Every founder should be thinking about the next step in their business, turning their company from a startup to a scaleup. To offer some insights into how entrepreneurs can make this leap, I turned to John Rafferty, a partner at the law firm of Morrison & Foerster, a firm that offers a special ScaleUp site that's filled with resources.

And for more on the topic of scaling your startup, join us Thursday night at Plug and Play in Sunnyvale for a special event sponsored by CDW dedicated to helping you grow your business. Click here for details and tickets, and get a special discount by entering "Smart17" into the promo code.

The official green light has been given for the Mayo Clinic and partner United Therapeutics to begin construction work on a multi-million-dollar project to build a lung restoration center on the clinic’s Jacksonville, Florida campus, according to a published report.  

The Jacksonville Daily Record reported last week that city officials have signed off on a building permit to begin soil, foundation and structural concrete work for the project, in which Mayo and Maryland-based United Therapeutics Corp. (Nasdaq: UTHR) are combining forces with a goal to significantly increase the volume of lungs available for transplantation.

Image: A rendering of the lung restoration center addition to Mayo's Jacksonville Campus. (Photo courtesy of Mayo Clinic)

There are 4 lessons from Leonardo da Vinci’s life – the “universal genius” from the Renaissance era – that still hold true for today’s digital enterprises.

In his new biography of Leonardo da Vinci, Walter Isaacson concludes with a list of lessons that can be learned from Leonardo’s life. Among them: “be relentlessly curious,” “seek knowledge for its own sake,” “start with the details,” and “go down the rabbit holes.” Let’s look at each, and how it relates to the innovation mandate that organizations face today. 

The U.S. government plans to spend hundreds of millions of dollars in venture capital funds overseas as part of an expanded federal program to do good around the world through what’s known as “impact investing.”

The program, unveiled Wednesday at a conference by the Overseas Private Investment Corporation, will dedicate around $200 million over the next few years in 10 to 15 venture funds that focus primarily on making a social impact in overseas countries. The exact amount of money allocated could change, but is expected to be in the hundreds of millions of dollars.

Over the past year, state lawmakers in approximately have looked to grow innovation and entrepreneurship in their respective states by introducing and expanding tax credit efforts intended to increase the availability of startup capital, support R&D activities, facilitate business growth, and spur job creation. The two most common types of tax credits proposed to support innovation at the state level are angel tax credit programs and R&D tax credit programs. In addition to these two areas, states also proposed other tax credits intended to support job creation and business growth.

For the last two decades, we’ve celebrated one model of innovation: Silicon Valley. Its sprawling suburban setup has undoubtedly worked well, but there are signs that the Valley’s appeal is waning. As the skyrocketing cost of living becomes anything but liveable, industry talent is looking elsewhere to lead the next tech boom. Seeking accessible locations that are more conducive to diversity, creativity and collaboration, I doubt that they’ll replicate the Bay area’s suburban model.

More than half of Americans say that the present day is the worst period of American history that they can remember, according to a new survey of stress in the United States.

The American Psychological Association (APA) just released the results of its annual Stress in America survey, which revealed that the biggest stressor Americans face is the state of the U.S. The APA surveyed 3,440 American adults in August, and 63% of them said the future of the nation is a “very” or “somewhat” significant source of stress. That’s slightly more than other common stressors, like money at 62% and work at 61%.

This Amsterdam office block is packed with 30,000 sensors to control everything from lighting to where it would be best for people to work

Ron Bakker has designed the world’s most sustainable building – and it just so happens to be the world’s smartest, too. His London-based architecture company, PLP, finished the construction of Deloitte’s new Amsterdam HQ in 2015, with the aim of focusing on the needs of those inside it. "It was about making people happier," he says.

Image: Ronald Tilleman - http://www.wired.co.uk

Humans have been incredible innovators since the beginning of our history. Each new invention laid the groundwork for more sophisticated technology, more advanced cultural practices, and more impressive innovations. We often take the things we have for granted, but it’s important to remember that not so very long ago, great minds were working on innovations that would change the world and make our lives easier, safer, and more comfortable.

Nancy started her day feeling prepared to brief her executive team on a high-stakes project she had been working on for the past two months. She had rehearsed her slide deck repeatedly, to the point where she had every level of content practically memorized. She arrived at the meeting early and waited patiently, yet anxiously, for her part of the agenda. The meeting began, and within a few minutes Jack, one of the cochairs, asked her to brief the executives on her project and recommendations.

(Reuters) - Tiger economies and competition from China will undoubtedly be forces to reckon with, but anyone looking to find the most influential research leading to the most transformative technologies should look West, not East. That’s the conclusion of Reuters’ annual ranking of the World’s Most Innovative Universities, a list that identifies and ranks the educational institutions doing the most to advance science, invent new technologies and power new markets and industries.

Picture this…your lab, technology, and the successful Cooperative Research and Development Agreement (CRADA) that helped transfer that technology to market as the stars of our upcoming FLC video!

CRADAs are an extremely powerful tool—but they’re also technology transfer’s (T2) best-kept secret. The FLC is holding open casting calls for anyone interested in shining a well-deserved spotlight on a successful CRADA story dealing with any of the following areas…

I love rocks. I have always loved rocks. As a kid, I spent countless hours climbing on the cliffs and rock falls close to my house. My first job, during high school and college summers, was working for a Japanese landscape designer and builder. One of my fellow employees was an Italian stonemason who taught me the skills of cutting stone and building stone drywalls. From my boss, I learned the art of placing boulders properly.

For those of you wondering what ‘placing boulders properly’ means, every stone has a top and a bottom, a front and a back. The skill I learned was how to figure out which is which and then place the boulder in exactly the right position in exactly the right place. In this way, the boulder would transform from a rock to something that would catch your attention, stop you in your tracks, and lead to thoughtful contemplation.

One of the most common complaints I hear from new business owners and startups is about the pain and difficulty raising capital. The “venture capital” model is the only option they know, where they feel they get no mercy, giving up equity and control. Based on my experience with startups, I’m a strong believer that there are far better alternatives available, if you think outside the box.

The key is to look hard outside the world of “professional investors,” to regular people who share your vision and dreams, friends and family who believe in you, and crowd funding your ideas that have a popular appeal. Of course, none of these sources should be approached casually, and none will give you the relationship and terms you are looking for without proper win-win planning.

Economic growth, and meaningful job creation, in the US is a matter of increasing the skilled labor proportion of the workforce, raising entrepreneurial capacity to meet excess capital reserves, and not neglecting basic science and engineering research.

Lots of politicians talk about job creation and economic growth, but miss crucial factors.

One Paragraph of US Economic History In the mid 1900’s the US was a manufacturing powerhouse, GDP growth was strong, and wages rose along with earnings. As time went on, and globalization stepped into higher gears, the US transitioned into a service economy. In a service economy, productivity gains are much harder to come by (advances in artificial intelligence are changing this today), and so real GDP growth stalled. It is still stalling, but something interesting began in the last twenty years.

Nearly every startup these days will consider crowdfunding at some point on their journey as a potential means of securing funding. Maybe you’re burning rapidly through small bank loans, your own savings, or “family and friends” funding—and you’re ready to see what the crowd thinks. There are numerous platforms to choose from, each with pros and cons. Do your due diligence and find a platform or two that match what you’re looking for.

The question for Australia’s future economy isn’t so much about where we are going, but how do we get there, and how do we take people with us? Whether we are ready or not, our economy is transitioning away from its reliance on mining and traditional manufacturing, into a technology and innovation driven future focused on services and high-tech industries. In the five years from 2006 to 2011, firms less than three years old created 1.4 million jobs while employment in mature businesses dropped by 400,000.

Over the past decade, co-working has grown from a niche offering to having a significant impact in terms of the commercial real estate market — and providing a new alternatives tailored for remote and independent workers and small teams.

This summer, Fourth Economy was engaged to create a market assessment for the co-working market here in Pittsburgh. As a part of that effort, we reviewed a volume of existing secondary research that answered questions similar to the ones that we were looking to answer in Pittsburgh: what is the market capacity for co-working? Who is the co-working market? And, as we’ll address in this blog post, how is “co-working” defined?

The National Venture Capital Association filed suit in September hoping to overturn the Homeland Security Department’s delay of the International Entrepreneur Rule.

On Friday, the parties met in court for the first time and after the appearance agreed to a expedited schedule for summary judgement in the case, according to a blog post from the NVCA. This could permit the court to enter a speedy final judgement in lieu of simply considering the NVCA’s request for a preliminary injunction turning back the rule’s delay.

I’ve recently had the good fortune of working with three Global 50 companies – two U.S. based and one European. I’ll refer to them here as Company A, B and C. Despite being in different industries (high-tech, financial services and industrial), one common theme emerged: senior leaders in each of the companies articulated a strong desire and an equally strong level of frustration with their innovation efforts. After a little digging, I think I uncovered the source of the frustration — there was no real evidence that the desire for innovation was being met with meaningful adoption or implementation. In fact, I found the opposite: a lack of urgency, misinterpretations or downright resistance to the basic ethos of innovation.