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 the market changes, so do worker expectations. Startups, perhaps more than any business today, are fighting to attract and keep talent by providing employees the support they seek -- especially when it comes to compensation.
Nearly half of all employees expect a pay raise in the next 12 months to offset cost-of-living increases, Glassdoor’s July 2015 report shows.
In my more than 20 years of teaching entrepreneurship, I have learned that few aspiring business founders want to talk about the unsexy parts of the process, like when and how to get non-dilutive capital. But I have also learned that understanding the boring stuff almost always makes a big difference in outcomes.
Failure to know when and how to get non-dilutive capital can mean the loss of millions of dollars in profits going into the pocket of an entrepreneur, as the financing history of one Cleveland-area startup illustrates.
Demographers frequently remind us that the United States is a rapidly aging country. From 2010 to 2040, we expect that the age-65-and-over population will more than double in size, from about 40 to 82 million. More than one in five residents will be in their later years. Reflecting our higher life expectancy, over 55% of this older group will be at least in their mid-70s.
While these numbers result in lively debates on issues such as social security or health care spending, they less often provoke discussion on where our aging population should live and why their residential choices matter.
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Landing a job as a recent college grad is no easy feat. The openings are hard to come by, the competition is fierce, and the requirements are often difficult to meet.
Liz Wessel, CEO and cofounder of WayUp, a site used by 200,000 college students to find jobs at places like Microsoft, Uber, The New York Times, Disney, and Google — where Wessel previously worked — says there are things you can do to up your chances.
Image: Courtesy of Liz Wessel
A while back while I was reading the tech press I saw a quote from Randy Komisar, a partner at Kleiner Perkins that was simple, yet profound. He was quoted as saying,
“Being a great partner is as important as being smart or being right.”
I liked it so much I wrote it down and tried to think about what it meant to me and I promised myself I would write about that one day. What does it mean to be a great partner? In business? In life?
Elephants have evolved extra copies of a gene that fights tumour cells, according to two independent studies, offering an explanation for why the animals so rarely develop cancer.
Why elephants do not get cancer is a famous conundrum that was posed — in a different form — by epidemiologist Richard Peto of the University of Oxford, UK, in the 1970s. Peto noted that, in general, there is little relationship between cancer rates and the body size or age of animals. That is surprising: the cells of large-bodied or older animals should have divided many more times than those of smaller or younger ones, so should possess more random mutations predisposing them to cancer. Peto speculated that there might be an intrinsic biological mechanism that protects cells from cancer as they age and expand.
Being an ideas machine is one thing; giving your ideas the chance to be rediscovered and flourish is another.
Because let’s face it: Ideas are merely forgotten thoughts if they’re not recorded, organized, managed, and implemented. How many times have you heard of a new business and thought to yourself, "I totally came up with that idea years ago"? That’s proof that great ideas mean nothing if you don't manage them for later expansion and implementation.
While dreamers often have the best ideas, it’s the doers who are getting things done. Below, five leaders share how they record, organize, and manage their ideas.
Hiring is often a long and arduous process, and hiring the wrong person can cost a company and employees and managers lost time and money.
Which is why noticing potential red flags on resumes and in interviews is important. A red flag is any behavior arousing suspicion that a candidate is wrong for the job and/or will not be a good fit within the company. For example, spelling errors indicate that the candidate doesn’t pay close enough attention to their work, while delays in candidate communication indicate that the candidate is less interested in the position or does not respect others’ time.
This past spring, two engineers huddled behind computer monitors as they fine-tuned a robotic ape. The 443-pound simian-inspired machine, called Chimp, would soon be competing in the Pentagon-funded DARPA Robotics Challenge. The competition to build disaster-response robots, which had started three years before, was nearing its final showdown. And Carnegie Mellon University’s Chimp was considered a front-runner for the top prize of $2 million.
Image: http://www.popsci.com
This summer, as Chairman of the House Small Business Committee, I had the opportunity to honor an innovative business accelerator called First Batch. This isn’t your typical business accelerator. First Batch is a product accelerator in my hometown of Cincinnati, Ohio, that focuses on helping entrepreneurs and makers bring physical products to market. It’s a great resource supporting the intersection of technology and manufacturing, and it’s another example of the resources communities are using to build entrepreneurial ecosystems.
For more than two centuries, the term “Yankee ingenuity” has stood for inventiveness and the practical approach to problem solving that first characterized New England in the early 1800s and has since been a hallmark of the American spirit.
That ingenuity, coupled with the world’s largest market and a federal government that a generation ago invested more in scientific research and development than the rest of the world combined, explains why the United States once led the world in innovation.
Despite the rise of social media, instant messaging, and all manner of apps, reports of email’s death have been greatly exaggerated. In fact, according to technology market research firm The Radicati Group, in 2015, roughly 2.6 billion people will use email—a number that will grow to more than 2.9 billion by the end of 2019.
"For most organizations, it’s the communication nervous system," says business writer and communications consultant, Natalie Canavor, author of Business Writing for Dummies.
Most entrepreneurs underestimate the challenge of hiring someone for a founding role. I know I did. The roles that end up becoming some of the most influential in a startup often stay in the hands of those who come onboard as founders. So it's important to get the makeup of that core team right. Whether it's a sales director, customer success head, or lead engineer you're looking for, there are a few principles that can help you make the right decisions for the long haul.
W
ith migration rates near historic lows, not many Americans have been changing addresses in recent years. A few larger jurisdictions, however, are welcoming large numbers of new residents from all across the country.
Last week, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) published updated migration data based on income tax returns, showing where taxpayers are moving to and from at the county level. We’ve compiled the data, shown in the interactive below, and have highlighted the areas experiencing the highest population gains from migration.
Image: More people moved to Travis County, Texas, home to Austin, than anywhere else in the United States. (FlickrCC/Kent Kanouse)
It’s fitting that Wichita, Kansas is nearly dead center of the country (though the geographic center is actually nearby Lebanon, Kansas), because this Midwestern city is also at the center of some cutting-edge advanced manufacturing. Wichita State University (WSU) leads the South Kansas Manufacturing Community (PDF), which was named as an Investing in Manufacturing Communities Partnership (IMCP) designated community during the first round of IMCP competition. WSU also seeks to lead the country in advanced manufacturing and experiential engineering through its EDA-supported Innovation Campus.
Image: Robots at the WSU Robotics and Automation Lab
For almost as long as we have been writing, we’ve been putting meaning into maps, charts, and graphs. Some 1,300 years ago, Chinese astronomers recorded the position of the stars and the shapes of the constellations. The Dunhuang star maps are the oldest preserved atlas of the sky.
Many entrepreneurs fantasize about days longer than 24 hours, convinced that their new venture could change the world, if they just had more time. They don’t realize that a more viable solution is to get more done per existing hour, rather than creating more hours. We all know at least one person who is always “very busy” and works plenty of hours, but generates few significant results.
At a recent coffee meeting with a Phoenix-based entrepreneur, we discussed real estate crowdfunding. I also have written extensively on crowdfunding, including rewards- and equity-based crowdfunding, often citing crowdfunding’s many diverse platforms. Today, debt and equity crowdfunding markets are exploding.
CAMBRIDGE, Mass., Oct. 7, 2015 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The acceleration of technology growth has led to major benefits for business, economy, and society. However, the challenge of inclusive innovation remains, as all workers do not currently have access to the same economic opportunities. To address this issue, MIT's Initiative on the Digital Economy (IDE), in collaboration with the MIT Innovation Initiative (MITii), recently launched the MIT Inclusive Innovation Competition (IIC). The competition is being funded by the Rockefeller Foundation and Joyce Foundation, and aims to focus entrepreneurial and innovative energy on improving economic prospects for all workers. The announcement came during the launch of Solve (solve.mit.edu), MIT's new cross-disciplinary program to address the world's most pressing challenges.
