Kurt Squire first recognized the learning potential of games in 1987 in his history class in high school. When his teacher asked the students if they knew the differences between English and Spanish colonization strategies in the Caribbean, he was the only one who knew the answer (the Spanish sailed galleons and held forts across the Caribbean for transporting gold, while the English sought to establish permanent settlements). But Squire hadn’t been reading ahead in the textbook: He had inadvertently learned the history of Caribbean colonization from spending countless hours playing a video game called Sid Meier’s Pirates! on his Commodore 64 computer.

Image: Creative Commons 

Bayer HealthCare appears to be the first pharmaceutical company that started its own accelerator. The company that made €18.924 million in turnover in 2013 “understands that innovation and healthcare cannot only be driven by the industry but also needs creativity.” This was announced by Christian Ullrich, Head of Marketing & Sales IT at Bayer HealthCare yesterday.

Bayer has partnered with universities and smaller companies before and started Grants4Apps, a crowdsourcing initiative last year. This year, it was turned into an accelerator.

Image: Team Parica - http://venturevillage.eu

Kentucky representative, Steve Rigg, announced on Monday (August 25th) that he is filing new crowdfunding legislation to bring the funding option to his growing, entrepreneurial state.  The General Assembly will reconvene in January but the bill is up for discussion now.

Riggs stated,

“This form of investment, which enables entrepreneurs to tap into a pool of hundreds if not thousands of investors, has taken off in the last couple of years. Kickstarter is the most widely known effort, but we’re starting to see states localize this approach as well, which is making it easier for home-grown businesses to raise the money they need to get off the ground. I think its time for Kentucky to take part.”

Image: http://www.crowdfundinsider.com

Equity crowdfunding is off to a slow start in Wisconsin, with few businesses moving to use the new investment vehicle, and banks seemingly cautious about getting involved.

Other states have traveled a similar path, but Wisconsin's road contains a speed bump found nowhere else:

The financial institution that holds investors' money during a crowdfunding campaign must be state chartered.

That means the biggest banks — federally chartered institutions such as BMO Harris, Chase and U.S. Bank — can't participate.

Image: Mark Hoffman Giotto Troia (from left), Andrew Gierczak and Henry Schwartz have been attempting to raise money for their company, MobCraft Beer Inc., under Wisconsin’s new crowdfunding law, but they have had trouble finding a state- chartered financial institution willing to work with them.

Steve Blank, a serial entrepreneur, author and professor at Stanford University, developed the curriculum for the National Science foundation’s business boot camp for scientists before the NIH adopted it for scientists in the SBIR grant program. At a fireside chat at New York University Langone Medical Center hosted by NYC Bio this week, Blank talked about a new investment group called M34 Capital that will invest in technologies seeded by federally funded research, particularly graduates of I-Corps boot camps.

After months of campaigning for smartphone anti-theft legislation, San Francisco District Attorney George Gascon got what he wanted Monday: Governor Jerry Brown signed Bill SB 962 into California law, making “kill switches" mandatory on all new smartphones. 

Starting next summer, all phones sold in the state must have a built-in feature that renders the device inoperable to strangers or thieves, and it must be activated by default. The idea is to discourage smartphone theft, a problem plaguing law enforcement across the country.

On September 14, 2007, Lorenz Diesbergen, age 44, stepped off a commuter train in downtown Chicago and began his daily walk to work in the Chicago Loop. As he crossed the bridge over the Chicago River, his heart’s normal rhythm suddenly deteriorated into an uncoordinated frenzy of useless fibrillations. He may have managed a few more steps—we don’t know—before he pitched forward and fell face-first onto the sidewalk.  Paramedics were on the scene within minutes, but efforts at resuscitation proved futile. He left behind a wife and four children.

I’ve had several coaching conversations about career challenges with multiple individuals who thought their jobs might be in danger.

One theme through all of them was how to really figure out your career situation if you suspect your job is in danger. Sometimes it’s obvious you’re on the bubble. Some people seem to always miss the obvious, however, especially when the obvious is about them.

image: http://www.freedigitalphotos.net 

Idea Foundry and the University of Pittsburgh's Innovation Institute have established a formal partnership aimed at speeding up the commercialization of innovations being developed at the university. Idea Foundry has been working with the university for the past five years, but the new partnership allows the innovation-based economic development group to become more embedded into the university, said Michael Matesic, president and CEO of Idea Foundry.

Image: Free Digital Photos 

An influx of governmental funding has helped fuel major increases in research capacity and scholarly productivity as well as impressive internationalization at Chinese research universities, but these institutions face significant challenges, including ones related to institutional autonomy and academic freedom, in their continuing quest to achieve “world-class” status.

Image: https://www.insidehighered.com

As the healthcare sector evolves, health organisations are turning to tech entrepreneurs to help solve industry challenges. While it is important to connect start-ups and small and medium enterprises (SMEs) with those commercial partnerships and opportunities, innovators also need to know how to build and sell relevant propositions from the start.

Image: Free Digital Photos

The National Science Foundation (NSF) announced today that it will provide a multimillion-dollar grant to create a hub of innovation that unites public and private institutions throughout Southern California, headquartered at and administered by USC, the California Institute of Technology and UCLA.

Image: Free Digital Photos

Unlike popular business myths, not everyone should start their own company. In fact, it is not the path to happiness and wealth for most people. Every month, over a half million people will quit their day jobs to start a company. Many people have that big dream of betting it all to take a huge risk. Others have a business on the side or as Pamela Slim says, a “side hustle” going while they work a full time job.

Image: http://smallbiztrends.com

Science projects are no longer just about poster boards and papier-mâché volcanoes.

With prestigious competitions like the Google Science Fair and the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair, millions of entrepreneurial students are showcasing their talents and gaining national recognition for their work. From bioplastics made from banana peels to new treatments against influenza, today's science projects by children and teenagers have turned into life-changing ideas.

Image: Free Digital Photos

Amazon has forever changed the way people shop online, but it wasn’t always the juggernaut that it is today. In fact, once upon a time it was just a tiny startup with a big vision. So, how did it end up as the giant online retailer that it is now?

It’s hard to say, but one thing founder Jeff Bezos was very intentional about was how he hired for the company. In fact, in his 1998 letter to shareholders, just four years after Amazon was founded, Bezos wrote, “It would be impossible to produce results in an environment as dynamic as the Internet without extraordinary people…

Image: TED S. WARREN/ASSOCIATED PRESS

Even though Susan Cooney has had a fruitful career as a serial entrepreneur, it took her 23 years to actually launch her first company. She was stuck in a comfort zone marketing for companies, which was something she did very well.

In 1993 she joined her first startup disrupting the mobile computing space which sold for $12 million a year later. The second company she joined was also a disruptive company, and two years after joining Cooney saw it sell for $32 million.

Image: http://tech.co

Being an international student for the past couple of years has made me more educated about the U.S. and some of the policies that are different from my home country. Growing up in a family full of entrepreneurs meant entrepreneurship is not a new concept for me, but becoming one is a challenge.

Students do not have to study entrepreneurship as an academic major or minor in order to be an entrepreneur, but as competition grows, it has become an important major in higher education.

Image: http://www.usnews.com

A study by the US Senate committee has exposed a large gender imbalance in entrepreneurship, with women lagging behind men in many of the areas crucial for business success.   Called “21st century barriers to women's entrepreneurship”, it reveals that there were eight million women-owned firms in the US in 2007, but these accounted for just 3.5 per cent of sales and 6.4 per cent of all employment.

The GLOBAL 1000 Meet | Partner | Deal Portfolio Showcase + Conference is a unique Transaction Network and conference series. G1000MPD WEST brings together Fortune 500/Global 1000 corporates from Corporate Venture Capital (CVC), Open Innovation, External Partnering, Business Development, M&A, Tech/Startup Scouting, Research, and Licensing groups looking for transactions with innovative, research-intensive startups and SME companies from verified Portfolio Holders: VCs, Angels, Universities, National and State governments with startup funding programs, and Accelerators and Incubators, who have world-class companies in their portfolios and would like to do significant deals with the Fortune 500/Global 1000.