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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.

cybersecurity

As the dangers mount, current approaches aren’t working. Cyberrisk management needs a root-and-branch overhaul.

Until recently, financial firms and governments were the primary targets of cyberattacks. Today, with every company hooking up more and more of their business to the Internet, the threat is now universal. Consider the havoc wreaked by three recent events. From 2011 to 2014, energy companies in Canada, Europe, and the United States were attacked by the cyberespionage group Dragonfly

 

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As a startup advisor, I see many aspiring entrepreneurs whose primary motivation seems to be to work part time, or get rich quick, or avoid anyone else telling them what to do. Let me assure you, from personal experience, and from helping many successful as well as struggling entrepreneurs, that starting a business is hard work, and doesn’t come with any of the benefits mentioned. Y

et, for those with more realistic expectations and the right motivation, the entrepreneur lifestyle can be the dream life you envisioned. According to a study by the Wharton School of Business, in a survey of 11,000 MBA graduates over many years, those running their own businesses ranked themselves happier than all other professions, regardless of how much money they made.

Image: http://blog.startupprofessionals.com

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stick figure

In Bruce Lee’s final film, his character fights his way to the top of a pagoda, vanquishing foes of different fighting styles on each floor. As he ascends, he finds opponents more challenging than the last. On the top floor, he faces the 7’2” Kareem Abdul Jabbar, whose martial arts style and prowess matches his own. Lee’s quest is to retrieve something sacred, though it’s never named.

 

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genes

Standard screening tests such as colonoscopy, mammography, and cholesterol measurement are fine for individuals at average risk for cancer and heart disease but are inadequate for people whose genetic profiles put them at much higher risk. Current clinical guidelines, based primarily on families large enough to show a positive family history for that condition, fail to identify about half of the high-risk individuals in the population. For those individuals, we need a different approach that accurately forecasts their risk and anticipates their health needs. To this end, Geisinger has launched a DNA sequencing project with the potential to identify virtually everyone in our patient population who is at increased risk for early onset, inherited cancer and cardiac events.

 

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Unfortunately, many entrepreneurs seem to prefer to fail their way to the top, rather than do some research and learn from the successes and mistakes of others. It seems to be part of the “fail fast, fail often” mantra often heard in Silicon Valley. As an advisor to many startups, I’m convinced it’s an expensive and painful approach, but I do see it used all too often.

Image: https://blog.startupprofessionals.com

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Twenty global business leaders share the attributes that make them effective.

We often hear that running a large company is one of the most complex jobs in the world. Business schools, strategic consultancies, headhunting firms, training providers, executive coaches all have a tendency to mystify the work of the CEO. However, effective CEOs see their jobs in much simpler terms and consider this simplification an important element of their effectiveness.

Image: https://knowledge.insead.edu

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March Madness—the NCAA college basketball championship playoffs—is among the most popular sporting events in the US, thanks in part to the wide-ranging contest that has evolved around predicting which teams will progress through the tournament. This year, almost $10.4 million is on the line in office pools or more organized competitions, and more than 40 million Americans will fill out their own versions of the playoff brackets to take part, according to the American Gaming Association. The chances of predicting a perfect bracket, which no one has ever done, are at least 1 in 128 billion and could be as remote as 1 in 9.2 quintillion.

Image: https://www.technologyreview.com

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willpower

Those who know me know my high regard for the late Dr. Stephen R. Covey. In in my earlier career as a leader, after serving for three years as CEO of Franklin Quest Canada, I served as Managing Director of the First Things First division of Covey Leadership in Provo, Utah, for a five-year sojourn that I completed in 1996.

 

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Johnson Johnson Innovation Announces Launch of JLABS Shanghai in Collaboration with Shanghai

And in a world where tech giants like Google, Apple, and Amazon are emerging as potential disruptors, slow simply doesn’t cut it.

Two of the largest pharmaceutical companies in the world, Bayer and Johnson & Johnson, have made innovation non-negotiable in their organizations – and are finding success with distinctly different approaches.

While Johnson & Johnson has concentrated on looking outside the organization for transformative ideas, Bayer has made cultural change the focus of their efforts.

 

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pizza

It is hard to imagine a food more devotion-worthy than pizza. After all, even bad pizza is good pizza. And at its best—an intoxicating jumble of crust, sauce, and cheese—it’s nothing short of sublime. But with any devotion comes strong opinions, and taste is nothing if not subjective.

Yet, in a country that is home to an ever-growing class of truly excellent pizza makers, the very best still find a way to rise to the top.

 

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I’m out of the office this week, but there are still a number of conversations that I had at VentureBeat’s Blueprint conference that are on my mind.

Last week, I wrote that the benefits to being outside the Bay Area are growing — many executives I’ve spoken with say that it’s employees who have expressed the most curiosity in ditching SIlicon Valley. This week, I’d like to talk about the challenges that Heartland communities still face.

Image: https://venturebeat.com

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blockchain

Over two million people tune in each week to watch the UK's top entrepreneurs and inventors pitch their latest ideastoa group of high net worth individuals on BBC's Dragon's Den. What we are watching is venture capital in action, albeit repurposed as entertainment with a few details missing. However, the goals are the same: high-growth start-ups looking for investment and mentorship.

 

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svb logo

TORONTO, March 14, 2018 /CNW/ -- Silicon Valley Bank (SVB Financial Group, NASDAQ: SIVB), the bank of the world's most innovative companies and their investors, today announced two milestones in its plans to further expand into Canada to better serve the country's technology and life science companies and their investors. Canada's Minister of Finance has issued an order authorizing Silicon Valley Bank to establish a lending branch in Canada, which will commence operations after it receives the approval of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions. The company also announced that it has hired Barbara Dirks to lead the Canada expansion and team, effective immediately. 

 

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trust

Anne Raimondi was stumped. Two people she managed weren't getting along, and it was really impacting progress. In her private conversations with each of them, they had the same goals and wanted the same things. But in the room together, they'd disagree on everything. They'd quibble over the smallest things, avoid spending time together, and jump to assuming the worst about each other, even though they were ultimately on the same team.

 

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sleepy

Researchers know that a condition as complicated as Alzheimer’s can’t be traced to a single or simple cause. Genetic factors contribute to the degenerative brain disorder that robs people of their memory, and biological process related to aging play a role as well.

But in recent years, scientists have uncovered some behaviors that may also influence Alzheimer’s risk. In the latest study published in JAMA Neurology, a group of them report how sleep — daytime sleepiness, in particular — may be an indicator of Alzheimer’s.

 

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STARTUP WORLD CUP POWERED BY FENOX VENTURE CAPITAL US WEST COAST EVENT 2018

Just in case you missed the announcement, I want to let you know about the Startup World Cup event I will be part of at Plug and Play in Silicon Valley on April 12. It's the Western Regional Finals, one of 30 regional competitions around the globe. The winner will compete for a $1 million investment at the Global Grand Finale Competition in San Francisco on May 11.

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Imagine showing up at work every day with the same excitement you had as a kid rushing home after school to play with your favorite toy. That’s what many days are like for Dan Winger, the senior innovation designer at LEGO’s Creative Play Lab in Hollywood, California.

“It’s a rare field in which thinking and acting like a child can be beneficial,”  Winger says. He says that helps keep him and his team tapped into their own inner 7-year-olds, which is critical to the innovation his lab is tasked with: inventing the future of creative play for the 86-year-old LEGO Group.

Image: Photo: Dan Winger/LEGO

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podcast

The workplace can be a curious environment. Dozens or even hundreds of employees can labor side by side for hours, spending more time with each other than with anyone else, yet they don’t feel connected. New research shows that loneliness isn’t just damaging to mental health; it can also lower job performance. Wharton management professor Sigal Barsade and Hakan Ozcelik, management professor at California State University, Sacramento, joined the Knowledge@Wharton show on SiriusXM channel 111 to talk about their study of loneliness in the workplace and what managers can do to help. Their new paper, which was published in the Academy of Management Journal, is titled, “No Employee an Island: Workplace Loneliness and Job Performance.”

 

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be happy

Do you like what you do? And do you get to use your strengths every day?

People in Naples, Fla. and Barnstable, Mass. largely answered yes to those questions when surveyed by Gallup-Sharecare, boosting their communities to the top of a new ranking of U.S. metro areas based on well-being. Other top communities include Boulder, Colo., Santa Cruz and Santa Rosa, Calif., and Charlottesville and Lynchburg,

 

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