The new U.S.-Canada council on women in business, unveiled at Justin Trudeau’s first meeting with Donald Trump last month, has been dismissed by some as little more than a symbolic photo op. But that’s a mistake. Symbols matter. The creation of a group of leading businesswomen to champion the cause of female entrepreneurs is a powerful signal. It has sparked renewed energy among those of us who believe that the best way to change workplace culture is to support women in founding their own businesses — after all, there are no glass ceilings in a company you’ve built yourself.

Image: Michelle McBane is an investment director at MaRS IAF, and has set up a fund to invest in women-led startups. - https://medium.com

Google. Apple. Dropbox. Twitter. If anyone has had a hand in helping build phenomenal teams at powerhouse companies in their prime, it’s Kim Scott. At one point in her career, she admits she thought she was one of the best people in the world at creating amazing teams. That was, until an executive at Apple showed her how she’d been systematically undervaluing some of the most important people on her teams throughout her career. Even worse, she’d not been living in accordance with her own personal humanity.

For many companies, their supply chain is their business—so critical that even small increases in efficiency can produce major earnings gains. How much more efficient could digitization make your supply chain?

4.1% — Annual increases in supply chain efficiency thanks to digitization.

If these results peak your interest, then the featured article in this month’s IT Foresight, Industry 4.0: How digitization makes the supply chain more efficient, agile, and customer-focused, will provide you with information on how you can achieve similar results.

For the first time at SXSW, a series of panel discussions in the health track zoomed in on cancer — Connect to End Cancer. The themes that dominated tended to be the role of technology such as telemedicine and data from connected devices, the role of 5G technology and technology’s shortcomings. But concerns over what Trump’s FDA nominee will do with the FDA cast a long shadow over parts of the discussion.

For industries that depend on innovation, sustaining it is a constant challenge. This is particularly the case in biopharmaceuticals, where turning molecules into medicines is notoriously fraught with risk, and failure.

When one of us (Vivek) and his team launched Roivant Sciences in 2014 and began developing treatments for Alzheimer’s disease — they were determined to learn from the pharma industry’s innovation issues and build a more sustainable innovation engine. After extensive assessment, they settled on two initiatives: realigning incentives for employees and systematically introducing outside talent and practices.

When I started my etiquette business 20 years ago, I hired a college student named Ed to design my logo and website. It was a quick, easy and inexpensive way to get my name out into the world. However, when it came time to update my materials, Ed was nowhere to be found. He left town and did not provide me with his new contact information. I ended up hiring a more expensive and reputable company to design all of my marketing materials and it made all the difference in the world. Even today, my website is my number one marketing tool. It establishes me as "The Etiquette Expert." It's my brand.

Bill Schmidt, Managing Partner of Cultivation Capital’s Life Science Fund, is optimistic about the future of Life Science investment in St. Louis. He said, “More capital is flowing in St. Louis, with us, BioGenerator, RiverVest Venture Partners, Lewis & Clark Ventures, Ascension Ventures, iSelect Fund, St. Louis Arch Angels, Missouri Technology Corporation, and others. And, we are starting to get attention from upmarket VC firms on the coasts, which is great, as our companies are going to need it.”

Cultivation Capital’s Life Sciences fund invests in early-stage companies, primarily in the therapeutics, diagnostics, research tools and reagents, medical devices, and healthcare information technology verticals. 

The latest Innovation Leaders research shows that there is an increasing number of high-growth companies that are prepared to take greater risk and make big bets. Rather than focus just on incremental growth, they are being bolder and are seeking to develop more radical innovation opportunities. Despite requiring significant investment and offering no guarantee of success this approach has been transformational for some. Where and why is this happening and what has changed that has made this approach more common?

For most of us, yo-yos are those toys from our childhood that we played with for approximately five minutes before the string got so infernally tangled that we could never play with it again.

But there are a select few magical people who have mastered the yoyo. Those people go to the European Yo-Yo Championship to compete for a chance to make it to the World Yo-Yo Contest.

Pittsburgh technology startups bucked a national trend by attracting more venture capital investment in 2016.

Funding for Pittsburgh-area companies from venture capital firms increased 8 percent in 2016, jumping from $217.4 million in 2015 to $235.1 million, according to a report by Innovation Works and Ernst & Young released Tuesday.

Nationally, venture financing dropped 32 percent in 2016, falling from $77.3 billion in 2015 to $52.3 billion.

Image: http://triblive.com

The longtime leader of the UND Center for Innovation will retire April 30, he announced Tuesday.

Bruce Gjovig, the center’s CEO and entrepreneur coach, is leaving after 33 years with the facility.

“I am in great health and have lots of energy so retirement presents an opportunity to do new things that are innovative, entrepreneurial and interesting,” Gjovig said. “I have been living the entrepreneur life working 60 to 80 hours per week for years, so this may also offer me the chance to do other interesting work as well as travel and socialize more.”

Image: http://www.grandforksherald.com

With the New Year well and truly upon us, expansion plans for 2017 may be on the minds of many startup founders.

But growth requires funding, and funding requires convincing someone to hand over their hard-earned capital. Even an idea that puts Facebook to shame won’t attract funding if its commercialisation can’t be explained in a simple, compelling, and realistic manner.

And the reality is that your average angel investor probably receives hundreds of startup pitches every single year. These are often from hopeful entrepreneurs who have interesting ideas with at least some commercial potential.

AUSTIN, Texas — For a generation of school kids, Bill Nye is zany and fun-loving, “America’s favorite scientist.’’

A mostly flattering new documentary about the science educator, author, and mechanical engineer, which premiered here Sunday at the South by Southwest festival, chronicles how Nye drew inspiration from Carl Sagan as well as how he sparred with creationists and climate change deniers.

Energy companies and analysts spend a lot of time gazing into metaphorical crystal balls. Oil investments can cost billions, for example; investors, for their part, want to place winning bets.  McKinsey has its own in-house seer, a think-tank known as the McKinsey Global Institute, which recently came out with a big report on a big subject:  the future of global resources.

Image: photo credit: National Science Foundation

Region’s most active pre-seed fund has helped startups create nearly 1,000 jobs since 2007 Four local startups will receive a combined $175,000 from Innovation Fund Northeast Ohio, the region’s most active pre-seed fund for technology startups. The companies will use awards between $25,000 and $100,000 to complete specific projects that will bring their technologies closer to market, preparing them to raise more funding, launch new products, and create jobs.

With the new investments, the Innovation Fund has awarded $11.7 million to 178 local technology startups since it started accepting applications in July 2007.

You thought the Shark Tank was tough? The second annual BioHealth Capital Region Crab Trap is now accepting applications!

Submit your application for a chance to be named the company with the most commercial potential at the BioHealth Capital Region Forum.

Deadline for entries is March 31st - Finalists will be announced by April 7th

TechStars rejects 98% of all applications.

Is there a strategy for raising your odds of getting into TechStars?

The short answer is yes.

Watch this 1 minute 22 second video on how Nevin Shetty, CEO of Blueprint Registry, bootstrapped to validation, traction in fact, before applying.

Image: http://www.sramanamitra.com

Tucson, AZ, March 14, 2017 – The Association of University Research Parks (AURP) announced today that Carol Stewart has been appointed as its Chief Executive Officer. Ms. Stewart is an experienced research park leader with a more than 25-year career serving the academic/not-for-profit sector, as well as the high-tech industry in Waterloo region located in Ontario, Canada. In addition to Ms. Stewart’s appointment, AURP formally announced its 2017 Board of Directors and executive officers.

Considering how Germany anchors a European continent plagued by high unemployment and slow growth, its labor market is on fire. The number of unemployed has been halved over the past decade. With just 2.6 million people out of work, the German unemployment rate has declined to 5.9%. The country’s exports reached nearly $1.3 trillion in 2016. That’s roughly, and remarkably, half of Germany’s GDP, amounting to about 9% of world exports that year.

Digitization is transforming how companies in every industry go to market, interact with customers, and carry out their operations. The digital transformation required, however, is complex, time consuming, and expensive, and it affects every aspect of the enterprise. So it’s essential that companies actively plan and monitor their digital investments in order to get their money’s worth out of the effort.