Postdoctoral researchers in the United States are often overworked, poorly paid, and stuck in jobs that don’t advance their careers. And efforts to improve the system have progressed slowly, in part because academics who supervise postdocs have little incentive to push for change.

Image: UAW Local 5810 - Postdocs and others picket at the U. of California at Los Angeles in 2009. Collective bargaining is the only way to ensure follow-through on the changes urged in a new report, says Benjamin Schwessinger, a union steward and postdoc in plant pathology at the U. of California at Davis. 

Our bedrooms used to be quiet sanctuaries built for comfort and rest with usually nothing more than a bed, some clothes and a few personal belongings. Today, technology is seeping into our bedrooms through televisions, laptops and the phones in our pockets. But how does all this technology affect your sleep patterns?

Image: http://smallbiztrends.com/ 

The world of marketing is changing faster than technology these days. Winning entrepreneurs have long since supplemented conventional print and video “push” marketing with digital online interactive “pull” marketing, and more recently added social-local-mobile (SoLoMo) to the mix. Mobile and global are driving all of these in innovative new ways to grow your business.

Publisher: Macmillan, Palgrave Pivot

ISBN 9781137489623

December 2014

Traditionally, company experts and outside collaborators innovate by developing the knowledge map. Success or failure of incremental innovation hinges on this path. The Role of Creative Ignorance suggests the knowledge map should be abandoned and replaced with a new methodology, that of creative ignorance. With over 30 years of experience in international economics and entrepreneurship, Piero Formica explores the concept of creative ignorance in combination with path creation and its disruptive effect on entrepreneurship. Using narrative examples of innovators and companies worldwide, he introduces the characteristics of successful path creators that overstep the boundaries set by knowledge maps to open up new, unprecedented routes and connect them each other. In doing so, path creators reveal latent, unexpressed needs of consumers and drive innovation forward.

While many people consider government rules and regulations boring, angel investors should be aware that the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is considering potential changes that could prevent many angels from investing. Even worse, it could reduce capital for startup companies that create jobs and spawn innovation.

Could the innovation that has helped drive human prosperity for centuries finally be petering out? Some worry that the easy discoveries in science and technology have been made, and it will only get harder from here. Is this believable?

The idea seems counterintuitive given the frantic pace of innovation in Silicon Valley, or the steady flow of discoveries in science. Researchers in California, for example, recently discovered a solid material that, even when sitting in direct sunlight, naturally cools itself to about 9 degrees Fahrenheit below the ambient temperature. It might point the way to a new wave of technology for cooling.

image: http://www.freedigitalphotos.net 

As an offshoot of PatentStat, I’ve assembled a set of graphs of patent inventor locations, focusing in 33 industry sectors.

Here are the maps for biotechnology:

Image: http://www.biotechblog.com/ 

Named as one of the Top Innovators in the Philadelphia region, Wayne Kimmel, a managing partner at SeventySix Capital, recently gave a talk about startups, venture capital and entrepreneurship here at Penn. He started out by talking about different anecdotes and experiences of his working in the startup and VC world then quickly transitioned into giving us aspiring student entrepreneurs some practical advice with a focus on networking and building relationships.

Image: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ 

If you take venture capital money...

1) You increase the chances that you may not be CEO of your own company one day--and that also might be the best thing for its long term success.  

2) You are signing up to sell the company one day--to another company or to the public market, but definitely to someone.  

3) You will almost certainly take more venture capital money after that.  

4) You will almost certainly go cashflow negative, increasing the risk that your company will fail.

image: http://www.freedigitalphotos.net 

Breakout startups that are ready for “Fundraising Acceleration” often face the challenge of managing interest from multiple investors. Having been involved in a number of these startups first-hand as an early-stage VC, I’ve noticed a common pattern to how they manage to “juggle” investor interest that we can all learn from.

Image: http://techcrunch.com/ 

Arizona Technology Enterprises (AzTE), the exclusive intellectual property management and technology transfer organization of Arizona State University, has for the third year in a row achieved high rankings in innovation metrics collected by the Association of University Technology Managers (AUTM).

Among all institutions with more than $300 million in research, ASU landed in the top ten for invention disclosures (No. 3), startups (No. 7) and licensing agreements (No. 8) per $10 million in research expenditures. ASU researchers also received 48 U.S. patents in fiscal year 2013, high enough for a No. 12 ranking on the same expenditure-controlled measure. The results come from AUTM’s fiscal year 2013 survey of approximately 200 universities and research hospitals.

Time is of the essence for many of the small to medium-size investment opportunities that companies face during the course of a year. The right moment can be fleeting, for example, to scale up production in a unit that suddenly takes off, to launch a marketing campaign to meet an unexpected wave of customer demand, or even to acquire a facility that comes abruptly onto the market. These are the kinds of projects, often identified by frontline managers, that a company should be able to approve quickly and undertake in less than a year’s time.

image: http://www.freedigitalphotos.net 

I've got an important anniversary coming up. In January, I will have officially been running my own business for three consecutive years. I've been working full-time on my company, ELSA AND ME, since leaving my corporate gig for good in December 2011. Last year at this time -- my second year in business and the beginning of this year -- was most likely the toughest time since launch and it taught me a lot, not only about running a business, but also about myself. Before I embark on another year, and the next phase of growing my business, I wanted to take some time to share some things that I think would be invaluable for anyone in the middle of launching a company, about to start a business or even just thinking of striking out on their own.

"Everybody is doin' a brand new dance, now, I know you'll get to like it if you give it a chance now" -- Carole King/Gerry Goffin: "The Locomotion"

For those of us over 50, that new dance is Entrepreneurship; and it's a dicey new dance for us if we've spent most of our careers in the predictable, stable and familiar corporate environment. Even if we have attained senior management ranks, the prospect of taking a chance on our own venture, depending entirely on ourselves, and forging into unknown territory is uncomfortable at best.

The University of Maryland is now integrating the Lean LaunchPad® into standard innovation and entrepreneurship courses across all 12 colleges within the University. Over 44 classes have embedded the business model canvas and/or Customer Discovery including a year-long course taken by every single one of its bioengineering majors.

In 2014 the American workforce valued short-term perks, like free lunches, work-life benefits like flexible work hours, and remote work opportunities, and long-term benefits, like working with intelligent people, having a clear path for career advancement and a strong mentorship culture.

It should then come as no surprise that this year’s top ranked place to work in America—according to anonymous feedback provided by employees via Glassdoor.com on more than 325,000 workplaces— was the company that best embodied both characteristics.

Scale Up Milwaukee continues to inspire new projects in the U.S. and beyond. Earlier this year, the U.S. Small Business Administration announced its launch of Scale Up America, an effort to support community efforts fostering entrepreneurial activity and business growth. In September, the SBA announced eight specific programs in communities throughout the U.S. that will receive funding support.

LaunchTN had a busy year. Their annual report, released November 2014 reviews all of LaunchTN’s initiatives over their full fiscal year (ending in June). One of the most interesting details of the report is their INCITE Fund, which is a venture capital program implemented by Governor Bill Haslam’s $50 million INCITE (Innovation, Commercialization, Investment, Technology and Entrepreneurship) initiative.

Image: http://southernalpha.com

Many people define innovation in business to mean the development of new products. Let’s expand that description to include some of the gradations that should not be lost in this normally black-and-white polarization. There are shades of gray which all bring value in their own way.

Raise your hand if "be more organized" is on your list of 2015 New Year's resolutions.

If your desktop looks like a minefield of haphazardly strewn files, you have 12,587 unread emails and you're still running iOS 7.something on your iPhone, spending time to overhaul your digital life is an easy way to get a head start on your organization goals.