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.
As optimism on Main Street remains stagnant, a new report finds U.S. entrepreneurial activity fell in 2015, reversing four years of upward growth.
According to the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor 2015 U.S. Report released by Babson College on Tuesday, total entrepreneurial activity in the U.S. fell 2 percentage points last year, sliding from 14 percent in 2014 to 12 percent in 2015. This indicator measures those starting and running new businesses.
The Upshot’s elections model suggests that Hillary Clinton is favored to win the presidency, based on the latest state and national polls. A victory by Mr. Trump remains quite possible: Mrs. Clinton’s chance of losing is about the same probability that an N.B.A. player will miss a free throw.
Image: http://www.nytimes.com
Not terribly long ago, headlines predicted that Facebook would die because it couldn’t figure out mobile. Of course, we all know the ending to that story. The company invested a ton in making the switch and survived. But it wasn’t without serious struggle. Ultimately, it required much more than a shift in technology — the whole culture of the company had to change. Everyone had to understand what users truly wanted from mobile and the steep costs of screwing up.
The technology driven global economy is brutally competitive and has put enormous stress on businesses to adapt or die.
I lived through this at Accenture. When I started the firm was a partnership that did almost entirely consulting, mostly in an on-shore, on-site model with bespoke solutions. By the time I left, the company had become a publicly traded corporation that pulled in huge revenues from completely new businesses like long-term outsourcing contracts, delivered contracts through blended on-shore/off-shore model that was heavily delivery center based, and tried to sell standardized solutions. The company’s name had even changed. It was a far more competitive business at the end of my tenure than it was at the beginning.
Matthew Walvick is a doctor. But until recently, when he left a large hospital to work at a startup, he felt like his day was utterly consumed with data entry.
Walvick, a former internal medicine physician at John Muir Health, recalls spending endless hours checking boxes and filling out charts on the hospital's electronic medical record system. As soon as he returned home after an exhaustive day, he'd hit refresh and be faced with yet more computer work—much to the dismay of his family.
The risk that your job will be automated out of existence depends, of course, on the job you do. For many, that's already happened—typically in roles and industries where the name of the game is eliminating human error and improving efficiency.
But in order for artificial intelligence to take a much bigger bite out of the knowledge-economy workforce, the technology may need to start behaving more like humans, not less. And that will mean mastering one key behavior: small talk.
Is your organization struggling to deliver on the innovation expectations you have for it?
From our experience at The Brainzooming Group and ongoing research, there are ten common innovation barriers blocking new idea and implementation across organizations. Only a couple of these barriers existing in a culture can block even modest expectations for implementing new ideas.
There is good news, however: none of the innovation barriers is insurmountable.
Understanding which challenges you’re facing is vital. That insight drives the smart change management steps needed to navigate each innovation challenge.
US vice president Joe Biden says Australia can become the innovation hub of the southern hemisphere with a “little bit of help and a little bit of luck”.
Speaking at the US-Australia Business Roundtable in Sydney, Biden discussed how America can help the Australian startup ecosystem grow, the need to embrace failure and the importance of immigration, as the ABC reports.
Image: http://www.startupsmart.com.au
Eric Glatt just wanted to change careers. He ended up changing the national conversation on unpaid internships. In the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, Glatt left a job at AIG on Wall Street to pursue his dream career in the film industry. At 40, he landed a coveted internship on the set of Darren Aronofsky’s Black Swan, where he did administrative and clerical work for no pay.
"I decided to get trained up, suffer some of the blows to my ego, start at the bottom, and do what it takes," Glatt tells Fast Company.
I’ll be the first to admit that I’m a total creature of habit. I love predictability and stability. They help me to feel focused, organized, and on top of things.
But, not too long ago, I made a major shift to my morning routine. Rather than writing my to-do list when I first sat down at my desk in the morning, I decided to use that time to tackle loose ends—those things that were previously taking up precious real estate on my to-do list, but could easily be taken care of with very little thought or time.
Recent psychological research hints that entrepreneurs may boast a few advantages over the general population—for instance, in their ability to cope with stress, higher levels of optimism, and resilience. But those advantages, such as they are, may come at a price. Researchers have noticed how these characteristics often go hand in hand with less savory ones. Here's a look at four of the more common negative personally traits entrepreneurs tend to share, plus one that can not only hold the others in check but even put them to good use.
Scientists these days don’t just need to be good at putting their ideas into writing; they need to know how to post them on Twitter and Facebook.
That’s the premise of an unusual course at the California Institute of Technology, "Social Media for Scientists," which was first offered this past spring by Mark E. Davis, a professor of chemical engineering, and Sarah Mojarad, a communications program manager for social media.
Being a millenial often means being associated with some negative terms: lazy, uninspired, reckless, and the most common of all, “lost”. Recent data suggests otherwise, especially when it comes to venturing into the risky world of startups.
A survey, conducted by Buzz Marketing group, polled 1623 millenials and found that even though they have a great passion for starting their own businesses, there weren’t many resources available. Even so, millenials continued to conquer their difficulties.
This is the third column in my series about things that can and do lead entrepreneurs to fail.
Technical founders being unwilling to accept the advice and experience they need to carry their ventures forward was No. 1. Founders who are so enamored with their product that they believe they are a proxy for their customers and ignore the mirror of the marketplace was No. 2.
No. 3 on my short list of things that cause startups to fail is not having enough capital. I don't mean “not having enough capital” in the way you might expect, at least not in the way that I do when I write about the dearth of seed-stage capital.
According to The 2015 Global Accelerator Report, accelerator programs are launching every year in all regions throughout the globe. However, it's found its foothold in the U.S. and Canada.
In 2005, Paul Graham launched Y Combinator (YC), setting forth an entirely new business model known as the startup accelerator. YC provided housing for young startups in exchange for a stake in equity. The principle of the idea was that their investments would later generate profit through successful startup exits, and in turn create more capital to re-invest in even more startups.
Tech Coast Angels is pleased to announce the upcoming celebration of the 10th anniversary of our John G. Watson Quick Pitch Competition held on October 6, 2016. This competition is one of the most recognized angel investor events in the nation showcasing talented entrepreneurs who are given 2 minutes each to pitch their business to an expert panel of judges and large audience of investors, business executives and community leaders.
As a startup advisor and investor, I’ve met many aspiring entrepreneurs, and I often get asked the question, “I have a great idea for a startup – do you agree that it real potential?” They don’t know that most experts agree the person is more important than the idea, yet I’ve never been asked, “I have a great idea for a startup – do you agree that I have real potential as an entrepreneur?”
LOS ANGELES BizBash Live: The Expo took over Los Angeles’ California Market Center on July 13, and included a packed lineup of smart speakers at the Event Innovation Forum downstairs from the buzzing exhibit floor. With speakers representing such thought-leading organizations as Google, Salesforce, and even the White House the program offered a range of provoking takeaways including these big ideas.
1. “Focus on the user and all else will follow.” Google executive producer Amanda Matuk described how her team reinvented the brand’s massive annual developer conference, known as I/O. The approach included a larger keynote, more technical content, and more and larger breakouts. “But we didn’t just scale for scale’s sake,” she explained
Image: Former White House social secretary Jeremy Bernard offered insights from the stage at the Event Innovation Forum in Los Angeles on July 13. Photo: Michelle Kyle Photography for BizBash
Inspiration can come from the oddest places. As often as not, the spark may occur during an otherwise mundane moment. But the difference between the truly inventive and the rest of us is that is that inventors zero in on something they've noticed and we don't give that something a second thought.
So it is with these eight young innovators. One man's business was inspired by a comment from his mother. Another developed his great idea after staring into a cup of day-old coffee, a third while standing next to a racetrack, still another while watching how fish swim in a school. Then there are the three Chilean women whose "Aha!" moment came when all of their cell phones ran out of juice.
Image: David Amster-Olszewski, founder of SunShare, at one of the "solar gardens" his company built in Colorado (Helen Richardson, Denver Post)
