The Region of Waterloo has been a hub for startup activity ever since the delivery of the first computer to campus in 1960.

Wes Graham, who was instrumental in the creation of a strong computer science tradition at the University of Waterloo, is also its first entrepreneur leading to the creation of Watcom, the first of many successful startups derived from the University of Waterloo.

There are too many to list them all, but some of the most notable are the aforementioned Watcom, Maple, OpenText, Certicom, BlackBerry, Sandvine, Slipstream, Kik, ThalmicLabs, Clearpath Robotics and Aeron.

Innovation is the foundation for sustained growth. This is true both for companies and for nations. Being better at innovation is critical for Australia to ensure our national prosperity in the modern era.

In today’s high cost and highly competitive markets, good companies will always seek efficiency and productivity gains through incremental innovations — for example, process improvements and adoption of best practices. But at the same time, they must also drive up market relevance and value for money for high-cost products, by seeking out value-creating innovations using science, technology, design, art and reverse hermeneutics — productivity defined as doing smarter things in smarter ways.

Startup Institute is an eight-week immersive program that helps career changers transition into the world of startups.

Founded in 2012 and now operating locations in Boston, New York, Chicago, London, and Berlin, Startup Institute has trained hundreds of individuals across the globe who have gone on to embark on new career paths. Some of them have founded startups of their own and some have landed at tech behemoths like Google. And, of course, a great many of them are now working for startups.

Programmers, known within the industry as developers, are the builders, inventors and problem-solvers of the digital age. Our lives are all but dependent on computers, and developers are the brains behind the workings of every type of computer imaginable – from your desktop PC and smartphone to the systems sending spacecraft into orbit or the programme that tells your washing machine to rinse and spin. And yet, despite being one of the few lucrative careers that require little to no formal tertiary training, development careers have been reserved mainly for the upper-middle classes who grew up tinkering with computers at home.

These days, with the many Internet articles and new courses available, most new professionals readily cross the gap from lack of business knowledge to knowing, but many never make it over the knowing versus doing gap. Investors I know highlight this problem with the mantra that they fund founders and teams who can execute, rather than ones who just talk about their great ideas.

Image: http://blog.startupprofessionals.com

THIS PAST WEEK Trevor “Job” Clarke, activist on behalf of black business passed away, a takeover of Banks Holdings Limited by a St Lucian entity was announced, and Professor Sir Hilary Beckles gave a lecture in which he explained how the economy was designed to keep blacks out of business. Let’s get real about entrepreneurship.

Many humanities and social science Ph.D.s leave graduate school and are thrust into adjunct employment as they seek out more permanent positions. Others take on postdoctoral fellowships -- essentially full-time teaching or research gigs -- under one or two-year contracts that may offer little in the way of mentorship. The University of Southern California has created an alternative for a select number of recent graduates, offering them full-time employment, with benefits, for up to two years. In return, these Ph.D.s teach four class discussion sections for a faculty mentor, as well as a course of their own design.

Image: Alexander Young, a preceptor in English, teaches a course at the University of Southern California.

About five years ago, machine learning reached a point where software could, with guidance from senior lawyers, effectively take over the time–intensive task of legal discovery, in which one party in a lawsuit combs through its documents to determine what it must show to the other side before trial.

Image: http://www.technologyreview.com

Innovation is the foundation for sustained growth. This is true both for companies and for nations. Being better at innovation is critical for Australia to ensure our national prosperity in the modern era.

In today’s high cost and highly competitive markets, good companies will always seek efficiency and productivity gains through incremental innovations — for example, process improvements and adoption of best practices. But at the same time, they must also drive up market relevance and value for money for high-cost products, by seeking out value-creating innovations using science, technology, design, art and reverse hermeneutics — productivity defined as doing smarter things in smarter ways.

Mother Nature is reclaiming her land piece by piece, or so it appears after she swallowed more than 200 metres of beachfront in Queensland on Sunday.

Fortunately, no one was harmed in the freak event, but a car, caravan, camper trailer and tents have all been lost to the abyss.

The sinkhole, located at Inskip Point near Fraser Island in Queensland, is said to be three-metres deep and still unstable. At least 300 people have been evacuated from the area.

Three years ago, MIT finance professor Andrew Lo proposed rallying private investors to raise an eye-popping $30 billion to develop cancer drugs.

That idea went nowhere.

A California congressman plans to file legislation next week that would create a more modest version of Lo’s plan: A $400 million fund to finance development of drugs for rare diseases — with the federal government acting as a backstop, providing financial guarantees to attract private investment. If it works, Lo said, taxpayers could profit and patients could get access to new treatments.

Image: C.J. GUNTHER/THE NEW YORK TIMES MIT finance professor Andrew Lo in Cambridge in 2009.

If you want to see a city with pride and passion, come to Baltimore on the Friday before a Ravens football game. The entire city is purple, our home team’s color. School kids wear purple. Working men and women wear purple. The cupcakes at local bakeries are — you guessed it — purple.

A Ravens game might be the occasion, but our pride and passion are bigger than our team. During Orioles games, we sing “Oh” as loud as we can during the national anthem that was penned right here (“Oh say can you see by the dawn’s early light”). We put Old Bay (thank you McCormick Spice, a Baltimore company) on everything from crabs to ice cream.

It’s standard interview fare, especially for venture capitalists at tech conferences. To understand why, read our breakdown of the reasons journalists can’t stop asking about the tech bubble. And if you’re in need of a gift for the doomsaying venture capitalist in your life, consider “Unicorn Tears.”

Opinions vary on whether this is a bubble. Most say it’s not, while issuing dire warnings that a shake-out is coming for certain startups. Just don’t ask them to name which ones are on their dying unicorn lists.

Once a myth takes hold it's difficult to debunk it and venture capital funding is commonly seen as synonymous with tech startups but in reality it isn't.

In 2014 we reported that about 76% of US tech companies acquired in 2012 had not raised institutional investment (VC/PE - private equity) prior to acquisition. In addition, about 75% of venture capital-backed US startups do not return investors' money. The common rule of thumb is that of 10 startups, only three or four fail completely. Another three or four return the original investment, and one or two produce substantial returns. However , the National Venture Capital Association estimated that 25% to 30% of venture-backed businesses fail outright.

I was watching our Seattle Seahawks lose to the Green Bay Packers on Sunday and was surprised to see a series of television ads air during the game from GE, not touting how great theirproducts are, but why GE is a great place for software developers to come work.

Each 30 second advertisement will have cost GE nearly $700,000, meaning that GE probably spent $2 million last Sunday. First I’ll share the ads and then I’ll share my thoughts on their significance.

Paul Graham wants to farm black swans. Dave McClure likes ugly ducklings, little ponies, and centaurs. Almost all large VC funds are looking for unicorns, while some people argue that investors should hunt dragons, and others talk about decacorns.

If you have no idea what I’m talking about, here’s a quick refresher. The term unicorn was coined by Aileen Lee about two years ago to describe those rare and magical tech startups that have reached a valuation of $1 billion or more.

Leaders here like to say entrepreneurship is one of Wichita’s best-known traits.

We’re the founding home of Pizza Hut. Of Rent-a-Center. Lear Jet, Beechcraft, Cessna. Koch Industries – businesses that created tens of thousands of jobs.

But Jeremy Patterson thinks that trait is mostly old history.

Patterson has overseen or collaborated in 30 start-up enterprises as the director of Wichita State University’s Human Physiology laboratory. Wichita trains great entrepreneurs at WSU – who leave town after graduation, he said.

Image: Data analyst James Chung presents an analysis of the regional economy to local business and community leaders at the Kansas Leadership Center on Tuesday. (Sept. 22, 2015) Travis Heying The Wichita Eagle Read more here: http://www.kansas.com/news/local/article36708219.html#storylink=cpy 

Most entrepreneurs looking for an investor can tell you how much money they need, but few have given much thought to what they are willing to give up for it. Perhaps they're way off in their valuation (usually far too high), or paralyzed by fear at seeing the other terms, because they have no idea what's normal, and what's worth a fight to the death (their startup's).

The first thing a venture capitalist does is make sure an investment is worth it.

That applies to any company, any idea and yes, Catholic schools.  B.J. Cassin tells FOXBusiness.com he pursued, “the best leverage of your dollar” when he and his wife Bebe helped fund the first 18 Cristo Rey Schools and the Cristo Rey Network as well as 30 Nativity/Miguel middle schools with an investment of $22 million back in 2003. 

The ultra-stable properties of the proteins that allow deep-diving whales to remain active while holding their breath for up to two hours could help Rice University biochemist John Olson and his colleagues finish a 20-year quest to create lifesaving synthetic blood for human trauma patients.