If your car starts to smoke and sputter, you’d take it to an auto repair shop right away. The U.S. patent system — the engine driving the country’s innovation economy for more than 200 years — is sputtering and smoking. Yet its path to the mechanic is being blocked by an inane Supreme Court ruling.

American innovators are no longer promised reliable and effective rights for the fruits of their labors. In 2014, the Supreme Court reinterpreted laws that have been enacted by Congress since 1790 and created a stricter test for receiving patents for innovations in health care and high tech. This test makes it incredibly easy for the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) to reject applications, or for judges to invalidate patents already granted by the office.

To succeed as an entrepreneur, having a playbook for how to scale your business and process feedback is key, according to Zuleyka Strasner, founder and CEO of Zero Grocery, a plastic-free online grocery store that operates in San Francisco and Los Angeles.

“Starting a company, scaling a company is exceptionally hard,” Strasner said. “I was told that many times, but until you live it, you do not understand how all consuming this is and how truly difficult it is.”

By now, everyone is familiar with Dyson’s innovative product line of vacuums, fans, hairdryers and lamps. But the team at Dyson have been continuing to improve on their first product: the vacuum. With an emphasis on creating a healthier home, Dyson’s newest vacuum is the cord-free, Dyson V15 Detect. This new machine is engineered to detect hidden dust as small as 10 microns. This technology finally answers the question of why your floor looks clean, but your socks are surprisingly dusty.

Image: Dyson's newest vacuum uses lasers to find hidden dirt DYSON

British scientists have identified some of the genetic factors that make certain people more likely to suffer severe Covid-19 symptoms than others,as part of a major study that could aid the development of new treatments for the disease.

Researchers pinpointed 16 genes that predispose patients to critical illness as part of the world’s largest study into the genetics of the disease, which was led by scientists from the University of Edinburgh and Genomics England. They also confirmed seven other genes associated with severe Covid that had been identified by earlier research.

There will hardly be any IT sector today untouched by the influence of Artificial Intelligence. AI has garnered much debate and speculation, and it continues to do so. It has gone through extensive research and development, which has naturally led to an increase in AI-based products and solutions. These are now slithering faster into our day-to-day life, more than most of us are aware.

The venture capital boom of 2021 was not built from merely traditional VC money. A host of other capital sources played a role in the global trend, from new methods of disbursing angel and seed capital to crossover funds pouring into late-stage startups. And amid all the noise, record-setting totals, and rapid-fire dealmaking, corporate venture investors were busy, investing gobs of parent-company cash into far-smaller concerns.

Corporate venture capital, or CVC for short, is the method by which wealthy businesses build their own investing arm. Traditionally, these efforts blend strategic goals (M&A, early access to technology, partnerships) and financial ones (returns). The exact mix varies by company and CVC effort, but it’s rare to find a corporate venture concern that has none of one or the other. This makes their investing an interesting blend of traditional venture and corporate opportunism.

Image: Image Credits: Nigel Sussman - TechCrunch

With the current pandemic appearing to scale down, many of you running businesses are looking forward to things getting back to the way they used to be. I’m sorry to predict it will never happen, so the agility you may have learned over the past couple of years will continue to be critical to your survival. If you aren’t yet adapting to the market and your customers, you are falling behind.

Image: https://blog.startupprofessionals.com

Technology used to make a deepfake — a synthetic image of a person — may soon be helping foreign language films become more accessible. Matt Dibble has the story

The Wisconsin Senate voted, 33-0, Tuesday to approve Assembly Bill 759, which will make it easier for young companies to stay put in Wisconsin as they grow and add jobs while expanding beyond its borders.

The effort to pass the bill was led by the Wisconsin Technology Council. It was previously passed unanimously in the 99-seat Assembly. It will now go to Gov. Tony Evers for his consideration and possible signing into law.

The bill amends Wisconsin’s “Qualified New Business Venture” law, which took effect in January 2005 and remains a leading bipartisan example of how to carefully lever state tax credits for angel and venture capital investors who risk money in startups and emerging companies.

Differences in gene expression were identified in two specific regions of the brains of hundreds of patients who had bipolar disorder.

The findings, published today in Nature Neuroscience, represent the first time that researchers have been able to apply the discipline and tools of genetic research to brain samples from hundreds of patients with bipolar disorder (BD), a chronic, often debilitating, almost always incurable behavioral syndrome. The findings suggest that bipolar disorder may stem from chemical and structural changes in brain cells that affect how they communicate with each other.

Image: https://www.medindia.net

In the endless quest to pack more energy into batteries without increasing their weight or volume, one especially promising technology is the solid-state battery. In these batteries, the usual liquid electrolyte that carries charges back and forth between the electrodes is replaced with a solid electrolyte layer. Such batteries could potentially not only deliver twice as much energy for their size, they also could virtually eliminate the fire hazard associated with today’s lithium-ion batteries.

Image: https://scienceblog.com

The role of cybersecurity leader needs to evolve, as accountability for cyber risk shifts outside IT and an increasingly distributed ecosystem leads to a loss of direct decision-making control, according to Gartner.

Security and risk management (SRM) leaders now invest significantly more effort into evaluating and influencing the cyberhealth of external parties. Employees are making more decisions with cyber risk implications, and executive committees being established outside the scope of the cybersecurity leader.

Megan Gerhardt, management professor at Miami University, studies the impact of generational conflict on organizations. She says too many leaders see generational lines as a source of division that hurts productivity. But her research shows that age is often an untapped source of diversity. When age-diverse teams are managed well, members share more knowledge, skills, and networks with each other. To foster intergenerational collaboration, she lays out a four-part framework that starts with questioning assumptions and ends with embracing mutual learning. Gerhardt is a coauthor of the HBR article “Harnessing the Power of Age Diversity.”

The Biotechnology Innovation Organization (BIO) and Council of State Bioscience Associations recently released Driving the Bioscience Economy Forward During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Best Practices in State and Regional Bioscience Economic Development Initiatives. The biennial report provides a summary of state programs serving the bioscience industry.

Image: https://smartincentives.org

Indeed, in 2021, the U.S. bioscience industry represents a unique confluence of characteristics essential for addressing these challenges and realizing societal and economic progress: extraordinary innovation that’s saving and improving lives through advancements in biomedical, energy, and advanced food and industrial technologies, along with an expanding mix of employment opportunities with incomes that support a quality standard of living.

The industry is at the forefront of a host of major global challenges related to diagnosing, treating, and curing disease—especially COVID-19 and other infections with pandemic potential. The industry is also ensuring that the world can rely on a safe, affordable, and more sustainable food supply to feed a growing population, as well as developing biobased fuels, chemicals, and other industrial products to help us address climate change.

Startup work environments are always chaos, but they can still be great environments to work in, or they can be terrible. Whether yours is terrible or great, that same tone flows out to your customers, and regulates your productivity inside. You as the founder are the starting point and definer, so you need to get it right.

What does it take to create a positive workplace culture? I did some research on this, and compared it with my own experience. I’ve concluded and the experts agree that it’s all about understanding people, and overtly optimizing the factors that drive them at work.

Image: https://blog.startupprofessionals.com

Eric was one of the most fearless entrepreneurs I’d encountered. His prowess when it came to making calculated decisions was unparalleled. When faced with difficulties, colleagues would often flock to him for counsel. 

There was just one area where Eric deeply struggled with indecision: public speaking roles.

As you might guess, this hindered him from taking on more valuable opportunities. Even as he could relay his thoughts one-on-one and in emails, if he had to choose between taking on a more senior role that involved public speaking or staying put, he would often procrastinate.

The length of time users spend navigating your website can reveal whether they're enjoying their stay there or not. A shorter session often indicates that something is forcing them to leave: that could be slow site speed, poor-quality content, unappealing design, technical errors, a mismatch in expectations or a combination of these factors. A longer stay, on the other hand, indicates that visitors are finding a site useful and are enjoying the experience provided. Marketers, of course, are continually looking for ways to boost stays; the more time users spend on a site, the higher the chances that they'll consume content, develop trust in a brand and eventually convert into quality leads.

We asked leaders in industry, academia, and at McKinsey to share their perspectives on the technology trends likely to headline business agendas this year, the ones that could—but shouldn’t—slip through the cracks, and what executives should think about when considering new technologies. Here is what they told us.

Metaverse. Web3. Crypto. 5G.

These are just a few of the technologies grabbing headlines at the start of 2022. But what technology trends truly sit atop business agendas this year? Which might be under executives’ radars but should be surfaced? And what should business leaders keep in mind as they consider these trends?

Boards have a unique role in helping their organizations manage cybersecurity threats. They do not have day to day management responsibility, but they do have oversight and fiduciary responsibility. Don’t leave any questions about critical vulnerabilities for tomorrow. Asking the smart questions at your next board meeting might just prevent a breach from becoming a total disaster.