Failure drives innovation — many innovators of our age would agree.

Before we make that first breakthrough, we must face painful, and often embarrassing, flops. Whether to fuel our innate shadenfruede, or prove that we too can become the next Steve Jobs, here are the six biggest failures of great innovators before they made their first real breakthrough, and stuck around for more success of the tech kind. 

You may not be one of the people who believes that money can buy happiness; however, a recent Glassdoor survey revealed that as many as 7 in 10 respondents (68%) said that salary and compensation are top of mind when considering whether or not to accept a new job.

There’s a lot more of that going on right now. With as many as 78% of hiring managers planning to bring new people on in the first half of 2016—according to career site Dice—and over 100 occupations in the U.S. that have more job postings than actual hires month over month, it’s a great time to be looking for a job.

When it comes to understanding the pace of global digital evolution, the digital growth of developed countries usually has little to tell us about the digital future of developing ones. This has big implications for businesses, entrepreneurs, and innovators seeking growth beyond their home markets: there just isn’t a one-size-fits-all app or approach to building scale in the global digital economy. But if a country wants to become attractive to new investors, what it can do is learn from its better-connected peers and play some “digital catch-up.”

Is China capable of innovating? This is a controversial question. Plenty of people, especially those in the West are doubtful of China’s innovative capabilities. But it’s not just outside of China where you find non-believers, many Chinese also mock the concept of “Chinese innovation”. To be fair, China is famous (or should I say infamous) as the “Empire of Shanzhai” (counterfeits).

Hear from the exciting companies completing the first Relevant Health cohort! This event is currently invite only, but if you would like to find out more and possibly attend please send an email to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

A new fund that would invest in Iowa startups is in the works after receiving certification from the state.

River Glen Venture Partners aims to raise a pool of $25 million it would invest in early-stage companies, fund founder Matt Busick said.

"We think that’s the right number to build a portfolio over four to five years of 10 (startups) of between $2 and $2.5 million each" in investment, Busick told the Register.

Busick is also managing director of River Glen Private Capital, a West Des Moines-based investment firm and manager.

My clients and I sat across from each other in stunned silence, gazing in horror at what lay before us. No, it wasn’t a notice that the IRS was coming to visit. But close.

It was a timeline document prepared for us by our newly hired, and I must add, well compensated, project consultants. It was poorly laid out, badly aligned, skimpy on details, and had a number of unexplained big gaps between events. It contained typos—further evidence that no one bothered to review it before sending it off to us.

It looks like Healthbox is raising a new fund, according to a Form D filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The accelerator is keeping schtum about the Healthbox Opportunity Fund I and declined a request for comment.

Still, its website shows that it is poised to bring its Healthbox Studio accelerators to Orlando, as part of a partnership with Guidewell Innovation Center, and Los Angeles later this year. Healthbox and Guidewell had previous accelerator classes in Miami, Tampa Bay and Jacksonville. Los Angeles is home to a few accelerators, including one between Techstars and Cedars-Sinai.

Two years ago, Michelle* was a thriving real estate mogul in Seattle, and cofounder of her own business. Her company sponsored elite events from Vancouver, B.C., to Los Angeles and contributed to many philanthropies.

But at the age of 28, she did what many other successful millennial women do: She burned out. She scaled back on clients, travel, and events. Eventually, with the support of her husband, she decided to call it quits and take a sabbatical.

March 8, 2016 – (CHICAGO, IL) – The Illinois Science and Technology Coalition (ISTC) today released new data conveying the growth of entrepreneurial activity across the state’s universities as part of its Illinois Innovation Index, a publication that reports on key metrics of the state’s innovation economy. The announcement was made at the Illinois Institute of Technology’s University Technology Park with university leaders and leading university-driven entrepreneurs.

Based on data self-reported by the state’s universities, the report found that over the past five academic years, students and faculty at Illinois universities have created 611 startups through university technology licensing, entrepreneurship programs and competitions, and other university-financed initiatives. Roughly 80 percent of these companies remain active (or were acquired), and 73 percent of active startups were based in Illinois at the time of the survey—up from 68 percent reported in last year’s survey.

Managers make about three billion decisions each year, and almost all of them can be made better. The stakes for doing so are real: decisions are the most powerful tool managers have for getting things done. Setting goals (another tool) is aspirational, but making decisions actually drives action. Our research has shown that people usually do what they decide to do. The good news is that there are ways to consistently make better decisions by using practices and technologies based on behavioral economics.

Advocates of the lean startup method for creating a business advise entrepreneurs, as well as corporate intrapreneurs, to document, test, and refine their assumptions about a new venture’s business model via customer conversations and experiments. My recent research on 250 teams that participated in an American cleantech accelerator program during the last 10 years found that while the lean approach can be effective, having a strong strategy is more important than conducting a tremendous number of market tests.

America’s entrepreneurs are brimming with promising ideas. But they appear to be struggling to transform innovations and insights into successful companies with broad reach.

That’s the conclusion of new research and a policy brief from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Catherine Fazio, Jorge Guzman, Fiona Murray and Scott Stern.

“To the extent that the current state of American entrepreneurship is facing a crisis, it is not in the rate of creation of high-growth potential startups or even in the initial funding of those firms, but instead in the potential of those firms to scale in a meaningful way over time,” the authors said.

Austin is the only venture capital bright spot in Texas, according to a new report by Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy.

Houston, Dallas and San Antonio are drastically underperforming in entrepreneurship compared to other major U.S. cities. Austin is the lone exception among the state’s four largest metropolitan areas, reporting a 170 percent growth in its entrepreneurship ecosystem during the past decade, "The State of Venture Capital in Texas" report released Monday indicates.

The Philadelphia area in 2015 attracted less than its share of venture capital investment, according to a U.S. metro deals count posted by the National Venture Capital Association. See it here.

Philadelphia was the nation's fifth-largest Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA), according to the last 10-year U.S. Census. It tied for seventh in the number of venture capital investments in local companies in 2015 (93), and ranked only 13th for the value invested by VCs in local companies ($540 million). 

Over the last 1,000 years, the source of wealth in the world has changed. For centuries, wealth came from land. Starting a few hundred years ago, people discovered how to make money by manufacturing things. And in the last 60 years or so, wealth has increasingly sprung from people’s brains.

The 2016 Environmental Performance Index (EPI) ranks 180 countries according to their performance in safeguarding ecosystems and protecting human health from environmental harm. We've compiled a listing of the top five and bottom five countries, providing a window into winning strategies and common obstacles in tackling environmental challenges. 

Image: Wikimedia Commons

Two Australian surfers are trying to tackle the planet's water pollution problem head-on, by developing a device that functions as an automated floating trash bin for the world's oceans.

The device, called the Seabin, can be placed in the water, attached to a floating dock in a marina, and is connected to an onshore water pump. The pump generates a flow of water into the container that collects trash and other debris, according to the inventors.

Image: A photograph of the inventors with a prototype of their Seabin device. Credit: The Seabin Project

First-ever report reveals the most prolific innovators in the U.S. are not young entrepreneurial college dropouts; rather, highly educated immigrants with STEM degrees.

It’s the myth that just won’t go away and is, in part, responsible for the current belief amongst Millennials and Gen Z’ers that higher education isn’t relevant: today’s most successful and brilliant innovators are young entrepreneurs that drop out of college (e.g. Mark Zuckerberg, Jan Koum, Sean Parker).

Every small business goes through rough patches where business growth sometimes must take a back seat to “just getting by”. Maybe you lost a key employee, maybe family concerns have eroded your laser focus on your business, or maybe the economy is going through an uncertain time. But growth may be possible even in tough or uncertain times. Actually, down times can also be the perfect time for making positive shifts that will benefit your business later. These 10 tips can help you position your business for future success.