Xconomy Boston —  (Updated 9/19/18, 3:40 p.m. See below.) Tiny Rhode Island and its capital city Providence have always punched above their weight, for better or for worse.

Better: Little Rhody’s founder Roger Williams, fleeing religious persecution in 17th-century puritanical Massachusetts, was one of America’s first abolitionists and created the concept of the separation of church and state.

Worse: After World War II, one Providence neighborhood became the nerve center of New England organized crime and one of its mayors the ne plus ultra of civic corruption—twice elected, and twice a felon. But the same mayor, Vincent A. “Buddy” Cianci (pronounced see-ANN-see), also sparked a renaissance in Providence that, ever so fitfully, has given civic leaders hope of an economic wave propelled by life-science activity in a new downtown core.

Image: https://www.xconomy.com

This month we’ll revisit two issues covered previously: attempts to promote compulsory licensing as a way for lowering the cost of Medicare drugs and increasing the return on investment from federally-supported R&D.

Last month we discussed Rep. Lloyd Doggett’s (D-TX) bill allowing the government to issue compulsory licenses if a company won’t sell a drug to Medicare for the price the feds wants to pay.  In a recent “Dear Democratic Colleague” message seeking co-sponsors for his effort Rep. Doggett’s office says:

Entrepreneur Steve Blank has served as a founder, investor and even in the air force. But there’s another title he is known for: professor.

Blank has earned a reputation among budding and veteran business leaders alike as the father of the Lean Startup movement, a business philosophy that popularized startup concepts like “pivoting” and “minimum viable product.” (Disclosure: Blank is an investor in EdSurge.) And he’s taught these ideas on business and innovation at Stanford, the University of California at Berkeley, Columbia and New York Universities.

With all the hype these days around the impending disruptions on the horizon such as blockchain, artificial intelligence, augmented reality and the like, it's natural to assume that breakthrough innovation requires breakthrough technology.

And if you consider the mind-boggling burn rates of recent innovation icons like Uber, WeWork, and MoviePass, it's also easy to assume that monstrous investments are needed to grow a successful new venture.

NORTH CANTON, Ohio, Sept. 25, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- The Collegiate Inventors Competition®, an annual competition that rewards innovations, discoveries and research by college and university students and their faculty advisors, announced today its 2018 Finalists.

This year's Finalists and their inventions provide a glimpse into the future of American innovation and emerging technological trends — from a harp-inspired water harvester to a steerable microcatheter. Through their research, these college students have harnessed their "inner inventor" to make working prototypes that can positively change our world.

Across the state, nearly 120,000 scientists are developing biologically advanced materials with the potential to change the course of our health, environment and even the foods we eat. It’s expanding New Jersey’s reputation from the “medicine chest of the world” to a hub for the life sciences.

One of the most valuable assets any entrepreneur has is time. It's always ticking, slipping away with each minute of procrastination and inefficient process. There's simply too much to be done and not enough hours in the day. Technology was supposed to free up time for you to focus on your highest and best use. Frequently, however, technology makes you more captive than ever. What business leaders and their teams need is technology that actually improves their lives, rather than becoming just another obstacle in their way.

Picture yourself at the beginning of the school year, selecting your course load for the semester. Your favorite subject is offering two courses. The first option is easy -- you already know most of the material and you can coast through the class to get an A, no problem. The second course is more challenging and will require that you push yourself -- it’s not a guaranteed A, but you will learn a lot and if you hustle hard, you’ll earn the grade.

A large chunk of an Australian beach has fallen into the ocean, in another incident of its kind in recent years.

On Monday morning, approximately 200 to 300 metres (218 to 328 yards) of beach at south-east Queensland's Inskip Point eroded into the ocean, leaving a gap in the coast which reaches to the tree line.

Alicia Robb was recently at the Hera Venture Sunmit in San Diego when a young woman entrepreneur told her about arriving a meeting, with her presentation and pitch in hand, and then having one of the men in the room ask her to go fetch them all coffee. This followed another recent experience  recounted by Robb, the founder and CEO of Next Wave Impact and an active angel investor, where a male venture capitalist spent his time hitting on her during a meeting.

In my experience, consummate entrepreneurs tend come up with more startup ideas than they can ever implement, and some of the ideas may not even make business sense. But how does any entrepreneur know which ideas to implement, and which ones are best left behind?

Image: https://blog.startupprofessionals.com

Scrabble enthusiasts will have 300 new words added to the Scrabble dictionary to up their game, thanks to the sixth edition of the popular board game.

The latest edition, which was released on Monday, added long-awaited words like “OK” and ew” to the vetted Scrabble lexicon, something that fans of the game won’t take for granted according to Merriam-Webster (which publishes The Official Scrabble Players Dictionary) editor at large Peter Sokolowski in an interview with USA Today.

The Smart Cities for All global initiative, a collaboration of the non-profits G3ict and World Enabled, has announced a new project to define a more inclusive approach to innovation for smarter cities.

In partnership with AT&T and the cities of Chicago and New York, the Inclusive Innovation for Smarter Cities project seeks to convene leaders from government, industry, and disability organisations.

Finding under-the-radar gems is one of the best parts of travelling — but unless you know a local, it can be hard to know where to go in popular tourist destinations.

To mark the magazine's 50th anniversary, Time Out's editors and city experts have compiled a list of the 50 coolest neighborhoods around the world after surveying 15,000 people globally about which areas have the best buzz, cool new openings, are affordable to live in, are great for visitors, and feel like they're "on the up."

Image: Once a working class suburb, Fitzroy in Melbourne is now an "artistic haven." Graham Denholm

Japan’s asteroid mission Hayabusa2 has become the first to land moving rovers on the surface of an asteroid.

On 22 September, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) tweeted that it had confirmed the mission’s twin rovers, called MINERVA-II 1A and 1B, had landed safely on the space rock Ryugu, and were moving on the surface.

The Hayabusa2 mothership deployed the small probes late last week as it dropped to just 55 metres above the surface, later pulling up to a higher orbit.

Image: Hayabusa2’s MINERVA-II rover 1A captured this image during a hop on the asteroid Ryugu. Credit: JAXA

Paul Volcker, former chairman of the US Federal Reserve, once said that the ATM was the only really useful financial innovation. Today’s entrepreneurs and bankers are looking to prove him wrong.

Mr Volcker’s view was far too gloomy. But given the flurry of fintech innovation — some of it potentially disruptive — we must think hard about what defines success.

There are five simple tests for a genuine financial innovation. Is it cheaper? Does it offer much better service? Is it faster? Does it democratise access? And what are its side effects?

Yale University researchers invented pliable sheets that turn objects into multifunctional robots.

Image: Photo via @ESFStream

Earlier in her career, Karen Rhorer was rising through the sales ops leadership ranks and working with her team to come up with an aggressive hiring plan, trying to reverse engineer the sales team capable of delivering the equally aggressive bookings numbers that their startup had set.

For nearly two decades Cleveland Clinic Innovations (CCI), the hospital group’s commercialization arm, has looked to invest in and develop new medical technologies into market-ready products.

While many of these innovations have been the product of in-house inventors, Pete O’Neill, executive director of Cleveland Clinic Innovations, said that his organization has found external innovation partnerships to be especially advantageous and a growing area of focus.

Image: https://www.mobihealthnews.com

When speaking, the average person uses about five filler words—such as um and uh—per minute, Noah Zandan, CEO and co-founder of science firm Quantified Communications, writes for the Harvard Business Review.

While these verbal crutches are common, overusing them can hurt your credibility in interviews or make audiences less interested in what you have to say. Fortunately, it's possible to eliminate this habit with a bit of practice, no matter how uncomfortable or nervous you may feel when speaking in public.