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.
What traits help set successful people apart? What makes Steve Jobs or Warren Buffett different from anyone else? Small business owners and entrepreneurs realize success isn’t just luck. Here are some traits of successful people to help you catch a bit of that magic for yourself.
This week marks the 30th anniversary of the first two investments by Venture Investors LLC, the oldest and largest venture capital firm headquartered in Wisconsin. Those investments in Office Solutions and Promega were successes, and our firm has now invested in its fifth fund and has $200 million under management.
That makes it a good time to reflect on what has been accomplished — and how far we still have to go to create a truly competitive entrepreneurial economy in Wisconsin.
Image: Mark Hoffman The Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery is a public/private research facility at the heart of the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus. The university is much more friendly to entrepreneurs than it was in the past.
Khosla Ventures, one of the biggest and most well-known venture capital firms, is getting ready to raise a new seed fund, according to documents filed with the Securies and Exchange Commission on Wednesday.
The total size of the fund, called Khosla Ventures Seed C, will be $400 million. Listed in the filing are partners Vinod Khosla, Keith Rabois, Samir Kaul, and David Weiden.
Instead of an apple, could a hug-a-day keep the doctor away? According to new research from Carnegie Mellon University, that may not be that far-fetched of an idea.
Led by Sheldon Cohen, the Robert E. Doherty University Professor of Psychology in CMU’s Dietrich College of Humanities and Social Sciences, the researchers tested whether hugs act as a form of social support, protecting stressed people from getting sick. Published in Psychological Science, they found that greater social support and more frequent hugs protected people from the increased susceptibility to infection associated with being stressed and resulted in less severe illness symptoms.
Eastern Foundry, a tech incubator catering to the needs of small business federal contractors, officially opened its doors Tuesday in Crystal City. The incubator was established by Geoff Orazem, a former Marine platoon commander who left McKinsey & Co.'s D.C. office in the spring. He set up Eastern Foundry as a way to unite a variety of tech-focused small businesses that all target the federal government. The incubator offers support through the contracting morass with training and guidance in the legal and regulatory requirements.
Image: Eastern Foundary Geoff Orazem came up with the concept for Eastern Foundry after facing his own challenges breaking into federal contracting.
The first startup accelerator in Des Moines has its leader.
The Global Insurance Accelerator has named Brian Hemesath, a local serial entrepreneur, as its managing director, organizers announced Tuesday.
The accelerator aims to bring insurance-centric startups to Des Moines and put them through an intense 100-day business development and mentorship program.
Image: Andrea Melendez/The Register
Skin cancer may have found its worst enemy: IBM’s cognitive computers.
VentureBeat has learned that IBM Research will announce a partnership today with New York’s Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center on technology that, in tests, successfully evaluated patterns in medical images and detected even the most deadly forms of skin cancer as much as 97 percent of the time.
Image: http://venturebeat.com/
Innovation is elusive and full of contradictions. It's about breaking from convention and going in a new unprecedented direction, but also requires incredible teamwork.
That's why heading up innovative companies requires a set of skills unlike those required of the leaders of traditional companies, argues Linda Hill, professor of business administration at Harvard University.
image: http://www.freedigitalphotos.net
I've had a lifelong struggle with waking up in the morning.
No matter how much sleep I got at night, getting up for school was always torture. As soon as I learned my ABCs, I was pleading for "five more minutes."
Things got worse as I got older. I got into the habit of sleep procrastination—staying up late, reading, watching bad movies, writing in my journal—just to avoid going to bed and by logic, waking up the next day.
image: http://www.freedigitalphotos.net
16 December 2014 – Despite an uneven global economic recovery, international patent requests continued to surge in 2013, extending the run of strong annual increases in intellectual property (IP) filings to a fourth consecutive year, a new United Nations study reported today.
The 2014 edition of the World Intellectual Property Indicators – a benchmark report gleaning data from 100 countries and released by the UN's World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) – noted that applications for trademarks, industrial designs and utility models increased over the last year, fuelled by strong demand in China, the United States and Japan.
Image: WIPO Director General Francis Gurry presents the World Intellectual Property Indicators 2014 at a press conference in Geneva. Photo:WIPO - http://www.un.org
The biggest challenge organizations face in building and nurturing and leading innovative cultures is language. Not plans. Not ideas. Not action items. Not even creativity. It is language.
When it comes to organizational languages, we have plenty of words for commands, for directions, for setting expectations. Declaring that something needs to be done and then describing how to do it comes naturally. This is the language of strategic plans, of goals, of reports, of evaluations.
There are some disruptive forces in the venture capital industry these days, and two of them are Dave McClure of 500 Startups and Chris Lynch of Atlas Venture.
Both spoke about innovation in the venture business at MIT’s 17th annual venture capital conference on Friday. They wound up clashing on the merits of accelerators, with Mr. Lynch onstage and Mr. McClure challenging him from the crowd.
Image: Dave McClure, founding partner of 500 Startups Bloomberg News
Changes in technology are happening at a scale which was unimaginable before and will cause disruption in industry after industry. This has really begun to worry me, because we are not ready for this change and most of our leading companies won’t exist 15–20 years from now. Here are five sectors to keep an eye on:
The FDA offered up an early retrospective of the 2014 year of approvals Friday with a rundown the regulator feels pretty good about. “Our Center for Drug Evaluation and Research (CDER) has so far approved 35 novel drugs in 2014 compared to 27 in 2013,” FDA commissioner Margaret Hamburg wrote on the agency's FDA Voice blog.
I’m fascinated with Detroit. When I was there in October 2012 with my partners Ryan and Jason to run the Detroit Marathon we talked about the idea of getting more involved there in some way. Jason grew up in Detroit and has lots of stories there. He goes back regularly to visit his parents and Ann Arbor where he went to school.
Focus is the art of limiting your scope to the key function that really matters for the majority of customers.
Time to market is tied to the size of your offering. In many business domains today, the market seems to change about every ninety days. With the current low cost of entry, nimble competitors appear quickly and seize the high ground of your existing customers and potential. No startup can implement a broad strategy quickly enough to stay ahead.
Image: http://www.business-opportunities.biz/
High Tech Rochester (HTR) will expand its operations to the center of Rochester, creating an incubation facility that will serve as the cornerstone of the city’s new innovation zone. The $24 million facility will be located in the Sibley Building.
“I want to thank Governor Cuomo, Lt. Governor Duffy, Assembly Majority Leader Morelle, Senator Robach, County Executive Brooks, and Mayor Warren for their support for this transformative project,” said President Joel Seligman. “This new facility will enable us to harness the new ideas emerging from our region’s universities and entrepreneurs and provide them with the support that will both accelerate economic growth and revitalize downtown Rochester.”
Image: Artist rendering of the redeveloped Sibley Building. - http://www.rochester.edu
David Rose, entrepreneur and Founder of New York Angels, offers seven clusters of useful tips for angel investors in his new comprehensive guidebook, ‘Angel investing: the Gust guide to making money and having fun investing in startups.’ Since angel investors play an important role in the startup journey, this book will also be useful for entrepreneurs to better understand how investors assess their companies. Besides, many successful entrepreneurs themselves become angel investors along their journey.
Image: http://yourstory.com/
Venture capital can take your invention from an idea to an innovation and then an IPO - if you can get it. Last year, U.S. venture capitalists invested about $10.7 billion in seed and early stage companies,* and venture capital has been demonstrated to have a strong positive impact on fostering innovation. While VC investment is on the rise, the number of start-ups has also exploded, and competition for VC dollars is fierce. Join us for a talk with Louis P. Berneman, an expert in the field of venture capital and university technology transfer, who will offer insight into the decision-making process for VC firms and shed light on what VC funding can do for your start-up.
image: http://www.freedigitalphotos.net
The world of technology is growing at a rapid pace, nothing new, but next year could involve some major cashing in for some health tech industries. With the help of some leading analyst firms, Business Insider put together a list of the trends that are predicted to be really booming next year.
As far as health is concerned in the list, smartwatches will dominate over the fitness wearables, employees will join group wellness programs, 3D printers will continue to grow and healthcare will become an app.
image: http://www.freedigitalphotos.net
