Dear Sandy,

I always appreciate your insight into issues of education and innovation — and am particularly impressed that you were able to work in some post-it notes (even in an email)!

Figuring out what we mean by “innovation” is key to making sense out of this word that is buzzing around with increasing frequency. I wish I could see the thought-bubble that appears whenever people talk about innovation in education. I could almost guarantee that there would be a very different picture in each one. That’s not a bad thing — but it does mean that taking a few minutes to make sure we are clear about what we mean will keep us from just talking past each other.

There are a number of items I want to discuss with you but tonight there is only time for a few very time sensitive items that may be of interest to you.  Item #1 is the DoD SBIR submission site because Tuesday is your last full day to submit for the DoD 15.2 SBIR and 15.B STTR, (submission closes Wednesday June 24, at 6:00am edt).  Item # 2 is all important patent legislation which is supposed to be voted on this week in the House (H.R. 9 "Innovation Act") and the Senate's version (S. 1137 "Protecting American Talent and Entrepreneurship" (PATENT) Act).  Both of these items have the potential for causing small businesses plenty of grief.   

At last week's National SBIR Conference many of you kind readers reached out to me and requested more frequent (but relevant) SBIR Insider editions.  So we will try to do that without wearing out any welcome I may have with you.  Consequently we hope to have another SBIR Insider for you in a week or so with a lot of good news including information about award winners and new generations of SBIR companies. 

 

Josh Lerner sits somewhere in the middle of all the most powerful money on the planet. But he's not a billionaire investor — he just knows everything there is to know about those types. Hyde Park-bred Lerner is a hotshot professor at Harvard Business School and a prominent authority on venture capital, right when VCs are some of the glammest celebs around.

Image: Josh Lerner knows how the highest echelon of money operates. (Photo: Rose Lincoln/Harvard)Image: 

gradThe job market for new college graduates is red hot, according to the most recent report from Michigan State University’s Collegiate Employment Research Institute (CERI).

The survey, the nation’s largest with over 5,000 companies responding, indicates that employers are hiring college graduates at levels not seen since the dot-com boom in 1999-2000. The 16% increase in recruiting comes after several years of single-digit growth, igniting competition for qualified candidates.

We all want to work smarter, and science and data have proved that timing plays an important role in scheduling different types of tasks at work, from getting a response to your email to asking for a raise. Grab your calendar, and pencil in the best times to get these seven things done:

SEND AN EMAIL THAT GETS READ

The traditional workweek might be Monday through Friday, but if you want your email to be read, consider sending it on a weekend morning. According to a study of 500,000 emails by email tracking software provider Yesware, email-open rates are higher on the weekends. That's because significantly less email is sent on weekends and you have less competition for clicks.

It turns out that the myth of the entrepreneur who raises her first round of funding from friends and family isn’t actually true. In fact, 75 percent of aspiring U.S. entrepreneurs rely on external debt sources, as opposed to capital from family and friends.

A team at the Kauffman Foundation reported on the first funding decisions that startup founders make.  The data came from the Kauffman Firm Survey, which tracks business characteristics, cash flow, and owner demographics for over 5000 new firms, to identify from whom firms choose to raise capital and how that decision impacts the long-term growth of the firm.

The fight for a well-paid job without a degree is a tough one, but there are still a handful of roles out there in which you can earn serious money without a degree-level qualification.

The job-search engine Adzuna has pulled data on hundreds of thousands of job listings over the past year to find which careers offer the highest average wage — even if you have never been to university.

The good news is that recent big company financial woes and layoffs have generated a flood of candidates with real experience seeking positions at startups. The bad news is that many of these frustrated employees may have already reached their level of incompetence (The Peter Principle). They are not the ones you need in the few key team positions to drive your startup.

Image: http://blog.startupprofessionals.com

Earlier this month, I wrote a post titled What Makes It So Hard to Let Go? In this recent post I wrote for Fast Company, I outline five proven ways that leaders can make it easier to let go:

In my 15 years of executive coaching and running leadership development programs, I’ve worked with thousands of leaders charged with getting different results.

Earn a college degree, and you’ll set yourself up for life: a stable job, salary, and mortgage. That was the old adage for generation after generation, following World War II. Yet, both young and old workers no longer hold the same abiding faith in the power of four-year degree, according to the latest Allstate/National Journal Heartland Monitor Poll.

Instead, understanding computer technology, working well with different types of people, keeping your skills current, and having good family connections trump the importance of college—at least, when it comes to people’s notions of what it takes to succeed in the modern workplace. “If you don’t have a good grip on technology, it is very hard to succeed,” said 45-year-old Christine Welch of Idaho, who has three children, ages 17 to 25.

You’re leading team meetings regularly and you’re frustrated. Even though you consider yourself a collaborative leader, you’ve noticed that when you invite your team to participate in discussions you’re often met with silence. They stare back at you. Not much is coming out of their mouths’ that’s helpful to the issues you want their input on.

There are also issues that you should know about that your team isn’t bringing to you. You’re finding out about them from unexpected sources. You’ve told your team you need more information from them, yet nothing is working to assure that you have the information you need to properly lead your organization.

Uber, Google, and Facebook are among the biggest, most powerful tech companies in the world.

But when they were founded, these companies were scrappy startups with small staffs. They hired interns — usually college kids or recent grads — to help keep things chugging along.

Image: http://www.businessinsider.com

The time before going to bed is critical to ensure that one closes out the day that has passed, plans for the day ahead, but it is also critical that the mind is calmed so that one has a restful sleep. Too many successful executives get this wrong.  One can only burn the candle at both ends for so long before it will mean that they are not as productive as they should be at work, and not as happy as they should be overall.  Based on research and conversation with successful executives on the topic, here are the five things that successful people do before they go to sleep:

Italy has safely secured its place as pizza capital of the world.

As part of Milan's Expo 2015, a horde of 60 pizza makers gathered to make one colossal pie on Saturday.

Image: http://mashable.com

Understanding how the brain works—or doesn’t, as the case may be—depends on deciphering the patterns of electrical signals its neurons produce. Recording them requires inserting electrodes into the tissue. But the rigid devices traditionally used to record these signals, or to therapeutically stimulate certain regions, can damage the brain and elicit an immune response, and they tend not to work for very long.

Image: http://www.technologyreview.com

It’s a heady time for M&A professionals. Deal volume is skyrocketing, and cash and equity are flowing. We are bouncing from one deal to the next and loving it. For a founder or CEO, there may be little you can do to prepare yourself for the chaos of selling your company, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try. Here are five tips to help prepare for the onslaught.

Corporate logos are designed to convey all kinds of messages, but humor is generally avoided when it comes to something that billions of people could potentially see. But with a little rearranging, the blog Whats His Face? shows us that even these symbols of international finance can be amusing if looked at in the right way. By combining corporate logos in creative ways, the blog turn them into surprisingly expressive faces. The blog sees these portraits as "a slightly fun and different way of looking at the brands that surround us." And with every company under the sun merging together, some of these logo remixes don't seem so far fetched.

Image: http://www.fastcodesign.com

You’re starting a business and are looking for someone to fund it. Are angel investors a possibility?

How much money you need and the revenue potential of your startup will determine the answer.

There are no absolutes, but generally angels fund companies needing amounts between $100,000 and $1 million. Lesser outlays make the effort and transaction costs of raising angel money prohibitively expensive. Consider self-funding or tapping friends and family.

As we consider the interplay between innovation, business models and change, it becomes clear that many companies have a definition of innovation that’s far too narrow.  Increasingly we need to rethink the scope, depth and breadth of innovation possibilities, as well as the secondary implications of innovation.

In my opinion, the biggest faux pas might be claiming absolute knowledge about anything.

In a tech environment, even if you're 100% confident about X being true, you express it with, "I think X might be true" or, "Let's try it with the assumption of X and see if it works," so that you allow room for the possibility that others may contribute something you did not think of.

Image: FLICKR, PHIL WHITEHOUSE