The extreme winds from last year's destructive hurricane season seems to have come with some unexpected consequences.  

Hurricanes Irma and Maria — some of the most destructive in Caribbean history — may have forced rapid evolutionary change in a native population of small-bodied anole lizards (Anolis scriptus), researchers in the West Indies say.

New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy announced on Wednesday, July 25, two initiatives to jump-start the state’s innovation ecosystem. He addressed officials and guests at Princeton Innovation Center BioLabs in Plainsboro, which formally opened in May.

“We’re all here today for a good reason,” Murphy said. “It’s right here in places like this across our state where the innovation economy will be reborn and once again dominate in New Jersey. These are the spaces where the next great leaps in technology and the life sciences will be made by new companies doing leading-edge research and development.”

The new initiatives are designed to attract and support entrepreneurial startups, as well as established companies developing technological and medical innovations.

Image: https://www.princeton.edu

The UNC Board of Trustees heard a proposal for an incubation space at their finance committee meeting last Wednesday. The area, which will partner with a third-party life-sciences operating company, will provide development and acceleration to life science startup companies created by university staff, according to the presentation. The presenting group suggested the sixth floor of the Carolina Square development as their targeted location.

Image: https://chapelboro.com

Elizabeth Holmes had the world on a string. In 2003, the 19-year-old college dropout founded Theranos, a medical technology company that promised to revolutionize health care with a device that could test for a range of conditions using just a few drops of blood from a finger prick. Holmes, a striking blonde with a bold presence, racked up big-name investors, forged a partnership with Walgreens and raked in the money: Theranos reached a valuation of $9 billion.

But this story of a Silicon Valley unicorn was too good to be true. An investigation by Wall Street Journal reporter John Carreyrou uncovered the truth that led to the company’s downfall. Holmes and former Theranos president Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani have been indicted on federal fraud charges. Carreyrou has chronicled the saga in a book titled, Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup. He visited the Knowledge@Wharton radio show, which airs on Wharton Business Radio on SiriusXM, to talk about the story. Wharton business ethics and legal studies professor Peter Conti-Brown, who teaches about Theranos for the business responsibility core class for Wharton MBAs, also joined the discussion.

Image: http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu

Michelle McBane is senior investment director at MaRS Investment Accelerator Fund and managing director of StandUp Ventures. Lauren Robinson is general partner at Highline BETA and executive director at Female Funders.

The reports continue to pile up and the verdict remains the same: Venture capital firms have a gender problem. Specifically, investors in early-stage companies have too few women on their teams and that has become a huge hurdle for female entrepreneurs to leap over.

“Go find your passion,’’ Henry directed his children when they reached their late teens and early twenties. “Find your interests outside our family business and pursue them.’’ As inspiring as those words may have been, Henry, the patriarch of a successful automotive parts business, wasn’t simply freeing his children to follow their dreams. He was requiring it.

Successful innovators are unafraid to try new things and prioritize stakeholder buy-in. But some of the hurdles to innovation center mainly around three aspects, according to Dcode Founder and CEO Meagan Metzger.

"A lot of people in government really want to do something and move forward," she says. "And some of the biggest barriers are just around processes and the culture. I see a lot of barriers around just tech compliance, so making sure technologies can actually get in the door."

“Dress for success” is a well-known adage, but the meaning has evolved in today’s digital economy. A new infographic by Fundera provides some insights with actionable tips to improve your wardrobe. Titled, “Dress For Success: 8 Attire Tips from Famous Business Icons” the infographic looks at the style choices of business leaders and the advice they offer regarding attire.

It is fair to say once you achieve the level of success of some of the people in this infographic, you can basically wear whatever you want. For a small business owner just starting out, this may not be possible in some industry segments.

With a €3 billion budget to award 7,500 startups until 2020 with up to €2,5 million, the SME Instrument of the European Commission’s Horizon 2020 programme is the largest, most competitive non-dilutive fund in the world.

The aim is to offer Europe’s smart innovators the chance to step forward and request funding for breakthrough ideas with the potential to create entirely new markets or disrupt existing ones, across all sectors. The SME Instrument bridges the critical investment gap in early stage innovation and makes market-creating innovation easier in Europe.

Image: http://www.eu-startups.com

An incubator space is coming to Cherry Hill Mall — a change that points to the broader trend of shopping centers rebranding as destinations to do more than just buy clothes.

Incubator company 1776 will occupy 11,000 square feet of the 1.3-million-square-foot Cherry Hill Mall, one of the 21 mall properties owned by Pennsylvania Real Estate Investment Trust (PREIT). The space is expected to open in November and 1776 considers it more of an “incubator” than a coworking space, providing resources for desk, office, and conference rooms in addition to entrepreneur-centered programming and mentorship, said Penny Lee, the company’s chief strategy officer.

Image: COURTESY OF 1776 - The 1776 incubator space in Washington.

GlaxoSmithKline has made a $300 million equity investment in 23andMe as part of a deal that pulls it close to the consumer genetics pioneer. The partners are contributing preclinical programs to a 50-50 collaboration that will use 23andMe’s genotypic and phenotypic data to accelerate progress. 

The agreement features multiple components. To get the relationship started, 23andMe and GSK are bringing existing programs into the collaboration. 23andMe is proposing to include its early-stage programs, while GSK is contributing its LRRK2 inhibitor. GSK thinks 23andMe’s database of people who know their LRRK2 variant status will help the Parkinson’s program enroll patients on the way to clinical proof of concept.

Image: The packaging of 23andMe's genetic test. (23andMe)

During the second half of fiscal year 2018, the Mayor’s Office of Economic Development (OED) issued more than $4 million dollars in grant monies to various local organizations. Grantees were selected based on their economic impact within Maui County through business and/or jobs created or sustained. Improvements to Maui County in the areas of environment, agriculture, business, sports, arts, and cultural were also considered. “These economic development grants are a vital way that our tax dollars help create jobs and sustain our local economy,” said Mayor Alan Arakawa. “Funds have helped preserve our environment and open space, support our small businesses, and share our host culture with residents and visitors. I’m pleased to see how far these funds go toward strengthening our community on many levels.”

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It’s awfully hard to kill a planet—and Mars should know, because Mars ought to be dead by now. Long ago, perhaps 4.3 billion years back, the Red Planet was a place not unlike Earth. It had a thick atmosphere and abundant water, much of which might have been concentrated in a vast ocean in its northern hemisphere. All over the rest of the planet were lakes, smaller oceans and rivers.

Manufacturing is enjoying a resurgence in the United States. After years of falling output and a diminishing percentage of the labor force, the last few years have seen renewed growth. According to PriceWaterhouseCoopers, the catalysts for this revival include factors such as the strengthening economy, workforce quality, tax policies, the regulatory environment, and transportation and energy costs.

There has been a steady drumbeat of headlines praising Canada’s innovation economy of late, including our academic contributions in the area of artificial intelligence, federal “superclusters” that will foster collaboration between large multinationals, local startups and postsecondary institutions, and strategies to increase access to venture capital.

It seems like every business discussion today is just counting the seconds before the term “platform” comes up. Books and articles are written, pundits swoon and conference audiences nod and exchange glances in knowing agreement. Everyone, it seems, wants to transform their business into a platform.

Yet take the argument to its logical conclusion and the message becomes problematic. Platforms, as many have observed, function as multi-sided markets and therefore must connect value to value. So if everybody becomes a platform, who actually creates the value to make a vibrant marketplace?

As a business advisor, I have long been surprised by the large number of industry stalwarts, including Blockbuster, Kodak, and General Motors, that have been dealt major setbacks, or even total failure, by upstart young companies, with a fraction of the resources or industry experience. The stalwarts should be making the big leaps to be competitive, rather than the other way around.

Image: https://blog.startupprofessionals.com

PARIS — Occupying the space of an abandoned 1920s train station in the south-east district of Paris is the world's largest start-up incubator called Station F, fully funded by French billionaire Xavier Niel.

Another 20km away lies another initiative of his: A coding school named 42 that has no teachers.

The 50-year-old telecommunications tycoon pays for the campus and the tuition fees of the 1,000 students that they accept each year at 42.

Image: Siau Ming En/TODAY

It’s common knowledge that millennials long for "community." What’s less understood is the concrete expression of that longing in cities and suburbs across America, especially now that the older tier of millennials between ages 28 and 34 are buying homes, starting companies, running for office, and throwing around their consumer weight.

The story is a hopeful but tentative one, threaded by a reviving localism at the very time this localism’s future rests on how, exactly, millennials choose to live out their commitments to a place – as much with one another as with the nation at large.

Image: http://www.newgeography.com

Vancouver has a strong health and wellness culture and is home to active lifestyle brands such as lululemon, Arc’teryx, and Herschel Supply Company. Vancouver also has one of the lowest infant mortality rates in North America.

While Vancouver is the most densely populated city in Canada, it is far from the most polluted. Vancouver residents are exposed to an estimated 6.4 micrograms of pollutant per cubic meter of air, among the least of any Canadian city. Vancouver also has some 99 square meters of green space per resident, or about 10 times the WHO recommendation of 9.5 square meters per capita.