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innovation DAILY

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.

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You can’t survive as an entrepreneur without resilience, because you are going to fail at least once, maybe multiple times. That’s the nature of trying something that’s never been done before. Resilience means not giving up, and being energized by what you have learned. As Thomas Edison said, "I have not failed. I have just found ten thousand ways that won't work."

Image: https://blog.startupprofessionals.com

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Sujan Patel

Growing up, our parents taught us to choose a career path that we enjoy. To love what we do. That teaching has carried over into our adult lives and is essentially what we strive for in our careers.

According to the Pew Research Center, 49 percent of working Americans are unsatisfied in their jobs. Furthermore, The Balance reports that the average worker changes jobs 10-15 times in their career.

 

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Nidhi Singh

Age doesn’t really matter when it comes to following your passion. You must have heard people say entrepreneurship is a young person’s game, although, a study published in the Harvard Business Review by MIT Sloan School of Management in the US, states that the average age of a successful startup founder is 45.

 

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vacation

New research shows people living in Colorado, Virginia and Arizona take the most vacation time from work. The advocacy group "Project: Time Off" finds last year, Americans used around 17 vacation days, which is the most since 2010. But 52 percent of workers still report leaving unused vacation days by the end of the year.

 

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failure

It's no secret that entrepreneurs fear failure, with claims that a majority of startups fail running rampant in media. To add to the founder's list of concerns, entrepreneurs are 30% more likely than average to experience depression. To me, the question is obvious: What can we do as entrepreneurs to ensure that we’re not only making it into the category of successful businesses, but are also fostering a strong, healthy and sustainable mindset toward our work?

 

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hurricane damage

The weather outlook for the low country of South Carolina looked unsettling. Alan Walters, charged with protecting more than 9,000 students as the executive director of safety for the Georgetown County school district there, pored over the forecasts. Just a few weeks into the 2015 school year, he was facing the possibility of a dangerous storm. With computer forecast models literally all over the map in projecting where the storm—soon to become Hurricane Joaquin—would go, Walters was left to weigh the options on his own.

 

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Money bill check and writing HD photo by rawpixel rawpixel on Unsplash

There are a variety of decent retirement savings benchmarks out there. How much other people your age have saved isn’t necessarily one of them.

After all, age is just one factor in how much you should have saved for retirement, and it assumes you and everyone else who hit their Sweet 16 in 1999 will also retire at the same time.

 

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diet

Most healthy eating advice focuses on eating a variety of foods to ensure you’re sampling from a range of different food groups. That way, health experts say, you’re more likely to get everything that your body needs.

But in the latest review of the topic, scientists found that having a diverse diet may not necessarily lead to better health.

 

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impossible

I’m just coming off of a one year build of a new startup. As with most startups, it’s been a wild ride, with more twists and turns, obstacles and challenges, learning and growth than I would ever have imagined. You’d think after having made the startup journey a handful of times on my own and dozens of times with companies I’ve advised that I’d be used to the process by now. Yet each time down this path reminds me of how much we discount the stamina, conviction, and resilience required to build something new. As I near the finish line, I’m reminded of the saying, “Nothing is impossible, some things just take longer than others.”

 

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The reigning theory in business has long been that “alpha” leaders make the best entrepreneurs. These are aggressive, results-driven achievers who assert control, and insist on a hierarchical organizational model. Yet I am seeing more and more success from “beta” startup cultures, like Zappos and Amazon, where the emphasis is on collaboration, curation, and communication.

Image: https://blog.startupprofessionals.com

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Inspired by the other companies who have done the same and fearful of being disrupted by startups, several companies have opened innovation labs and startup accelerators. Examples of this include Telefonica’s Wayra, Jaguar Land Rover’s InMotion Ventures, EDF Energy’s Blue Lab and many others. The success of corporate innovation labs and accelerators has been mixed and this has led to questions of whether such programs are a good idea.

Image: Taylor Weidman/Bloomberg

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laptop

Gig economy workers and freelancers make up an increasingly larger percentage of today’s workforce. But when it comes to getting paid, a new survey from Bill.com says 54% of them feel it takes too long.

Freelancers Are Not Being Paid Fast Enough

The freelance workforce is a connected demographic using digital technology to work, play, shop and carryout financial transactions. And the survey says they are great supporters of digital payments.

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building

Dennis Lower, longtime president and CEO of Cortex, a self-styled innovation hub and technology district in St. Louis, calls the sprawling, 200-plus-acre development “a handshake to the millennial workforce” in this Midwestern city.

Since 2010, when Lower arrived, Cortex, a nonprofit development and a public-private collaboration between local universities and businesses, positioned geographically between Washington University and St. Louis University, has become a nexus of the new economy.

 

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team

Small, independent teams are the lifeblood of the agile organization. Top executives can unleash them by driving ambition, removing red tape, and helping managers adjust to the new norms.

What does it take to set loose the independent teams that make agile organizations hum? These teams are the organizational units through which agile, project-based work gets done. The typical agile company has several such teams, most composed of a small number of people who have many or all of the skills the team needs to carry out its mission.

 

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It’s hard to be successful in any business when your customers can’t find you, or they find you and still can’t figure out whether your solution works for them. Thus I was surprised to see in a recent CNBC survey that 45 percent of small businesses still don’t have a website. These are missing a major opportunity to be found instantly via the Internet, locally and around the world.

Image: https://blog.startupprofessionals.com

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If you want an idea of which new startups are going to make it big in a few years, look no further than the portfolios of Silicon Valley's biggest venture capital firms and start-up accelerators.

Y Combinator, Sequoia Capital, Kleiner Perkins, New Enterprise Associates (NEA), Bessemer Ventures, and 500 Startups are among the most recognizable names in the Valley because of their history of success with e-commerce startups and ability to place their fingers on the pulse of consumer retail trends.

Image: Burrow

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Plastic Bag

In an effort to tackle plastic pollution, New Zealand is committed to banning plastic bags for good.

On Friday, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and Associate Environment Minister Eugenie Sage announced plans to ban single-use plastic shopping bags, giving retailers a six-month window to phase them out.

 

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