Innovation is the cornerstone of a successful business, so why is it so elusive to many companies? To determine the biggest roadblocks, consulting firm Imaginatik conducted a study of 200 professionals in its "State of Global Innovation" report. 35 percent of those surveyed were senior management, board members or C-Suite executives, and 76 percent of respondent's organizations had 1,000 employees or more. The results offer insight into what makes innovation stall at large companies.

We know nothing about the backstory of this tweet from First Round Capital’s Josh Kopelman, but we’re gonna go ahead and say this is probably not the best way to correspond with investors (or anyone else, for that matter):

Image: http://technical.ly 

“It’s only words, and words are all I have…….” , is a line from the Bee Gees song “Words” from the 1960s that has been covered many times since.  Full disclosure here – I don’t have this song in my collection, only in the recesses of my consciousness.

Last year I helped to run a survey with members of the IACCM (International Association of Contract and Commercial Management).  We found that while 73% of organizations represented had innovation as an explicit Top 3 priority, only half of respondents felt that they had C-suite support; with 32% ticking the “don’t know” box.

Image: http://www.innovationexcellence.com

Whether it's Paul Ryan's outspoken remarks, or the Swedish shifting to a 30-hour workweek, there's a lot of talk in the news lately about work-life balance. But how does your work-life balance compare to other Americans, taking into consideration factors such as education and your commute? Nathan Yau's latest visualization calculator from FlowingData helps you figure it out.

Image: http://www.fastcodesign.com

Few things are quite as fulfilling as scratching that last item off of your daily to-do list—except when it’s Monday’s list and you finished it on Thursday. But, believe it or not, there are some people who actually get through their daily to-dos on the actual day they intended to finish them.

If someone asked you to list your skill set, you probably wouldn’t mention the fact that you show up for work every day. But Jon Acuff, author of Do Over: Rescue Monday, Reinvent Your Work, and Never Get Stuck, says you should rethink your definition of skills and recognize that the small things—like showing up—are often the "invisible" things that contribute most to your success.

The European Commission announced today that it has invested $1.1 billion into venture capital funds across the continent, since January.

The massive figure is part of an ambitious program to accelerate the continent’s high-tech economy, something the EC believes is critical to dealing with the region’s stubborn unemployment.

More than 770 health care innovation companies are operating in Washington state, representing 6 percent of jobs in the state’s health-care industry, but producing more than 13 percent of the industry’s overall output, as measured by the value of the goods and services they produce.

That’s one of the findings from a new study commissioned by the Washington State Department of Commerce and Cambia Grove, the health-care innovation hub established in downtown Seattle this year by Portland-based Cambia Health Solutions.

OCTOBER 26, 2015, 3:14 PM|Boeing is the only company in the U.S. that builds jumbo jets, and soon, it will soar past a milestone. Boeing began with a canvas and wood airplane nearly 100 years ago. That first biplane led to today’s 787 Dreamliner. Over a century, Boeing transformed travel across the globe. Only on “CBS This Morning,” Jan Crawford takes a look inside a flying revolution.

When using the Attribute Dependency technique, you’ll reach a point in the function follows form process where it’s time to make adaptations to your concept. That’s where you try to improve the concept and put more definition around it.

One way to make adaptations with Attribute Dependency is to change the type of dependency. There are three ways to do it: passive, active and automatic. Think of these as what has to happen within the product or service for the dependency to take place. Let’s look at each type.

Image: http://www.innovationinpractice.com

REHOVOT, Israel–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Yissum Research Development Company of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, the technology-transfer company of the Hebrew University, announced today the inception of Agrinnovation, an investment fund focused on agricultural inventions. The announcement was made at an inauguration ceremony that took place at The Hebrew University’s Robert H. Smith Faculty of Agriculture, Food and Environment.

Nominations are now being accepted for the 2016 FLC awards. One of the most coveted honors in the technology transfer field, the FLC awards have been presented to over 200 federal laboratories since their inception in 1984. To reflect the diversity in scope and number of technology transfer efforts undertaken by federal laboratories and their partners, seven categories of awards will be presented.

Companies backed by venture capital funds are increasingly important to the US economy, according to Researchers at the Stanford Graduate School of Business.

American venture capital backed companies include Apple, Amazon, Starbucks and Google.

Their numbers show that since 1979, VC-backed companies account for 43% of all the companies floated.

Image: http://www.businessinsider.com.au

Herd behavior has long been a staple in financial markets. Boom-and-bust cycles are widely observed, creating opportunities for technical strategies, such as momentum investing. Simply chasing returns exacts a heavy cost from investors, however, and venture capital is no exception.

Tales of fantastic returns — now sensationalized by pop culture — support the growing popularity of venture capital. While The Social Network and Shark Tank make a positive impact by encouraging entrepreneurship and innovation, they are less effective at setting realistic investor expectations.

Image: https://blogs.cfainstitute.org

Has venture capital always been a bad model for the life sciences?

Andrew Lo, director of the MIT Laboratory for Financial Engineering, dismissed the sector outright on stage Sunday at the Cleveland Clinic Medical Innovation Summit. His rationale:

Google Ventures founder Bill Maris believes that we've already created the technologies necessary to double the lifespan of people around the world. The challenge is making those technologies available for everyone. 

Of all the podcast interviews I’ve done over the years, I think the one I recently did with Jerry Colonna on his Reboot podcast series is my favorite.

In the podcast show notes, Jerry links to a fun post by Fred Wilson titled Sixteen Years Ago (which is now 19 years ago…) We’ve known each other for a very long time, and I treasure Jerry as one of my best friends on this planet.

Image: Greg Rakozy

Women entrepreneurs are getting more help and resources from governments, universities and corporations — including money.

The number of women-owned businesses in the U.S. increased 44 percent from 2001 to 2011, says the Center for Women’s Business Research.   

Image: Aishwarya Mandyam, left, and her twin sister, Karishma Mandyam, write on an "idea board" for an upcoming startup competition at the University of Washington in Seattle. They're working on a mobile marketing startup.

In this world of constant change, new technologies, and a thousand cultures, it’s evident and somehow comforting to me that the basic rules for business prosperity really haven’t changed in the last hundred years. Business success is still more about the people than the technology or idea involved. As an angel investor and a mentor to entrepreneurs I still see this every day.

I was just perusing a recent book, “The Science of Success,” a collection of essays by and about Napoleon Hill, who is most recognized as the author of the best seller “Think and Grow Rich” from way back in 1937. Hill attributes his ten rules of success to Andrew Carnegie, who was in his prime well before that, over a hundred years ago.

Image: http://blog.startupprofessionals.com

Globe correspondent Jay Fitzgerald emailed Harvard Business School professor Clay Christensen several questions about his theory of disruptive innovation and recent criticisms of it, including an article publised in MIT Sloan Managment Review. Here are Christensen’s responses.

Q: Have you read the MIT Sloan Management Review article and, if so, what are your thoughts on it?

A: Yes, I have seen the article. When I first heard from the editor of the Sloan Management Review that there was going to be an article on disruption, I was excited because it was nice to hear of other scholars investing effort into researching disruptive innovation. I think the article had great ambitions for what it initially set out to achieve, but due to a number of flaws it ultimately fell short of those goals and the potentially useful contribution it could have made.

Image: PAT GREENHOUSE/GLOBE STAFF/FILE Harvard Business School professor Clay M. Christensen met with research assistants in July 2011.