Hosted by Relevant Health

Thursday, July 16, 2015 from 6:30 PM to 8:30 PM (EDT)

Impact Hub (New York, NY)  

Info Session and Networking Event: July 16

If you are in the New York area on July 16, we will be hosting an information session covering Relevant Health and other opportunities on the east coast for health tech startups. If you have friends and colleagues from the New York area who may be interested, please pass along our invitation as we would enjoy the opportunity to meet them. The event will be hosted at Impact Hub in New York City. We will be hosting a networking session and discussion. Space will be limited, so get your RSVPs in early!

Tickets and more information

Many of my friends have been posting upbeat “3 Good Things” lists to social media, highlighting positive events in their daily lives. Today, I’d like to post my own set of “3 Good Things” in health care, all related by the theme of under-appreciated innovations.

1) Improvements in cardiac care

The first “good thing” was reported by the New York Times in their story, “A Sea Change in Treating Heart Attacks.”

For traditional companies, making the transition to thinking and acting digitally is easier said than done. Yet digital natives must also continually work to maximize the advantages of digital technology. In this interview, Google’s vice president of US sales and operations, Jon Kaplan, tells McKinsey’s Barr Seitz how the company’s culture developed and how Google keeps pushing to retain its entrepreneurial spirit. An edited transcript of Kaplan’s remarks follows.

DALLAS, June 25, 2015 /PRNewswire/ -- AT&T* commissioned a study to help companies innovate and make the most of technology. The results show that innovation happens where companies have one or more of six business model traits – "Six Degrees of Innovation."

The University of Cambridge Judge Business School carried out the research. They studied how new technology and market demand have combined and led to business innovation.  The aim was to see if there were any common characteristics in the businesses that did succeed.

I’ve been reflecting on what it was like each time I started a new venture. We were brimming with excitement, passion and energy. We knew what we were creating was going to disrupt the media industry and make it better, faster, smarter. But maintaining that high has been difficult.

Eight years after starting Rubicon Project, I’ve found that our excitement, passion and energy comes in waves. It is so easy to get caught up in the day to day monotony and slowly drift away from the very mindset that is the foundation of our company. How can we return to that mindset of innovation?

I’m sure many of you will have read or heard the famous quote attributed to Henry Ford, “if I’d asked people what they wanted, they’d have said a faster horse”.  This is usually quoted in the context of radical or breakthrough innovation, justifying an approach that doesn’t rely on customer feedback.  A famous quote by Steve Jobs is also used in the same context, stating that by the time Apple had delivered what people wanted it would have been obsolete.

The world has been clamoring for a super-battery. Since about 2010, a critical mass of national leaders, policy professionals, scientists, entrepreneurs, thinkers and writers have all but demanded a transformation of the humble lithium-ion cell. Only batteries that can store a lot more energy for a lower price, they have said, will allow for affordable electric cars, cheaper and more widely available electricity, and a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. In the process, a lot of gazillionaires will be created.

Image: This black goop is what will be at the heart of the next generation of batteries. (Kieran Kesner for Quartz)

When it comes to fostering innovation and the commercialisation of world class research, there is something the United States has that we lack. We ought to learn from the successes of the US in this area, and emulate one program they have pioneered to give our own innovative industries a much needed kick start.

For dozens of Australian researchers returning to the country after working in the US, the lack of an equivalent to the US’s Small Business Innovation Research SBIR scheme here reflects a major hole in our innovation ecosystem.

Its gradual shift from a research park to an innovation district in recent years has put Wake Forest Innovation Quarter on a path to developing a work, live, learn and play culture and community in Winston-Salem. This hub of activity on about 200 acres is rising from old tobacco factories and warehouses in eastern downtown, creating a knowledge-based innovation ecosystem to include developers, people, product partners, technical and legal teams, workforce training, incubators, and capital and management for sustainability. It is a place for research, business and education in biomedical science, information technology and advanced materials.

Image: David Rolfe/Journal The group of buildings formerly known as RJR's Building 60, seen Friday, May 8, 2015, is undergoing renovation for the Wake Forest Baptist Medical School. The buildings border Bailey Park in the heart of the Wake Forest Innovation Quarter. (Winston-Salem Journal, David Rolfe) WSJ_0517_Innovation 

The new era of highly connected and interactive technology is changing not only how business employees interact with customers, but also how they interact with each other, and with their company. I am happy to see reports that young companies are in the forefront of these trends, on both the customer trends and the employee trends. Both are required to stay competitive.

The business of buying and selling of shares is a potentially profitable one. While there is an element of uncertainty involved, acquisition of company shares is an endeavor that has provided long-term financial security to vast numbers of people. In the early 1970s, foreign owned companies were directed by the Nigerian Government to make their stocks available for local purchase. This created massive opportunities for investment and profitability, which gains are still enjoyed by some of Nigeria’s wealthiest.

Are you really an Entrepreneur, or just a small business person?

The differences between the two are subtle but quite distinct.

Entrepreneurship is a hot item at the moment. Articles abound about entrepreneurship as a career. Are they born or made? I've had some thoughts on that. But my view is that Entrepreneurship is not a career, its a calling.

Click around crowdfunding sites and you’ll find campaigns to fund vacations, make documentaries and build 3-D printers. You’ll also find the Paragon Induction Cooktop, a project by an arm of General Electric. It can cook sous vide, sear, deep fry, poach, braise and warm up food — all controllable by a handy mobile app. As of Friday morning, it had raised nearly $311,000 from 1,900 backers on its Indiegogo site. GE isn’t the only large company raising money through sites like Kickstarter and Indiegogo, normally places where people fund pet projects, and startups test their first products.

Few investors these days have the time or patience to read a full business plan, so a better way to catch their eye is with a tightly written and well formatted two-page executive summary. As a model, think high-quality marketing collateral, with text and graphics in columns and sidebars, but focused on the value of your business, rather than selling your product.

Image: http://blog.startupprofessionals.com

In the third installment of his four-part series for Disrupt Africa (read parts one and two here), Sw7 co-founder Keith Jones analyses what he calls the “Funding Paradox.

We are in an unfunded market, but there is lots of cash around, both locally and offshore, and the disbursers are as frustrated as the entrepreneurs that the money is not flowing. This is what I have called the Funding Paradox. Those of you that remember Catch 22 will relate.

"I really, really wanted to be in finance," confesses Curren Krasnoff from the head of a table in a corner conference room with a panoramic view of the Los Angeles skyline.

The son of a banker, Mr Krasnoff, 23, said that all changed when he was home for the summer after his freshman year at Hamilton College.

Martine Rothblatt wants to transform the way we transplant organs and she doesn’t take no for an answer. When her daughter came down with a rare, life-threatening illness several decades ago, Rothblatt started researching the illness, and founded a company to develop a treatment for it.

Partnerships between public universities and private companies – called technology transfers – have the potential to solve some of the world's most difficult problems. The idea is to have researchers at universities do their work, and then the institution will help them obtain a patent. At that point, the product can be sold to a private company for distribution. Think of the iconic Gatorade story at the University of Florida. 

Image: Boise State University researcher Juliette Tinker works in the lab where she has developed a vaccine that may protect dairy cows from staph infections. KYLE GREEN IDAHO STATESMAN

I am one of those people who doesn't like bubbles. Right now, we're experiencing a bubble in Silicon Valley with funny money driving weird, unproductive behavior.

Some people want this party to go on.

I don't.

Francisco Dao has written a poorly analyzed post on VentureBeat titled "What will happen to Silicon Valley when demographics strangle the global economy":

Image: http://www.huffingtonpost.com

How Patenting Changes May Affect Small Innovators Friday, June 26, 2015 :: Staff infoZine Patenting and Innovative Startups: Putting the America Invents Act (AIA) in a Broader Economic Context.  

Washington DC - infoZine - Thursday, the Office of Advocacy, an independent office within the U.S. Small Business Administration, released an Issue Brief entitled “Patenting and Innovative Startups: Putting the America Invents Act (AIA) in a Broader Economic Context.” The issue brief summarizes some of the potential small business outcomes of the AIA and contextualizes those outcomes for innovative startups. This issue brief finds that policy changes that affect patenting could affect innovative startups as they may heavily utilize patents to raise funds to continue to innovate.

Image: http://www.infozine.com