Historically companies have innovated by creating small teams to develop or refine an idea. Sometimes these teams are successful, and more often, they aren’t. New value creation in corporations has rarely meant bringing an entire corporation along on its innovation journey. However, every company will have to do just that if they want to thrive in a world where the bar to creating offerings that customers embrace keeps getting higher.

You’ve probably heard or seen the acronym “SPAC” floating around in the last couple of months. It’s a craze that’s taken Wall Street by storm.

SPACs are special purpose acquisition companies, essentially shell companies that raise money from investors through stock-market listings. After going public themselves, they look for private companies to buy. Such transactions make those private companies public without having to go through the traditional initial public stock offering process, which involves “roadshows” to drum up investor interest and an intense media spotlight.

COVID-19 vaccines are effective at protecting you from getting sick. Based on what we know about COVID-19 vaccines, people who have been fully vaccinated can start to do some things that they had stopped doing because of the pandemic.

We’re still learning how vaccines will affect the spread of COVID-19. After you’ve been fully vaccinated against COVID-19, you should keep taking precautions in public places like wearing a mask, staying 6 feet apart from others, and avoiding crowds and poorly ventilated spaces until we know more.

“Intrapreneurs” are entrepreneurs inside big companies, who do corporate spin-offs. A spin-off is merely a startup spawned by a mature parent (company), and conventional logic would dictate that it has a survival advantage over the lowly startup. Yet spin-offs seem to most often fail to launch in the real world. I was part of one myself a few years ago, and felt the pain.

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Tesla is making a giant battery to plug into Texas' power grid, Bloomberg reported on Monday.

Gambit Energy Storage, a subsidiary of the electric-car giant, is developing a battery-energy-storage project in Brazoria County, Texas.

The system is registered with the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, the state's power-grid operator. An ERCOT filing from August gave the project an expected commercial opening date of June 1, 2021, and said it has capacity to store 100 megawatts of energy.

Both speed technology and information are vital trading inputs.

The stock market, as we have recently seen with the GameStop furore, can be a bit of a rollercoaster. Investors are at work trying to use both better information and ever faster trading algorithms to profit from the market.

Speed and information are an interesting pair. Remember, an important reason why people trade is that they want to realise their information into to make a profit. That information could be a tweet or something far more fundamental, like a careful analysis of a company stock.

Event Summary Bayh-Dole’s “march-in” provision — which allows the government to mandate the relicensing of federally-funded innovations in limited circumstances — is often subject to misinterpretation. For nearly 20 years, critics have claimed that Bayh-Dole’s march-in right can be used as a price-setting mechanism — rather than a tool meant to ensure that private companies make good faith efforts to commercialize federally-funded inventions.

All eyes are on the global rollout of COVID-19 vaccines. Achieving the broad uptake needed to reach population immunity and curb the virus’s spread will require an unprecedented effort among health workers, scientists and stakeholders at every step of the supply chain.

During this 90 min event, experts from organizations central to vaccine development and delivery, regulatory oversight and quality assurance will discuss over the course of two high-level panels what’s needed for the global COVID-19 vaccination campaign, how to build public trust in the quality and effectiveness of vaccines, and how these investments can build better systems for the future.

BALTIMORE (WJZ) — As students and staff return to the classroom, state leaders are working to get every teacher vaccinated. Now, there’s a way to track the progress.

Johns Hopkins University is launching its teacher vaccination tracker.

The entrepreneurs behind an exited Baltimore biotech company are creating a new center for immigration law in the city.

A $5 million gift from Marco and Debbie Chacón to the University of Maryland Francis King Carey School of Law will help to establish the Baltimore-based school’s new Chacón Center for Immigrant Justice.

The couple founded Paragon Bioservices, the contract manufacturing and development company that was acquired by Catalent in 2019 for $1.2 billion. Marco Chacón served as CEO and Debbie Chacón served as VP when the company moved to the University of Maryland BioPark in 2009. Now known as Paragon Gene Therapy, it still has a base at the BioPark, and Marco Chacón founded Irazú Bio, which is also based in the BioPark.

Image: Marco and Debbie Chacón founded Paragon Bioservices. (Photo courtesy of University of Maryland School of Law)

Business as usual is over. Companies around the globe, in every industry, have spent the past 12 months confronting challenges both practical and existential. Some have failed. Many have simply survived. A select few have flourished, remaking their businesses and illuminating the way forward for others. These are the businesses we’re celebrating on our annual list of the World’s Most Innovative Companies.

Over $567 billion has been amassed by the 10 richest people in the world in less than a year.

To put that into perspective, that’s more than sevenfold the wealth accumulated by the top 10 in the time period prior. As just one example, Elon Musk witnessed his wealth increase at least 500% in the last year. Meanwhile, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, has earned a cool extra $68.6 billion.

Image: https://www.visualcapitalist.com

This week marks the one-year anniversary of when Fortune advised all U.S. and Europe-based staffers to work from home. Looking back on the email announcement is like looking at a time capsule. There was a strong focus on cleaning and sanitization, which we now know isn’t a good use of time and resources in fighting the battle against COVID-19. Business travel was canceled. Training sessions on working from home were offered. But most notable is that initially the office shutdown was scheduled for just one week: “We will reevaluate the need to extend this temporary policy next week and will communicate updates accordingly.” 

Image: https://links.msg.fortune.com

A happy employee is a productive employee. That is why it is in your best interests to learn how to boost employee morale as an entrepreneur. Being in a startup is inherently stressful, and you will need every trick in the book to ensure that the pressure doesn’t crush your team. Here are 7 ways you can keep employees motivated and working hard, no matter what:

Nevada Gov. Steve Sisolak is proposing legislation that would allow advanced technology companies to establish Innovation Zones for their businesses that would function as local governments, supporting resident housing, schools, retail, transportation, power generation and health care facilities and fostering economic development in emerging technology industries.

Many startups fail before reaching that magic “cash-flow positive” position they have been striving for, despite seemingly reasonable financial projections. A closer analysis often indicates the cause to be a lack of diligence in handling common business finances. These mistakes are usually masked by excuses, like the economy turned on me, or my competitors played dirty.

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The US Department of Energy (DOE) issued a $115-million funding opportunity announcement (DE-FOA-0002381) for FY2021 Phase II Release 2 Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) and Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) R&D projects. The projects range from grid modernization and carbon removal to renewable energy and energy storage.

The Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) and Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) programs were established to encourage participation of diverse communities in technological innovation, as well as to increase technology transfer between research institutions and small businesses.

While managing your own startup can be incredibly rewarding, there is no denying it can also be extremely stressful. From managing the ins and outs of running your business to trying make sure that you actually generate a profit, startup founders have a lot on their plate. This can unsurprisingly lead to a lot of stress.

Canada is an innovation laggard. We have known this for decades. Successive federal governments have launched consultations, councils, strategies, superclusters and other initiatives to find a way out of our low-innovation equilibrium. But these efforts have borne little fruit. Pinning our hopes for an innovation awakening on Ottawa has been a mistake. We need to change the conversation.

Startups are the corporations of the future, so I have long believed that entrepreneurs who study existing corporate models, rather than ignoring them with disdain, will likely profit from the exercise. In today’s fast-paced world, that means recognizing early and capitalizing on the changes that are bringing many big companies to their knees, before that company is yours.

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