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.
In a digital world that never sleeps, it can be difficult for business owners to strike a balance between success and happiness. As soon as you set your mind to one task, five more appear. If one gets overlooked, 10 other balls drop.
You probably feel like it’s a zero-sum game. You either keep your business moving forward or you take time for yourself and allow your business to suffer. If you’re like most entrepreneurs, you start to put your business first and yourself second.
Matt Rogers, co-founder and vice president of engineering at Nest, urges entrepreneurs to focus on concrete and discrete business opportunities, rather than try to aim for some grand vision. He then explains how focusing on problems that others ignored presented his company with a wide-open market.
Stanford Prof. Tina Seelig explains how imagination requires active engagement, which reveals opportunities to envision what might be different. Imagination is the first stage of the "Inventure Cycle," which describes a four-step process for bringing ideas to life.
How many times have investors heard startups start their pitch by touting that their technology is “disruptive?” What entrepreneurs forget or don’t realize is that most customers are wary of all technology, educating the market on new technology is expensive, takes a long time, and people buy problem solutions rather than technology. Investors will likely wait for more traction.
By relocating graduate programs and research institutions into the core of cities, universities and colleges can spur metropolitan growth, says Bruce Katz, a vice president at the Brookings Institution and co-director of the Metropolitan Policy Program.
Image: http://fortune.com
Trinity College is a place apart. We wear gowns, have a not-so-secret society, and burn Guy Fawkes in effigy. Mostly, our traditions are good. Tradition builds camaraderie and community, tradition allows us to honour those who came before us and often enjoy ourselves in the process.
Image: MARI ZHOU/THE VARSITY
As politics at the federal level becomes increasingly corrosive and polarized, with trust in Congress and the President at historic lows, Americans still celebrate their cities. And cities are where the action is when it comes to using technology to thicken the mesh of civic goods — more and more cities are using data to animate and inform interactions between government and citizens to improve wellbeing.
Image: Free Digital Photos
In order to push gender equality forward, we need to measure and track gender gaps over time.
That's precisely the goal of the World Economic Forum (WEF)'s annual Global Gender Gap Index, which published its latest report last week. It analyzes the gaps in rights and opportunities between men and women in key areas, including health, education, economic participation and political empowerment, in 142 economies worldwide.
Image: Esja, the mountain range in the north of Reykjavik, capital city of Iceland. Iceland topped the Global Gender Gap Index for the sixth consecutive year.IMAGE: WIKIMEDIA COMMONS MARTIN PUTZ
Implementing a startup project, regardless of its nature, is associated with a number of risks that need to be taken into consideration. When a project is implemented properly, these risks can be efficiently curbed by the startup founders during the different stages of the project lifecycle. Statistically, more than 20% of all the risks technology projects are derailed by are associated with a startup’s technical implementation, and not the erroneous selection of the market niche, or how innovative their product or service offering is.
Image: Free Digital Photos
Stanford’s Linear Accelerator Laboratory operates the longest particle accelerator of its kind — it’s produced ground-breaking work in particle physics over the decades, as well as several Nobel prizes. But surprisingly, it also played a major role in the early web: By hosting the first web site in the US. It wasn’t much to look at, but that’s not important.
Image: http://www.gizmodo.com.au
A scanner the size of an iPhone that you could hold up to a person’s chest and see a vivid, moving, 3-D image of what’s inside is being developed by entrepreneur Jonathan Rothberg.
Rothberg says he has raised $100 million to create a medical imaging device that’s nearly “as cheap as a stethoscope” and will “make doctors 100 times as effective.” The technology, which according to patent documents relies on a new kind of ultrasound chip, could eventually lead to new ways to destroy cancer cells with heat, or deliver information to brain cells.
Image: http://www.technologyreview.com
How do you use college to learn how to be an entrepreneur?
For the student looking to launch a company after graduation, the answers to the typical questions—where do you go to school, what do you study, what clubs do you join and so on—aren’t necessarily the usual ones. Aspiring entrepreneurs should view college as a unique chance to build up a set of diverse skills, create a network of potential investors and partners, and soak up life experiences that will help them fly solo.
Entrepreneurs will often talk about the “entrepreneur’s rollercoaster.” Starting a company is certainly something that induces ups and downs, victories and defeats, failures and successes and a ride full of differing emotions.
Allowing yourself to go through ups and downs is counterproductive, tiring, and unhealthy. It is imperative to be so strong that nothing can knock you down and so humble that nothing can make you overly excited.
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ou would think that entrepreneurs are the most skilled people on the planet at manufacturing wealth. And you’d be incorrect. Beyond personal independence, creation of jobs, and the creation of returns for investors, it’s surprising how ill equipped entrepreneurs are when it comes to creating and holding onto wealth for themselves.
I’ve been learning new ideas from my friend Garrett Gunderson who recently merged his business with Robert Hirsch of The Elevation Group to create the Wealth Factory, with a mission to help entrepreneurs learn the skills they need to create more and better wealth of their own.
The World was supposed to be finished years ago. But the financial crisis of 2008 slowed construction. Work now has resumed on the artificial archipelago off Dubai. However, changing plans and obsolete satellite images make it curiously difficult to find out what The World actually looks like these days.
Image: http://bigthink.com
The command-and-control approach to management has in recent years become less and less viable. Globalization, new technologies, and changes in how companies create value and interact with customers have sharply reduced the efficacy of a purely directive, top-down model of leadership. What will take the place of that model? Part of the answer lies in how leaders manage communication within their organizations—that is, how they handle the flow of information to, from, and among their employees. Traditional corporate communication must give way to a process that is more dynamic and more sophisticated. Most important, that process must be conversational.
Image: Artwork: Adam Ekberg, Arrangement #1,2009, ink-jet print
Electronics are slowly turning humanity into a humpback species. Poor posture is a major contributor to back pain and can even negatively affect our emotions. Fortunately, there’s a an easy way to remedy the situation. At VentureBeat’s Healthbeat conference this week, Crossfit San Francisco Founder and author of the bestselling book, Ready To Run, Kelly Starrett coached the audience on how to text and type properly (video below)
Image: http://venturebeat.com
The Conference Board of Canada says “despite a decade or so of innovation agendas and prosperity reports, Canada remains near the bottom of its peer group on innovation, ranking 13th among the 16 peer countries.”
Canadian business leaders say in surveys that they don’t know how to innovate, and rate their innovation skills as average.
image: http://www.freedigitalphotos.net
Forget the haunted house, the dark basement, or the cabin in the woods: some of the scariest scenarios in recent memory have taken place in the boardroom, where terrifying business blunders have unleashed bloody disasters.
image: http://www.freedigitalphotos.net
Can students use college as way to launch their start-up? UP Global founder partner Joey Pomerenke discuss tips for aspiring entrepreneurs. Photo: AP.
image: http://www.freedigitalphotos.net
