Let me repeat: I drove a 3D printed car. It wasn’t for long, and it wasn’t far, but it was a singularly awesome experience.

The car, known as the Strati, is perhaps the world’s fully drivable, almost completely 3D printer-manufactured automobile. Local Motors used crowd-sourced design and a custom-built 3D printer to create the one-of-a-kind (for now) 3D printed car and assembled it over six days at the International Manufacturing Technology Show (IMTS) in Chicago, Illinois a few weeks ago.

Before I preview the biometric compression shirt that Ralph Lauren designed for U.S. Open ball boys, I’m served a wineglass of blueberry smoothie in a room lined with black-and-white photos of wispy suave men. There is one other reporter waiting with me. With jeans rolled to expose his ankles, a bright summer plaid work shirt, and blonde hair just long enough to tuck behind his ears, he looks like he sprung from one of the picture frames on the wall and materialized here specifically to shame my off-brand attire.

Image: Free Digital Photos

Every entrepreneur thinks he can relax a bit after his business model is proven, funding is in place, and revenues are scaling as projected up that hockey-stick curve. Unfortunately, the market is changing so fast these days that any upward climb can level off quickly, as the core business growth begins to stall. This S-Curve, with no correction, can quickly lead to disaster.

The Pipeline Entrepreneurial Fellowship announced today that St. Louis will join its entrepreneurial region, allowing for the first time any qualified entrepreneur from St. Louis to apply to become a Pipeline Fellow. Additionally, as a participating city in the regional program, Pipeline will hold one of its quarterly modules in St. Louis each year, bringing additional focus and exposure to the entire entrepreneurial community. Each module brings in nearly 100 regional entrepreneurs and dozens of national experts to work together on their businesses, while interacting with the larger entrepreneurial community at networking events, planned by Pipeline and their St. Louis founders.

Wearable technology is the new black, weaving inexorable threads into the fabric of our lives. Witness the design technology explosion at New York’s just concluded Fashion Week. Today the Fashionista Express is rolling through Europe, to Milan, Paris, Madrid, then to Turkey, India, Tokyo, Beijing and Seoul. Apple’s iWatch gets a lot of headlines, but this core set of emerging technologies drives designers and the business. 

Image: http://eengenious.com 

Scott Crabtree spent 24 years climbing the ladder in the gaming and software industries, eventually leading his own engineering team at Intel. And after observing life at companies big and small, he recognized one commonality: The happiest people are the most productive. The difference was so striking to him that he retired and rebooted his career, founding Happy Brain Science to surface and share the scientific underpinnings of what makes people happy and how that makes them more effective at their jobs and in their lives.

image: http://www.freedigitalphotos.net 

Hardly a day passes without pundits crying for leadership in the NFL commissioner and team owners, among high-ranking government officials, and in other public figures. If University of Illinois experts didn’t have evidence that this valuable trait can be taught, they might join the collective swoon that’s engulfing much of the country.

But a new U of I study supports the idea that leaders are made, not born, and that leadership development follows a specific progression.

The traditionally secretive culture of old-school venture capital may be changing. These investing firms have increasingly been hiring community managers to help foster a network within their portfolios. And what started with a few spreadsheets is now evolving into new technological platforms and tools to connect these companies. What’s more, VCs are starting to share information with each other in order to provide their portfolio networks with aggregated data on what other startups are doing to succeed.

Image: HackNY.org 

It’s standard productivity advice: Do your most important task during your most productive time. But even if you know when you work best, it’s not always easy to figure out what deserves your attention.

Prepping for a meeting with your CEO is probably more important than editing a memo on office fridge policies, but many tasks at work are more ambiguous. Given that time is limited, how do you establish priorities?

image: http://www.freedigitalphotos.net 

After Wayfair’s successful IPO which valued the the Massachusetts-based company north of $3 billion, Fortune’s Dan Primack wrote a love letter to New York City calling out its technology success – or lack thereof. Primack wrote:

“When it comes to technology success, would you mind waiting a bit longer before adopting the mantle of “next Silicon Valley” or “Silicon Valley of the East?”…At this moment, New York is not the next Silicon Valley. It’s not even the next Seattle.”

Image: https://www.cbinsights.com  

London Set to Become Key European Investment Hub

qodeo, a provider of financial data to the global venture community, has unveiled research that Venture Capital (VC) firms are seeing three times more investment opportunities than Private Equity (PE) firms, but despite this, PE firms are twice as likely to invest as VCs.

Early stage VCs see, on average, 900 business plans per year, and deal flow is at an historic high, given the weight of capital raised since 2012. However, ‘Time to Exit’ has extended and the UK is more risk averse than the US, at early stage investment. Less than 10 percent of UK VC & PE firms hold pre-revenue companies in their portfolios compared to 24 percent in the US. 

Investors put $149 million to work with new and developing companies in Ohio last year, but Ohio’s entrepreneurs still face a severe shortage of capital, according to the Ohio Venture Report 2013, the first statewide overview of venture investing in the state.

While job creation by new companies is “alive and well in Ohio,” the report shows that new companies face “a severe shortfall in capital to fuel growth,” Lisa Delp, chairwoman of VentureOhio's research committee, said in a statement.

“Human happiness,” the Greek historian Herodotus once observed, “does not abide long in one place.” In its 240 years or so of existence, the United States has experienced similar ebbs and flows, with Boston replaced as the nation’s commercial capital first by Philadelphia and then by New York. The 19th century saw the rise of frontier settlements—Cincinnati, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, and finally Chicago—that also sought out the post position. In the mid 20th century, formerly obscure Los Angeles emerged as New York’s most potent rival.

Image: http://www.newgeography.com 

According to the National Angel Capital Organization, 29 angel groups across Canada invested $89-million in 199 startup businesses last year. That’s up 120% from 2012 when $40.5-million was invested. Karen Grant, executive director of the Angel One Investor Network in Oakville, Ont., has seen a strong uptake on good quality applications firsthand.

“The money is out there. Not only are the number of investments going up year over, but the round size is also increasing,” she says. “Investors are putting more money in year over year. The right companies are getting the funding they need.”

image: http://www.freedigitalphotos.net 

CLEVELAND and LEUVEN, Belgium, Oct. 6, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- NineSigma, Inc., the leading innovation partner to organizations worldwide, today announced the launch of the Siemens innovation gallery on NineSigma's open innovation and social media site, NineSights. The gallery features multiple needs and challenges for the global community of solution providers to solve in collaboration with Siemens.

Now, innovative minds and companies can submit their proposals on Siemens Corporate Technology's applications and connect with other researchers around the world to develop solutions for Siemens. The first open innovation projects on the platform cover the areas of Social Computing, Multicore Computing and Cloud Computing.

Your startup is gone, it’s never coming back, and you are in mourning. An entrepreneur whose business fails grieves similarly to anyone who has lost a loved one. The pain of losing a business is not only about a significant loss of income, but can send your entire identity into turmoil.

Los Angeles County was home to 368,580 high-tech jobs in 2013, more than other regions that boast strong high-tech sectors, according to figures released Monday by Mayor Eric Garcetti and local economists. The Los Angeles area had more high-tech jobs than Boston-Cambridge, New York City and Santa Clara County, according to the Los Angeles Economic Development Center's "High Tech in L.A." report funded by JPMorgan Chase & Co.

Our objective is to develop a network that supports research and teaching on commercially viable scientific and technological innovations that will support Northern families, communities and societies. The University of the Arctic network will work with government agencies, commercial associations and private companies on the identification of opportunities for ad barriers to innovation in the North.

The University of Michigan experienced a record-breaking year in terms of innovation and research discoveries.

The university's Office of Tech Transfer had its best year to date, announcing Monday that researchers reported the launch of 14 startups, 439 new inventions and 148 option and license agreements for the 2014 fiscal year.

A business accelerator that admits people based on their entrepreneurial potential — not just their business idea — is looking for its first Baltimore class. Founder Institute, a California-based organization that operates accelerator program in 61 cities, is considering launching a Baltimore chapter. Local organizers will be holding engagement events in October to gauge interest and determine if any local entrepreneurs are good candidates. The four-month program could start later this year or early next.

Image: Neil Kleinberg is a co-director of Founder Institute's Baltimore chapter.