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.
Even if you ignore all the hype around crowdfunding, there can be no doubt that it is a real alternative for entrepreneurs to achieve visibility and funding today. According to articles on Entrepreneur last year, there are now almost 1,000 crowdfunding platforms in existence, currently estimated to add more than $65 billion and 270,000 jobs to the economy.
Stressed out by traveling? We're here to fix that.
Mashable recently hosted our first #2015TravelChat to discuss how you can travel better this year. Several experts joined us, including Brian Kelly, founder of travel site The Points Guy, Johnny Jet, editor-in-chief of travel-information site JohnnyJet.com, travel writer Jean Newman Glock, Paul Brady, deputy consumer news editor at Condé Nast Traveler, and Mashable travel editor Jessica Plautz.
A few years from now, people might reminisce about a time when they watched movies on screens and manually closed their bedroom curtains.
We're in the midst of a technological revolution. Nanoparticles might soon internally diagnose diseases. Machines might build themselves. And virtual reality headsets might replace televisions — some boutique movie studios have begun to prepare for the shift to virtual reality by designing 360-degree films suitable for the headsets.
In a meeting with state business and education leaders today, Friday, Feb. 13, University of Iowa President Sally Mason outlined steps the UI is taking to accelerate the transfer of biomedical research into the marketplace.
Sally Mason The remarks were shared during the Iowa Innovation Council’s Biomedical Roundtable at the BioVentures Center in the UI Research Park. Doane Chilcoat, Bioscience Workgroup co-chair for the council, facilitated the meeting.
Image: Sally Mason
A lot of companies claim to foster innovation among employees, but usually on the company's terms and within highly constrained parameters. Add to this -- layers of bureaucracy, constrained budgets and slow decision-making among leadership. Is it any wonder then that Gallup's most recent State of the American Workplace report shows that 70 percent of U.S. workers aren't engaged at work? The Gallup research highlights that the disengagement can primarily be related back to what it calls the "managers from hell." They are creating active disengagement, costing the U.S. an estimated $450 billion to $550 billion annually.
Want a culture of innovation? Choose a few of the following guidelines and make them happen. If not YOU, who? If not NOW, when?
1. Remember that innovation requires no fixed rules or templates -- only guiding principles. Creating a more innovative culture is an organic and creative act.
2. Wherever you can, whenever you can, always drive fear out of the workplace. Fear is "Public Enemy #1" of an innovative culture.
I’ve been an entrepreneur for more than 30 years. It’s been a wild ride.
I became an entrepreneur because the idea of working for someone else never sat well with me. I have always wanted to be in charge of my own destiny.
I’m thankful that I am more excited about the future of my business today than I ever have been. Some might say I’m a late bloomer -- and I’d have to agree. I feel like doing more, not less! I’m far from ready to slow down.
The typical challenges that many entrepreneurs face are the development, design, execution and scaling of their product for an increasing customer base. For the inexperienced, this can lead to grave losses in time and money.
On the other hand, a well-planned and developed strategy for growth can exponentially increase opportunities. Here are three things to consider for an early-stage entrepreneur:
1. Don’t take on the world all at once.
BERKELEY, Calif. — To halt climate change, the world desperately needs advances in clean energy. But in recent years, Silicon Valley, the nation’s engine for technical innovation, has turned its back on investments in the field.
Now, even as the world grows hotter, young scientists with fresh ideas about energy technology are finding it increasingly difficult to find venture capital to get them off the ground.
“The V.C. model isn’t working,” said Horst Simon, the deputy director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.
By Garrison Moore
Congress recently passed a rewrite of the Workforce Investment Act (WIA). The new law, The Workforce Innovation and Opportunities Act, makes a number of changes from WIA. However, both laws have the same primary goals, the training and placement of poor and unemployed people in decent jobs. It seems useful to have a point of reference for program performance under the new law by reviewing recent WIA program performance. Critics and supporters have many claims about Workforce Investment Act program performance. Most lack any basis in fact. This paper provides a few facts about WIA for the layperson.
Programs funded under Workforce Investment Act service a variety of poor and unemployed populations (youth, Native Americans, migrant workers, the disabled, etc.) WIA Services range from counseling and job search assistance to a variety of training options (community college education courses, customized classroom training, employer provided on-the-job training, etc.) This paper reviews outcomes and simple benchmarks for unemployed adult participants and recently laid off or “dislocated” workers.
Download the report here: http://www.innovationamerica.us//images/stories/pdf2/WIA-Report-for-Review-2-15-2015.pdf
About once a week, I hear an entrepreneur during a financing presentation tell me that the product is almost ready for General Availability. They say, “Now all we need to do is hire a sales guy.”
It’s a little bit of an overstatement to say that the meeting ends at that point, but suffice it to say that I know I am dealing with someone who doesn’t have any idea what to do next – and as a result, we are very unlikely to invest.
Big cities are considered great engines of new ideas for good reason. Lots of smart people in a single place means many minds converging on the same problem. That leads some people to create fresh solutions—and it leads others to hear about these solutions early, steal them, and try to improve them even more.
But when it comes to innovation, city size may not matter as much today as it did in the past. That's the argument made in a new working paper by researchers Mikko Packalen of the University of Waterloo in Canada and Jay Bhattacharya of Stanford University. The duo writes that the "considerable advantage" once held by big cities on great new ideas "has eroded" in recent decades:
Image: An art and architecture ideas festival takes place in New York in 2013. (Storefront for Art and Architecture / Flickr)
Many high-tech supply chain managers looking for qualified talent to fill jobs across their supply chain network will be thrilled with recently introduced immigration legislation. New guidelines triple the cap on the number of skilled foreign workers allowed in under the H-1B visa program.
While some are happy with the announcement, however, my concern is that the proposed changes don't go far enough to shorten the length of time it will take for an H-1B visa holder to become a U.S. citizen, a process that currently can take more than ten years. That said, the bill will effectively increase U.S. dependence on skilled foreign workers tasked with applying their skills toward improving American innovation and job creation.
Biodegradable needles. Electronic parking. Online voting. Online storage. Online everything, really. In today’s fast-paced world, it is important to keep up with the latest technological advancements.
While the United States’ Silicon Valley is probably one of the most-known technologically innovative cities, take a look at these three European cities with excellent innovation climates, residents who are mostly involved in technological advancement, and startup ecosystems that provide good support.
This report coordinated by Nesta and commissioned by the European Commission, DG CONNECT is the first systematic network analysis of the emerging digital social innovation (DSI) ecosystem in Europe.
Key Findings
Angel investors and venture capitalists don’t make equity investments in non-profits. The simple reason is that it’s impossible to make money for investors when the goal of the company is to not make money. Yet as an active Angel investor, I still get this question on a regular basis, so I’ll try to outline the considerations in common-sense terms.
We all know that for most people who start businesses it is either necessary or extremely helpful to have access to financing. The lower the cost the better and the more cash-flow friendly it is, the better, because you don’t have any dang cash-flow. Or at least not much since you’re in your first year or two of starting the business.
New York City has created more jobs over the past five years than during any five-year period in the last half century. But the city is not pulsing with the same boomtown swagger it radiated in past growth spurts.
What’s missing? Wall Street.
The big investment banks and brokerage firms used to form the powerful engine that pulled New York’s economy out of recessions. During the boom years of the 1990s, the high-paying securities industry accounted for more than 10 percent of all of the jobs added in the city’s private sector. This time around, it has contributed less than 1 percent.
When you feel like you’re just one e-mail away from failure at work, it can seem ludicrous to take your eyes off of what you believe absolutely needs to get done to consider what you might regret in the future. The amount of demands coming at you feels so crushing and so unavoidable that you justify a missed soccer game here, a canceled dinner with a friend there, and a never-used gym membership over there, with the thought, I was just doing what it takes to get everything done.
