There really is no one-size-fits-all approach inventors can follow, and there is no inventing roadmap to success that will work in all cases. Notwithstanding, there are certainly a number of things that can and should be understood if an inventor is going to pursue inventing as more than a hobby.

By understanding some basic but critical information at the outset you will substantially raise the chances of succeeding. This is not to say that you won’t make mistakes; mistakes are inevitable. You will, however, make fewer mistakes if you give thoughtful consideration to what it is you are attempting to do. Indeed, running off and starting without an appreciation for the process will prove costly.

George Davis, CEO of the Maryland Technology Development Corporation (TEDCO), joins Rich Bendis to discuss the Economic Development Balance, Goals for Business in the State, and the Partnership across the Region.

It’s that time of year again, when a month of epic celebration and partying begins to simmer down, and we quickly realize we need to buckle down in those chilly early weeks of the new year if we’re going to have lots to celebrate at the end.

Most of us set New Year’s resolutions and break them by the middle of February. So if you want a goal that will truly enhance your life experience — and is easy to commit to — I have the answer: Get to know people you normally wouldn’t.

While many people believe brick-and-mortar shops are doomed in today’s tech-driven world, there are still a number of people who prefer this hands-on method over shopping online. In fact, offline sales are 10 times bigger than online sales in the U.S. But online shopping is growing at a significant rate. Researchers predicted a 15 percent growth in U.S. sales and total value for online shopping between 2016 and 2017, while offline only saw a 4.5 percent increase.

This is big.

Top immigration lawyers are taking note of a story that’s begun doing the rounds on the last day of 2017 - that the Department of Homeland Security is chewing hard on the concept of ending H1B extensions.

H1B visas are issued for an initial period of three years with the option to extend for another three years basis confirmed employment availability. Although the yearly influx of H1B workers is now 85,000, the option of extensions takes the total number staying on in the US to a much bigger number.

Ask 10 people how they cure a hangover, and you’ll likely get 10 different answers.

Some go for greasy food and hair of the dog; others swig Pedialyte or Gatorade; and a motivated few hit the gym to sweat it out. But do any of these hangover remedies actually work?

Probably not, says Dr. Ed Boyer, a medical toxicologist at Boston’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital. “I don’t think anybody can really tell you with a great degree of honesty what causes a hangover,” he says, adding that theories run the gamut from dehydration to electrolyte imbalance to a buildup of alcohol byproducts. “The bottom line is nobody knows for sure what causes it, so we don’t have a good cure.”

On a day-to-day basis, Wall Street seems to have the attention span of a gnat. One day, stocks sell off because of perceived gridlock in Washington or another crisis in North Korea. The next day, equities are just as likely to rebound because iPhone sales are going through the roof or Amazon just found another industry to disrupt. It all sounds random. But over time, there's a method to the market's madness. Events that reflect or affect the direction of the economy will always move stocks.

In case you didn't notice, it's very cold across parts of the globe, stretching from a good chunk of the U.S. to the UK and Europe and even down into India this New Year's Eve. The coldest in decades, in fact, and the chill is going to hang around for a bit. 

While that makes it incredibly inconvenient to do anything that doesn't involve being on your couch under around a dozen or so blankets, the weather does make for some interesting images and you can enjoy them without having to dig out your gloves and scarf. 

2017 is a year for the history books. Between political unrest, historic natural disasters and leaps forward in innovation, this year has left its mark on people across the globe.

On this special podcast episode, the GeekWire team analyzes 2017 with a deep dive into two organizations that had a giant impact on the tech world this year: Amazon and the Trump administration.

Image: Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos. Amazon dominated much of the news in the tech world this year, including its massive search to establish a second headquarters. (Blue Origin Photo)

I’ve written previously about finding ways to have better conversations about Heartland startups in 2018. Now I’d like to make one of my own goals public in the hopes that others will join me: Let’s stop thinking of tech ecosystems as trying to be “the next Silicon Valley.”

Comparing Kansas City or Omaha to Silicon Valley is helpful in understanding how large a gap still exists between these cities, but it does little to shed light on the kind of progress tech hubs outside the Bay Area are actually making.

You can’t just take a blood sample and determine if someone has the DNA of an entrepreneur. Still, I’m convinced from decades of observation and interaction that being an entrepreneur isn’t just something you do; it’s something you are.

So, rather than draw blood, I’ve distilled the essence of entrepreneurism into three very basic questions. Yes, this isn’t exactly a Myers Briggs profile, but I’ve tested these on entrepreneurs over the years in various forms and the results are uncanny in their consistency. They speak to what really drives an entrepreneur–something that is at the same time wonderful and perverse, in that it is so different from what drives most people.

A lot of people have good ideas. But only a few have the tenacity, discipline and single-mindedness to bring them to fruition. Here are nine groundbreakers to keep your eyes on in 2018.

Image: Dana Farber Cancer Institute

We see it every day in our news feeds – Canada is ripe for innovation and growth. The federal government announced it will double the budget dedicated to Innovative Solutions Canada, a program helping Canadian startups get off the ground, to $100 million. We have innovation hubs in cities from coast to coast, with four Canadian cities holding places in the Top 20 strongest startup ecosystems globally (Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver and Waterloo).

The support for Canadian startups has never been stronger. They’re being encouraged to disrupt and incented to grow. But they’re also being coached to sell, most often to companies in other countries. And that’s where we get it wrong. To have an innovation economy, we need to encourage our entrepreneurs to scale up, not to sell out. To grow and not to exit.

Image: Carl Rodriguez, founder and CEO, SOTICourtesy SOTI

Deal sizes have spiked in 2017 as trendlines of deal count and deal value have diverged. On a year-over-year basis, capital invested has increased roughly 12%, while deal count has slipped approximately 11%. We expect this dichotomy to continue as the softening in angel and seed deal counts illustrates a segment looking for its identity after a period of extreme exuberance from 2011-2015.

Image: http://news.morningstar.com

Texas added the most new residents of any state over the past year according to the July 1, 2017 estimates of the United States Census Bureau. Texas grew by 400,000 residents (Figure 1). Florida added 328,000 residents more than one third more than California. Four states grew between 100,000 to 125,000, led by Washington, North Carolina, Georgia and Arizona. Colorado and Tennessee round out the top 10. The ten states adding the most new residents include five from the South census region and five from the West census region.

Image: http://www.newgeography.com

As we are approaching the final few days before 2017 draws to a close and January first rolls around, we’re afforded a rare kind of commodity—free time.

If you’re anything like me, having founded an online community and global live events company, free time isn’t something you come by very often. In fact, the very words may be foreign to you and you may have even already started spinning your wheels about your next lineup of projects.

Image: www.pexels.com

With this being the last Friday in 2017 we’re taking the week off from the usual weekly interview, but we’ll be back next Friday to kick off 2018. And speaking of 2018, my Watching Amazon partner John “ColderIce” Lawson and I wanted to see which company would give Amazon a run for their money in the year ahead.

Even though 2017 sometimes felt like a slow descent into madness, some truly amazing things happened this year as well.

But not all of them were on Earth. 

From a total solar eclipse to an interstellar asteroid, space news was filled with incredible stories in 2017. 

The competitiveness of the U.S. economy depends on technological progress, but recent data suggests that innovation is getting harder and the pace of growth is slowing down. A major challenge in business and policy spheres is to understand the environments that are most conducive to innovation. One way to do that is to look to history. In our research we focused on the golden age of invention: the late 19th and early 20th centuries, when America became the world’s preeminent industrial nation.

The ‘‘skills gap’’ in the United States is serious. Here is how to do better.

“The land of opportunity”—that is the promise of the United States. And one of the reasons the country has been able to deliver on that promise is that it has been able to develop the talent it needs to create wealth and to adapt to ever-changing economic realities. But there are concerns that the United States can and should be doing better. This will require policies and actions on many fronts, for example on trade, taxation, regulation, education, and fiscal and monetary policy. In this article, we focus on a single subject: preparing people without college degrees for jobs with promising career paths. The need, for both business and society, is clear.