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.
The world's biggest electronics companies are flaunting their goods at CES in Las Vegas, giving you a look into the laptops, TVs and weird gadgets they hope will end up in your house sometime in 2023. That can be dazzling enough, but the really fun stuff at CES is the tech that's not necessarily going to go on sale anytime soon.
Image: Aska
Visa founder and modern payments pioneer Dee Hock, who passed away this past August, transformed the way we spend. While he didn’t invent the credit card, his outsider status and visionary approach to the very concept of money changed the world. And despite commentary that the credit card is a relic of Hock’s generation and ripe for disruption, today’s credit card is stronger than ever.
As we enter 2023, the expected flow of economic forecasts is well underway. Some say the global recession is inevitable. Others acknowledge the changes in geopolitics and economics but are trying to find a silver lining.
Anyway, we’re all feeling the effects of the current financial crisis. But one thing is certain, now is not the time to retreat. Don’t stop marketing, and don’t forget about your customers during these difficult times.
The past three years have been tumultuous for founders.
COVID-19 altered the way many ran their businesses, talk of a possible recession dominated the second half of the last year, and recent high-profile layoffs at major tech companies have stoked fears about future employment. But it's also been a good time to learn valuable lessons, founders told Insider.
I spend a lot of time in meetings and am surprised to see the stance that Shopify is taking to curb the amount of time their employees are spending in meetings.
Shopify's approach, implementing a set of rules about how, when, and who can attend meetings, isn't addressing the issue. That employees are meeting isn't the problem--it's how the meeting is conducted that makes the difference.
A team of University of Arkansas physicists has successfully developed a circuit capable of capturing graphene's thermal motion and converting it into an electrical current.
“An energy-harvesting circuit based on graphene could be incorporated into a chip to provide clean, limitless, low-voltage power for small devices or sensors,” said Paul Thibado, professor of physics and lead researcher in the discovery.
Image: Paul Thibado, professor of physics, with sample energy-harvesting chips under development. (CREDIT: University of Arkansas)
The past few months have seen conversations around initial public offering offerings (IPOs) of start-ups garnering greater momentum. Entrepreneur and investor Nithin Kamath shared his thoughts on start-ups making their stock market debut in a post on the professional networking platform, LinkedIn on Thursday.
Kamath rolled out some advice for B2C businesses and revealed, “Setting the right expectations, being transparent, & not overselling are great ways to reduce the volatility of the stock price pre & post-IPO.”
As it prepares to launch a global lineup of electric cars and trucks, Stellantis is also planning to build a very different kind of electric vehicle.
At CES in Las Vegas, the automaker announced that it will build the Archer Midnight electric aircraft, as well as provide $150 million in funding to California-based Archer Aviation in 2023 and 2024.
Image: Archer Midnight electric aircraft to be manufactured with Stellantis
We're hours into CES week and I've already lost count of the number of TVs I've laid eyes on. Don't get me wrong, all those 8K, perfectly contrasted, punch-you-in-your-face colored demos are a pleasure to watch -- but they've also become repetitive and, dare I say, boring. Instead, the one TV that's actually raised my eyebrows this year -- and is deserving of the Las Vegas limelight -- is the wireless TV by startup Displace.
Image: In a demo for ZDNET at CES 2023, Displace mounted its new TV to the window of a Las Vegas hotel. June Wan/ZDNET
BMW today announced the i Vision Dee electric sport sedan at CES, a concept car seemingly positioned to rival Apple's long-rumored electric vehicle.
The i Vision Dee uses some Amazon voice-recognition technology, but primarily showcases BMW's own software-first approach to next-generation vehicles with features designed to pre-emptively tackle tech companies like Apple that are seemingly on the brink of entering the auto industry. BMW has offered over-the-air software updates for millions of its vehicles since 2019, and going forward, it is says it is focused on data protection, guiding developers, and seamless digital integration.
Image: https://www.macrumors.com
A few years ago, I’d sometimes find myself needing to answer the question, “Why does Future Perfect, which is supposed to be focused on the world’s most crucial problems, write so much about AI?”
After 2022, though, I don’t often have to answer that one anymore. This was the year AI went from a niche subject to a mainstream one.
If you’re one of the record number of people who started a new business last year, you might feel a bit intimidated right now. Or maybe you were recently laid off or have nursed dreams of leaving your salaried job to start your own company for years. This might feel like the time to shelve those dreams of entrepreneurism until the downturn passes. Absolutely not.
The latest breed of elevators can recognize your face, greet you by name, take you to your floor automatically — and even stop to let on a robot bearing a catering platter or hospital tray.
Why it matters: The widespread fear of elevators that hit during the pandemic served to turbo-charge new innovations, in what some are calling a "digital revolution."
Every year the world runs more and more on batteries. Electric vehicles passed 10% of global vehicle sales in 2022, and they’re on track to reach 30% by the end of this decade.
Policies around the world are only going to accelerate this growth: recent climate legislation in the US is pumping billions into battery manufacturing and incentives for EV purchases. The European Union, and several states in the US, passed bans on gas-powered vehicles starting in 2035.
In 2022, around 50,000 new companies were entered in the Swiss commercial register. This data comes from the National Analysis of Swiss Company Formations 2022, carried out by the IFJ, which is an institute offering support to start-ups. Compared with the record year 2021, this equates to a slight decline of -1.4 percent. However, the number of start-ups is still above the average recorded over the past decade.
Image: In 2022, around 50,000 new companies have been entered in the Swiss commercial register. Genric image: StartupStockPhotos/Pixabay
GrubHub founder Mike Evans reveals the inside story of how he grew a multibillion-dollar behemoth that changed the way we eat.
Hungry and tired one night, Mike wanted a pizza, but getting a pizza delivered was a pain in the neck. He didn’t want to call a million restaurants to see what was open. So, as an avid coder, he created GrubHub in his spare bedroom to figure out who delivered to his apartment. Then, armed with a $140 check from his first customer and ignoring his crushing college debt, he quit his job. Over the next decade, Mike grew his little delivery guide into the world’s premier online ordering website. In doing so, he entered the company of an elite few entrepreneurs to take a startup from an idea all the way to an IPO.
GrubHub’s journey from Mike’s bedroom to Wall Street doesn’t fit into how business schools teach entrepreneurship. In Hangry, he details step-by-step the grind of building an innovative business, with each chapter including sharp lessons for entrepreneurs and startups that Mike learned on the fly as he piloted GrubHub by the seat of his pants. Hangry reveals a decade of eighty-hour work weeks, detailed steps of how Mike garnered his first customers, his hunt for financing dollars, cliffhanger acquisitions, the near collapse of his marriage, a brutally difficult merger, and a pair of tumultuous quit/unquit moments, all to steer the company to become one of the most successful startups in the world. With a razor-sharp wit, Mike reveals hard-won truths about how startups succeed—and even harder-won truths about how startups fail.
Shocking everyone, at the pinnacle of startup success, Mike leaves it all behind, quitting the company he started to bike across the United States in search of balance. But eventually, the grand vistas of America bring the lessons of the past into focus, driving the realization that for entrepreneurs a hunger for success doesn’t end, and he starts another company, even more ambitious than the first.
Everybody wants a side hustle or two these days. Not only is money tight, but such great opportunities are available; spurred on by the ease of online culture and the gig economy, it seems like a no-brainer to capitalize on them. If you're here reading Entrepreneur, you probably already have a side hustle or have a great plan. 2022 is behind us, so it's time to consider what you want to accomplish in 2023. Why not plan to make your side hustle more profitable, or even turn it into a full-time gig, become your own boss or start your own business?
“Teams succeed to the degree that there is a free flow of ideas. Read this book to learn how to bring out the best in others—and in yourself.”—Scott Galloway, bestselling author of The Four and Post Corona
Ideaflow: the number of ideas you or your team can generate in a set amount of time
We all want great ideas, but few actually understand how they’re born. Innovation doesn’t come from a sprint or a hackathon—it’s a result of maximizing ideaflow.
Jeremy Utley and Perry Klebahn of Stanford’s renowned Hasso Plattner Institute of Design (aka the “d.school”) offer a proven strategy for coming up with great ideas by yourself or with your team, and quickly determining which are worthy. Drawing upon their combined decades of experience leading Stanford’s premier Launchpad accelerator and advising some of the world’s most innovative organizations, like Microsoft, Michelin, Keller Williams Realty, and Hyatt, they’ll teach you how to:
Overcome dangerous thinking traps
Find inspiration in unexpected places
Trick your own brain to be more creative
Design and deploy affordable experiments
Fill your innovation pipeline
Unleash your own creative potential, as well as the potential of others
Perhaps you have experienced low ideaflow. Have you been in that quiet conference room, with a half-filled whiteboard, and an unmet business target? With the proven system in this book, entrepreneurs, managers, and leaders will learn how to tap into surprising and valuable ideas on demand and fill the creative pipeline with breakthrough ideas.
For all their utility and ubiquity (not to mention TV commercials’ allegations), paper towels are simply not very good at their job—at least when compared with hydrogels, which are already utilized in the form of microbeads between fabric or paper sheets for products like diapers or tampons. These materials, composed of large, interlocking polymers, absorb upwards of 100 times their weight in water, making them roughly 30 percent more effective than porous options like paper towels.
The internet revolution has made many people rich, and the lure of outrageous fortune has tempted many to exaggerate what computers can do. During the dot-com bubble, many companies discovered they could double the price of their stock simply by adding .com, .net, or internet to their names. Now, we face an comparable AI bubble — in which many companies woo customers and investors by claiming to have a business model based on artificial intelligence.
