Why do some companies stay competitive, while others fall behind? The answer used to seem clear: great companies simply harness the best people, and invest in the most innovative ideas. Today, however, merely having great talent, ideas, and capital no longer works. Something has shifted. There is a new game.
A few years ago in this very publication I read a piece by Amity Shlaes (who was writing about the dour nature of her family) called Family Affair that stopped me in my tracks. She said:
(My father) gave the best career advice I’ve ever heard: There will come a moment when you are bored with an area of study and will want to try something new. But that boredom is the signal you’ve achieved mastery. You’ll be quitting at the moment when it’s most costly to do so. Only a mastered trade can be properly monetized.
I
t is easy to get taken in by the allure of entrepreneurship. People gravitate towards visions of eight-digit seed funding sums, several additional rounds of investments, and finally that glorious payout in the form of a billion dollar exit. They peruse tech blogs like ours and gaze wistfully at the gargantuan sums of capital being moved around between investors and startups. But if you dig deeper, you’ll see the other side of the coin.
Image: http://ventureburn.com/
The Nasdaq Biotechnology Index (NBI) has been on a wild ride in 2014 with a 20 percent gain in the first two months, a 24 percent drop from late February to mid-April, and a rebound of 16 percent off April lows by early June. This recent sell-off follows a 130 percent gain over the last three years and the debut of 100 biotech IPOs, leading some investors to ask if the recent sell-off is the start of a bubble bursting.
Image: http://www.biotech-now.org/
Are good entrepreneurs born that way, or can entrepreneurial skillsets can be learned over time. Let’s study which skillsets make for a good entrepreneur, and whether or not they can be taught.
High Intellect
Some people are naturally intelligent and have high IQ scores, while others struggle in this area (with a whole lot of people in between). I am not saying you need to be genius, to be successful as an entrepreneur, as many geniuses are very book smart, but not street smart. But, intelligence certainly goes a long way.
Earlier today I was talking with an entrepreneur that’s working on building a tech entrepreneurship center in his city. We talked about many of the lessons learned so far with the Atlanta Tech Village and drilled into several topics. At the end of the conversation I realized it would be good to summarize some of the best practices to share with others.
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There comes a time in every entrepreneur's journey when he or she needs to ask: Should I quit my day job and do this full time? For some of them, giving up the corporate life is an easy choice, but others need to weigh the pros and cons of keeping their steady source of income and benefits.
Image: http://www.freedigitalphotos.net
Entrepreneurship is not for the faint of heart. The only constants while striving as an entrepreneur are flexibility and instability, especially at the start-up phase. Many of those who choose this route have to wear so many hats all at once, it may prove to be too exhausting. You may have to serve as the founder, president, secretary, accountant, business developer, marketing manager, publicist and sometimes attorney (which I personally do NOT advise) at the same time, while seeking to make a name for yourself and your company, and while also trying to seek investor and raise money. Despite the many challenges associated with starting and running your own business, many people still decide to take this route because their passion for the products and services they are providing is just too strong to ignore.
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Speech recognition has gotten sophisticated, but spoken words aren’t the only revealing noises people make. We also cough, laugh, grunt, grind teeth, breathe hard, and make other sounds that can provide clues to mood and health.
Image: Good listener: This prototype piezoelectric detector attaches to a person’s head, behind the ear, and picks up body noises like chewing and laughing.
The elaborate records kept by the US Patent Office since 1790 are allowing researchers to study the nature of invention and how it has changed in 200 years.
One way to think about invention is as a process that combines technologies to fulfill some human need or purpose. In other words, inventions never come out of nowhere. They always build on earlier advances to create something new.
Image: http://www.technologyreview.com/
TORONTO - Cisco Canada plans to invest $150 million over 10 years in a variety of Canadian startup companies, technology development incubators and new technologies that it thinks have the potential to affect the global market.
Cisco Canada's president Nitin Kawale said Canada has many innovative entrepreneurs but that there is a lack of funds and expertise to turn their ideas into commercial products.
If you’re not using online video to market your small business or brand, you’re likely missing out on a lot of traffic. And now is probably a good time to get started. A new study from Cisco, the company’s VNI Global IP Traffic and Service Adoption Forecasts, 2013–2018, reveals this. The study says that by 2018, 79 percent of all Internet traffic will be video-related. That’s an increase from the 66 percent share that video traffic claims today.
Image: http://smallbiztrends.com/
