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innovation DAILY

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.

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This report is Deliverable 4.3 of DRAGON-STAR: “The Innovation Ecosystem in China”

The report is expected to analyse the innovation measures and system in China and especially the incentives and obstacles towards the exploitation of research results. The report aims to provide a comprehensive analysis of China’s Innovative Ecosystem and specifically, to identify innovation support mechanisms regarding:

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New York, NY – Today at New York Energy Week, ARPA-E Acting Director Dr. Cheryl Martin announced $33 million in funding for 13 new projects aimed at developing transformational fuel cell technologies for low-cost distributed power generation. The projects, which are funded through ARPA-E’s new Reliable Electricity Based on ELectrochemical Systems (REBELS) program, are focused on improving grid stability, balancing intermittent renewable technologies, and reducing CO2 emissions using electrochemical distributed power generation systems.

 

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Innovation Contests With Cash Prizes Attract More Average Joes WSJ

Government and private foundations increasingly are using prize money to allow even Average Joes to help find outside-the-box solutions to complex problems, according to a report set to be released Thursday.

From a search for new technology to thwart robocallers to a bid to boost the number of college graduates living in cities, solutions to public problems are more often being sought from open contests in addition to more traditional methods, such as contracts with experts and consultants.

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As Harvard Business School Professor Linda A. Hill began to dig into the scholarship around leadership and innovation, she soon realized there was a lot of research on both.

What she didn’t find, however, was work linking the two. Specifically, what is the role of the leader in creating and sustaining an innovative organization? A new book written with three coauthors attempts to answer the question of why some companies, such as Pixar, are able to invent continuously, while others aren’t.

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When you run a software recruiting company, you end up fielding a lot of questions from other founders who are just starting to hire. The number one question I get: How can I find a great recruiter?

This is a top priority for good reason. If you’re doing it right, hiring is one of your most time-consuming and energy-depleting tasks. That’s simply how you find the best people at the beginning. But when you hit hyper-growth, or your leadership needs to jam on the product, this isn’t always realistic. It’s easy to fall behind. A well-matched recruiter can not only catch you up, but help propel your startup through massive step changes.

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Henry Doss

Undermine their pompous authority . . . make anarchy and disorder your trademarks. Cause as much chaos and disruption as possible . . .

Sid Vicious

In the midst of all the current handwringing and polemic about disruption, maybe it’s time to step back and figure out exactly what it is everyone is arguing about.   When we do that, and when we dig a bit beneath the surface hysteria, we’ll find the same old business problems lurking about; they’re just lost in the disruption debate behind a flurry of acronyms, “new” paradigms and slogans — stuff like “disrupt or be disrupted.”  Like most strategic tautologies, this mantra will tend to mean something only to the already-converted, and like all the other noise about disruption, will add little to actual business outcomes.

 

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Canada’s most well-known tech company is finally back in the black.

Struggling smartphone maker BlackBerry today reported a profit of $23 million, or 4 cents a share, on total revenue of $966 million. That net income is based on generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP), which consider the company’s real estate sales and a tax refund. Excluding those items, BlackBerry’s adjusted loss for the first fiscal quarter of 2015 totaled $60 million, or 11 cents a share — substantially less than the 26 cents per share loss analysts anticipated.

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Today the National Institutes of Health announced they are offering my Lean LaunchPad class (I-Corps @ NIH ) to commercialize Life Science. There may come a day that one of these teams makes a drug, diagnostic or medical device that saves your life.

Over the last two and a half years the National Science Foundation I-Corps has taught over 300 teams of scientists how to commercialize their technology and how to fail less, increasing their odds for commercial success.

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NAI LOGO (National Academy of Invensors)

TAMPA, Fla., June 18, 2014 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Just how valuable is "technology transfer" for universities?   This question is addressed in "More than Money: The Exponential Impact of Academic Technology Transfer," an article from the National Academy of Inventors (NAI) that examines the impact of landmark 1980 legislation that facilitated technology transfer from the academic inventors' "bench" to commercialization and the far-reaching and beneficial changes for universities and communities that have resulted.

 

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dictionary

Let's disrupt "disruption."

My boss, ReadWrite editor-in-chief Owen Thomas, and I disagree, feistily and frequently, about a variety of topics. We had profound differences of opinion on how to cover Brendan Eich's departure as CEO of Mozilla and PayPal’s role as a company in the payments space. But we both agree on one simple fact: “Disruption" as a technological fetish object is a childish, lazy concept thrown about by people who think their laundry-stain-removing app is changing the world.

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Businesses have talked about becoming more flexible in their work culture, open in their leadership, and collaborative among teams for practically as long as the Internet has existed (and probably longer than that).

But with the rise of mobile technologies and the shedding of 9 to 5 norms, instead of paying lip service to these ideas, corporate cultures are now finally being forced to adapt or face losing their competitive edge with both customers and employee recruits.

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A whole lot of “whoa” went into Amazon’s new Fire Phone. Its Firefly feature lets you look at anything, anywhere, and instantly buy it. Dynamic Perspective takes movement related gesture control to a degree not yet seen in smartphones. Mayday brings next generation customer service. The Fire Phone is packed full of features and hardware, tied with a neat little Amazon bow. 

 

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You sometimes hear managers complain that their organization has no strategy. This isn’t true. Every organization has a strategy: its strategy is what it does.  Think about it. Every organization competes in a particular place, in a particular way, and with a set of capabilities and management systems — all of which are the result of choices that people in the organization have made and are making every day.

When managers complain that their company’s strategy is ineffectual or non-existent, it’s often because they haven’t quite realized that their strategy is what they’re doing rather than what their bosses are saying. In nine cases out of ten, the company will have an ambitious “strategy statement” or mission of some kind: “We are going to be the best in the world in our industry and always lead innovation to the benefit of all of our customers.”

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How’s your diet these days? Many people find the summer months to be a good time for making some healthy adjustments to their eating patterns, whether that means eating more fresh vegetables, eating more regular meals, or trying new recipes or cooking methods.

Just as the foods we eat affect the strength, health, and overall well-being of our physical body and brain, the information sources we absorb can affect our attention, emotional state, and mental well-being.

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Microsoft Ventures

Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) has announced that it is launching a new startup accelerator in Redmond, Washington that focuses on home automation and the “Internet of Things.” Microsoft is partnering with American Family Insurance on the accelerator.

The startups will work on ways to improve how people use technology in their homes. The accelerator was unveiled at Microsoft’s Global Startup Day in San Francisco. It will be housed at the Microsoft campus in Redmond and will run from September to December of this year.

 

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San Francisco's Market Street artery is already clogged with startups ranging from Twitter to Uber. Now McDonald's is moving onto the congested corridor, opening a digital incubator that aims to bring the Valley's cherished culture of disruption to the Golden Arches.

McDonald's decision-making powers are notoriously mediocre, with flops like the Arch Deluxe and their waffling runs of the McRib. But this time will be different, maybe. The company's mealy-mouthed Chief Digital Officer Atif Rafiq recently dished to Advertising Age their half-fried plan:

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