Here’s a question every leader should answer: Do you have a clear understanding of your people’s skills, and where the gaps are?

Odds are, the answer is no. Although the cloud, digitization, and the Internet of Things allow businesses to gather and analyze all sorts of data, few organizations today have a system in place to track the skills they have. And even fewer apply that knowledge to gauge what skills they lack, both now and in the future — which presents a challenge, given that in tomorrow’s automation- and data-driven workplace, talent will be scarce and the needs of your organization will change often.

An estimated 64% of Americans drink coffee every day, according to data from the National Coffee Association. In many ways, that’s a healthy habit: research has found that coffee may boost longevity and decrease the risk of type 2 diabetes, heart disease and more.

But when the habit crosses the line from a pleasant pick-me-up to a daily necessity, the equation gets a little more complicated.

Ottawa is set to unveil its intellectual property strategy on Thursday, although the details will look rather familiar to anybody who has read the budget.

The federal government will re-announce plans to spend $30 million to create an independent “patent collective” as a pilot project to allow access to intellectual property and legal protection for small and medium-sized businesses who are trying to get in on the innovation economy.

Image: Innovation, Science and Economic Development Minister Navdeep Singh Bains.- THE CANADIAN PRESS

Americans spend more than 10 hours every day staring at screens. But researchers are developing cutting-edge interfaces that could change the way we interact with digital media–interfaces that, in many cases, don’t require screens at all. Instead, your skin is the interface. Objects around you are the interface. Architecture itself is the interface.

Image: Carnegie Mellon University

ALBANY, N.Y. The latest round in New York state's annual Regional Economic Development Council competition is underway, with $750 million to be awarded to entities statewide.

Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced Thursday that the state economic development funds will be awarded to 10 regions: western New York, Finger Lakes, Southern Tier, central New York, Mohawk Valley, North Country, Capital Region, Mid-Hudson, New York City and Long Island.

Baby names go in and out of style like fashion trends — what's popular one year may not be so hip a few years down the road.

Take Mary, for example.

Mary was once the most popular girl's name in America for more than 60 years, but today it isn't even among the 100 most common names for girls, according to the Social Security Administration, which has tracked the popularity of baby names dating back to 1880. At its peak in the early 1920s, there were more than 70,000 girls born with the name Mary each year, but in 2016, that number had plummeted to just over 2,000.

The University of Maryland, College Park is seeking a Director for its Office of Technology Commercialization.  The Director leads and manages the OTC, overseeing personnel, budgets, and all aspects of intellectual property cultivation, assessment, protection, and commercialization. The Director establishes and implements strategies to maximize the social and economic impact of University research and discoveries through OTC’s commercialization efforts and its support of related entrepreneurial endeavors. The Director is responsible for developing and meeting annual OTC licensing goals and acts as primary point of contact and steward to resolve problems and issues affecting intellectual property and licensing at all levels within the University.

In 1997, health information technology and digitial health pioneer Warner Slack wrote his bold and prophetic book, Cybermedicine: How Computing Empowers Doctors and Patients for Better Care.  Slack argued that “the electronic digital computer, with its capacity to hold large amounts of data and to execute multiple complex instructions and accuracy would…find an important clinical role in both diagnosis and treatment.”

In 2017, 25.7 percent of all angel capital group deals went to a founding team with at least one female founder, up from 17.0 percent in 2016, according to the Angel Resource Institute’s (ARI) HALO Report: 2017. The report also found a sizeable increase in the number of deals made for companies that included at least one minority female founder – 5.5 percent in 2017 (1.0 percent in 2016).

The HALO Report: 2017 is based upon data collected from angel groups as well as individual angel groups across the country. To collect the data, ARI uses both survey responses and PitchBook online resources. In total, the study’s database includes 3,617 deals made by angel groups. ARI, however, excluded deals with first-time investment rounds greater than $4 million to avoid skewing the data. ARI also excluded deals made by individual angel investors outside of groups in 2017 – they report that 1,499 such individual angel investor deals were made.

The Internet of Things is a prototypical technology space, where small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs), universities and their spin-outs as well as big corporations alike could constitute a fruitful innovation ecosystem. All these players could thrive in the spirit of Open Innovation, so to collectively re-invent the future of the internet and patents could take the role of promoting tech transfer, knowledge exchange and spur secondary markets for intellectual property.

Image: http://www.ip-watch.org

Last March Startup Grind Tel- Aviv hosted Rona Segev Gal, a successful entrepreneur that became a very successful venture capitalist. As a Founding Partner of TLV Partners, Rona has a unique investment philosophy which focuses on helping entrepreneurs in very tangible ways and focusing on building long-term partnerships and relationships. 

On April 25, 2018, Darrell West testified before the Joint Economic Committee of the U.S. Congress on how innovation can lead to economic growth and opportunity. In his testimony, West argues that the United States should take six steps to increase opportunity and make sure it does not fall behind other leading nations. These actions include:

Why do a few entrepreneurs, like Steve Jobs and Elon Musk, seem to come up with all the real innovations, while the majority of business leaders seem stuck in the rut of linear thinking? I have always wondered if innovation required some rare gene mutation, or whether I might be missing a simple formula for unlocking the ability in any intelligent business person to innovate.

Image: https://blog.startupprofessionals.com

The Biohealth Capital Region–DC, Maryland and Virginia – plans to be a top 3 biohealth hub in the US by 2023. What will it take to get there?

The Biohealth Capital Region is already a top 5 location as ranked by NIH and venture capital funding, patents, lab space, and jobs. The 1,100 participants at this week’s 2018 Biohealth Capital Region Forum agreed on the area’s strengths: a highly educated and diverse workforce, leading universities and research institutions, strong healthcare organizations, hundreds of companies, and broad-based policy commitment to the biohealth industry.

While startups may have had a rocky run in 2017, 2018 is looking good, according to Silicon Valley Bank’s ninth annual Startup Outlook report. Said Greg Becker, CEO of Silicon Valley Bank, “Most startups say they are hiring, expect a strong M&A environment and in the US and the UK they report fundraising is getting less challenging...In today's fast-changing world, it's more important than ever to continue promoting companies that are inventing the future. It's imperative to remain supportive of the innovation economy as it becomes an even bigger driver of job growth and contributor to the overall economic health by creating good-paying jobs that attract best-in-class talent and offer affordable healthcare to employees.”

On April 25, 2018, Darrell West testified before the Joint Economic Committee of the U.S. Congress on how innovation can lead to economic growth and opportunity. In his testimony, West argues that the United States should take six steps to increase opportunity and make sure it does not fall behind other leading nations. These actions include:

San Diego. New Haven. Boston.

Besides cities that make for a nice waterside vacation, these destinations seem to have figured out the complex, yet irresistible, world of bioscience investment.

For municipalities looking to stoke an innovation ecosystem, an anchor industry can provide the needed spark. One of the best anchor-industry bets around is biosciences.

Everyone needs healthcare, no matter where they live, and interest in genetics, life-saving drugs and high-tech medical devices is booming. It’s an alluring and growing industry promising lots of reliable jobs with good pay: In Connecticut the average salary for bioscience workers is over $85,000.

How often do you really stretch yourself, mentally? Most of us, most of the time, stay in our comfort zone. We know our strengths and what is expected of us, and we hover in this space, secure in the knowledge that we are doing an OK job.

The problem with this approach: Often the greatest learning and innovating takes place when we step outside of our comfort zones and stretch into what I like to call our “yikes zone.”

Marketers and parents both have a role to play in combating the global childhood obesity crisis.

In the last four decades, childhood obesity has escalated into a full-blown global epidemic. As rates continue to skyrocket across Africa and some parts of Asia, the latest U.S. data largely deflates hopes that the crisis was beginning to recede.

The main causes of the epidemic include: the globalisation-fuelled prevalence of fast food chains around the world; Big Food’s child-targeted marketing tactics; the resource-thin lifestyles of poorer families; and a general decline in physical play due to the mobile revolution.

Do not expect co-investment demand to go anywhere anytime soon – according to a recent report by CEPRES, private equity co-investments have increased 20-fold over the last 17 years. The boom of private equity co-investments can and should be viewed as a win-win for both general and limited partners.

More and more we are seeing our clients offer co-investments to their investors, and while the demand and appetite for co-investments stems from several contributing factors, it is predominantly being driven by investors’ appetite for increased exposure to deals.