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.
You’ve got your disruptive idea. You’re making the rounds with angels and VCs. But where will you launch and set up shop with your new startup?
A successful business can have origins in almost any location — Rogers, Arkansas, was the site of the first Walmart, after all. Strategically basing your startup, however, can add power and velocity to your growth, positioning you to gain partners and market share more quickly.
image: http://www.freedigitalphotos.net
BEIJING, Dec. 25 (Xinhuanet) -- Although Chinese consumers have traditionally preferred salty snacks, the world’s best chocolate makers are banking on them ALSO having a sweet tooth. In recent years, more and more international chocolate brands have been appearing in China.
Want something sweet for Christmas? Though chocolate is rapidly becoming a staple of holidays in China, very few people know how it's made.
Image: http://news.xinhuanet.com/
Americans looked to Google for information on Ebola, the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge and the actor Robin Williams’s suicide this year—all of which ranked among the hottest search terms of 2014. Google has announced the results of its “14th Annual Year in Search,” an inventory of the year’s most-searched-for keywords and phrases. The data gives us a chance to look back and relive some of the major events of 2014, many of them in science (see Scientific American’s list of the top 10 science stories of the year).
Image: http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/
At some point in your life, Escherichia coli has probably brought you to your knees to pray to the porcelain god. Common bacteria that often live harmlessly in the guts of most animals, a few strains of it can cause anything from food poisoning to death in humans. But, according to news out of Washington University in St. Louis last month, it may also be the key in our quest to find a renewable, environmentally safe fuel source.
Image: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Escherichia_coli.jpg
The door opens for Tennessee businesses looking to solicit capital from in-state investors online, also known as crowdfunding, in January. Supporters of crowdfunding say it allows entrepreneurs and startups to tap a wider net in order to get the early capital to a company off the ground. In the General Assembly this past year, state lawmakers followed up on federal actions to allow companies to raise up to $1 million per year from Tennessee investors and accept up to $10,000 from individual unaccredited investors.
image: http://www.freedigitalphotos.net
Wearables define a wide array of devices including smartwatches, health monitors and activity trackers. Which are considered notable in 2014? Here are five worth considering.
Pebble Steel
The $200 Pebble Steel is probably the most mature smartwatch design going. That’s saying a lot in a category that’s relatively nascent and therefore still full of proof-of-concept – dare we say beta – designs.
Image: An LG G Watch R smartwatch is presented at the IFA consumer technology fair in Berlin. (REUTERS/Fabrizio Bensch)
British fashion designer Zandra Rhodes has never been afraid to stand out. Her eponymous clothing line soared in the 70s, only to shutter its doors in the 90s. But she’s moved on to other projects, and today’s hottest designers credit her influence.
We talked with her about overcoming setbacks through hard work.
Image: https://hbr.org
Have you ever wondered why after a stressful experience - like getting into a fight with your spouse or hearing that your office is announce massive layoffs, you have a physical reaction like a headache or stomach pain? According to the Huffington Post, this is because “the majority of stressors facing humans were physical (lions and tigers and bears, oh my!), requiring, in turn, a physical response.”
In the wake of success stories such as Coolest Cooler, which raised more than $13 million on Kickstarter, I’m starting to hear talk that crowdfunding is making traditional financing less relevant. I question this logic—and not just because I’m part of the traditional financing world.
There are a number of reasons. First, not every product can be explained in a five-minute video (think: your next advanced iteration of carbon fiber). Nor can every product be built for prices the average Joe is willing to risk (for example, the next Tesla automobile), or be brought to market for less than $10 million (e.g., the next generation of cholesterol drugs).
image: http://www.freedigitalphotos.net
Startups that sell innovative new products seem to get all the attention these days, but services may be the quicker way to larger profits and faster growth. Of course, we all love disruptive new products, like the Pebble Smart Watch and Google Glass, but recent innovative services startups, including Uber for transportation and Airbnb for lodging, have grown much bigger and faster.
RIGHT-BRAINERS, YOUR TIME HAS COME—THIS IS THE AGE OF THE CREATIVE MIND.
In the not-too-distant future, creatives will rule the world.
I’m not just saying this because I consider myself a creative. The interconnected systems we use to function in business and society, whether in communication,transportation, design, finance, and more, are increasing in complexity, and so are the types of issues and challenges that arise from these systems.
Tech companies are staying private longer. Amazon went public in 1997, just two years after its first round of institutional financing, at a market capitalization of about $440 million. Compare that with on-demand ride service Uber Technologies, which remains private close to six years on and after recently raising $1.2 billion at a whopping $40 billion valuation.
Faced with diminishing returns on R&D investments, large pharmaceutical companies are searching for innovative ways to successfully identify, develop, and market products with financial viability. Yet small discovery companies and biotechs continue to outpace large pharma in the approval of NMEs (new molecular entities).
Image: http://www.lifescienceleader.com/
An accelerator program is like a boot camp for early-stage ventures. They usually last anywhere from three to six months to help accelerate a startup, and most programs provide a small amount of seed capital. More importantly, an accelerator offers experienced entrepreneurs within the local community who help mentor new entrepreneurs, and gathers other resources that give ventures the fuel that they need to accelerate. Many accelerator programs provide their entrepreneurs with a curriculum focused on creating a viable business model.
The most irritating innovation insight I’ve had seems paradoxical, but it’s true: good ideas are bad for innovators. Honest.
At first, I didn’t believe it either. What could be bad about good ideas? Then, in my work with organizations and executive education students, I started paying even closer attention to how successful innovation initiatives really take root and flourish. The results—in companies ranging from financial services to industrial equipment to consumer products to digital media—gradually changed my mind.
Image: https://hbr.org
A coalition of geneticists and computer programmers calling itself the Global Alliance for Genomics and Health is developing protocols for exchanging DNA information across the Internet. The researchers hope their work could be as important to medical science as HTTP, the protocol created by Tim Berners-Lee in 1989, was to the Web.
One of the group’s first demonstration projects is a simple search engine that combs through the DNA letters of thousands of human genomes stored at nine locations, including Google’s server farms and the University of Leicester, in the U.K. According to the group, which includes key players in the Human Genome Project, the search engine is the start of a kind of Internet of DNA that may eventually link millions of genomes together.
Image: http://www.technologyreview.com/
Swiss pharmaceutical firm Novartis has signed a deal to acquire 12.8% of Israeli drug development firm BiolineRX. Under the arrangement, Novartis will invest $10 million in Jerusalem-based company, developing and commercializing drugs developed in Israel.
Under the deal, Novartis and BioLineRx will jointly evaluate both clinical and pre-clinical stage projects presented by BioLineRx, with Novartis deciding which projects to develop further. Upon selection of a project, Novartis will pay BioLineRx an option fee of $5 million, as well as fund 50% of the anticipated remaining development costs associated with establishing clinical proof-of-concept, in the form of an additional equity investment in BioLineRx. Read more: Novartis invests $10 million in pharma developer BiolineRX | The Times of Israel http://www.timesofisrael.com/novartis-invests-10-million-in-pharma-developer-biolinerx/#ixzz3Mg4GH0jV Follow us: @timesofisrael on Twitter | timesofisrael on Facebook
Image: Pharma worker (Photo credit: Courtesy)
“The Twelve Days of Christmas” is, of course, already long and repetitive, such that when in recent years I’ve sung even the first few notes of it at “Ave Maria” speed, I’ve been greeted with satisfying moans of agony. This year I decided that the thing must be put to tape, with each verse slower than the last. The whole thing now runs to around 75 minutes.
Happy Holidays from the Innovation America Team!
And a special thanks to the folks at JumpStart for sponsoring us and helping make Innovation DAILY possible.
We know why you’re here. And it’s okay.
You’re online, maybe hunched over your smartphone, or hidden in a room browsing the Web just to get a little me time.
You need a mental break from weeks of stress shopping. You need to get away from the those long unseen relatives who can’t even be bothered to join Facebook and instead spend all day asking you about all the stuff they missed the last five years. “Why don’t you email us pictures of the kids?” they ask, as you try to explain social networking.
Image: http://venturebeat.com/
