Most successful entrepreneurs will tell you that their primary motivation is to “change the world” and to build something lasting, not to make a lot of money. But the conventional wisdom is that employees work for money, above all else. Yet my own experience, and a still relevant McKinsey survey, leads me to believe that non-cash motivators may be more effective in the long term than financial incentives.

Image: https://blog.startupprofessionals.com

MONTGOMERY — Governor Kay Ivey this week signed into law two bills passed by the Alabama Legislature designed to drive innovation and entrepreneurship in the state while attracting and retaining talented workers for a 21st century economy.

HB 540 and HB 609 were developed based on interim policy recommendations by the Alabama Innovation Commission, which was created last year at the governor’s directive.

“The state of Alabama is focused on ensuring our innovation economy is strong,” stated Ivey. “The policy ideas developed from the hard work of the Alabama Innovation Commission will create an environment for growth through supporting entrepreneurship, job creation and workforce development.”

Entrepreneurship and innovation go hand to hand. Innovation is a creative process that renews and updates products or services by applying new features or other advantages to create new value. According to Barry Jaruzelski, Kevin Dehoff and Rakesh Bordia’s article “Smart Spenders: The Global Innovation 1000,” there are four key stages of innovation – Ideation, Project Selection, Product Development, Commercialization.

The COVID-19 pandemic has had a substantial impact on global health and highlighted the importance of international cooperation to effectively combat SARS-CoV-2. Since the discovery and publication of the virus’s genome in January 2020, scientists have rushed to develop vaccines, therapeutics and diagnostics on an unprecedented timescale. To date there are 80 vaccines in clinical trials and 70 more in clinical development, setting the stage for some of the fastest vaccine development and testing in modern history1. The vaccine technology platforms used by the most promising vaccine candidates range from viral vector–based and protein-based technologies to mRNA and lipid nanoparticle technology. Despite these impressive scientific achievements, barriers such as the vaccine cold chain and multiple forms of intellectual property (IP) protection stand in the way of equitable access and fair allocation.

Image: https://www.nature.com

Sometimes a founder’s image is so publicly associated with his or her company, one rarely stops to ask, “Who is that person?” A few, such as Colonel Sanders of Kentucky Fried Chicken, Henry Ford, and Ralph Lauren become something even more than that; they become “iconic.”

In the early days of research on black holes, before they even had that name, physicists did not yet know if these bizarre objects existed in the real world. They might have been a quirk of the complicated math used in the then still young general theory of relativity, which describes gravity. Over the years, though, evidence has accumulated that black holes are very real and even exist right here in our galaxy.

May 20, 2021 (Washington, D.C.)- Connected DMV held its ninth and final COVID-19 Strategic Renewal Task Force meeting, where they announced the formation of the DMV Regional Congress to continue the Task Force’s mission of advancing strategic initiatives to promote economic renewal and social equity in the region. Washington, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser also addressed the Task Force, where she gave an update on the District’s reopening plans. She also thanked the cross-sector regional nonprofit for its work in bringing together all of the region’s stakeholders for the shared purpose of creating a more economically vibrant and equitable future for all in Greater Washington on behalf of the District and Maryland and Virginia Governors Larry Hogan and Ralph Northam.

Image: https://www.connecteddmv.org

Steve Case openly admits he did not know of all the opportunities that existed when six years ago he launched Revolution’s Rise of the Rest, which focuses on investing in underserved and secondary markets in the country.

“I sensed it,” he recalls, “but I didn’t know it.”

Since 2014, Rise of the Rest seed funds have been focused on investing outside of  the big venture capital markets — Silicon Valley, New York and Boston — looking to shine a spotlight on what lies outside the well-known coastal areas. The seed funds have invested in 181 early-stage companies throughout 33 states — plus Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico — and 83 cities. In total, the firm has invested in more than 200 companies.

Image: https://news.crunchbase.com

Nearly $161.5 billion of venture capital poured into U.S.-based companies last year, as the private markets and tech startup ecosystem had another banner year.

While the country as a whole saw new highs reached in venture, so did states such as Washington, North Carolina and Minnesota — not just in the amount of capital raised by private companies in those states, but also in terms of the percentage of total venture capital dollars in the country, Crunchbase data shows.

Image: https://news.crunchbase.com

The State Science and Technology Institute (SSTI), located in Westerville, OH, is receiving an award under the NIST MEP Notice of Funding Opportunity, 2021-NIST-STATE-PARTNERSHIP-01. This open competition invited U.S. based for profit and not-for-profit institutions or organizations to apply for funding to provide in depth collaborative support in developing and advancing collaborative relationships between NIST MEP, MEP Centers, States and other stakeholders. SSTI proposes to carry out activities that will identify and understand the goals and personalities of individuals in key stakeholder groups, build and enhance relationships with policymakers and leaders, and execute partnership strategies. SSTI focus will be on ensuring the MEP National Network has impartial information on stakeholders’ priorities, plans, and activities using publicly available documents and determining how these activities will impact the MEP National Network. SSTI will provide evidence-based recommendations on how the MEP National Network might best fit with partner priorities, plans, and activities. SSTI is awarded $4,999,847 for the period of July 1, 2021 to June 30, 2026 (5 years).

The chief executive of Domino’s Pizza has complained that the company can’t hire enough drivers. Lyft and Uber claim to have a similar problem. A McDonald’s franchise in Florida offered $50 to anybody willing to show up for an interview. And some fast-food outlets have hung signs in their windows saying, “No one wants to work anymore.”

The idea that the United States suffers from a labor shortage is fast becoming conventional wisdom. But before you accept the idea, it’s worth taking a few minutes to think it through.

Image: https://www.nytimes.com

Cincinnati startup capital company CincyTech has finished raising its fifth fund, giving it nearly $20 million in new money to invest.

Avondale-based CincyTech, based in the University of Cincinnati’s 1819 Innovation Hub in Avondale, raised $19.7 million for its fifth investment fund. It wrapped up fundraising at the end of April.

Image: Mike Venerable is CEO of CincyTech. David Kalonick | Courier

As many as six in 10 applications for government tenders don’t conform to the correct guidelines, and are not even considered as a result.

When you’re taking time and resources out of your business to apply for tenders, grants, or contracts, you don’t want to miss out on a technicality.

Here, Thomas Pollock, an expert on winning government business for SMEs, explains the six most common mistakes that SMEs make when writing formal submissions, and how to avoid making them yourself.

Image: CHECK THESE MISTAKES BEFORE SUBMITTING. SOURCE: UNSPLASH/ CHARLESDELUVIO

Be your own boss. Have your own business. Every day more people see becoming an entrepreneur as a life plan. However, many are left with their dream unfulfilled. Not because of a lack of conditions, but because of beliefs that they have incorporated and that are holding their way.

As Babson College students log in to a virtual meeting on a Friday afternoon, they are confronted with an ambitious agenda, one involving heaps of data, weighty ideas, and the chance to improve people’s lives.

It is, in short, not a simple endeavor. There is work to do.

The COVID-19 crisis has put thousands of small businesses, from high-growth startups to Main Street employers, out of business. Importantly, the economic impacts of COVID-19 have not been equal. Minority-owned businesses and very small businesses are disproportionately concentrated in the industries most heavily impacted by the COVID-19 crisis such as restaurants, retail stores, and personal services. As a result, encouraging entrepreneurship, making it more equitable, and improving access to the financial resources needed to start and maintain a business must be a priority for policymakers as the economy recovers.

Washington, D.C.— United States Senators Pat Toomey (R-Pa.) and Tim Scott (R-S.C.) introduced the Preventing Foreign Attempts to Erode Healthcare Innovation Act to prevent the Biden administration from relinquishing intellectual property (IP) protections on COVID-19 vaccines, a move that would undermine American innovation while doing nothing to actually increase the amount of vaccines reaching developing nations.

As a leader, you may sense the heavy mantle of work to be done, employees to motivate, bosses to impress, organisational culture to manoeuvre. Most leadership theories place all these burdens squarely on your shoulders: How you handle them all is entirely up to you. Concepts such as transparent leadership neglect external factors. Although leaders may be highly talented individuals, they are constrained by their environment and their own internal conditions.

MIT.nano has announced a new pilot program, START.nano, to support hard-tech ventures in their early stages. Seven companies with nanoscale technologies at the core of their business have been accepted to the program.

Image: https://news.mit.edu

“The next frontier for university technology transfer will likely be in the transformation of data-rich sectors using artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning technologies. One area largely accumulating data is the healthcare sector. Medical knowledge is doubling every 73 days, yet we are barely scratching the surface of utilizing this data.”

Image: https://www.ipwatchdog.com