Anyone born before 1985 is lucky. They have experienced life before and after the Internet. They remember what happened when their ride didn’t show up, and when they had to kill three hours in an airport. Instead of idly reaching for a device, they waited. They read a good thriller, or watched airplanes take off, or did a crossword puzzle. Sometimes, they did nothing.

Image: http://www.flickr.com/photos/26835854@N07/6331498953

People have been struggling with procrastination long before the Internet tempted us away from work with YouTube videos.

Thomas Jefferson didn’t take a break from writing the Declaration of Independence to tweet out his famous quote: “Never put off ‘til tomorrow what you can do today.” And Mark Twain wasn’t on Pinterest looking for fence-painting techniques when he quipped: “Never put off ‘til tomorrow what may be done day after tomorrow just as well.”

(06/10/2014) Open innovation is a strategic game for big companies and one of the most important moves to consider for their innovation leaders is the allocation of focus and resources in the context of open innovation.

Here we need to consider that big companies like GE, Cisco or Microsoft tend to have 8-12 different value pools (think suppliers, startups, customers or universities) to consider for their open innovation efforts.

Image: Free Digital Photos

Health information technology (HIT) refers to a broad spectrum of technologies, ranging from personal health-monitoring applications to big data analytics. The venture capital firm Rock Health recently reported that venture capital funding in the HIT field reached $3 billion for 2014, well surpassing the $1.9 billion invested in the sector during 2013. The LSN research team tracks investors in early stage life sciences, and we have noticed a growing interest in HIT as well.

Image: http://blog.lifesciencenation.com

An abbreviated version of this post appeared yesterday on TechCrunch.

If you want the full SlideShare deck with many slides not in either post it’s in this link –> The LA Tech Market “

There’s something going on in LA.”

It’s the most common refrain I hear from investors and even entrepreneurs these days. I hear it right after people have decided to come by for a few days to “check out what all the fuss is about.” I hear it when I visit LPs (the people who invest in VCs) all across the country, “Yeah, I haven’t been out there for a few years but I keep hearing that something is going on there.”

KANSAS CITY, Mo., SANTA CLARA, Calif., and NEW YORK, Oct. 9, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- The Angel Resource Institute (ARI), Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) and CB Insights released the Q2 2014 Halo Report today, a national survey of angel group investment activity. The report finds median pre-money valuations continuing to climb for the third consecutive quarter reaching $3 million in Q2 2014. Round sizes dropped approximately 40 percent to $600K over the prior quarter when angel groups invested alone, but rose nearly 20 percent to $2 million when angels co-invested with other types of investors.

It has been over a year since the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) permitted securities issuers to market their capital raises using general solicitation and general advertising while still qualifying for an exemption from public registration. During this time, hundreds of online crowdfunding platforms have launched — seemingly overnight — offering investment opportunities in private companies. For a company seeking to raise capital, these “accredited crowdfunding” platforms offer the tantalizing possibility of raising funds with the click of a button. As this new industry grows and develops, it’s conceivable certain accredited crowdfunding platforms may become as ubiquitous as traditional broker-dealers. But in this nascent industry, how should a company seeking to raise capital for a new or existing venture go about selecting the most suitable crowdfunding solution? The following are 10 things you should know before engaging in accredited crowdfunding.

 

Thanks to the meritocracy that is Silicon Valley, any doofus with a bloated bank account can become a venture capitalist. But you no longer need the right net worth to get in on the excitement of making speculative bets on startups!

That's right, Twitter engineer Buster Benson spent his free time making "Valleyball": a fantasy venture capital league that lets everyone bet how much startups with be "worth" in a year.

For Steve Blank, tackling the hurdle of developing life-science products is his Mount Everest.

Over the past three years, Steve Blank has taught a “Lean LaunchPad” course through the National Science Foundation, instructing about 400 teams of students in robotics, computer science, materials science and geoscience how to commercialize their tech ideas. The curriculum focuses on the business model canvas and students speak one-on-one with consumers to test their market hypotheses.

Digital technology is full of paradox, yet we often tend to under-emphasize or even ignore the paradoxes — often looking at either technology’s problems or its promises, rarely examining both at the same time. But it’s only when we explore both that we gain new insight into what will truly help us harness technology’s economic value.

Let’s start with the core strategic paradox created by digital technology: it represents both a source of mounting performance pressure and a dramatic opportunity for value creation.

Image: Free Digital Photos

Akamai’s "State of the Internet" report for the first quarter of 2014 revealed a sorry fact: Compared to other nations, the United States can’t cut the mustard when it comes to broadband speeds.

In that report, the U.S. didn’t even crack the top 10, instead taking 12th place. This time around, according to Akamai’s latest survey covering Q2, we've fallen even further—to number 14. 

Twenty-one companies have been awarded $5.63 million as part of a program to support technology-based businesses and attract them to Kentucky. The funding is through the state's competitive Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) and Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) matching funds program, according to a news release. The program matches all or part of federal SBIR-STTR awards received by Kentucky-based companies. It also provides a match to out-of-state companies if they relocate to Kentucky.

Image: polygraphus Twenty-one companies have been awarded $5.63 million as part of a program to support technology-based businesses and attract them to Kentucky.

Thomas Erickson had never really given much thought to employee non-compete agreements.

But recently, the CEO of the Burlington, Massachusetts-based software company Acquia, Inc., says he's been getting some push-back from new hires who weren’t happy signing contracts that restrict them from working for competitors or within the same industry after they leave their jobs.

Image: Free Digital Photos

In this day and age, being an entrepreneur is truly glamorized. Stories of huge wins resonate through the different startup communities like wild fire. Successful entrepreneurs look like the Beatles when they first landed in America and, yes, it’s awesome.

Although I love the positivity in the coverage of building awesome products and services, it is highly over-exaggerated. Most parts of being an entrepreneur SUCK. In most cases, you work more hours than anyone you know, you work for free (until you make or raise money), and the ups and downs are like the world’s most intense roller coaster. The wins are few and far between, with more than 90 percent of startups failing.

Image: Free Digital Photos

Innovation districts are springing up in cities across the country. Unlike traditional science parks and suburban innovation corridors, these districts cluster cutting edge research institutions, R&D intensive companies, entrepreneurial firms and business incubators in small geographic areas that are livable, walkable, bike-able, and transit connected. They incorporate both the new collaborative workings of the “open innovation” economy as well as new market and demographic preferences for quality places. 

As an entrepreneur, it’s never too early to set the culture you need for a thriving business, as well as thriving employees, customers, partners, and vendors. In fact, in my experience, cultures are very hard to change, so if you don’t get it right the first time, the road ahead will forever be difficult. “The Art of War” culture as an analogy for business just doesn’t work anymore.

North Carolina’s new Economic Development Partnership began operations this week. The public-private partnership will assume many of the economic development operations of the state’s Department of Commerce (as described in an earlier Digest article), with most of its 34 staff members previously working for the department, according to the News & Observer. The partnership will help firms gain access to the state’s research, technology and academic resources, though the NC Office of Science, Technology and Innovation, which administers a number of innovation-focused programs, remains under the Department of Commerce. Learn more…

There are two good reasons to ask people how they feel about their lives. The first: Well-being is arguably a better measure of national success than Gross Domestic Product and life expectancy--traditionally the granddaddies of country-level metrics. After all, a country can't truly claim to be successful if its people don't feel successful, whatever economists might say.

Image: Free Digital Photos

Earlier this month I had the opportunity to join SSIR’s Nonprofit Management Institute, a gathering of more than 300 social-sector leaders from across the country that focused on scaling for impact. As the director of the Social Innovation Fund (SIF), a White House initiative and program of the Corporation for National and Community Service focused on scaling effective solutions, my team and I spend our days thinking about strategies to discover, develop, and grow community solutions that work. Scale is a critical and constant subject in this conversation, and there’s no shortage of writing about what it is and how to do it—or not do it—effectively.

Image: Free Digital Photos

Infectious diseases seem to come and go, sometimes causing scary outbreaks, while other times seeming to disappear. But some infectious pathogens are always with us, lurking just below the surface of society.

Sexually transmitted diseases are one major group of diseases that make for ongoing hidden epidemics: In the United States alone, there are nearly 20 million cases of new sexually transmitted infections yearly, from just eight viruses and bacteria. Here is a look at the number of people infected with each of these diseases in the U.S. as a whole, and in each state:

Image: http://www.livescience.com