When it comes to the Puget Sound region's biotech industry, is it more important to have big anchor companies or an ever-churning ecosystem of small innovators? That was one of the questions posed to a panel of three biotech executives last week at an industry forum hosted by news website Xconomy at Fred Hutch.

Digital security is one of the most pressing issues on the minds of both the private sector and the public sector. But many technology experts are finding the potential limits that stringent policies on data and encryption might place on innovation even more concerning than the data protection and privacy issues they mean to address. Simple features that feel familiar to us all like searching for something on the web or in an app are threatened not by good security but by oversecurity.

General Electric made a $500 portable electrocardiogram machine that runs on batteries and only requires a patient to press a green button to check for abnormal heart rhythms.

It was aimed at bringing the vital test to rural Indians who lacked access to hospitals with expensive machinery.

Since the company created the simple device, which can produce 500 scans costing 10 cents each on a single battery charge, it's sold in dozens of nations — including developed ones.

The way that entrepreneurs are viewed by the federal government continues to evolve. Savvy policymakers have been pointing to new and young firms as the true engines of economic growth for several years — but you can really see the progress when it filters down to federal programs.

If it filters down to federal programs.

When the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA) was signed into law in 2014, it replaced the Workforce Investment Act (WIA) and updated the performance metric system. Until now, entrepreneurial training was not a legitimate option since it was not viewed or tracked as a “successful outcome.”

One of the most tiring things for founders can be always being compared to Unicorns. Certainly sometimes it’s inspirational. I loved it when many of the founders I work with came out of the ’15 SaaStrAnnual saying they needed to grow faster, at a Zenefits-like level:

But the reality is as a founder there are different ways to make real money and build something meaningful.  Go back to our case study of Marketo vs. Eloqua vs. Pardot here.

This article is by Kevin Lindsay, Director of Product Marketing at Adobe. He spends his time messaging a wide variety of extremely complex products. If anyone has seen how choice can stymie consumers, it's him. Here's how he's learned to survive the paradox.

People crave relevance — we can all agree on that. But with the rise of personalization capabilities, there’s a new Catch-22 at work: Even though brands can curate and deliver relevant experiences, is that actually what your users want? Or do people really want unlimited access, choice, and opportunity when it comes to decision making?

BEREA, Ky. — I WAS always with older folks when I was very young. They called me “Little Man” and told me I was “an old soul.” I worked in the garden with my grandparents, learned how to count money with Old Man Hoskins at the local store, and eavesdropped on the tales of my ancient neighbors. But it was the stories of my fierce aunt, Sis, that were my favorite.

Unfortunately, it seems there are fewer opportunities for different generations to interact now. The 2010 United States census shows that Appalachia, where I live, has some of the lowest levels of age segregation in the nation. Yet even here I notice a shift away from the intergenerational activity I enjoyed as a child in the 1980s.

Fitbit just filed to go public, and it revealed the company is growing fast and profitable.

It will trade on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker FIT.

The filing comes months after Bloomberg's Leslie Picker reported that Fitbit would IPO this year.

The company reported net profit of $132 million from operations, on revenue of $745 million, last year. But if you include stock-based compensation and other adjustments, net income was $38.5 million.

Cleveland's "Series A" Woes – Part I. Cleveland has been on a miracle series of good luck and fine fortune recently: The "Return of the King" LeBron James, being awarded the Republican National Convention, culinary virtuoso Jonathon Sawyer winning the prestigious James Beard Award, a city benefiting from one amazing real estate development after another.

It is a new golden era in Cleveland. Well, let's hold that thought ... all the largess

Michael C. DeAloia Courtesy photo   and national prominence means little if the city and the region do not have the industry to support it.

Image: Tech Czar Talk. (Courtesy of Erika Hernandez)  

I attended the recent EMC World, which is one of the best events for press and analysts because it tailors its program for us and our specific needs. There was a nice balance of group sessions and one-on-ones. One of the sessions I found fascinating was given by Scott Darling from EMC Ventures about EMC's venture funding efforts.

Not long ago I attended an event in San Jose where Intel's investment group leader gave a similar talk, so it was interesting to contrast the two groups. Intel is focused on investing in young companies that consume Intel's products, EMC is interested in investing in young companies that could grow up to replace all or part of them. These are two very different strategies.

Last week I wrote about the way specific technologies have lowered the barriers to entrepreneurship worldwide: Amazon Web Services, Google Drive (and Google Search), mobile devices combined with widespread wireless Internet service, and Facebook.

Most of these tools are what author Jonathan Zittrain would call “generative,” in that they are technologies which engender further innovation, thanks to their openness and extensibility. Like the earliest personal computers, AWS is an open-ended tool with virtually no restrictions. You can use a credit card to purchase an instance — a virtual server — and you can set it up and use it in almost any way your creativity will allow.

Dubai: At the Clinton Global Initiative, former US President Bill Clinton announced today the launch of the Hult Prize Foundation’s game-changing one year master of entrepreneurship degree programme.

The innovative programme is a continuation of the annual Hult Prize $1-million challenge and pioneering approach to tackling the world’s most pressing social issues through crowd sourced innovation.

The Community Launchpad program draws innovative ideas from employees, rather than seeking outside advice. A bottom-up approach is the only way to succeed in today's market, says one health system CEO.

Healthcare leaders have gotten used to hearing about disruptive innovation, with the notion that nontraditional competitors can eat your lunch and make you pay for it. How can traditional hospitals and health systems compete with outside innovation?

Between TSA hassles, exorbitant baggage fees, and torturously tiny seats, "flying sucks," said Jordan Golson at Wired. But thanks to researchers at North Carolina State University and MIT, it might soon be a whole lot easier to sleep through. Researchers say they can substantially reduce the amount of engine noise inside the passenger cabin by installing an ultra-thin latex membrane over the "honeycomb" of lightweight materials that make up the inside of most modern aircraft. Lead researcher Yun Jing says the membranes "could be installed in existing airplane designs" and ultimately make flying up to 1,000 times quieter than it is today.

Image: http://theweek.com/ 

More than two decades ago, Bill Bengen, then a financial planner in Southern California, said he had several anxious clients with the same question: How much can I spend in retirement without running out of money?

Being relatively new to the profession, he dived back into his finance textbooks for answers, but said he couldn’t find any guidelines rooted in facts. “I decided to get down to business with my computer,” said Mr. Bengen, 67, who retired in 2013 and now lives with his wife in La Quinta, a resort town in California’s Coachella Valley.

Kelly Chu stands at the front of the room and explains a complex spreadsheet displayed on a projector.

With precision she describes the discounted free cash-flow model she built of a food-services and construction company, and walks through its revenue-growth assumptions before making a recommendation on whether or not to invest.

Image: http://www.businessinsider.com 

Albany, NY – May 8, 2015 – (RealEstateRama) — Governor Andrew M. Cuomo today announced the launch of a $2 million MWBE Investment Fund to provide seed financing to certified minority- and women-owned business enterprises (MWBE). Rochester-based venture capital firm Excell Partners will manage the fund, targeting its investments to high-tech MWBE start-up companies with significant growth potential in New York State.

Image: wikimedia

In my experience with entrepreneurs, there seems to a wealth of self-proclaimed “idea people” who aspire to start businesses, but only a few who are willing and able to dig in and get the job done. All the great ideas in the world won’t make a business, if the ideas never get implemented. Only rare great entrepreneurs, like Bill Gates and Elon Musk, have proven to be both.

Japanese premier Shinzo Abe’s criticism of innovative behaviour among firms in his own land has thrown a spotlight back on to how companies can best harness and exploit the creative spirit. In their recent book Brick by Brick, authors David C Robertson and Bill Breen explained how toy manufacturer Lego the company pulled itself back from the brink of bankruptcy to become the kind of brand that is to toys what Apple is to technology.

One of the firm’s key strategies was to plug into diversity in all its forms, to energise creativity and make innovation a more natural, organic process – a talent that the company would, in time, stake its reputation on.

Exposure to highly energetic charged particles — much like those found in the galactic cosmic rays that bombard astronauts during extended spaceflights — causes significant damage to the central nervous system, resulting in cognitive impairments, according to a UC Irvine radiation oncology open-access study appearing in the May 1 edition of Science Advances.

“This is not positive news for astronauts deployed on a two- to three-year round trip to Mars,” said Charles Limoli, a professor of radiation oncology in UCI’s School of Medicine.

Image: http://www.kurzweilai.net