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.
Big businesses don’t seem to be very innovative. An informal glance around the big business landscape won’t reveal much in the way of innovation beyond perhaps the routine adoption of a new technology, a bit of chasing the most current business model paradigm or acronym, or maybe rejiggering organizational charts here and there. But, innovation? Not so much.
If there’s an 800-pound gorilla in the patent wars, it would have to be IBM.
Today, Big Blue said it topped the list of patent recipients in 2014 with a total of 7,534 patents, 34 percent more than second-place Samsung, which had 4,952, according to data from IFI Claims Patent Services.
It marked the 22nd consecutive year that IBM took first place. Among the most common industries involved are analytics, security, cloud computing, mobile, and social.
Nate Mitchell has been at Oculus VR from its humble beginnings as a virtual reality goggles startup to its $2 billion acquisition by Facebook last year.
A year ago, he came to the 2014 International CES with Oculus Rift creator Palmer Luckey to show the Crystal Cove demo with the development kit 2 (DK2) in a tiny room. This year, Mitchell and company returned with a giant booth where the public could view the latest Crescent Bay demo in huge numbers.
Image: Nate Mitchell - Photo by Dean Takahashi
Startups that never achieve positive cash flow from operations might seem like a risky investment. And that's probably why the Small Business Administration is offering an incentive to get people to buy in. The agency posted a notice to the Federal Register Monday calling for proposals from fund managers to get licensed as "early-stage small business investment companies," which would qualify them to receive federally-guaranteed loans of up to 100 percent of their regulatory capital — that is, the amount of liquidity required to ensure they're not at risk of default.
Most descriptions of innovation end up in overreaching hyperbole: groundbreaking, disruptive, radical. This shouldn't surprise anyone because innovation is basically a type of positive deviance, a form of useful novelty. What separates a new soft drink that has a hint of cherry flavor from a vaccine that prevents the onset of Alzheimer's Disease is the magnitude and speed at which it deviates from the norm. Put another way, it's how much and how fast the innovation makes the way we do things now obsolete.
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While creating a new course for UC Santa Barbara’s Entrepreneurial Program entitled, “The Past, Present and Future of Entrepreneurship,” I was recently blessed to come across Steven Johnson’s PBS series and accompanying book, How We Got To Now. Mr. Johnson doesn’t just tell us How We Got To Now, he also points to How We’ll Get To Tomorrow.
There are three common myths about tech founders: they are extremely young, they are technically trained, and they’ve often graduated from a prominent local university. The logic then follows that to accelerate the growth of a local tech sector, cities need to actively cultivate people who fit this profile and encourage them to start a business. But on all three counts, the data tell a different story.
image: http://www.freedigitalphotos.net
The idea of work in the past 15 years has changed so much that it’s difficult to imagine what the next 15 years will look like.
According to a new study published by commercial real estate services CBRE and Genesis, a real estate developer from China, many of the ideas, trends, and behaviors that will shape work in 2030 is already evident today. However, some of these changes are quietly emerging and business leaders might not truly understand the significance of their impact on performance, productivity, and retaining talent.
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It might be something you have hanging on the wall of your office or just on a Post-It next to your computer. It’s that go-to motivational quote—a touchstone that gets you fired up when you’re having a bad day or just need a little boost. Here are the quotes that fire up some accomplished leaders and why these words resonate with them.
I loathe the thought of conveying the idea that I am an advocate of cliché mantras; nevertheless, here we are, and I endorse my opening statement 110%. I genuinely hate the idea of becoming confined to a box. Thinking in a linear fashion makes me feel as though I am hindering my own ability to peak. Far too often, when an individual decides to start a business, he/she becomes enamored by compartmentalized ideas of “How to…” I am rational enough to understand why some people immediately gravitate toward the “How to…” methods; people innately attain confidence amid proven methods of success.
Image: http://under30ceo.com/
Roche, the world’s largest maker of cancer drugs, is spending $1.03 billion to buy a 56.3% stake in Cambridge, Mass.-based Foundation Medicine, a company that uses genetics to help select drugs for cancer patients. Roche, based in Basel, Switzerland, will also market Foundation’s diagnostic tests outside the U.S., help educate doctors as to the value of the tests in the U.S., and provide another $150 million to support additional research on Foundation’s products.
Green fashion companies are taking the next leap in terms of using eco-friendly materials. A host of brands have found innovative ways to use skins from salmon and eels, fruits, like pineapples, and even spiders to make clothing fabric.
Telegraph reports that by-products from the food industry, namely the aforementioned salmon and eel skins, are being used as an alternative to leather by fashion start-ups. A company called Heidi & Adele has found that fish skins are just as sturdy as other leathers and dye easily—plus the new material is much more humane that using the actual snake skin that it replicates.
Image: Daily Telegraph
Software that was first put to work writing news reports has now found another career option: drafting reports for financial giants and U.S. intelligence agencies.
The writing software, called Quill, was developed by Narrative Science, a Chicago company set up in 2010 to commercialize technology developed at Northwestern University that turns numerical data into a written story. It wasn’t long before Quill was being used to report on baseball games for TV and online sports outlets, and company earnings statements for clients such as Forbes.
Image: http://www.technologyreview.com/
Investors will tell you that they love to put money into startups that are scalable, and ready to scale. But what does that really mean? Simply stated, it means that your business has the potential to multiply revenue with minimal incremental cost. Ready to scale is when you have a proven product and a proven business model, about to expand to new geographies and markets.
As social media redefine how we communicate, both new and experienced users in colleges' top jobs have to ponder some questions.
How should I be representing and promoting my college personally on social media? What do I gain if I do it well? What do I lose if I don’t? And what are the risks of engaging in a forum where a misstep can go viral and embarrass me and my institution?
We’ve discussed the value of having three different strategic thinking perspectives in any strategy work. These three strategic thinking perspectives include people with front-line experience, others with functional expertise, and innovative thinkers that look at opportunities and challenges in new and different ways.
Image: http://brainzooming.com/
Her arrival gets attention, clad as she is in an impeccably tailored hot-pink dress and towering black stilettos. Her monogrammed, patent-leather briefcase—designer, of course—contains just the basic tools of the trade: smartphone, tablet and chic little clutch in case today’s meeting spills over into cocktail hour. A woman of the 21st century, the things she needs to do business are largely digital: a LinkedIn profile (updated regularly with her latest achievements), a clear and instructive PowerPoint presentation, a snappy hashtag for optimal Twitter traction. She is Entrepreneur Barbie, and her business is inspiring more young girls to consider starting their own companies.
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Introducing your stealth startup to the world is an exciting and monumental time. It’s the first step in determining whether your product is the right solution for the problem you’re trying to alleviate. It’s a way of getting data and a way to identify the market that resonates most with your product. And when the press opportunities start filtering in, you can’t help but feel like you’ve made it.
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By Tom Ballard, Director of Innovation and Entrepreneurial Initiatives, Pershing Yoakley & Associates, P.C.
The announcement about the new “Manufacturing Innovation Institute for Advanced Composites” that President Obama made on Friday in Clinton is obviously a huge opportunity for the region.
Having some knowledge about the proposal that was submitted in response to a federal solicitation, I could not help but recall the words of Ed Sullivan, the legendary host of an early network television show. He described his weekly show and many of his guests with two words – “really big.”
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Need capital? Considering equity crowdfunding to raise the money? Here are five points to consider before embarking on a campaign.
• Set aside some time. A common misconception is that crowdfunding is fast and easy. Just because it's on the Internet doesn't mean a campaign can be posted one week and money collected the next. Gathering investors, even through online platforms, calls for financial documents, business plans, investment plans, risk assessments and anything else a business would bring to traditional investors.
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