Consider a breakthrough in machine learning that revolutionized voice and image recognition, a drug that turned AIDS from a death sentence into a manageable disease, or a biotechnology sector with revenues in the billions that employs thousands of people.

These three very different achievements share a common origin: They each stem from discovery research conducted in Canadian universities.

Pennsylvania lost 2,900 pharmaceutical jobs — or nearly 20 percent — in recent years, as big drugmakers shed workers to cut costs, consolidate, or relocate to other states.

While jobs in big pharma declined — Merck, GlaxoSmithKline, and AstraZeneca have all laid off in the region — Pennsylvania life-sciences jobs overall were up slightly, 0.6 percent, in the last five years, according to a report released Tuesday by Life Sciences Pennsylvania, an industry trade group.

Across the country, pharmaceutical manufacturers shed less than 2 percent of their employment, “illustrating that Pennsylvania has become less attractive for pharmaceutical manufacturers compared with other regions of the country during the last five years,” said the report prepared by tax and audit firm KPMG.

Image: Paratek Pharmaceuticals president and chief operating officer Evan Loh is one of nearly a dozen former pharma executives and scientists who are heading start-ups in Pennsylvania. Loh is a former Wyeth and Pfizer executive. - http://www.philly.com

Writers, designers and other creative types working in the Troy Innovation Garage on 4th Street are among the rising number of gig workers nationally.

The $1.3 million development project opened this spring.

"We have 80 members today and I am actively pursuing developing other spaces around the region and in other markets," Tom Nardacci, founder of the Troy Innovation Garage as well as Gramercy Communications, said.

Image: John Carl D'Annibale

The 2018 FLC Awards is now open for nominations. One of the most coveted honors in the technology transfer field, the FLC awards have been presented to over 200 federal laboratories since their inception in 1984. Many of our winning technology transfer efforts have gone on to become products and devices that are indispensable in our daily lives.

As a fundraising platform, crowdfunding is still fairly new. Yet, it's helped launch million-dollar businesses nearly as often as traditional investment channels since it’s inception.

Crowdfunding has also given many side projects a fighting chance, when no one else would.  Many startups that originally launched on crowdfunding platforms have gone on to build $100 million businesses from the funds (and pre-orders) they received on platforms like Kickstarter and Indiegogo.

Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson went camping. They pitched their tent under the stars. During the night Holmes wakes Watson and says. “Watson, look up at the stars and tell me what you deduce.”

Watson answers, “I see millions of stars. It’s quite likely some have planets similar to Earth. And if there are planets like Earth there might also be life on some of them.”

Holmes replies, “Watson, you idiot. Someone stole our tent.”

Hanoi (VNA) – Former Finnish Prime Minister Esko Aho delivered a presentation in Hanoi on September 18 about Finland’s experience in economic development based on innovation.

As part of the Vietnam-Finland Innovation Partnership Programme Phase 2 to improve the capacity of Vietnamese policymakers, the event was a follow-up to a presentation made by Prof. Goran Roos in late August.

Opening the event, Minister of Science and Technology Chu Ngoc Anh said to serve demand for renovation, managers and science-technology policymakers should improve science-technology policies in tandem with sustainable economic development in Vietnam.

Image: Former Finnish Prime Minister Esko Aho (Source: Internet) 

Last month, the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) formed a committee to examine angel networks in the country.

The market regulator shot off notices to over a dozen such networks in the past two months, asking them to provide details on their fundraising process and explain whether they operate within the ambit of the Indian market securities law. Because these platforms connect investors with enterprises for raising capital, SEBI’s concern is that they might be operating in a regulatory grey area by acting like stock exchanges that are akin to public markets.

Image: U. K. Sinha, chairman of the Securities and Exchange Board of India, in Mumbai in July 2016. (Photographer: Dhiraj Singh/Bloomberg)

I was thinking a lot this week about what it takes for healthcare companies to adopt new innovations, particularly those that fundamentally change what has come before. The topic was top of mind because I was at the HealthXL Global Gathering where very large companies and many startups come together to collaborate in numerous permutations with the goal of finding better ways to do business.

Salesforce will invest $50 million into the growing world of AI-based startups, the company told Reuters earlier today. Salesforce Ventures Executive Vice President John Somorjai said that the firm’s goal in creating this fund is to get more AI solutions out of the realm of ideas and help make those a reality for its clients. One of Salesforce’s own biggest specialties is cloud computing, and the company recently dove into the world of AI itself when it trotted out its Einstein AI tech about a year ago, meant to automate some processes and crunch numbers more efficiently than humans. Getting AI startups off the ground, especially when the company will have a vested interest in those startups, is obviously beneficial to the AI field in general and Salesforce’s access to AI development knowledge and research in particular. Should companies flourish commercially, Salesforce Ventures will also be able to reap financial benefits from the deployment of its fund.

The Federal Small Business Innovation Research program –SBIR--was created by Congress to provide start-up funding for small businesses with less than 500 employees.  More than $2 billion is available each year to launch projects from concept, to prototype development, to commercialization.   Its high risk,high reward.   Robert L. Smith, S-B-I-R manager for the U-S Navy, says one small company developed whale-watching technology that evolved into something bigger.

Is your new co-worker antisocial or asocial? Is your spouse jealous or envious? Not sure? Don’t worry -- most of us get confused by these similar words.

A recent article published in the journal Frontiers in Education identifies 50 psychology “term pairs” that people often get wrong. From empathy and sympathy to disease and illness, “These terms are so frequently confused in popular parlance that few people are aware that they differ,” the article’s authors explain.

Innovation in theory and innovation in practice are radically different. Here are some simple tools to get your company’s innovation pipeline through the obstacles it will encounter.

Pete Newell and I have been working with Karl, the Chief Innovation Officer of a large diversified multi-billion-dollar company I’ll call Spacely Industries. Over the last 15 months his staff got innovation teams operating with speed and urgency. The innovation pipeline had been rationalized. His groups whole-heartedly adopted and adapted Lean. His innovators and stakeholders curated and prioritized their problems/idea/technology before handing them off.

Nine years ago, Elena M. Stegemann, chief operating officer of McCreadie Group, Inc. – a healthcare software company that’s grown 20 percent year over year for the last three years in a row - found Ann Arbor. She’s lived all over the world, but finally found a place she wanted to settle in with her family.

“My husband was recruited to be a professor in the department of Biomedical Engineering at the University of Michigan,” she explained. “We were moving from pretty homogenous community in upstate New York and raising two future young adults. I was born abroad and immigrated when I was a teen, and my husband and I have travelled the world. It was important to find a place we could raise our kids, then ages six and nine, where they could experience diversity.”

Image: Elena M. Stegemann

There’s a shortage of women, non-binary people and men of color in the venture capital world. That’s why Pipeline Angels, an angel investing bootcamp for underrepresented people in tech, has launched a VC-in-Residence program to help people from diverse backgrounds become managing or general partners at VC firms.

While there are some people of color in the VC world, it can be hard for associates to climb the ladder to become managing or general partners or for underrepresented people in tech to start their own funds, Pipeline Angels founder Natalia Oberti Noguera told me.

Steve Schiff has the soothing voice and gentle manner of someone who has spent a large part of his career dealing with children, and frequently, children in pain. As a pediatric neurosurgeon, he has lent his skills and bedside manner to treating diseases of the brain in children. As a researcher, he is joining forces with electrical engineer Srinivas Tadigadapa to develop technology to understand and treat diseases of the brain.

Image: Electrical engineer Srinivas Tadigadapa and neurosurgeon Steve Schiff have joined forces to create a tiny magnetic device that can interact with brain cells without physically penetrating the brain. Image: Patrick Mansell

Wireless company, Sprint, is preparing for their second startup accelerator with a focus on agricultural technology, and technology that can bolster the economy across middle America.

It’s the 5th year for the Sprint Accelerator based in Kansas City where the company is headquartered.  But last year, in an interesting but worthwhile move they repositioned their focus.

The Dairy Farmer’s Of America, the nationally recognized dary farmer’s cooperative, joined Sprint as an accelerator sponsor last year. In that cohort of seven companies, four of them where in agtech, the other three were in digital tech.

Image: http://www.nibletz.com

Exercise is on the rise among Americans, particularly among millennials, according to a new report from Gallup and Sharecare, a health and wellness company. They found that 53.4% of Americans reported exercising three or more times a week, a two percentage point increase from 2008, and a modest increase from more recent years. The new figure is based on surveys of 177,000 people nationwide in 2016.

The city with the highest exercise rate was Boulder, Colo., where nearly 70% of residents say they exercise three or more times a week. Two other metropolitan areas in Colorado — Fort Collins and Greeley — also topped the list, at second and fourth place, respectively. Communities in California and Hawaii followed closely behind.

Amazon’s search for a second national headquarters site is being likened to the Powerball lottery for economic development organizations. They’re all lining up to take a chance at the $5 billion investment jackpot that could result from landing the online retailer's mega-office requirement.

Several senior-level managers across CoStar's analytics team are working through Amazon’s official RFP requirements and list of preferences for its second headquarters complex to come up with a ranking of potential metros that fit best. Our analysis will also identify specific development projects capable of handling the HQ2 requirement within those markets and that have the economic drivers to make people want to build there.

Image: http://www.costar.com