In today’s digital world, succeeding as an entrepreneur means building a visible, impactful social brand. A personal brand is defined as attaching monetary value to a person as opposed to a business, service or product. When an entrepreneur’s personal brand is adequately developed, it spells true thought leadership. Compound that with social media marketing, and that personal brand becomes influential. 

Jeff Bezos runs Amazon in Day 1. He works in a building named Day 1. And he works with a Day 1 mindset.

For Bezos every day is Day 1. And he obsessively acts to ensure that Amazon and all of its employees are right there with him in Day 1.

Day 1 companies are entrepreneurial companies no matter how big they get. They’re always looking up. Everything they do is aimed at continually working to realize their full potential. Full potential which they can never reach because as they aim higher and higher and achieve goal after goal their potential increases even faster than they grow.

ANN ARBOR, Mich.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--

At its annual meeting, Ann Arbor SPARK honored leading regional businesses and released its annual report as well as an economic benchmarking report. The annual meeting also featured a keynote address by author and thought leader Richard Florida as well as presentation of Ann Arbor SPARK’s annual FastTrack awards.

“Our annual meeting has become a signature networking event and celebration of our ever evolving and growing economy,” said Paul Krutko, president and CEO of Ann Arbor SPARK. “Ann Arbor rightfully attracts global attention:

Fall 1996. A young Chris Fralic is selling software for Oracle. He’s not sure what he wants to do next, but he’s always been curious about venture capital. And then some unusual magic happens — a friend offers to introduce him to Kevin Compton, a vaunted name in VC. To his surprise, they talk on the phone for over an hour, and Fralic not only walks away with a comprehensive download on the industry, but a thesis on networking he’s adhered to ever since: The best way to be highly influential is to be human to everyone you meet.

This month, employees at Apple began moving into the company's gargantuan new headquarters in Cupertino, Calif. Nicknamed the "spaceship," the ring-shaped building cost an estimated $5 billion, the most expensive office building in history. And with 2.8 million square feet of office space and 11,000 parking spaces, it's one of the biggest.

But to many people, the Apple spaceship -- like similar Silicon Valley headquarters for Facebook and Google -- typifies the biggest challenges of the new tech economy in the San Francisco Bay Area: Massive, isolated corporate campuses plopped down in the 'burbs, which drive up housing costs and force many workers to endure hours-long commutes.

Image: A rendering of the Apple "spaceship." (FlickrCC/Forgemind ArchiMedia) 

I am constantly speaking with entrepreneurs, and they all seem to share the same obstacle: securing funding. Sometimes, bootstrapping isn’t a viable option and traditional lenders won’t approve a business loan, resulting in the need for venture capital (VC) money.

Reality check: Less than one percent of U.S. companies have raised capital from VCs. VC money is essentially unicorn money. 

The first 100 days are usually the honeymoon period for any new CEO to make their mark and get others on board. However, for Airbus CEO Christian Streiff, it was just a brief window before his abrupt departure from the European aircraft company that’s part of the EADS consortium, along with DiamlerChrysler and Aerospatiale-Matra.

Streiff’s drive to speed up decision-making, overcome bureaucracy, and deliver rapid execution, exposed historic and deep divisions between executives at the consortium. There were reports of internecine feuding at Airbus:

Local business leaders, elected officials, scientists and scholars attended the 2017 BioHealth Capital Region Forum at the campus of MedImmune in Gaithersburg on April 19 and 20th. The forum focuses on the biotechnology cluster in Maryland, Virginia, and Washington, D.C., which is working collaboratively to become a top three biotech hub in the United States by 2023.

John Trainer, vice president for partnering and strategy at MedImmune, said attendance at the annual conference has doubled.

Image: http://www.mymcmedia.org 

The University of Louisville has started a new crowdfunding platform to help support the endeavors of faculty and staff.

The program — called Elevate — launched today, and you can get more information by clicking here.

The platform features noteworthy university initiatives and enables the community to engage with and support projects that are meaningful to them, according to a news release. Elevate also gives students, faculty and staff an opportunity to share their stories and impact their respective areas.

Image: http://www.bizjournals.com/ 

Developed by ‘GEN Corporation,’ the ‘GEN H-4’ is a personal helicopter that's steered using a control bar. It reaches speeds up to 55 mph, and can fly for up to an hour.

Image: http://mashable.com - From video.

MONTRÉAL, April 24, 2017 /CNW Telbec/ - What if researchers, physicians, engineers, patients, students, equipment vendors, and public health system stakeholders all worked together to devise the medical technologies of tomorrow? That is the founding vision behind the TransMedTech Institute, created by Polytechnique Montréal, Université de Montréal, Centre hospitalier universitaire Sainte-Justine, Centre hospitalier de l'Université de Montréal, the Jewish General Hospital of Montreal, and several academic, government, socio-economic and industrial partners, and inaugurated today at CHU Sainte-Justine.

Corporate innovation is often talked about, but when it comes to pushing innovation alongside the entrepreneur and startup communities, Canadian firms are decidedly lacking, according to the Business Development Bank of Canada (BDC).

While Canada has all the elements to be an innovation nation, including high-quality research and an active national network of incubators, accelerators and startups, corporate R&D spending in Canada is less than half the average rate of other OECD countries, says Michael Denham, BDC president and CEO.

I know entrepreneurs who have suffered from premature execution often associated with the ready-fire-aim quick-to-market approach. Yet I believe that many more have benefited from this approach, especially in early startup stages. If your product is highly innovative, and speed to market is critical, you won’t get it right the first time anyway, no matter how cautiously you plan.

The process of taking a technology from laboratory to market — a gap so fraught with pitfalls that some have dubbed it the ‘Valley of Death’ — is daunting to many academics who have no prior business experience.

In Singapore, help is at hand: The Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology (SMART) Innovation Centre is one of several institutions working with researchers to help them navigate the jump between an academic environment and the marketplace.

March 27, 2017 – All the talk of digital disruption turning incumbents into dinosaurs and unicorns into masters of entirely new domains might lead you to think this is already an old narrative—so 2016. In fact, digitization has barely started, and so has the accompanying upheaval.

Digital technologies and processes have penetrated only about 35% of the way into the average industry, meaning that merely a third of a typical company’s products and operations that could be digitized have been. Yet the impact has already been dramatic: Globally, digital disruption is shaving 45% off incumbent companies’ revenue growth and 35% off their earnings before interest and taxes (EBIT).

Out of five startup companies selected to present in front of a panel of industry leaders at the 2017 BioHealth Capital Region Forum, LifeSprout was chosen to have the most commercial potential at the 2nd Annual Crab Trap Competition.This year the event was moderated by BHI President & CEO, Rich Bendis. Judges included industry leaders from Verily Life Systems, Roche, Inova Strategic Investments, New Enterprise Associates, AstraZeneca, and Blu Venture Investors. LifeSprout impressed judges with a presentation by Kevin Colbert, Director of Operations, on their next-generation of synthetic soft tissue substitutes for aesthetic and reconstructive medicine. Their first-in-class bioresorbable, nanofiber-hydrogel composites are formulated to match the stiffness of native soft tissues without compromising their porosity.  LifeSprout is a Johns Hopkins University startup.

Greater Washington is so much more than a political “swamp.”

But that's the label a group of life science companies and nonprofits — led by Gaithersburg-based MedImmune — said Wednesday they are still fighting against as they try to sell the year-old BioHealth Capital Region brand.

Immunomic Therapeutics, Inc. (ITI), a privately held, Maryland-based biotechnology company, is pleased to announce the winner of their Cancer Discovery Incubator Award, Midissia Therapeutics (Midissia). Midissia is a clinical stage immunotherapy start-up focused on immune intensification.

Currently, Midissia is based in San Francisco and incorporated in Delaware. Immunomic Therapeutics’ Cancer Discovery Incubator will provide Midissia with the opportunity to develop a proof-of-concept experiment in the Immunomic laboratories. Additionally, Midissia will receive funding, lab equipment and a unique mentorship with the Immunomic executive team for one year.

The Maryland Life Sciences Advisory Board (LSAB) today announced a series of strategic recommendations to grow Maryland’s biohealth industry and position the state as a globally recognized Top 3 U.S. BioHealth Innovation Hub by 2023. Maryland is currently one of the most asset-rich states for biohealth in the nation, and is home to top federal agencies, like the National Institutes for Health, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, and the National Cancer Institute; key federal research labs and world-class higher education institutions; and a confluence of more than 500 biohealth companies.