Whether you're a CEO or CMO, crowdfunding is a viable way to raise funds for your business or cause. Last year, 22,252 projects were successfully funded on Kickstarter, with more than 2 million people backing a project for the first time. Even with such great success, crowdfunding is not an exact science, and ignoring basic rules can lead to avoidable blunders and quick failure.  

Malcolm Turnbull has been heralded as the new "innovation PM". Expectations are high that he must now translate his rhetoric around agility, disruption, entrepreneurship into concrete economic policies.

Both Glenn Withers, Professor of Economics at Australian National University, and myself have argued that we need not just STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics), but also researchers from the social sciences, arts, design and the humanities contributing to innovation.

There’s one thing that every entrepreneur must understand to truly grow a successful business.

That one thing is human behavior.

Understanding human behavior will help you become more effective at marketing, sales, productivity, copywriting, and even product development.

And there’s no better way to develop an understanding of human behavior than through research.

A complete list of books which makes you a strategic thinker. Start growing your business today with the best books that will make a better entrepreneur.

Having a dream and start building things is the most fulfilling sentiment in the whole world. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not easy to build something from zero to one, but definitely is the most beautiful job in the whole world. What keeps you moving? For me, books are playing an important role!

“Governments can’t conjure up entrepreneurs. But they can set the conditions under which entrepreneurs flourish,” says Australia’s chief economist Mark Cully.

Cully this week released the government’s sixth Australian Innovation System Report, arguing the need for more high-growth startups, driven by an entrepreneurial culture.

These days, the National Football League, BMW, and Uber have something in common — they’re all experimenting with big data in exciting new ways. The NFL is using big data to help football fans track how fast and how far their favorite players sprint during a game. BMW is using big data to help drivers anticipate upcoming traffic light changes, and determine whether they need to speed up or slow down to make the light. And Uber is using big data to predict where riders want to go even before they get into the car.

There is no such thing as a "male brain" or a "female brain," new research finds.

Instead, men and women's brains are an unpredictable mishmash of malelike and femalelike features, the study concludes. Even in brain regions previously thought to show differences based on sex, variability is more common than consistency.

"Our study demonstrates that although there are sex/gender differences in brain structure, brains do not fall into two classes, one typical of males and the other typical of females, nor are they aligned along a 'male brain — female brain' continuum," the study researchers wrote Nov. 30 in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

BOSTON, MA--(Marketwired - Dec 2, 2015) - Apple and Google again retain the two top spots in The Boston Consulting Group's annual survey of the most innovative companies. Tesla Motors accelerated to number three from number seven last year, and Microsoft and Samsung round out the top five.

This year's list is a global group: 29 companies on the list are from the U.S., 11 are from Europe, 10 from Asia, 3 from China and one from India. The companies on the list are a mix of technology companies and traditional ones -- in fact, five of the top ten are non-tech companies, the same mix as in BCG's first survey.

Blockchain, the technology behind Bitcoin, is expected to take our digital environment to the next level. While the risks involved are growing in parallel with its development, regulatory responses are not a priority for lawmakers.

Described as one of the “greatest technological breakthroughs since the Internet”, Blockchain technology will significantly change the way we share and do businesses, as it cuts the need for intermediaries. 

Image: Although one of the first applications has been the so-called crypto-currency, the potential of blockchain technology may affect every transaction and process where a validation is needed (BTC Keychain)

WASHINGTON, D.C. (PRWEB) December 02, 2015

Overwhelming majorities of voters across the nation and in key swing states support a comprehensive initiative designed to parlay the United States’ strong research base into greater economic prosperity and a higher quality of life for all. These findings come from a new survey conducted for the Innovation Advocacy Council, an initiative of SSTI, by the bipartisan team of Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research and TargetPoint Consulting.

COLUMBIA — A new farm incubator program at the Clemson University Sandhill Research and Education Center in Columbia will open small plots for startup farmers to begin growing their businesses.

The program is accepting applicants to grow fruits, vegetables and specialty crops on half-acre irrigated plots under the tutelage of Clemson Extension farming and agribusiness experts. The program expects to accept five or six aspiring entrepreneurs in its inaugural season, said Extension agent Harry Crissy, who is overseeing the program.

Utah, its startup scene, and its venture capital industry have been featured in every major business publication this year. The state attracted broad attention after ranking 7th in the nation in 2014 for total seed to later stage investments, a heady achievement for a state with just 3 million inhabitants. Per capita, Utah raised more venture capital funding than New York. Utah companies raised over $800 million in 2014, more than twice the $316.2 million raised in 2013, according to a report from PwC/NVCA MoneyTree. Some of these deals were substantial, like Qualtrics raising $150 million.

This is the second in a series about the changing models of corporate innovation co-authored with Evangelos Simoudis. Evangelos and I are working on what we hope will become a book about the new model for corporate entrepreneurship. Read part one on the Evolution of Corporate R&D. ---- Innovation and R&D Outposts For decades large companies have set up R&D labs outside their corporate headquarters, often in foreign countries, in spite of having a large home market with lots local R&D talent. IBM's research center in Zurich, GM's research center in Israel, Toyota in the U.S are examples.

Australia has many things to learn from Boston’s innovation “secret sauce” in order transform its economy, a new Microsoft report says.  

Microsoft led a delegation of Australian politicians, business leaders and members of the startup community on a tour of Boston and the wider Massachusetts area in July and has now collated the various lessons learnt into a report that’s been backed by the federal government.

85% of UK workers believe the strategic objectives of their employers could more easily be met through innovative approaches. Fortunately, the innovation discussion in business is progressing. Yet although most organisations acknowledge the desperate need for change, they are still at a loss when it comes to taking action. Workforces are a goldmine for the insight needed to drive change in an increasingly competitive business environment - but this knowledge must be captured to unlock innovation.

Image: http://www.innovationmanagement.se

A major point of contention during this week’s climate negotiations in Paris is the question of who should be most responsible for the cost of transforming the world’s energy system. And while the need to curb rising emissions from major developing nations is one of the most urgent issues on the table, there is no ignoring the huge amount of heat-trapping gas that richer countries added to the atmosphere well before developing nations began emitting at a high rate.

Image: French president François Hollande gives a speech at the opening of the U.N. Conference on Climate Change in Paris.  - http://www.technologyreview.com

Building a winning sales deck is one thing. But what about the email templates needed to get prospects on the phone? What about the phone scripts for setting those sales presentation appointments? The best sales deck in the world isn’t super helpful sitting on a shelf, gathering dust because you aren’t setting appointments in which to use it! And while a sales presentation is all well and good, a well-scripted, live demo is required to show prospects it’s not all smoke and mirrors.

Executives, analysts, and investors often rely on internal-rate-of-return (IRR) calculations as one measure of a project’s yield. Private-equity firms and oil and gas companies, among others, commonly use it as a shorthand benchmark to compare the relative attractiveness of diverse investments. Projects with the highest IRRs are considered the most attractive and are given a higher priority.

Image: http://www.mckinsey.com

This is the second in a series about the changing models of corporate innovation co-authored with Evangelos Simoudis. Evangelos and I are working on what we hope will become a book about the new model for corporate entrepreneurship. Read part one on the Evolution of Corporate R&D. ----

Innovation and R&D Outposts

For decades large companies have set up R&D labs outside their corporate headquarters, often in foreign countries, in spite of having a large home market with lots local R&D talent. IBM's research center in Zurich, GM's research center in Israel, Toyota in the U.S are examples.

Hackathons—where people from different backgrounds come together to work on a project for a few intense, caffeine-fueled days—are already well-established practices in some corners of the business world. They’re hallowed traditions in Silicon Valley, and even old-economy companies like GM and GE use them. Hackathons have become popular in research and education, too. This year, MIT hosted several, including "Hacking Arts," "Hacking Rehabilitation," and even the second-annual breast pump hackathon, "Make the Breast Pump Not Suck!"