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.
FORGET THE FREE FOOD AND PERKS--YOUR NEW HIRES AREN'T AS SHALLOW AS YOU MIGHT THINK. THEY CARE MORE ABOUT EFFECTIVE JOB TRAINING AND CLEAR GUIDELINES, AND IT'S TIME YOU PROVIDE THAT FOR THEM.
Imagine you’ve just hired a new employee and it’s their first day on the job.
You have everything in place for them before they arrive, including a clever employee handbook, their desk arrangement and new equipment, and a good idea of what their responsibilities will be.
Image: http://www.fastcompany.com/
Walking is an extraordinary feat of biomechanical engineering. Every step requires balance and the ability to adapt to instability in a split second. It requires quickly adjusting where your foot will land and calculating how much force to apply to change direction suddenly. No wonder, then, that until now robots have not been very good at it.
Image: http://www.technologyreview.com
Last year investments in big data dominated health IT deals as 112 deals attracted $712 million in investments, according to a new report by StartUp Health assessing digital health investment trends in 2013 and the start of this year. But in a trend that’s likely to continue this year, sectors that saw the most growth tended to fall into one of two areas. Patient engagement had a 410 percent boost in deal flow, followed by sensors and vital-sign monitoring which showed a 243 percent rise.
Image: http://medcitynews.com
MedStar Health will become the final founding partner of the 1776 tech incubator in Washington, with clinicians and administrators with the Columbia-based health system having a "significant presence" in the incubator to work alongside startups working in the health care arena.
Image: http://www.bizjournals.com - MedStar Health recently became the final founding partner in tech incubator 1776.
FOLLOWERS ARE MUCH-MALIGNED, BUT WE'RE ALL FOLLOWERS IN SOME AREAS OF OUR LIVES. AND IN THAT ROLE, WE CAN LEARN SOME IMPORTANT SKILLS THAT MAKE US BETTER LEADERS.
The relationship between leaders and followers seems pretty straightforward: Leaders lead. Followers follow.
Image: https://www.flickr.com/photos/26503922@N08/6448104633
If you want to get top results and become a leader with a great reputation, then building loyalty amongst staff is a must.
Some managers and leaders try to do this by force, holding back career progression and trying to make employees feel that there are no other options for them. While this may make them stay in your team, all is does is dishearten and disempower them, and eventually they will leave. Even if they don’t, their performance will slowly deteriorate over time.
image: http://www.freedigitalphotos.net
I’m starting a time of year when I will be travelling to key conferences that I’m really looking forward to attending. I have learned over the years that preparation, organization and flexibility greatly enhance my conference time and experience.
Conferences can be very productive and fun or totally overwhelming and a drain depending on those factors. The investment of time, travel and energy required to go to conferences, makes it more important to be prepared before you go so that you’re not scrambling at the last minute or worse yet – while you are there.
image: http://www.freedigitalphotos.net
There is something you must always remember. You are braver than you believe, stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think. – Winnie the Pooh
Leading an innovation culture can be a messy business. Or, maybe that should be: Leading an innovation business can be a messy culture. However the notion is phrased, the point is the same. Innovation is not a tidy process.
A startup called Ultrahaptics aims to make gesture control and virtual reality more engaging by using ultrasound waves to let you feel like you’re touching virtual objects and surfaces with your bare hands.
Image Courtesy of Praisaeng / FreeDigitalPhotos.net
A series of breakthroughs in cloning technology over the last year and a half are stoking hopes that cells could be used as treatments for patients with chronic, debilitating diseases such as diabetes and Parkinson’s.
In January 2013, researchers at the Oregon Health and Science University reported that they had successfully created embryonic stem cells from a human embryo formed when the nucleus of one person’s cell was transferred into another person’s egg that had its original nucleus removed (see “Human Embryonic Stem Cells Cloned”). That was the first time stem cells had been made from such a cloned embryo, and the advance provides a potential route by which scientists could create various kinds of replacement cells based on a patient’s own genome.
Image: http://www.technologyreview.com - Healthy bloom: Insulin, shown in red, is being produced by cells that started as embryonic stem cells derived from a patient with type 1 diabetes.
He joins us now from sanford.
This class is called the art of the start.
What exactly are you teaching?
We are teaching how to start a company.
This is a very positive entrepreneur environment because the fact is you need -- starter companies are much cheaper.
image: http://www.freedigitalphotos.net
Downtown Las Vegas has a new investor. Well, sorta new. The Mill, a branch of the Vegas Tech Fund, opened up shop in January and is funding entrepreneurs in the earliest stages of developing their businesses.
“We want to help make Las Vegas a hub for entrepreneurs,” says Sara Vainer, who heads up the fund. “One of the ways to do that is to lower barriers (so that) entrepreneurs don’t have to drop their day jobs.”
image: http://www.freedigitalphotos.netÂ
One tends to forget, but 25 years ago things were really different. Your phone and computer—if you had one—were just tools, no more or less sexy than a filing cabinet. There was also no such thing in America as a real café, a place where you could work or just relax, and be welcome either way. And the idea of a store that could sell you virtually anything you could imagine as you sat at home was science fiction. Then came Apple. And Starbucks. And Amazon.
Image: AP In 1997 Steve Jobs, Apple's acting chief executive, announced that the company--buoyed by cost-cutting and strong demand for its new computers--surprised Wall Street by once again showing profitability.
Do you have a great idea you want to manifest, but... er... uh... um... just can't seem to get things rolling? Chances are good your reasons why are on the list below. No problem. Join the club. Without making yourself wrong, simply note the ones that show up the most for you, then try the simple "go beyond excuses" exercise at the end of the list. Hey, it's time to get unstuck...
image: http://www.freedigitalphotos.net
Current Marketing strategies consist of content marketing, social media marketing, and the like, but here’s a marketing tactic you might not have thought of. Write a book! Don’t consider yourself a writer? Don’t let that discourage you. You don’t have to have a degree in journalism or even a blog with hundreds of posts to put together a book to market your business. You are the expert in your niche; and writing about it, should come easy to anyone with passion and determination. A mentor once told me that you don’t have to be the best writer to gain an audience. You don’t have to agonize over each and every word. The most important thing about being a writer is offering valuable content in a way that your readers can understand and relate.
image: http://www.freedigitalphotos.net
There’s a great deal of focus on iPhone sales trends in North America and Europe, particularly from the tech blogger echo-chamber. That’s understandable, given that most of these writers and websites are based in the US, but increasingly the Apple iPhone is becoming an emerging market story. In the most recent (second) quarter, Apple reported a “new all-time record for total iPhone sales in the BRIC countries”. Bloomberg suggests that in the overall smartphone market, the four BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India and China) account for more sales than all other emerging markets combined. Or, in fact, developed markets. That’s incredible.
image: http://www.freedigitalphotos.net
Older people are increasingly going online, in part thanks to tablets, according to the U.K. telecommunications regulator. In one of its periodical media use reports, Ofcom noted on Tuesday that 42 percent of those aged over 65 accessed the web in 2013, up from 33 percent in 2012. The regulator linked this with an increase in tablet usage within the 65-74 demographic from 5 percent to 17 percent — I would assume that those older users who are less tech-friendly find tablets simpler to use and easier to maintain than full-blown PCs. More generally, the proportion of adults accessing the internet through a tablet jumped from 16 percent to 30 percent between 2012 and 2013.
Image Courtesy of bplanet / FreeDigitalPhotos.net
The negative descriptive words that come to mind when I think of Silicon Valley are: arrogance, pretentious, greed, overcrowded, overvalued, and stressful. I have some positive words too, but this topic is centered on the negative. Here's a very personal take on the subject...
My wife and I grew up there and spent most of our adult lives in and around San Jose. Having worked in the tech industry in the late 90's early 00's, mostly for a great little start-up company, I had a lot of fun and fully embraced that "cool" Bay Area vibe. My wife worked for a few tech start-ups as well. I still consider myself to be an entrepreneur and still know many people with that same spirit who live there. We moved out to Denver for several years and have since moved to the Roseville/Sacramento area and visit the Bay Area often.
Image: http://www.freedigitalphotos.net
A DESIGNER CLAIMS THAT HIS CONCEPT FOR A 3-D PRINTED CAST WOULD SHORTEN THE BONE-HEALING PROCESS NEARLY 40%. WE ASK HAND SURGEON MICHAEL HAUSMAN TO WEIGH IN.
199 TWEET 902 LIKE 49 SHARE In the near future, having a broken arm could look way cooler thanks to a new, black, lightweight 3-D printed cast that's patterned like latticework and which uses an ultrasound device to make bones heal more quickly. Designed by Turkish industrial designer Deniz Karasahin, the Osteoid Medical cast recently won the A’Design Award in the 3-D Printed Forms and Products Design category.
Image: http://www.fastcodesign.com
As the recovery from the Great Recession stretches into its fifth year, the locus of economic momentum has shifted. In the early years of the recession, the cities that created the most jobs — sometimes the only ones — were either government- or military-dominated (Washington, D.C.; Kileen-Temple-Fort Hood, Texas), or were powered by the energy boom in Texas, Oklahoma and the northern Great Plains.
Image: http://www.newgeography.com
