With an assurance to set up a venture capital fund and an incubator complex in the city for start-ups in the biotechnology sector, Chief Minister Siddaramaiah launched the 15th edition of the Bangalore INDIA BIO here on Monday.

The three-day event will see seminars, discussions and conferences by nearly 110 speakers, with delegations from more than 15 countries participating.

Image: http://www.thehindu.com

With all the websites we log into every day, forgetting passwords can become a hassle. Most of us are guilty of forgetting a password, or using the same password for each login, simply because of the amount of times we have to fill out login forms daily. Here are a few tips to help you build a more unique and memorable password that will keep your information secure, while making them easier for you to remember.

Farming by hand involves a lot of intense labor and some mindless tasks. There’s a startup that thinks there’s a better way to do things. Harvest Automation designs robots that arrange pots in nurseries and greenhouses. But soon, they might be able to accomplish even more – like warehousing and manufacturing.

In a recent visit with The Chronicle, t he director of the National Institutes of Health, Francis S. Collins, spoke of brighter days ahead for his agency and medical researchers after a decade of tough budgetary constraints. The Obama administration has asked Congress to spend $31.3-billion on the NIH in the 2016 fiscal year, up about $1-billion from its current level, and Dr. Collins said there are signs that Congress may be ready to put the agency on a more sustainable financial path in the years ahead.

Depending on where you stand when it comes to robots and artificial intelligence, the following piece of news will either make you giddy with excitement or terrify you. When a new Japanese hotel opens its doors in July this year, it will do so with robot staff. According to The Telegraph, the Henn-na Hotel, currently under construction in Nagasaki, will be partially staffed by “actroid” androids. The actroids are designed to look as much like humans as possible and will be capable of doing everything from making coffee to greeting guests and carrying luggage to their rooms.

“Innovate or perish” may be a Western management mantra, but Asia is reportedly winning the race.

According to Bloomberg’s 2015 ranking of the world’s 50 most innovative countries, South Korea claimed top spot ahead of second-placed Japan, with Singapore ranked eighth, Australia 13th and New Zealand 18th. Other Asian countries that made the list comprised China (22nd), Malaysia (27th) and Hong Kong (34th), with Thailand in 46th place.

While innovation seems like a buzzword these days, the reality is that it’s important when discussing the future of the Roanoke-Blacksburg region. In modern economic doctrine, the innovation economy positions knowledge, technology, entrepreneurship and a general quest for innovation as the keys to unlocking greater prosperity. This is not a new thing; in fact, America has been ramping up its innovation economy since World War II. However, it’s been in the last five years that significant emphasis has been placed on the U.S. becoming more competitive in the global economy by ramping up innovation efforts. While policymakers at the federal level and the agencies they fund have been slowly making changes to adapt policy and programs to fund new approaches to spur innovation, we don’t necessarily have the luxury of waiting on someone to “fix this.” The good news is our region hasn’t been waiting.

Many startups and mature businesses have not yet accepted the fact that customer satisfaction and loyalty in this “always connected” age are about more than product and service quality. They are all about how customers broadcast their pleasure or unhappiness to others. With incredible ease, they can influence thousands or millions of potential new customers, or say nothing.

New Zealand entrepreneur Sam Lee has joined an internationally renowned business incubator in America to develop his revolutionary meMini wearable camera idea. The 31-year-old flew to San Francisco last month to enter Wearable World Labs, which is the world's first incubator for start-up businesses, focussing on the "internet of things" and wearable technology.

Image: SUCCESS: StretchSense chief executive Dr Ben O’Brien.

Most technical entrepreneurs focus hard on building an innovative product, but forget that an elegant solution doesn’t automatically translate into a successful business. Businesses require an equally elegant business model, with the right price, messaging and delivery channel to the right target customers to keep the dream alive and growing.

Johns Hopkins University led the U.S. in higher education research spending for the 35th consecutive year in fiscal 2013, with $2.2 billion for medical, science, and engineering research, according to the National Science Foundation.

The university also once again ranked first on the NSF's separate list of federally funded research and development, spending $1.89 billion in fiscal year 2013 on research supported by NSF, NASA, the National Institutes of Health, and the Department of Defense.

There are some venture capitalists who consider themselves “entrepreneurial VCs” because they identify with and approach investing from an entrepreneur perspective. Others are actually former entrepreneurs who join a venture fund and call themselves a VC/entrepreneur because they once walked in the shoes of an entrepreneur.

And there is another unique breed: One-time entrepreneurs who never invested in startups professionally, but who decide to start a fund as a new venture — a truly entrepreneur VC. I am one of them.

2014 was a great year for startups seeking funding.  Two of the leading reporting companies, PitchBook and CB Insights, report similar trends (both of these reports focus on funding by traditional financial venture capitalists and corporate venture capitalists, but the numbers differ because PitchBook also includes some angel investments). The key points are:

It seems that every locality these days has a business incubator, or is thinking about setting one up. Success is far, far more than just erecting a building with a shared reception and cool breakout spaces. In this article, Glenn Athey sets out some of the key lessons from past practice, and the key characteristics of business incubators and accelerators.

Image: http://www.bqlive.co.uk

Blueprint Health, a NYC based mentor-focused health technology accelerator has revealed its Winter 2015 Accelerator class (seventh class) of seven digital health startups to its portfolio. Blueprint is a member of TechStars’ Global Accelerator Network. Today’s addition of seven companies brings the accelerator’s total to 60 digital health with more than 140 entrepreneurs in Blueprint’s alumni community. 

In 2008, Jean Maginnis was thinking about how to create a think tank to advance creative innovation in her home state of Maine, when a literal tank gave her an idea. Sprague Energy's giant white fuel storage tanks that line the Portland harbor represent traditional industry, but were also, she realized, huge blank canvases for creative expression. This idea launched both the nonprofit Maine Center for Creativity and the Art All Around competition, in which nearly 600 artists from 80 countries submitted designs to paint the 16 tanks.

Image: Jean Maginnis

Some amazing companies like Airbnb, Dropbox and SendGrid got their start in business accelerators. Even better, they brought great returns and a fun ride to their investors.  So what are the best ways for angels to leverage and support accelerators so they can find great startups like these?

Patrick Riley, CEO of the Global Accelerator Network, which supports 70 leading accelerators throughout the world, offered me some good advice.  It was a preview of what he and his colleagues will share at the largest gathering of angels in the world, the Angel Capital Association Summit in April.

Investing in entrepreneurs and startups is a fun but different world from investing in conventional stocks, bonds, and commodities. First of all, it’s more of an investment in people than in a business, since the startup is usually an idea barely half-baked when they need your money. Secondly, the risk is very high, since as many as 90% of startups fail in the first five years.

SuperAgers, aged 80 and above — but with memories that are as sharp as those of healthy persons decades younger — have distinctly different looking brains than those of normal older people, according to new Northwestern Medicine research.

Understanding Superagers’ unique “brain signature” may enable scientists to decipher the genetic or molecular source and develop strategies to protect the memories of normal aging persons, as well as treat dementia.

Image: http://www.kurzweilai.net

We’ve all done it. If you own a small business, you might not admit it, but you’ve done it. You might have thought about an unpaid bill from a client while in mid-conversation with your wife, or tried to respond to an email while your daughter was tugging on your shirt, asking to play. Maybe taken a client phone call during dinner?

As entrepreneurs, we wear so many hats that the dynamic nature of our work often blurs the line between work and family time — but you can find balance.