When you think of innovation hubs around the world, Andorra, a tiny country tucked between Spain and France, may not come to mind. But, for several years, the 180-square-mile nation of 77,000 people has served as a “living lab” for researchers from MIT Media Lab’s City Science Initiative to prototype, deploy, and test urban innovation. The researchers have, for example, developed CityScope Andorra, a 3-D augmented-reality platform that visualizes complex urban data on a small-scale model of the country in real-time. The platform simulates the impact of multiple urban interventions — from urban planning proposals to shared autonomous vehicles — and facilitates civic engagement and decision making.

Image: https://dam-prod.media.mit.edu/thumb/2017/08/18/IMG_8810.jpg.1400x1400.jpg

Starting off as an entrepreneur can be filled with many pitfalls. You are new to the market and trying to fit into with both your brand and its products and services. According to a report by the Small Business Administration, only two thirds of businesses survive two years from opening their doors, and only a half of them make it to the five-year mark. Those first few years of business can be tough, and you need to learn everything you can to stay in the game.

Image: Photos courtesy of the individual members. Members of YEC share how to avoid the most common entrepreneurial blunders.

Business is not overly complex. In fact there’s one characteristic I’ve noticed that has made a few individuals very successful: Being able to utilize the word no. It’s such a simple word. It’s only made up of two letters. How could two letters bring so much power? Well, because these two letters equal focus.

Believe in why you said yes in the first place. Say no now because of what you believed in earlier so much that you said yes to it. Your vision is something you said yes to. Now, when you say no, it redoubles your focus and labor on the idea you said yes to. 

In an effort to narrow the ever-growing digital gap so that more people can benefit from a tech-first economy, Google announced a new initiative — a $1 billion investment in nonprofit organizations over the next five years.

The announcement, made at Google’s Bakery Square campus on Thursday, includes the Internet giant’s largest single gift to date, a $10 million donation to Goodwill Industries to launch a “digital career accelerator,” that will help people to learn digital skills at all of the nonprofit’s locations.

Image: Antonella Crescimbeni/Post-Gazette - http://www.post-gazette.com

Over the past few years, several individuals have told me effectively the same thing: "Books are business cards on steroids." When I published my first book in 2016, I found out what they meant. I'd suddenly and dramatically increased my credibility, and I was invited to speak at events (and get paid for it). Even better, I generated more leads for my business interests.

The question of the role of robotics and automation in our everyday lives is one that looms large over conversations about what the workplaces and economies of the future will look like. As technology has become embedded into our lives, it’s not so much a question of if it will affect the kinds of jobs people hold, but when, where and how.

A group of researchers from Ball State University in Muncie, Ind., conducted a study to better understand which U.S. industries and regions are most susceptible to change driven by automation. They also explored why the subject is such a fraught, hot-button policy issue.

As one of the original Shark Tank investors, Robert Herjavec has seen his fair share of pitches. He's sat through presentations for everything from an energy drink for cougars to a book that becomes a lamp. Along the way he's learned what works and what falls flat. And as "the nice judge," he's consistenly offered helpful and constructive advice -- even if the recipient didn't deserve it.

As he's now in his ninth season on the show, the cybersecurity tycoon offers entrepreneurs some suggestions for making their pitches stand out from the pack.

Image: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Robert_Herjavec.jpg

With Pittsburgh vying to attract Amazon’s second headquarters, we’re reminded of the vital role that colleges and universities have played in our regional transformation and in helping to attract companies, like Amazon, to the region.

I didn’t quite realize the extent to which Pittsburgh is one of the truly great college towns in America until I moved here to become president of Chatham University. I knew about Carnegie Mellon and the University of Pittsburgh, but I wasn’t aware that Pittsburgh’s colleges and universities employ nearly 25,000 people and enroll more than 70,000 students. That’s more than 20 percent of the city’s population, and one of the highest concentrations of higher education talent anywhere in the United States.

HUNTSVILLE, Ala., Oct. 12, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- The Association of University Research Parks (AURP) today announced the recipients of the Awards of Excellence recognized during its 2017 International Conference hosted by Cummings Research Park in Huntsville, AL. Additionally, AURP announced the results of the election for its 2018 Board of Directors.

Award of Excellence Recipients:

• Outstanding Research Park – University of Maryland BioPark: Over the past 12 years, the University of Maryland BioPark has created a robust community of innovation while being an integral participant in the rejuvenation of West Baltimore. The park has generated over $400 million in capital investment.

We are excited to announce that Dreamit has teamed with Accenture, one of the world’s leading professional services companies, in an effort to connect Accenture’s strategy and innovation leadership to the startup founders at Dreamit working on transformational products in healthcare and urban tech.

“We’re excited that Accenture partnered with Dreamit to bring cutting-edge digital health and urban tech companies to market more quickly,” says Steve Barsh, Chief Innovation Officer at Dreamit. “It provides tremendous value to these startups that can leverage Accenture’s deep global experience and relationships.”

Jeff Bussgang, a venture capitalist who teaches entrepreneurship at Harvard Business School, knows from personal experience and having funded many startups that there’s more than one way into that world. You don’t have to have a technical background. Excellent communication skills and a high emotional IQ are startup skills, too. Bussgang, the author of Entering StartUpLand, walks through the process of finding your dream job in a new company.

To spur more capital investment opportunities and bridge the funding gap for the makers, doers and dreamers in the heartland, the Kauffman Foundation in 2016 launched a scholarship program with Kauffman Fellows, the independent, two-year venture capital and leadership program based in Silicon Valley.

This scholarship program renews the distinctive partnership between the Kauffman Foundation and the Kauffman Fellows program. Created by the Foundation in 1995, the Kauffman Fellows program was designed to enhance entrepreneurial access to venture capital by improving understanding and relationships between venture capitalists and entrepreneurs.

Image: http://www.kauffman.org

The U.S. House this week passed H.R. 2763, which would amend the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) and Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) programs in several significant ways. Most notably, the bill would extend by five years the “assistance for administrative… costs,” which is used for outreach initiatives and some business and market assistance initiatives across agencies. The bill would extend or implement other activities within SBIR/STTR, nearly all of which would improve the programs’ ability to support commercialization in parallel with technological development.

The National Institutes of Health and 11 leading biopharmaceutical companies today launched the Partnership for Accelerating Cancer Therapies (PACT), a five-year public-private research collaboration totaling $215 million as part of the Cancer Moonshot.  PACT will initially focus on efforts to identify, develop and validate robust biomarkers — standardized biological markers of disease and treatment response — to advance new immunotherapy treatments that harness the immune system to attack cancer. The partnership will be managed by the Foundation for the National Institutes of Health (FNIH), with the Food and Drug Administration serving in an advisory role. 

Image: https://www.nih.gov

Québec International invites you to the 11th edition of the Québec City Healthcare Industry Forum, held on December 5 and 6, 2017 at the Hilton Québec.

Innovation has always been an overarching theme of the Québec City Healthcare Industry Forum over the years.  Rich and unifying, this focus has led attendees to explore innovation in all its facets, from R&D to marketing, validation to integration. Anyone who ponders innovation knows that it has many definitions. While it is difficult to agree on a single meaning, one thing is for certain: innovation creates value.

Image: http://www.quebecinternational.ca

Riyadh- The Public Investment Fund (PIF) has announced the establishment of the Fund of Funds, a new investment vehicle designed to provide small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) with access to capital by investing in venture capital and private equity funds.

The Fund of Funds will also support the creation of a thriving private equity and venture capital ecosystem in the Kingdom.

The Fund will empower the private sector and increase its contribution to national GDP by encouraging venture capital and private equity investments. With a capital of SAR4 billion, the Fund is aligned with the Saudi Vision 2030 objective of facilitating private sector growth and supporting the development of SMEs in creating job opportunities, promoting innovation, and increasing exports as per the commercial by-laws, to support and encourage investment in SMEs.

Image: https://english.aawsat.com

Diabetics who have been pricking their fingers for years finally have another option. Freestyle Libre is a small patch that can be easily applied to the upper-arm. With a simple scan, the sensor can read your glucose levels, no needles or blood necessary. The device keeps readings for up to ten days, making it much easier to see any patterns or trends in your blood sugar readings, and it even shows these readings in an easy to understand line graph. 

The product is currently available at drug stores in the United States.

We interviewed someone who compiles dictionaries and found out that there may be a lot more than you think when it comes to how a word makes its way into the dictionary.

Intel has begun manufacturing chips for quantum computers.

The new hardware is too feeble to do much real work, but it offers a strong signal that the technology is inching closer to real-world applications. “We’re (moving) quantum computing from the academic space to the semiconductor space,” says Jim Clarke, director of quantum hardware at Intel.

Jeff Heepke knows where to plant corn on his 4,500-acre farm in Illinois because of artificial intelligence (AI). He uses a smartphone app called Climate Basic, which divides Heepke’s farmland (and, in fact, the entire continental U.S.) into plots that are 10 meters square. The app draws on local temperature and erosion records, expected precipitation, soil quality, and other agricultural data to determine how to maximize yields for each plot. If a rainy cold front is expected to pass by, Heepke knows which areas to avoid watering or irrigating that afternoon. As the U.S. Department of Agriculture noted, this use of artificial intelligence across the industry has produced the largest crops in the country’s history.

Image: https://www.strategy-business.com