Happy Independence Day from the Innovation America Team!

LinkedIn. It’s a powerful platform that connects you with millions of professionals across the globe. Blah, blah, blah. Sure, that’s amazing and all—but, it’s not even close to my favorite part about this networking tool.

What’s the very best thing about LinkedIn? You already know the answer. It’s easy: The fact that with just one click of a button you can see exactly who’s been creepin’ on you at any given point in time. And nothing makes me transform into Nancy Drew faster than when someone anonymous takes a gander at my perfectly quantified bullet points.

The one thing that’s for sure is that nobody knows how Brexit will play out.

The United Kingdom voted to leave the European Union last week and there’s been a panic ever since about what sort of effect this could have. One question that’s persisted is whether or not this could deeply hurt the British economy. What’s even more uncertain, is whether this could chill the country’s innovation.

Image: Flickr user Tyler Merbler; App Photo: Flickr user Sarah Joy 

While the smartphone industry continues to struggle, Virtual Reality (VR) industry has grown out at a very fast pace. In the pursuit, Taiwanese tech giant, HTC, has shifted most of its resources to the VR business. In an attempt to boost its VR business, HTC has decided to shift its Vive business into a new self-owned subsidiary.

Recently, HTC partnered with 28 venture capitalists to establish the VR Venture Capital Alliance. The company stated that its member firms have nearly $10 billion of capital to invest. However, this doesn’t depict how much the company will plunk down for VR startups. Venture capital firms which participated in the funding round included Matrix partners and Sequoia Capital.

About a year ago I was on an investor panel with hundreds of women founders in the audience. A woman stood up and asked “What do you recommend to us women who are about to fundraise given the odds are against us?” As this question was asked, the women around the room looked like deer in headlights. What have we investors and the media done? While raising awareness of a very serious issue (in case you haven’t heard, the vast majority of venture capital has gone to male founded companies v. female founded), we have helped perpetuate the exact cycles we mean to call out and squash. Fundraising is challenging enough but if you are deflated before you begin, it is guaranteed to be brutal.

Image: Caren Maio, founder and CEO of Nestio, a portfolio company of mine, and me. (Courtesy of Jenny Lefcourt) 

Over the course of an hour, @MashBusiness covered an array of questions, ranging from key salary-based questions to ask during an interview to other negotiable perks should you inquire about to benefit your career. 

Several negotiation experts shared their expertise on the topic including: Karen Keller, creator of the Keller Influence Indicator® and influence expert; Lewis Lin, author of Five Minutes to a Higher Salary; Meghan Godorov, career consultant and speaker; and Victoria Pynchon, negotiation consultant, author and trainer at She Negotiates.

Catherine Pugh, who will become mayor of Baltimore at the end of this year, is determined to start lifting the city out of its longstanding morass of poverty and crime. Not everyone thinks she’ll be able to do it. If she fails to make serious progress, though, voters will know whom to blame. Baltimore gives its mayor some of the strongest formal powers of any city in the country, making it clear who runs the show.

Image: Baltimore's presumptive next mayor, state Sen. Catherine Pugh (Tribune News Service) 

Reflexively founders want to raise as much money as they can because they figure it will give them more resources, better chances of competing and a longer runways before they have to do the often painful job of asking, yet again, for money. Every time you ask for money you’re faced with the possible of feeling literally and figuratively like a failure. I understand this instinct for more capital and I have two very different personal experiences: In my first company we raised an A-round of $16.5 million and in my second company we raised only $500,000 by choice.

Regulation A+ is the portion of the JOBS Act that allows a company to raise up to $50 million in new capital through an online “Mini-IPO.” It came roaring into the investment world a year ago with the promise of changing the way small businesses get funded. The law allows companies to economically raise funds from the “crowd” and let everyday people, not just the rich and powerful, invest in small private companies for the first time in 80 years. One of the ways Congress and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) made this law affordable was by exempting companies from having to comply with state Blue Sky laws. Those are state by state securities laws that require a company to register and often undergo extensive merit review by each state’s securities regulators.

WASHINGTON—House leaders said they have scheduled votes Tuesday on two more bills that are part of the GOP’s broader initiative aimed at reducing burdens on startups, spurring innovation and creating more U.S. jobs.

The two bills, tied to angel investing and equity crowdfunding, are among more than 20 pieces of legislation rolled out under an “innovation initiative,” announced in April.

A number of the bills in the innovation package, including one that would expand rural access to the internet, have already passed the House with bipartisan support, and both bills on Tuesday are expected to get backing from Republicans and Democrats.

Hillary Clinton, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, revealed her Tech & Innovation Agenda on June 28 while on – where else? – the campaign trail.

Some pundits say it's too much, perhaps even "pandering." Others describe it as "surprisingly solid."

The plan is sweeping and detailed. It blankets many aspects of modern life: education, the economy, infrastructure, jobs, business, security – and healthcare.

Here we cherry-pick those proposed initiatives that most closely align with healthcare IT:

Image: http://www.healthcareitnews.com 

When it comes to investments, here’s a general truth: the larger a company gets, the smaller it thinks. The process is insidious, and companies must always be on the lookout for signs that it is setting in. If you want your business to grow sustainably at scale, you need to figure out how to make big investments that will best differentiate you in your core.

The Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation approved a bipartisan bill Wednesday designed to streamline science and technology research and development.

“My hope is that this bill helps reset how Congress approaches science policy,” said Sen. Cory Gardner, R- Colo., in a statement at the committee’s executive session.

Notably, the legislation includes a four percent increase in authorization for FY 2018 over FY 2017 for the National Science Foundation (NSF) and National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).

Seems simple, right? "We create the conversation, you change America's future." That's the goal for USA TODAY's One Nation project.

The USA TODAY NETWORK chose 10 topics to focus on and 10 media sites to "own" those topics. They included energy, climate change, guns in America, and immigration. Because we're the Space Coast — a place well known for its moonshot innovations — FLORIDA TODAY will highlight American Innovation.

Europe is operating below its digital potential. Accelerating digitization could add trillions of euros to economic growth in less than a decade.

Europe is in the midst of a digital transition driven by consumers, thriving technology hubs, and some world-renowned companies. But digitization is also about the extent to which firms and industries invest in and use digital. In these respects, Europe is much less advanced. Yet if its laggards double their digital intensity, Europe can add €2.5 trillion to GDP in 2025, boosting GDP growth by 1 percent a year over the next decade.

Image: http://www.mckinsey.com/ 

I can’t remember the exact moment I had the thought, but it was an epiphany. It crept in slowly, like someone trying to startle me: “What if I didn’t have the title of SVP Global Communications anymore?” What if I wasn’t the voice of DKNY PR GIRL®, commanding the attention of half-a-million followers on Twitter? What would happen if I quit my job?” Those questions spun around my head like clothes in a dryer.

Leading companies have passed through three distinct phases of organizational usage. What should we learn from them?

Since the dawn of the social-technology era, executives have recognized the potential of blogs, wikis, and social networks to strengthen lines of company communication and collaboration, and to invigorate knowledge sharing. Many leaders have understood that by harnessing the creativity and capabilities of internal and external stakeholders, they can boost organizational effectiveness and potentially improve strategic direction setting. But they have also found that spreading the use of these new technologies across the organization requires time to overcome cultural resistance and to absorb the lessons of early successes and failures. Social technologies, after all, raise new sensitivities, seeking to breach organizational walls and instill more collaborative mind-sets.

WASHINGTON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--The Biotechnology Innovation Organization today released the following statement in response to Democratic Presidential Candidate Hillary Clinton’s Initiative on Technology & Innovation:

“As one of America’s most innovative industries, biotechnology is tackling head-on the unrelenting scientific challenges inherent in the discovery, development and delivery of new, high-value healthcare, agricultural, industrial and environmental products.

In today’s on-your-own economy, workers are urged to be entrepreneurial job hoppers, constantly adapting and searching for the next opportunity.

But an estimated 30 million Americans — nearly one fifth of the nation’s work force — are hobbled by so-called noncompete agreements, fine print in their employment contracts that keeps them from working for corporate rivals in their next job.

Now a number of states are looking to untangle workers from these agreements. The Massachusetts House of Representatives is scheduled to vote this week on a noncompete reform bill. The state is also the location of a union organizing campaign on the noncompete practices of the EMC Corporation, a large technology company based in Hopkinton, Mass., that is known for its aggressive application of these employment contracts.

Image: Brian Connolly, an engineer, was laid off from a Massachusetts start-up when the financial crisis hit. A noncompete agreement he had signed prohibited him from doing similar work for a year. Credit Christopher Capozziello for The New York Times