During periods of economic turbulence such as this one, it is natural for business leaders to go back to the “well,” so to speak, to drum up new business or put forth new efforts to innovate within your company. Here are some thoughts, strategies, and knowledge that may help in looking to assets and resources in your area or innovative regions that could propel your efforts.

The End Game Innovation has been and should remain the end game, since it is truly how companies are driving and sustaining growth in today’s economy. And innovation is not just defined through the building of new products; it is also the creation and transformation of knowledge and new processes and services that meet a market need. It’s about new ways to partner, and innovative interactions, entertainment forms, and ways of communicating and collaborating. Innovation truly distinguishes the leaders in today’s economy.

I often get asked about my experiences when starting up a new business. My start ups include a toy stall at the age of 10, gardening business age 16, cleaning business at 27, golfwear at 34 and business sales online at 38. Every one of these start up businesses have some common threads, or learning's as I like to call them, and I’d like to share them with you.

1) Expect a lot of energy in the start up phase, you will be bouncing around with tons of new ideas and want to talk to everyone and anyone about them. You’ll mostly feel positive about the business idea and then as you start to dig a little deeper the reality of turning an idea into action starts to bite. At this stage many people suddenly get cold feet and walk away from the idea. Many entrepreneurs have felt the fear and as some author may have said ‘done it anyway’. I would encourage you to seek professional advice if you feel strongly about the idea and get the feedback you need to make an informed decision. This could be the best investment you make.

Health startups are emerging in high numbers this year and it’s no surprise.  The health tech space is booming with new advances in HTML5, mobile health, and social media.  But with the economic downturn, it’s hard to go out on your own without funding or guidance.  But there’s help.  Over the past year, four startup incubators have surfaced offering a mentoring program specific to health technology entrepreneurs.  But, which one should you apply to? Here’s a breakdown of each accelerator and their offerings:

Rock Health

• $20,000 grant awarded
• no equity is asked in return
• best for companies early stage and pre-VC funding

Want to grow the economy? Shrink your city's emissions.

In tough times, some of us see protecting the climate as a luxury, but that's an outdated 20th-century worldview from a time when we thought industrialization was the end goal, waste was growth, and wealth meant a thick haze of air pollution.

Cities and urbanization are the story of the 21st century. Already, most of us live in cities. Over the next 40 years, though, we'll ride a building boom unlike anything humanity has ever seen, or may ever see again, as the world's cities swell by billions. Cities at the center of this demographic revolution will be utterly changed.

Students will be divided into groups of five and will submit a proposal to a panel of judges comprised of senior executives from a variety of companies, including Johnson & Johnson, Intel and Hewlett-Packard. Entrants are asked to submit a one minute video showing a new idea for a customizable product, and a system that will allow customers to create exactly what they want. Zazzle will launch the winning business on the Zazzle web platform and invest $1 million in technology to assist the winners with building tools for online configuration and invest in marketing.

The challenge was created as a result of the 2011 World Conference on Mass Customization, Personalization, and Co-Creation (MCPC).

The Toronto-based urban theorist Richard Florida has built a small empire promoting the idea that in today's highly fluid modern economy, those communities that fully embrace the creative class - the artists and architects, IT professionals and digital pioneers - are the only ones with much of a future.

His central idea is not without its critics (in part because Florida has a habit of tailoring his creativity pitch for whomever is paying his speaking fees), but it nonetheless remains quite potent. Unleashing the creativity of a city's residents can have profound consequences, especially if the reputation of the city is transformed in the process.

Now here's a thought: If cities can be transformed by unleashing the full potential of their creative class, no other community in New Brunswick is better positioned to achieve this than Saint John.

The Hong Kong SAR Government recently launched a new incubation programme for startups via the Hong Kong Science and Technology Park (HKSTP).

The Incu-Tech Programme is a three-year assistance program available for technology startup companies. Throughout the incubation period, Incu-Tech offers an office space in the Small Enterprise Centre in the HKSTP with subsidized rent, as well as various supporting services such as business development, collaboration with university and industry, training, technology support facilities and financial aid package.

The New Year is a reminder that we're our own worst enemies.

In fact, a study of one million people around the world revealed that most people believe self-control is their biggest weakness.

But willpower is like a muscle: it can be strengthened — and fatigued — with use.

"You only have a finite amount as you go through the day, so you should be careful to conserve it and try to save it for the emergencies,"  says New York Times author John Tierney, who co-authored a book with social psychologist Roy Baumeister, "Willpower: The Greatest Human Strength," which looks at how willpower and decision-making are interconnected.

Because we at VatorNews are well aware of the overwhelming curiosity of our readership concerning all things Finland, here's a report about how a Finnish mobile carrier and one of the first innovators of the text-messaging medium, Sonera, recorded a stark decline in texts on Christmas Eve 2011, the traditionally most popular day to text or call.

In 2011, Sonera customers sent only 8.9 million texts on Christmas Eve, down from the 10.9 million from 2010. DNA, a reportedly more youth-oriented Finnish mobile carrier, also experienced a decrease in text messaging on Christmas Eve, though less drastic, from 5.9 million down to 5.6 million.

Text messaging also declined 14% in Hong Kong on Christmas Day, while in Australia, texting declined 9% throughout 2011, according to the findings of an Australian blogger.

Some 133 million Americans suffer from chronic disease, and many would benefit from better home-based monitoring of their condition, but today's home-health medical machines remain mostly unconnected to the doctors who might want to check the data between visits.

A new platform from Qualcomm aims to solve this with a simple box that detects signals from devices from dozens of makers, and dispatches them by cellular connection to a cloud database that can be accessed by medical staff as well as patients.

“In the future we might not prescribe drugs all the time, we might prescribe apps.” Singularity University‘s executive director of FutureMed Daniel Kraft M.D. sat down with me to discuss the biggest emerging trends in HealthTech. Here we’ll look at how A.I, big data, 3D printing, social health networks and other new technologies will help you get better medical care. Kraft believes that by analyzing where the field is going, we have the ability to reinvent medicine and build important new business models.

For background, Daniel Kraft studied medicine at Stanford and did his residency at Harvard. He’s the founder of StemCore systems and inventor of the MarrowMiner, a minimally invasive bone marrow stem cell harvesting device. The following is rough transcript of the 6 big ideas Kraft outlined for me at the Practice Fusion conference

Some weeks, my desktop is a disaster — full of papers and files and sticky notes with half-baked ideas. Yes, I am your typical “creative.”

Disorganized and disheveled, I proudly chalk it up to the artist in me. But if I am honest, this is embarrassing, not to mention unproductive.

Clutter is not my friend; it is my enemy.

Clutter is procrastination. It is the Resistance — a subtle form of stalling and self-sabotage. And it keeps me (and you) from creating stuff that matters.

The mess is not inevitable. It is not cute or idiosyncratic. It is a foe — and it is killing our art.

Seth Epstein, Founder and CEO SocialStay, former Founder and CEO of FUEL (acquired by Razorfish) and Emmy Award winner for his work on the X-Games, recently spoke at UC Santa Barbara as part of the Technology Management Program’s Distinguished Lecture Series. His talk was especially intriguing, as he attended UCSB, but dropped out to start a clothing design company.

In this 8-minute video excerpt from his recent talk, Seth describes the practical, hands-on methodology that he uses on a day-to-day basis to identify and vet his entrepreneurial ideas.

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.”

This famous introduction by Charles Dickens sums up what entrepreneurs seeking startup capital are facing in 2012.

On the one hand, banks still aren’t lending. And with the debt crisis looming over Europe and political uncertainty here in the U.S., there’s an increased perception of risk for early-stage investors.

However, record low interest rates, stagnant public stock markets and real estate, and weakening commodities prices offer investors few alternatives to achieve decent returns. This creates an opportunity for entrepreneurs in spite of all the challenges.

TechColumbus is searching for a CEO to lead this nationally recognized tech-based economic development organization. Central Ohio, with a robust ecosystem and more than 150,000 tech jobs, is building a globally competitive, knowledge-based economy that continues to gain the attention and accolades of the nation. Columbus is ranked by Forbes as one of the top tech cities to watch and is considered to be the “Number 1 Up-and-Coming Technology City in the Country.”

TechColumbus is a unique and integrated model (incubation services, venture development, investment funds management, and membership) focused on innovation in advanced materials, bioscience and IT. The Board is searching for a nationally recognized leader in technology commercialization and economic development. The ideal candidate has experience commercializing technologies and knowledge of investments in early stage companies, startup company experience, and a track record of advancing companies and successful exits. A bachelor’s degree is required. For a copy of the position spec or to apply, please contact Deb Majoros at 614-854-7300 or This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. For a copy of the position specification, Click Here .

Happy New Year! Its another January and we’re taking stock of last year and pondering the one before us.

Reflecting on the Life Science landscape, there are a number of good reasons to be optimistic about where things are today.

Exits: Real innovation won in the M&A marketplace for venture-backed biotechs. A number of great deals with attractive multiples were closed in 2011 for companies with innovative assets in hot areas of medicine and science: e..g, B-raf at Plexxikon, PI3Kd at Calistoga, LPA at Amira, dual PI3K/mTor at Intellikine, oncolytic viruses at BioVex, and most recently Astofase Alfa at Enobia.  I expect that in 2012 this theme will accelerate with a number of exciting innovative biotechs getting acquired.

"Marketers: Start your engines." That's the call many marketing professionals have taken to heart in the past several months or so as they add a mobile component to their marketing mix. That being said, some have been more successful than others at taking their marketing show "on the road" and leveraging all that mobile marketing has to offer.

The key, experts say, is in understanding the fundamental differences between your inbound marketing program for the desktop environment and reaching those consumers that have been set free by taking their devices with them everywhere.

Many managers want their organizations to develop breakthrough products and ask their R&D departments to come up with the equivalent of the iPod or iPhone. Unfortunately, the reality is that product failure is more common than success. So what are the reasons for product failure and what steps can companies take to avoid it?

The first lesson from research is that failure rates are high. For example, a recent survey found that of the hundreds of new food and beverage products introduced in the last few years in the US, 90% had failed (and were withdrawn from supermarkets within 3 months of launch). Food and drinks is a particularly challenging market but research in other sectors—from automobiles, to pharmaceuticals, to chemical products—shows that product failure is a (far too) common phenomenon.

Mobile health apps are set to change the way individuals can look after their health, doctors can diagnose and monitor patients, and medical research can collect data and develop their research. As health apps go from ‘dumb’, i.e. use only aggregated or limited personal data to intelligent using personalised health records and genetic data, a revolution may be underway.

What is changing?

Mobile health apps are growing fast. How fast varies according to different reports: one forecasts the number of health app downloads in 2012 at 44 million; another at 600 million. Either way, the continued spread of smartphones and adaptors that either extend them or interact with them is driving that growth. There are currently about 9000 health apps on the iPhone, rising to about 13,000 in 2012.  Elsewhere, estimates put the total number of health apps at 17,000.

In its brief, 4-year history, The Scientist’s annual Top 10 Innovations contest has become a showcase of the coolest life science tools to emerge in the previous year. This year’s installment is no exception. We received more than 65 entries describing exciting new technologies and intriguing methodologies that made their way into labs in 2011.

Our panel of expert judges sifted through the submissions, and the cream of all these innovative products rose to the top. Björn Brembs, from the Freie Universität in Berlin, Medical University of Vienna neuronal cell biologist Michael Kiebler, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory biologist H. Steven Wiley, and Aris Persidis, president of Biovista, a pharmaceutical services company, combined forces to see that the very best of the entries were awarded this year’s prizes.