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.
Sales is both an art and a science. It is the skillful combination of emotion and logic, people and process, free-thinking and organization. I recently conducted an extensive research project involving more than one-hundred vice presidents of sales at top technology companies (software, cloud, computer hardware, and telecommunications) to better understand the art and science of managing a sales organization today.
Image Courtesy of satit_srihin / FreeDigitalPhotos.net
TechConnect is pleased to host 2014 TechConnect World, June 15-19 in Washington DC. The event, co-located with the 2014 National Innovation Summit the 2014 National Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Conference, delivers the world’s largest showcase and accelerator for industry-vetted emerging-technologies ready for commercialization. SBIR/STTR Phase II awardees planning to attend the SBIR Conference should consider the Innovation Showcase & Accelerator opportunity.
Alan Auerbach is the brains and leadership behind Puma Biotechnology PBYI -5.56%, a biopharma acquirer and developer of innovative cancer treatments that has had a great stock run this past week. The Los Angeles-based company’s shares surged 88 percent from Wednesday to Friday, closing the week at $86.75 per share. Today they’re up more than 1%, trading at close to $88 per share. The founder, chairman and CEO’s shares in the company have appreciated by $167 million on the good news, nearly doubling his stake from $185 million to $352 million.
Image: http://www.forbes.com
Minister Moore and Charlottetown-Sherwood MLA Robert Mitchell today announced government support for Somru BioScience Inc. The emerging biotechnology company is working to expand its portfolio of products and services.
Incorporated in 2012, Somru BioScience Inc. was created to develop breakthrough antibody technology for research, diagnostic and therapeutic applications.
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After vanquishing humans on Jeopardy!, IBM says its Watson computer is ready to help save human lives. The company on Thursday announced it has created a new business unit specifically to advance Watson and deliver its artificially intelligent wisdom to research organizations, medical institutions and businesses so that they can process “big data” for detailed answers to complex questions. They won’t actually own a Watson computer—instead its services will rendered via a network connection (the “cloud computing” model).
Image: IBM is so confident in its Watson cognitive computer, the company has launched a new business unit to sell the technology to academics and industry. Image courtesy of IBM.
From the architect. Generously supported by Jeff and MacKenzie Bezos, the Bezos Center for Innovation is a groundbreaking exhibition dedicated to the theme of innovation, featuring multimedia, interactive and hands- on experiences as well as artifacts, images and oral histories that explore Seattle’s creative history and ignite the innovator within.
Image: http://www.archdaily.com
Why is Silicon Valley the world center for innovation? How does innovation continue to thrive there? How do you create and maintain an innovative culture? Why is San Francisco becoming so attractive to startups? Is New York City poised to be the next Silicon Valley?
These and other thought-provoking questions were the topics of discussion on a recent episode of Inside Silicon Valley, a public affairs program that explores the trends, challenges and opportunities facing the region. Hosted by Joint Venture Silicon Valley President and CEO Russell Hancock, Inside Silicon Valley airs each week on radio station KLIV 1590 AM in San Jose.
Image: http://blog.appliedmaterials.com/
Vendors showed many wearable devices at the International CES expo, but the next big thing may just come from an enthusiast's garage.
To find the next wearable hit, companies are turning to the community of individual tech makers, who have been hacking circuit boards for decades to make technology accessible. New development kits introduced at CES will give do-it-yourselfers the tools to develop and experiment with new types of wearable devices.
Image: Freescale's Warp wearable development kit
As the United States geared up for an overhaul of its health-care system, we asked the provocative question: just why are new drugs so expensive? In our November cover story, “A Tale of Two Drugs,” veteran journalist Barry Werth took an in-depth look at how pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies determine the price of drugs, examining a life-saving treatment for cystic fibrosis and a cancer drug with marginal benefits. His insightful analysis suggests that putting a value on new drugs will only get more complicated and fraught with ethical challenges as treatments become more effective but often targeted at relatively small patient populations.
ABB manufactures a range of power and automation products in the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Egypt to serve rising local demand for electrical infrastructure. Their engineering teams across the region design and deliver a range of complex solutions from substations to serve new cities, oil and gas electrification, to electrical infrastructure for new property developments globally.
Image: http://www.utilities-me.com
This signing of this bill may have gone unnoticed to most over the holidays, but it’s not unnoticed by our startup and investor community.
Over the holidays, Gov. Rick Snyder signed the Michigan Crowdfunding bill into law, making us one of the first states to approve interstate crowdfunding for startups. This law was introduced by the House and passed rather quickly. The law includes a $10,000 limit on investment by non-accredited investors, but it has no limit for accredited investors.
Image Courtesy of ddpavumba / FreeDigitalPhotos.net
In 2013, three trends gained purchase and this year, they’ll ascend.
The first trend is the democratization of access to the opportunities in the $130 trillion physical economy, which by the way is six time bigger than the digital economy, according to Oxford Economics.
The second trend is the historic growth in “wearables.” Kleiner Perkins analyst Mary Meeker showed in her influential 2013 D11 address that “wearable computing is coming on strong, faster than the typical 10 year cycle” of tech trends.
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If there's one scrap of paper the Internet has yet to eliminate, it's the business card. There is something solid and comforting about that palm-sized piece of card stock as it passes from hand to hand, which modern gadgetry still can't replace.
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A pretty wild photo of a frozen lighthouse is making the rounds on social media today. People are sharing it thinking the lighthouse is another victim of the polar vortex that's taken over the United States this week.
Being an entrepreneur sucks.
Everyone in earshot of me could easily get a great paying job, enjoy paid vacation, and be able to relax on weekends. Instead we’ve all decided to barely take a paycheck and have resorted to buying beers with loose change we found under the cushions. We’re driven, focused, smart, and just the right amount of insane.
Image: http://www.techvibes.com
This is the second of a two-part series on how large companies can out-innovate start-ups. Part one is available here. An Infographic summarizing the 8 rules is available here.
In the companion piece to this article, I laid out three reasons for why large companies should out-innovate start-ups to capture the disruptive opportunities that are being enabled by a perfect storm of technological innovations. In this article, I offer eight rules for how they can do so.
Image: http://www.forbes.com
Beyond the glitz of the International Consumer Electronics Show, the wireless industry faces a fundamental problem: more features and faster data transmission are draining phones’ batteries faster than ever.
Fortunately, there’s room for improvement inside the devices, in parts known as power amplifiers that turn electricity into radio energy. In phones, they typically consumer more power than any other component but waste half of it along the way, as lots of people can attest if they’ve watched their battery die (and their phone get warm) after an hour of streaming video. The same problem bedevils wireless networks’ base stations, which send and receive signals to and from individual phones.
Image: http://www.technologyreview.com
No matter how optimistic and hopeful you might be by nature, it’s difficult to approach the issue of health care in the United States without a sense of foreboding. And confusion. And frustration. And maybe a little anger.
The issue of affordable, reasonable, pragmatic health care is the defining issue of our times. In the U. S. in 1969, we spent about 5.0% of GDP on healthcare; today that number is closer to 18.0%. We spend at least half again as much per capita on health care as any other developed country, yet our health outcomes lag significantly behind those countries that spend less. Medical advances have allowed us to extend life, to treat illnesses that a generation ago would have been fatal, to keep the seriously ill alive longer. But the result of that is that 50.0% of the population now accounts for 97.0% of health care spending, while the other half accounts for 3.0%.
Image: http://www.forbes.com
For generations, the countries of Latin America have relied on the export of raw materials for their wealth.
From Venezuela's oil, to copper from Chile, Argentinean soybeans, bananas from Ecuador, Mexican silver, and timber from Brazil - the vast region is blessed with a fabulous array of commodities the world wants and needs.
Image: http://www.bbc.co.uk
We’ve all faced the same question during the course of our careers, sometimes more than once: Should I stay or should I go? But after asking ourselves this question, too many of us end up making nonsensical decisions. Last week, I had a conversation with an executive who was seriously considering a lateral move to a small, family-owned company. When I asked him why, his only justification was that he’s fed up with his company’s toxic environment.
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