Few businesses owned by venture capital firms have been awarded Small Business Innovation Research awards since this program was opened to them two years ago. Through the SBIR program, 11 federal agencies spend at least 2.8 percent of their outside research budgets with small businesses. Only two of these agencies — the National Institutes of Health and the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy — have allowed VC-owned businesses to compete for SBIR awards, according to a new Government Accountability Office study.

Brand consistency — in the long term – ensures consistent business and career growth. Very often business owners steer clear of focusing on their personal brand, as they do not like the spotlight. The instinctive focus is on the PR and marketing activities to meet business objectives, highlighting their company’s services and successes. However, it’s not that easy to divorce the personal brand of a business owner from the brand of their business, especially if they are a small-business owner.

Russian Deputy Prime Minister Arkady Dvorkovich announced that construction of the Skolkovo Innovation Center will be completed on schedule during Tuesday’s session of Slush 2014 in Helsinki.

“We have just submitted to parliament the budget for the next three years,” Dvorkovich said. “All the funds that were earmarked for Skolkovo and forming the innovation ecosystem in the country are there, no cuts have been made.”

On October 29, Johnson & Johnson (J&J), the New Brunswick, N.J.-based pharmaceutical, medical devices and consumer goods giant, announced the launch of its Asia Pacific Innovation Center. Located in Shanghai with satellites in Singapore, Australia and Japan, this unit extends the J&J innovation network beyond its original chain of facilities in London, California and Boston. While laudable, J&J should think more innovatively about how it might source innovation. Some of the more interesting consumer and digital plays continue to come from unexpected places. In today’s age, it is time to start thinking about virtual networks rather than centers that require personnel and capital-intensive investments. Instead of a chain of pearls, a more appropriate metaphor might be a net of diamonds — with links in Africa, Asia and the Nordics, underpinned by a big data center that leverages customer data and the web.

Image: Free Digital Photos

Americans are starting fewer companies. New research released Thursday provides some of the first hints about why.

I’ve written several times about the long decline in U.S. entrepreneurship. It’s a counter-intuitive claim given the nearly constant buzz about “disruption” in Silicon Valley, but the data is clear: Multiple sources show the startup rate has been falling for decades.

Image: http://fivethirtyeight.com

A startup is like an infant: it keeps you awake from early in the morning until late at night. An established business is when your kid is all grown up, has left the house and now you can finally go and get a real holiday! But what about the transition between startup and a proper business, what about those awkward teenage years? Well, the good news is that the hardest part is probably behind you; you’ve got a product that the market enjoys enough to have given you either a stable/growing income, and/or you’ve got investors who love your product enough to push you to the next phase: growth.

Image: https://www.flickr.com/photos/12348847@N00/2536358399

Health tech incubator MATTER has secured $4.4 million to build the next generation of health IT, medical device, diagnostics and biopharma companies in Chicago. The funding was led by twenty two local companies mostly focused in the tech and healthcare sectors complementing the initial $2.5M grant and $1.5M loan provided by the State of Illinois. This brings MATTER’s total funding to more than $8M to build a viable health tech hub in Chicago. 

"We are seeing almost one new start-up incubator or accelerator being set up in the country every day," joked a senior Nasscom official last month.

That is perhaps true considering the country already has over 80 incubators and accelerators, five among which have been set up by multinational companies, 25 are privately run and 50 are public incubators, including those run by universities or colleges.

A rather recent entry into the world of procuring funds for business projects is crowdfunding. This is a means of gathering funds from a diverse group of investors using Internet technology.

The idea is broad based with some investors on crowdfunding sites getting rewards for investing money while others become investors with a stake in the business. As a result, some of these sites are, like PBS, seeking support from generous people with a passion for a type of business or short-term project or for a cause behind that business or project.

Nearly nine out of ten people aren’t satisfied with our government’s ability to address the problems and challenges that it faces. People are losing trust at record levels in various levels of government. People are understandably frustrated — those who they’ve elected seem unable to actually get any work done. Yet, re-election rates are incredibly high, for Congress around 90 percent, and actually higher in many state legislatures.

Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) investigators have developed a system to accurately track the dynamic process of falling asleep, something has not been possible with existing techniques. In their report in the October issue of the open-access journal PLOS Computational Biology, the research team describes how combining key physiologic measurements with a behavioral task that does not interfere with sleep onset gives a better picture of the gradual process of falling asleep. In addition to being a powerful tool for future research, the system could provide valuable insight into diagnosing and understanding sleep disorders.

Image: Free Digital Photos

It’s the age of the young entrepreneur: In the past decade, more millennials are taking the path of entrepreneurship. With many young entrepreneurs hoping to become the next Mark Zuckerberg, almost 160,000 startups were launched every month in 2011, according to a report by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation.

But an entrepreneur, especially a young one, needs more than just a great idea to get a business off the ground. Funding, mentorship, networking opportunities and a city’s affordability all play pivotal roles in the success of a new small business.

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As aerial-cinematography drones buzz overhead, apartment dwellers order a week’s worth of fresh groceries at the click of a button, and busy travelers hire a private car with the swipe of an app, it seems quite clear that the technology of “tomorrow” is actually here today.

There are presently massive shifts occurring in the competitive global landscape of health, and particularly in the life sciences. As we approach 2015, it is imperative that leaders in the health space understand the trends and shifts happening around them, not only in the US, but also in international markets, cities and service lines.

Obesity is a critical global issue that requires a comprehensive, international intervention strategy. More than 2.1 billion people—nearly 30 percent of the global population—are overweight or obese.1 That’s almost two and a half times the number of adults and children who are undernourished. Obesity is responsible for about 5 percent of all deaths a year worldwide, and its global economic impact amounts to roughly $2 trillion annually, or 2.8 percent of global GDP—nearly equivalent to the global impact of smoking or of armed violence, war, and terrorism.

Image: http://www.mckinsey.com

Some entrepreneurs are made, while others are born. If you have innate skills driving you down the entrepreneurial path, there were probably signs even when you were a kid. Were you the teacher’s pet who always turned in assignments ahead of time complete with extra credit? Were you always picked first in gym class, or were you the bookish type who was reading at levels beyond your age?

By 2030, according to the UN, there will be 41 mega-cities around the world with populations of greater than 10 million people. Not only will these mega-cities control the lion’s share of the world’s global economic and financial resources, they will also largely determine the future of innovation — and that could have a major impact on how we think about America’s hub-and-spoke model of innovation.

Innovation offices are being established by many governments—including cities (Austin, Philadelphia and Chicago), states (Maryland, Colorado and Pennsylvania) and federal agencies (the National Archives and Records Administration and the departments of Health and Human Services and State). But not all offices are organized the same way and not all have the same mission or metrics. In a new report from the IBM Center for the Business of Government, “A Guide for Making Innovation Offices Work,” Rachel Burstein and Alyssa Black detail how these various innovation groups fall into structural categories and how their success metrics map to their missions.

Until the age of 40, Judy Robinett thought she was shy. As a result, she'd go to corporate events and stand in a corner because she felt awkward around others. At some point in her career, the management consultant realized she wasn't getting anywhere by keeping her head down and working hard. She needed to make useful connections.

Today, the author of How to Be a Power Connector describes herself as a "raging extrovert."

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Recently, BloombergView writer Michael Lewis called attention to tape recordings made by a Federal Reserve Bank of New York bank examiner who was stationed inside Goldman Sachs’ offices for several months during 2011-2012. She released the tapes to This American Life who aired her story on September 26, 2014. Every media article I’ve seen on this begins with a prelude warning how complicated and hard to follow the story will be. Regular readers of New Geography are several steps ahead in their understanding of these causes and consequences of the financial crisis. If you are new here, you can follow the links in this piece to earlier NG articles.