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.
Now I don’t know about you, but I don’t know where I would be without my extensive library of business books – quite possibly flipping burgers at some greasy joint somewhere. I love to write (and sing) but one of my all time favorite things to do is read, because it’s true what they say: knowledge is power.
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For those who want to turn their PennApps hack into a successful business, a new initiative might provide the support they are looking for.
Partly inspired by Princeton University’s Tiger Labs and Stanford University’s StartX, the inaugurated PennApps Accelerator will be an eight-week program with focused workshops and brainstorming sessions, hacking space, volunteer software testers, industry mentorship and a $1,000 stipend.
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"I have been here since 2:30 p.m. because I was too excited to wait at home," the woman told me on a Wednesday at 5:45 p.m. a few weeks ago.
Standing outside the Museum of Natural History on what may have possibly been the most humid, sticky afternoon of the summer, the 40-something New Yorker with a giant DSLR camera hanging from her neck bubbled over with the emotion of a tween girl at a Justin Bieber concert.
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Mark Twain once said, “There are two kinds of speakers: those that are nervous and those that are liars.” In other words, no matter how seasoned or “under-seasoned” you are when it comes to making presentations, there is going to be some particular audience, some particular topic, some particularly poor timing or something else in particular that is going to give you some sleepless nights and a queasy stomach in the morning.
I know this firsthand. I've been a professional speaker and communications coach for over 20 years, so when a client of mine offered me the incredible opportunity to present a keynote address on customer service to more than 2,000 financial-service professionals, nobody was more surprised than I was to hear these words leak out of my mouth, “Uh, no thanks.”
Wall Streeters have a penchant for pulling pranks on each other and they're usually pretty funny. But this Velociraptor chase from a game show in a Japanese office takes the prize for the best prank ever.
Microsoft (MSFT +0.46%) Corp. got a lot of things with its $7 billion purchase of Nokia (NOK1V.HE +5.16%) Corp.’s mobile phone business.
Nokia Growth Partners Bo Ilsoe, managing director of Nokia Growth Partners. It got a healthy heap of skepticism that integrating Nokia’s devices and services business with its own will lead to products that can win market share from Apple and Google. It got praise that even as its second largest acquisition (Skype was its largest at $8.6 billion), the deal was financially savvy, given the division it purchased generated half of Nokia’s 30.2 billion euros in sales in 2012.
The Park Geun-hye government is embarking on an national agenda to not only integrate Korea’s economy more deeply in the global innovation ecosystem, but to be one of its leaders too—to increase the prosperity and well-being of not only Korean citizens, but residents of the world. Park challenged global leaders to use creativity, technology and innovation as the growth engines for the creation of new and unheard industries for the 21st century. This is a theme espoused by Peter Diamandis and Ray Kurzweil, the visionaries behind Singularity University—which inspires and trains global leaders to leverage exponential technologies to impact a billion people—& solve global challenges.
The iconic sea serpents, mermaids and other mythical creatures found on world maps from medieval and Renaissance times splash to life on the pages of a new book.
Chet Van Duzer's "Sea Monsters on Medieval and Renaissance Maps" (British Library, 2013) charts the evolution of the mythical creatures that adorned atlases from the 10th century through the 17th century. Cartographers used the beastly art to illustrate mysterious, unexplored regions of the globe and the possible dangers of seafaring.
The happiest people in the world may live in Scandinavia, a new study suggests.
That's according to the United Nations General Assembly's second World Happiness Report, which ranks countries based on several measures of well-being and analyzes the factors that contribute to that well-being.
Denmark was the happiest country, followed by Norway, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Sweden and Canada.
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When Nokia announced the sale of its mobile phone business to Microsoft, I surmised that what was left – certainly on the location side – would provide strong competition for Google. And as if to underscore that point, Nokia’s Here business has just announced that it’s working on autonomous cars.
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Many joint-venture agreements fail to cover the contingency that one of the venturers may want unilaterally to sell its interest, giving rise to controversy whether a right of first offer or first refusal should be implied. A more difficult issue is posed if the success of the joint venture is dependent on the continued operation of a segment of one of the venturers' main businesses. Reportedly, Sony was prepared to sue CBS to enjoin the sale of CBS's record division to anyone other than Sony, based on a long-standing joint-venture agreement between the two firms respecting, among other things, the manufacture of compact discs. If the venture is a general partnership, it is easier to imagine court-enforced restraints on the introduction of new proprietors called "partners" in view of the historical intimacy of the partnership relationship. This is no excuse, however, for failing to codify the parties' intention on this subject in a formal, comprehensive document—whether a partnership agreement or an agreement amongst shareholders. The touchiest area for negotiation, vide the CBS/Sony dispute, will be the responsibility of each venturer to maintain necessary infrastructure. If software company A joint ventures with hardware company B to exploit a particular system should B be required to stay in the hardware business? What if B is losing money on that line? If B's agreement is all-embracing, is the joint venture something B's shareholders should vote on-what amounts to "hypothecation" or "lease" of substantially all B's assets, perhaps?
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I’m going to make a statement that will surely make me the most unpopular person at my next family reunion: whatever you do, don’t hire your family to work at your start-up. Managing a start-up is a rewarding experience, and the workplace might even come to feel like your second home—which is exactly why you shouldn’t factor family into the equation. While guiding your company through thick and thin, you’ll see some huge successes, and you’ll also have to traverse some rocky terrain. Often times, tapping family for help might seem like an easy solution, especially because they no doubt understand how excited you are about what you do. But that doesn’t necessarily mean you should involve them. Here’s why:
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Entrepreneur Prashant Jain is taking a simpler approach to capturing venture capitalists’ attention as it becomes more competitive than ever for Asian startups to secure funding.
Getting VCs to actually consider a pitch is a key initial hurdle, with the dos and don’ts well-documented—from keeping presentations short to providing realistic sales expectations.
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You are probably aware that electric vehicles are clean, cheap to fuel, and an important part of our plan to reduce projected oil consumption by half within 20 years. You may not be aware, however, that you can now add another important feature to the list of electric vehicle benefits: safety.
Roche’s move to skip over Inovio’s (NYSE: INO) late stage drugs for cervical cancer and Hepatitis C and make a beeline for its preclinical DNA vaccines for prostate cancer and Hep B was initially a little puzzling. Investors have preferred to park their money further upstream when products are in the clinic and they’ve been derisked. Big pharma is always looking for ways to take costs out of research and development. But the prospect of utilizing new technology with the potential to improve treatment is appealing for drug developers that want to build up and strengthen their drug pipeline.
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I’ve been off the radar for a little bit. Not writing much…. In the depths of summer, grinding it out in New York City building a company.
Sometimes I ask myself, is this for me?
This week I lost my voice. Why? Because I didn’t sleep much. I was at the office at 7:45AM, back to back to back sales calls, two meetings, being interviewed on a podcast, more decisions and discussions on the phone, interviewing a new graphic designer, a 9PM call with our team…
Spinout companies based on technologies developed by researchers at Arizona State University raised $68 million in external funding during the 2013 fiscal year, according to figures collected by Arizona Technology Enterprises (AzTE), ASU’s technology transfer organization. Altogether, companies that have licensed ASU discoveries have raised nearly $400 million in total venture funding since AzTE’s creation in 2003.
That China's latest economic data sent global markets up speaks volumes about the world's urgent need for a stable source of growth. China's industrial output, investment and retail sales for August all suggest that the world's second-largest economy is improving, to the considerable and immediate relief of investors at home and abroad, as the global recovery remains vulnerable to slowdowns in some large developing countries and the withdrawal of cheap money in some major developed countries.
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“Innovation” may be the buzz word of the post-crisis world, but getting decision makers at multinational corporations to pay attention to ideas that are new, foreign and at odds with the company’s business model can leave subsidiary managers banging their heads against the wall.
As the world becomes smaller and more competitive, multinational companies (MNCs) are sending their managers to far-flung subsidiaries to absorb new techniques, ideas and markets, and to transfer the knowledge back home. However, with so much information flowing and vying for attention, it’s not always easy to be heard. So how can remote managers capture the attention of decision makers at headquarters?
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