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innovation DAILY

Here we highlight selected innovation related articles from around the world on a daily basis.  These articles related to innovation and funding for innovative companies, and best practices for innovation based economic development.

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E ven Fido thinks hardware is cool.

Graduating today from the third class of HAXLR8R is a startup called Petcube, an electronic cube of fun for pets controlled by you and your mobile device from anywhere. It and nine other startups have spent the last few months in San Francisco and Shenzhen, China building companies around hardware and smart devices.

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Yahoo be damned. Dell wants more, not fewer, of its employees to work remotely next year. In fact, it wants half its workers to work outside the office next year, up from 20 percent now, according to the Austin Business Journal, referencing comments from Dell spokeswoman Colleen Ryan.

That’s a big number for a company that employs roughly 110,000 people worldwide. And Dell’s statement flies in the face of what seemed to be a burgeoning “butt in chair” work ethic kicked off when Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer curtailed work-at-home options for Yahoo employees early this year. HP, a major Dell rival, followed Myer’s lead a few months back with a similar edict from CEO Meg Whitman. Whitman echoed Myer’s “all hands on deck” mandate.

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While flight passengers have been exercising the privilege of using e-books and tablets for the entirety of flights throughout November, it seems like the FCC is mulling over the possibility of lifting the ban on cell phone use above 10,000 feet.

According to a report from The Wall Street Journal, this will be the third time the FCC will consider changing the rules. The proposal has been shot down twice before, in 2004 and 2007, but it seems that they were both largely shot down due to the perceived nuisance of passengers taking calls on airplanes, as well as a “lack of technical information” about the risks.

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Given the rumors that Comcast is talking with regulators to see if it could find a way to buy Time Warner Cable and that Liberty Media’s John Malone is eyeing some kind of Charter and Time Warner Cable tie up, this summer’s hand-wringing over cable consolidation is still in play.

As my colleague Om Malik explained in a post in July, Malone may have set this off, but it is an opportune time for the industry to consolidate given the demand for broadband generated by over-the-top services such as Netflix and Hulu. The cable guys don’t compete against each other in a given geographic footprint, but instead, against the telcos. And when it comes to broadband, the telcos are losing. As Om wrote back in July:

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Great innovators are the new rock stars. Steve Jobs was the Mick Jagger of innovation. Like Jobs, sometimes the stars are individuals, like Richard Branson, Arianna Huffington or Phillipe Starck, but more often it is a company, like GM, Square, Intel, Facebook, Google, 3M, or Nike that achieves this status. Today innovation is more than a nicety; it’s a survival skill. Rapid changes in technology over the last ten years mean that you either innovate or get left in the dust as entire industries undergo major upheavals.

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GEW Saudi Arabia organized a one-day workshop on Saturday as part of its efforts to put the Kingdom’s entrepreneurs on the global map. The event, themed celebrating entrepreneurship, succeeded in exchanging experiences between speakers and participants from the world of entrepreneurship. GEW (Global Entrepreneurship World) is claimed to be the world’s largest celebration of innovators and job creators who launch startups that bring ideas to life, drive economic growth and expand human welfare. GEW is part of the Kauffman Foundation, one of the largest foundations devoted to entrepreneurship. Qotuf manages GEW Saudi Arabia, with almost 20 representatives from companies, government agencies and ministries.

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Dr. Daniel Saltzman says he can prove that bacteria that ordinarily cause food poisoning in people can be modified for use as guided missiles to deliver cancer-killing payloads into tumors.

But he needs $500,000 for some preliminary work, and despite his project’s potential, he’s not holding his breath for funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the nation’s leading source of biomedical research grants.

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As President of a local inventors group I can’t tell you how many inventors I meet who have spent big bucks to procure a patent but never built a prototype. So they have no idea if the invention really works. Others who have a garage full of product, just collecting dust because they never tested the market before hand. However, most successful inventors and product development companies that I know, start off with a Proof of Concept Analysis BEFORE they start spending money. So if they do it, why not you?

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The 14-year-old University of Central Florida Business Incubation Program generated a direct regional economic output of more than $327 million between Oct. 1, 2011-June 30, 2013, according to a new study. During that time, the program also directly sustained 1,856 jobs in the region, resulted in more than $18.5 million in state and local tax revenue and helped generate a fiscal return of $6.16 for every $1 of public investment.

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There’s a lot of resume advice out there — and some of it conflicting. Which makes it pretty hard for you, the job seeker, to know what to do. Should you stick to the one-page format, or is it OK to veer onto the second page? Will a creative resume catch the eye of a hiring manager, or do most people still prefer the tried-and-true traditional layout?

We know it’s confusing, so we’ve broken down the five most common resume debates. Here’s what the experts have to say—and how you can read between the lines and send the best resume for the job.

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Corporate America has an innovation problem, and has spent a great deal of time and energy attempting to fix it. Somewhat surprisingly, many of these large companies have found the answer in America’s smallest and newest organizations: entrepreneurial startups.

At first the problem seemed to be a deficit of innovation itself, but over the last couple of years, corporate executives realized the real problem was an inability to transform the best of these ideas into bottom-line results.

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“Innovation is following your instincts.”

“Innovation is pushing beyond known limits and making it work.”

“Innovation is bringing happiness.”

These quotable mantras from the live Twitter feed for the 2013 World Economic Forum Annual Meeting of the New Champions’ closing session “Innovating into the Future” beg the questions: If innovation is so critical, how can we foster entrepreneurship at an early age? Can we really teach people to yield positive social returns by challenging norms, pursuing passions, and taking risks? Or is innovative entrepreneurship something innate that cannot be taught?

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Whatever your concerns about the whys and wherefores of taking venture capital funding, one thing is for sure, VCs come into contact with thousands of entrepreneurs, all the time. What do successful entrepreneurs have in common? A fervent commitment to long term growth and an outright refusal to compromise in the here and now.

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Scaling is a question that every entrepreneur comes face to face with sooner or later – and hopefully soon enough. It doesn’t matter what vertical you are in, whether you’re a product or primarily a service, or if you’re in a capital intensive business or an operationally heavy one – opportunities to scale do come about eventually, even if a desperate need doesn’t, and along with it come choices and dilemmas.

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University of Pennsylvania’s Center for Technology Transfer is entering a new phase by adding mobile apps to its technology portfolio. That includes mhealth apps conceived by students and faculty at its Perelman School of Medicine and nursing school. Its inaugural app challenge AppITUP is tonight.

It also represents the start of a new program within UpStart advising students on how to start a business — UP Advisors.

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Here’s the situation: your company needs $500,000 in seed capital, so you decide to approach venture capitalists to help with your fundraising. As the offers start coming in, you realize you’re over-subscribed and have to choose which investors you’ll bring into the fold. If you’re fortunate enough to find yourself with too many funding offers around the table, remember that all funding is not created equal. Choose your partners wisely.

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BDC Venture Capital and the National Angel Capital Organization ("NACO") are proud to announce the renewal of their national partnership for the third consecutive year. This partnership will focus on the strengthening of Canada's Angel investing community by identifying, standardizing, and sharing industry best practices across the country. " BDC Venture Capital is an important national partner of NACO. BDC Venture Capital's support of early-stage startup companies is crucial to the Canadian economy and our partnership is a natural fit for us as we look to accelerate a thriving early-stage investing ecosystem critical to innovation and economic growth," says NACO Chair Michelle Scarborough .

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The pharmaceutical industry needs better scientific models for testing drugs before they get to the proving ground of human clinical trials. Current lab dish models and animal testing models are time-consuming, expensive and chronically unable to predict which drugs are going to work in clinical trials. The industry is crying out for new modes of early testing that can shorten the timelines, reduce the cost and increase the odds of success in clinical trials.

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During his tenure at Apple, Steve Jobs championed a product-focused strategy that combined hardware, software, and services in a bundle for customers. This holistic approach to the Apple suite of products is perhaps the most successful example of diversification into related offerings. The strategy helped Apple both develop an extremely loyal customer base and top Fortune’s list of the most admired companies in the world for the past five years.

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One way to extend the range of electric vehicles may be to provide power wirelessly through coils placed under the surface of a road. But charging moving vehicles with high-power wireless chargers below them is complex.

Researchers at North Carolina State University have developed a method to deliver power to moving vehicles using simple electronic components, rather than the expensive power electronics or complex sensors previously employed. The system uses a specialized receiver that induces a burst of power only when a vehicle passes over a wireless transmitter. Initial models indicate that placing charging coils in 10 percent of a roadway would extend the driving range of an EV from about 60 miles to 300 miles, says Srdjan Lukic, an assistant professor of electrical engineering at NCSU.

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