Jodi Goldstein knows a thing or two about innovation. With more than 20 years’ experience as a high-tech entrepreneur and investor with a focus on consumer technology and a stint as a venture capitalist, she’s held leadership posts at several startups, including PlanetAll, a social networking site that sold to Amazon in 1998 for more than $100 million.

Image: courtesy of Harvard Innovation Lab

Alexander W. Astin has something to say — a lot to say, really — about smartness. He knows some people won’t want to hear it, especially if they happen to teach college students for a living.

Mr. Astin, a professor emeritus at the University of California at Los Angeles, believes that too many faculty members "have come to value merely being smart more than developing smartness." That line comes from his new book, Are You Smart Enough? How Colleges’ Obsession With Smartness Shortchanges Students.

Image: Courtesy of Alexander Astin - Alexander Astin of UCLA: "When the entire system of higher education gives favored status to the smartest students, even average students are denied equal opportunities.”

These images are a selection of photos taken recently near Lizard Island off the north Queensland coast in Australia. They document the ongoing bleaching on the Great Barrier Reef as ocean temperatures continue to be driven upward by climate change.

The bleaching process Before corals bleach, they are often a deep brown or khaki-green colour. These colours come from the symbiotic algae (sometimes called zooxanthellae) that co-exist with the coral polyp.

It’s tough out there. Entrepreneurs need to do more with less and keep an eye on changes in the tax legislation, as these could affect their payroll calculations and the tax they need to pay on behalf of their employees.

Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan’s recent budget speech admirably brought a sound outline for the country’s framework for the next year with some changes in tax legislation. Some of these legislative changes (as included in the amendment Acts and reiterated in the budget speech), such as employee contributions to retirement funds, will most probably have an impact on the company’s payroll systems.

Image: http://ventureburn.com

It’s official: Beginning in the fall, MIT will offer an Entrepreneurship & Innovation Minor. Up until this point, undergraduate students have had to take graduate classes, which has posed a couple of problems, to get their entrepreneurship and innovation fix. But that will change starting next semester.

I spoke with Steve Haraguchi, who is the executive director of Innovation Initiative—which is the organization responsible for putting together, launching and administering the upcoming minor. He explained that the minor, to be referred to as E&I, will be co-offered (and co-taught) by MIT’s Schools of Engineering and Management. However, it is open to all.

Image: http://bostinno.streetwise.co

There seems to be a big debate these days about the best approach to starting a new business. Some argue the only way to start is to drop everything and jump in with both feet, while others recommend an overlapped approach to the lifestyle, including not quitting your day job until you have revenue and a proven business model. I’m definitely a proponent of this latter approach.

Billionaire entrepreneur and “Shark Tank” co-host Mark Cuban is an outspoken proponent of the all-in early approach, and has made it clear that he gives no credibility and low odds to founders seeking funding who have not fully committed their time and efforts to their cause. Obviously his approach of absolute focus, getting up early, staying up late has worked for him.

In August 2008, the United States economy lost 259,000 jobs, and the unemployment rate rose to 6.1 percent. The country was in the midst of a stretch of twenty-three consecutive months of job losses. That same month, the startup Airbnb was officially formed. Seven months later, in March 2009, the U.S. economy lost 824,000 jobs, and the unemployment rate rose to 8.7 percent, on its way to peaking at 10 percent shortly after. That same month, the startup Uber launched a prototype, and Airbnb was admitted to startup accelerator Y Combinator.

Much has been made of China’s efforts to close the gap between western high technology sectors, and in the case of certain spaces, to actually bridge the gap and become a global leader.  In form, these efforts represent the potential – but not the inevitability – of similar outcomes in other high technology sectors.  One of the sectors that has received significant interest by the Chinese government are life sciences; however, as we found in a nearly two year survey of various Chinese officials, entrepreneurs and multinationals, the unique requirements to re-create the innovative ecosystem for the life science space remain immature in China.  While the potential for China to disrupt how and where life science innovation takes place globally, there are reasons to believe the country’s policies to develop domestic success stories may fall short of similar endeavors in other high technology segments such as clean-technology.

The European Commission awarded the title of European Capital of Innovation 2016 to Amsterdam for its holistic vision of innovation related to four areas of urban life: governance, economics, social inclusion and quality of life.

Amsterdam was chosen by a panel of independent experts in a close competition with eight more finalists that included much larger cities such as Berlin and Paris. The Netherlands had one more finalist with Eindhoven.

Summary

Slowest First Quarter of U.S. IPOs since 2009.

Combined proceeds well below $1 billion mark.

U.S. IPO market may show some signs of life in Q2.

First quarter 2016 was the slowest quarter for U.S. IPOs since Q1 2009 (when there was just 1 IPO in Q1, and the world was about to implode). There were just 7 offerings, all in Healthcare, representing approximately $623 million in proceeds. This compares to the same quarter in 2015, in which there were 31 offerings raising approximately $4.87 billion in proceeds. There were more postponed /pulled offerings in the quarter that there were pricings, with 5 of the 8 postponed in non healthcare sectors. New filings were also down for the quarter with 22, about half of the total for the same period in 2015.

In English, we struggle with the distinction between “different” and “new.” It’s relevant when we come to describing business models and their likely impact. Let’s take cars as a starting point. There are many different makes and models on the market. They vary in shape, size, color, and features, but they’re also all the same — they’re all cars. Yet when we buy one of them, discarding our old vehicle, we buy a new car. On the other hand, were it not already invented, plane travel would be classed as a new form of transport, compared to driving along the highway.

Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad (R) signed legislation yesterday that will offer new tax incentives for renewable chemical production in his state.

The passage of S.F. 2300 makes Iowa the first state to offer tax credits to companies that produce biochemicals. It’s a strategic move for a state that is aiming to position itself early as a leading producer of biochemicals nationally.

Expanding chemical production makes sense for Iowa, since it is already a top renewable energy producer of both ethanol and soy-based biodiesel, Branstad told ClimateWire.

Aside from the mudslinging and name calling this election cycle, launching and running a successful presidential campaign has a lot in common with starting and running a business. Not only does it take considerable entrepreneurial chops—from raising and managing funds to building an organization from scratch—it demands many of the same leadership skills a president needs to draw on once in office. Here's what the high stakes, breakneck pace, and unpredictable twists of the campaign trail can teach business leaders everywhere.

Image: Flickr user Ted Eytan

The threat of bodily harm from heavy equipment, chemicals, or enemy attacks isn’t enough to make jobs such as logger, pest control worker, or enlisted military rank at the bottom of CareerCast’s Jobs Rated report. That distinction goes to newspaper reporter for the third year in a row.

Image: http://www.fastcompany.com

A cadre of venture investors speaking on a panel at this week’s INVEST conference in Chicago aren’t particularly concerned about the gyrations in the life sciences public markets. Venture capital remains fairly agnostic of the troughs and peaks of the stock market, and life sciences investment will likely continue on at a strong pace, they said – largely because of the quality of the science.

Image: http://medcitynews.com

TOP STORIES

Internet billionaire Sean Parker is investing $250 million to create an institute to speed up the development and testing of immunotherapies, a hot area of cancer research. — MIT Technology Review, Reuters LIFE SCIENCES

Atrial fibrillation treatment specialist AtriCure got a greenlight from the FDA for its cryoFORM Cryoablation Probe. — AtriCure

Merck KGaA loses FDA approval for fertility drug after abandoning postmarketing studies. — FiercePharmaMarketing

Image: http://medcitynews.com

Angel investors are moving upstream. So where do they get their early-stage dealflow?

Dan Kincaid, a member of Queen City Angels in Cincinnati, said his organization is making-early stage bets by helping hatch companies through increased collaboration with local technology accelerators and tech transfer offices.

“Traditionally we waited for folks to come to us,” Kincaid, who spoke at MedCity INVEST on Tuesday.

Image: http://medcitynews.com

Venture capital firms are having their biggest fundraising year in a decade, signaling a potentially robust climate for the high-valuation private companies known as "unicorns."

U.S.-based VC firms collected $12 billion in the first quarter, a 59 percent increase from the same period a year ago and the biggest raise since the second quarter of 2006, which saw $14.3 billion, according to numbers from Thomson Reuters and the National Venture Capital Association.

Image: http://www.cnbc.com

The Tennessee Valley may be a long ways from Silicon Valley, but Tennessee is attracting more of the investments in startup businesses that have fueled the growth of California's computer industry and other tech centers around the country.

Launch Tennessee, the state-funded venture capital fund and agency that tries to promote and seed more business startups in the Volunteer State, announced Tuesday that private investment in early stage companies based in Tennessee has surpassed $1 billion in the past four years. The billion-dollar milestone was reached well ahead of the 2017 goal that LaunchTN set when it was formed in 2012.

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Despite the explosive rate of innovation transforming our world, how established organisations innovate themselves is another matter altogether.

The string of defunct or struggling organisations such as Kodak, Nokia, Blockbuster, Blackberry or Borders Books attests to the fact that incumbent, established and erstwhile successful organisations either resisted, or were unsuccessful at attempting intrinsic innovation. At the same time, industry research indicates that there is no statistical relationship between R&D spend and business, revenue and net margin growth.