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.
It is the year 2014. Take note of the times we are in, because they are special. This era will go down in the history books as an entrepreneurial renaissance. More than ever, new businesses are being built. I believe this is brought on by a combination of economic climate and accessibility. Whatever the case is, it’s AMAZING.
Even at the ripe young age of 83, my dad is still fixing vacuums and sewing machines as part of the repair business he started 30 years ago after retiring from a career at Western Union.
He no longer runs the business from a shop, and he certainly is nowhere near as busy as he once was -- due mostly to the fact that you can replace the devices far easier then repairing them -- but he still manages to pick up a job from time to time to keep himself busy.
New York ranks third in the United States for entrepreneurship behind North Dakota and California, according to a new State Entrepreneurship Index produced by the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. New York held strong at No. 3 in the nation for the second straight year and North Dakota remained at No. 1, while California jumped from 11th last year to second in the U.S.
The expansion of startup communities in states around the country is having an impact, a new report on entrepreneurship suggests. The analysis of gains and losses in the 2013 State Entrepreneurship Index by University of Nebraska’s at Lincoln’s Bureau of Business Research highlighted some usual suspects such as California and New York. But the annual index, published since 2008, also drew attention to gains by states such as Kentucky, which shot up from 49 to four, Connecticut and New Jersey and significant setbacks, particularly for Pennsylvania.
Image: University of Nebraska
Keeping your distance from sick co-workers may not be enough to avoid contact with their germs: A new study shows that some viruses quickly spread through offices and other buildings, contaminating many surfaces in just hours.
In the study, the researchers placed virus samples on one or two surfaces — such as a doorknob or a tabletop — in an office building, hotel rooms and a health care facility. They used a virus called bacteriophage MS-2, which is harmless to people, but is about the same size and shape as the human norovirus, a highly contagious virus that causes diarrhea and vomiting. In other words, the researchers were able to trace how norovirus might spread through a building using a harmless virus.
Vivek Wadhwa boasts quite the résumé. He is a fellow at the Rock Center for Corporate Governance at Stanford University, director of research at the Center for Entrepreneurship and Research Commercialization at Duke, and a distinguished fellow at Singularity University. Wadhwa is also the author of a new book about Silicon Valley's glaring gender gap, Innovating Women: The Changing Face of Technology.
The movie theatre business offers insights as to how firms can find new opportunities for turning around dying businesses by understanding consumers and their needs better.
For movie theatres in the U.S. and Western Europe, viewership peaked in the late 1940s and has since slid by 80 percent or more, depending on the market. Television made the initial dent, followed by home videos, and most recently the likes of Netflix and Amazon Prime. A common thread that ties all the competition together is the television set. Given this, movie theatres have recently built on their offering to give movie viewers an experience that cannot be replicated on TV at home.
Risk-taking can be synonymous with entrepreneurship. I’ve certainly learned from the risks that have paid off, but just like bad beats in poker, the easiest ones to remember are all the mistakes, flops, and failures. Read our epic fails below, and be glad this wasn’t you.
Spending Too Much on Inventory
When IBM recently polled 1500 CEOs across 60 countries, they rated creativity as the most important leadership competency.
Eighty percent of the CEOs said the business environment is growing so complex that it literally demands new ways of thinking. Less than 50 percent said they believed their organizations were equipped to deal effectively with this rising complexity.
The key ingredients for sustaining a thriving life sciences innovation ecosystem are well known. There has to be a balance between the global market demand for innovative products, services & solutions, and the supply of the right knowledge, talent & technologies to address the market’s unmet needs.
Canada has built a competitive advantage on several vital supply-side elements of this ecosystem. We have a highly educated population in the STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) disciplines, globally competitive academic institutions across all life sciences disciplines, and a single-payer healthcare delivery system with robust health data repositories.
Image: Free Digital Photos
According to CB Insights data, funding to digital health/health IT companies has already topped $2.2B in the first half of 2014.
With the space becoming increasingly crowded and well-funded, one effective way innovation trackers can understand which areas (and likely companies) will play a key role in future of the digital health space is by following the smart money.
Image: Free Digital Photos
We have all heard people say, when they make a decision we don’t like, that “it’s not personal.” Generally they mean “it’s about the facts of the situation, it’s not about who you are as a person.” Usually this is a bit of a fib. In venture capital it’s often a big lie.
We like to say “it’s not personal” because this approach makes it easier for the other person to accept a bad outcome, reducing the risk of a messy, emotional discussion. The Godfather, the original mob melodrama, made this communication strategy iconic. The Corleones frequently explain that “it’s not personal” when they decide to threaten and kill people.
To help make sure that Salesforce.com can compete for the interest of mobile app developers, the corporate software powerhouse is taking an unusual step: setting up a special venture capital fund.
The company announced on Monday that its existing investment arm had set up the Salesforce1 Fund, a $100 million pool of money earmarked for start-ups creating apps for mobile phones. And specifically, the money that it pours into new developers is to help make sure that they create programs that work on the Salesforce1 mobile platform.
Every Monday, tune in to Fast Company Leadership for a quote to get your week started right.
While many of us are stuck inside fluorescent-lit offices, the weather outside is turning crisp, the days shorter, and the lure of new school supplies is calling. Even if you’ve outgrown back-to-school season by a few decades, the excitement of a fresh start doesn’t have to pass you by.
It seems like everywhere we turn we’re being told to “embrace failure.” From social media to countless business books and articles and the global failure conference FailCon, the importance of mistakes is lauded as a key stepping-stone for success.
Even advertisers are realizing the power of bragging about getting it wrong. For example, earlier this year Domino’s commercials touted that at their company “failure is an option” with a nod to its failed cookie pizza of 2007.
Image: Free Digital Photos
Ever since George Mason University started inviting prospective students to send in videos as part of their application materials, Matthew P. Boyce, the interim admissions director there, has seen applicants try to prove their mettle in some odd ways.
One young man wrote and performed a rap about why he wanted to go to the university, featuring a cameo by his grandma. Mr. Boyce recently watched footage of another candidate biting into an Indian “ghost pepper,” one of the world’s spiciest varieties.
Image: Free Digital Photos
One of the most frustrating things about smartphones—how long they take to recharge—could soon be one-third as frustrating. A startup called Qnovo, based in Newark, California, uses a technology that constantly checks and adjusts the flow of power during recharging to charge batteries faster and increase their lifespans.
Image: Free Digital Photos
Datacoup, one of the first companies to offer people money in exchange for their personal data, has finished a closed trial of its service and is now opening it to anyone (see “Sell Your Personal Data for $8 a Month”).
Datacoup will pay up to $10 for access to your social network accounts, credit card transaction records, and other personal information, and will sell insights gleaned from that data to companies looking for information on consumer behavior
Start-up companies are the reason America’s economy is more innovative, prosperous and dynamic than the economies of other industrialized countries around the world.
New companies create roughly 3 million jobs every year, while existing companies tend to shed 1 million jobs. It is no secret why a healthy entrepreneurial culture is important.
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The Sharks—from the hit ABC show "Shark Tank"—give budding entrepreneurs the chance to make the American dream come true and potentially secure business deals that could make them millionaires. (Photo: ABC/Bob D'Amico)
Nearly a quarter century ago, at a gathering in Phoenix, Arizona, John W. Gardner delivered a speech that may be one of the most quietly influential speeches in the history of American business — a text that has been photocopied, passed along, underlined, and linked to by senior executives in some of the most important companies and organizations in the world. I wonder, though, how many of these leaders (and the business world more broadly) have truly embraced the lessons he shared that day.
