How often have you heard somebody — a new CEO, a journalist, a management consultant, a leadership guru, a fellow employee — talk about the urgent need to change the culture? They want to make it world-class. To dispense with all the nonsense and negativity that annoys employees and stops good intentions from growing into progress. To bring about an entirely different approach, starting immediately.

From today, small businesses in Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire will be able to access free innovation support as a result of a new £20.3m programme being run by three local universities.

‘Enabling Innovation’ is a three year collaborative programme involving the University of Derby, Nottingham Trent University and The University of Nottingham, which will provide support to over 2,000 local small and medium enterprises (SMEs) over three years.

Image: http://westbridgfordwire.com

SCOTLAND is falling behind its international competitors in the amount of public funding it spends on vital university research, according to a new report.

A new study found Scotland spends just 1.6 per cent of its GDP on research - "substantially less" than leading European companies such as Finland, Sweden, Denmark and Germany.

The report also found that businesses in Scotland only contributed 3.1 per cent of the £24.1 billion invested in business research and co-operation between universities and business which is lower than other parts of the UK.

Contrary to popular belief, innovations don’t sell themselves. Successful adoption depends on how brands position themselves and how much they listen to their customers.

Innovation matters to the long-term success of firms, and marketing plays a key role in developing and launching innovations. While I have no doubt that managers and executives think carefully about the circumstances in which they propose to launch an innovation, recent marketing research brings to light an extended list of critical factors to consider in formulating long-term strategies, as well as specific tools to reduce the uncertainty inherent in such decisions.

Paul Sloane explains how to use the Power of the Random to boost Creative Problem Solving.

Sloane studied Engineering at Cambridge University. He worked for IBM in manufacturing, sales and marketing. He was Marketing Director and then Managing Director at database company Ashton- Tate. He went on to be VP International and CEO of software companies. He now helps organisations improve innovation. He is the author of over 20 books on lateral thinking, leadership and innovation. His talk shows how you can use simple powerful methods to break routine thinking habits.

Image: http://www.innovationexcellence.com

For any new business, money is at the forefront of every decision, simply because money is what will keep your business afloat. At the beginning many businesses gather a large amount of capital funding with the ultimate goal being that they move away from this and then begin to expand and build their company.

However, funding can often grow beyond what was expected and it can become the unintentional mission of the company. While many people believe that venture capital funding is crucial to the start-up of a technology business, the truth is many successful businesses managed without it and that is exactly why you should consider starting your business without any funding.

Australia may generate world-leading agricultural research, but it is world-lagging when it comes to commercialising its ideas and innovations.

Australian innovations captured less than one percent of the boom in global investment that flowed into the agri-tech sector in 2015, as the inaugural 400m Ag Innovate forum in Toowoomba was told last week.

What is holding us back? ‘Small population’ syndrome is partly to blame, believes one industry expert.

 Image: Venture capitalist Andrew Kelly from BioPacific Partners addresses the 400M Ag Innovation forum in Toowoomba. Picture: University of Southern Queensland Photography.

A traffic jam of Silicon Valley companies has a mission: to destroy Detroit’s business model and take over transportation with driverless cars and shared mobility services. Yet last summer, General Motors’ top brass ventured behind enemy lines to meet with the very forces trying to upend the industry. When the 15 executives returned to Detroit, they realized they needed to defend their turf not only by accelerating their own mobility programs—from ridesharing outfits to driverless-car software—but also by forming alliances with the challengers in the Valley.

Image: http://www.bloomberg.com

Business incubators and accelerators have emerged as a popular strategy to support the growth of entrepreneurial ventures, especially in the high-tech sector (Anderson, 2012; Lewis, Harper-Anderson, & Molnar, 2011). They are designed to address the networking, education and capital challenges all entrepreneurs face. These challenges are most acute for women and minority tech entrepreneurs (Fairlee & Robb, 2008; Robb, Coleman, & Stangler, 2014), suggesting that incubators and accelerators could have the greatest impact on their ventures.1 Yet, women and minorities are not participating in high-tech incubators and accelerators at the same rates as their white, male counterparts.  

Many kids who grow up to be architects get their start with Lego, but how do architects play with Lego when they're not kids any more? To find out, the Lego Store in New York's Flatiron District, in collaboration with Architizer, recently held an event. There, they teamed architects from BIG, SHoP, HWKN, and Bernheimer Architects with students from Manhattan's Urban Assembly School of Design and Construction to create a new New York out of monochrome Lego blocks, unbounded by pesky budgets and zoning laws.

A new approach to the design of a liquid battery, using a passive, gravity-fed arrangement similar to an old-fashioned hourglass, could offer great advantages due to the system’s low cost and the simplicity of its design and operation, says a team of MIT researchers who have made a demonstration version of the new battery. Liquid flow batteries — in which the positive and negative electrodes are each in liquid form and separated by a membrane — are not a new concept, and some members of this research team unveiled an earlier concept three years ago.

Image: http://news.mit.edu

The Navy is investing heavily in unmanned systems, whether aerial vehicles, surface ships or underwater vessels, but it’s also interested in one of the basics of water safety—the lifeguard.

The Office of Naval Research has co-developed a robotic lifeguard called EMILY, for the Emergency Integrated Lifesaving Lanyard, a four-foot-long, 25-pound remote-controlled buoy that recently was used in the rescue of almost 300 Syrians off of the Greek Island of Lesbos, ONR said in a release.

Image: https://defensesystems.com

Dear Small Technology Firms and Innovators, 

The SBIR Road Tour is coming to a city near you! This is a national outreach effort to convey the non-dilutive technology funding opportunity provided through the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) and Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) programs. Over the course of this year individual program managers from the 11 participating agencies representing $2.5 billion in early stage funding will embark on an across the country road tour, participating in a series of events alongside technology entrepreneurs and innovation supporters from across the United States.

The EU still has not learned basic lessons about innovation from its US competition. Professors Gunnar Landgren and Ramon Wyss, both instrumental in the formation of EIT Knowledge and Innovation Communities, explain how to remedy the European innovation paradox

We recently received an approach from the US offering help to our university start-ups, by providing coaching, networks, venture capital and access to a truly unified market. The invitation started with an analysis of the European innovation system, pointing towards (well known) deficiencies of the regional perspective, shortage of early stage capital, risk adverse venture capital, limited access to global high tech companies, poor translation of scientific discoveries into innovative companies, and so on.

Image: Gunnar Landgren and Ramon Wyss; Photo credit: KTH

In this complex, fast-changing job market, just putting in the hours and being good at what you do may not be enough. You need an edge. And the surest one these days is to possess the skills that are most in demand in your field, that help your employer keep up with the technological, economic, and social forces that are transforming so many industries. The key, of course, is to know exactly what those skills are, how to get them, and what the payoff will be.

Many experienced professionals would like to make a career transition. But the thought of giving up their hard-earned seniority and starting again at the bottom is simply too demoralizing, so they stay — sometimes unhappily — in place. But as I discovered in researching my book Reinventing You, there are ways you can shift jobs or even careers without giving up your professional status. Instead, you can work creatively to transfer it, so that even if you’re starting in a completely different field, you’ll benefit from your years of labor. Here are four ways to capitalize on your past experience.

Regarded among investors and industry observers as Southeast Asia’s most developed entrepreneurial ecosystem, Singapore has much to be proud of with regard to the transformation of its entrepreneurial landscape over the last decade. In fact, between 2012 and 2015, Singapore moved up seven places to rank 10th in an international report by Compass, which ranks start-up ecosystems. This is ostensibly a testament of Singapore’s ceaseless aspiration to becoming what might very well be, the Silicon Valley of the East.

Europe’s economy is still struggling to keep up with the global digital revolution. It is high time to make sure that young people are equipped with the right skills and reach their full potential as innovators, writes Eva Paunova.

Eva Paunova is a Bulgarian MEP (EPP) and co-chair of the Youth Intergroup.

What I hear from businesses, start-ups and software companies is that they’re still unable to reach their full potential because they cannot find employees with the skills they need. The lack of digital skills could lead to a shortfall of as many as 900,000 jobs by 2020.

Image: Lars Ploughman/Flickr

Years ago, starting a new business was a do-it-yourself exploration of the unknown. It was a process of experimenting and wandering toward success, rather than following any particular set of guidelines.

Development was a trial-and-error process. Professional help and mentoring were hard to find – except in the big cities.

These days, there are far more development pathways to choose from. Accelerators are usually the quickest route to success, thanks to the nurturing, funding, networking and other resources they offer.

Sprint Corp. has fulfilled its three-year commitment to its business startup accelerator in Kansas City and is looking for partners to help it sponsor next year’s program, CEO Marcelo Claure said Tuesday.

Claure announced the invitation to other corporate and civic sponsors at the Sprint Accelerator’s demonstration day event at the Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts.

“We’ve decided that we’re going to partner with other Kansas City-based companies in order to continue the momentum we’ve built with the accelerator,” Claure said at the event.

Image: http://www.kansascity.com