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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.

juggle

First, the good news: There’s a spate of new technologies to help companies measure and predict their employees’ talents, and it’s only a matter of time before artificial intelligence becomes a normal part of the hiring process. But now for the bad news: Those innovations have to surmount one pretty big obstacle first—human intuition.

The fact is that people just aren’t very good at knowing how talented they are at one thing relative to another, let alone at making objective (or even objective-ish) assessments about the strengths and weaknesses of others. Don’t despair, though. There are a few low-tech ways to size up your skill-set more accurately long before the robots roll in and do it for you.

 

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words

In general, it’s smart to say what you mean. In the workplace, people tend to use overwrought business jargon to compensate for not knowing their stuff. But there’s a less-apparent risk to doing just the reverse. If you sound like a walking Instagram comment, you might start to alienate yourself in your own office and lose your coworkers’ trust—even if they use those same kinds of words expressions when they’re texting their roommates.

 

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europe

European cultural and creative cities have stronger economic output and more jobs than their Australian counterparts. So why is our urban creative vibrancy associated with city size, not economic performance?

Culture nurtures our souls and binds our communities together, while creativity helps reveal new answers to our challenges and anxieties. Industries that build on creativity and culture are also a source of great economic value and social well-being.

 

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NewImage

The good news is that the rate of new entrepreneurship leveled off a bit last year, although it is still rising, according to the latest Kauffman Index of startup activity. The bad news is that it’s back to pre-recession highs, the opportunity for change is huge, and the cost of entry is at an all-time low. It’s a jungle fight for survival for aspiring entrepreneurs of all ages and demographics.

Image: http://blog.startupprofessionals.com 

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NewImage

Elumelu said this while speaking on the theme: “How do we create 10 million jobs by 2020?” at the Youth Connekt Africa Summit in Rwanda on Saturday.

The Chairman of Heirs Holdings and Founder of the Tony Elumelu Foundation, Tony Elumelu, has called on African leaders and development institutions to help address the deepening job and employment crisis bedevilling the continent by lending support and paying more attention towards the agricultural sector, creating access to electricity and developing entrepreneurship.

Image: https://theeagleonline.com.ng 

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Fail Epic Fail Funny Failure

One of the biggest factors holding back new and aspiring entrepreneurs is the fear of failure.

The reality is that the vast majority of successful entrepreneurs have, at one point or another, failed at some kind of business challenge. Personally, I have had more business failures than business successes, and even in the successful businesses, I can reflect on countless mistakes and failures along the way.

 

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class - course

In the past few years, changes in social media show that something can work like magic one day, and become outdated the next. Given the speed and development of ecommerce and online marketing, relying on information and strategies learned in college may not always cut it when you’re actually in the field.

Keeping up with trends and tech advancements is necessary to remain relevant in any industry. Luckily, there are plenty of online certifications and courses that enable you to stay abreast of all the rapidly changing components of running a business, one that is probably as much an online as it is an offline phenomenon.

 

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The Boring Company

Serial entrepreneur Elon Musk said his latest venture, The Boring Company, just got "verbal government approval" to build a Hyperloop connecting New York City with Washington DC.

Musk didn't clarify who exactly gave the company verbal approval and whether or not it came from different state representatives. But he said the company will build an underground tunnel that will connect the two major cities.

 

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goals

Goals are good. We should all have someplace we are heading. In small business, sharing our goals is critical to their success. We need everyone around us to know and understand what we are trying to achieve. We also need to be careful what goal we telegraph to others. Once again, the US Federal Government gives us a great example of how treacherous goals can be. For the past eight years, the Republicans have shared their goal of repealing and replacing the ACA. Somewhere in there is probably the goal of improving the cost of and access to health care in the United States. And that’s probably a good goal. Even the Democrats will say that there are things that need to be fixed with the current system.

 

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NewImage

The founders of the legendary Apple—the late Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak—have long been models of inspiration for entrepreneurs and other startup would-be innovators. Their individual lives, behavior, thinking, values, and decisions (just to name a few) have been picked and scrutinized endlessly to glean gems of success that followers and fans can learn from. The latest teaching to come down from this particular pipeline is unique in that it looks at both Jobs and Wozniak as a package deal, and use that partnership as a model for future business leaders.

 

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NewImage

Researchers at an American university have developed an ultra-thin technology that can generate energy from people as they walk – or even when they’re sitting down.

Thin enough to be woven into fabric, the wearable battery could fit seamlessly in clothes to power mobile phones and other electronic devices. A team at Vanderbilt University‘s Nanomaterials and Energy Devices Laboratory has pioneered the new system – ‘based on battery technology and made from layers of black phosphorus that are only a few atoms thick’ – which generates electricity from the slightest motion.

Image: https://www.innovatorsmag.com 

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dna

Entrepreneurs are as diverse as the businesses they start. A lot of people focus on the public personae of high profile founders to understand how they have achieved their success. But to find out what really makes them tick, it’s helpful to peek under the hood of an entrepreneur’s emotional engine compartment in order to gain a deeper understanding of how they work.

 

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NewImage

In 1977, a gallon of gas was 77 cents, a Georgia peanut farmer named Jimmy Carter was sworn in as president and a small start-up called Apple Computer was incorporated by Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak.

That summer, another momentous undertaking was launched. Hewlett Packard Co-Founder David Packard assembled a luncheon with 32 other Silicon Valley visionaries, including Intel Co-Founder Bob Noyce and AMD Founder Jerry Sanders, to create what is now the Silicon Valley Leadership Group.

Image: Silicon Valley Leadership Group CEO Carl Guardino looks at a map of the BART Silicon Valley Berryessa Extension during a VTA BART Silicon Valley celebration. Bringing BART to San Jose has been one of the Group's major campaigns. (Olszewski/SOSKIphoto) 

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y combinator logo

Silicon Valley startup accelerator Y Combinator is raising up to $1 billion for a new venture capital fund, Axios is reporting this morning. The fundraising comes less than two years after YC announced the close of its first big investing vehicle, a $700 million growth fund called the Y Combinator Continuity fund that it hired Ali Rowghani to oversee.

Rowghani was once the COO of Twitter; he also served earlier in his career as the CFO of Pixar.

 

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hawaii

With trials already underway in Kenya, Finland, and Oakland, and several others planned elsewhere, basic income is starting to get a thorough testing. The idea of direct cash transfers to meet basic human needs has been getting a lot of attention in the media, from Silicon Valley leaders, and among academics and think tanks. It can’t be long before a city or state in the United States experiments with basic income for itself (Oakland’s pilot is run by Y Combinator, a startup incubator).

 

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NewImage

Philadelphia tech boosters are making the most of Vanguard Group’s Innovation Studio, the outpost at 2300 Chestnut St. where the Malvern-based investment giant hopes in time to base up to 100 tough-to-recruit software pros for projects, so they can skip the daily Paoli-Thorndale line to the suburbs.

“Vanguard’s decision to locate their Innovation Lab in Philadelphia is further evidence that our efforts to support an innovation ecosystem are having an impact,” Craig Carnaroli, a University of Pennsylvania executive vice president and an invited guest, told me after Vanguard opened the site Monday. He’s hoping proximity will lead to collaboration among Penn and Vanguard people.

Image: http://digital.olivesoftware.com 

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NewImage

As an entrepreneur, you are faced every day with unpredictable situations and the uncertainty of where your own decisions will take you. This fear of the unknown can easily translate into everything you do for your business and can either become a powerful motivator or a debilitating factor working against your growth and development. According to a 2015 study on fear and entrepreneurship, fear is actually a major psychological barrier to most business leaders, as it can prevent them from taking necessary risks for their success.

 

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NewImage

Every dedicated business professional I know can’t find enough hours in a day to do their best work, and yet they often find themselves saying yes to new requests from the people around them. In some cases it may be fear of retribution by the boss, but more often they just hate to disappoint others, and end up instead with high stress and low credibility in the crisis to deliver.

Image: http://blog.startupprofessionals.com 

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crowd

Back in 2011, crowdsourcing was fueling an explosion in open innovation. At that time, most Fortune 500 firms had launched crowdsourcing initiatives or partnered with startups in order to access outside innovators or co-create with customers. The providers of crowdsource solutions had their heyday. Kaggle had raised $11M from Koshla Ventures. InnoCentive raised $7M and bought OmniCompete. TopCoder stepped from strength to strength, raising $11M in 2010. Quirky raised two rounds totaling $21M. But the glory didn’t last. Within six years, Kaggle had been acqui-hired by Google; a struggling TopCoder sold itself to Appirio; InnoCentive has been shrinking for years according to LinkedIn data; and Quirky has declared bankruptcy.

 

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