Brainstorming big ideas can be tough, especially when you're trying to figure out how to launch a product that customers will respond to. To stand out, your product needs to innovate in some way. It has to be marketed properly, so you can create a real sense of community around it and the brand as a whole.

As the global economic situation deteriorates amid the Russian invasion of Ukraine and soaring energy costs, many aspiring entrepreneurs might be tempted to give up and wait for better days. But don’t give up!

It is true that founding a startup in times of crisis may look more challenging. Investors can also be skittish, and winning new customers is not easy. However, a crisis can also be a golden opportunity to launch a new product or service, as long as the startup at the origin applies specific methods. One of them is called frugal innovation.

A Paris-based startup has created a genetically engineered houseplant that can literally clean the air within your home. The plant builds off the natural purifying properties that houseplants already offer. So, while it adds some color to whatever room you put it in, it’s also actively keeping the air cleaner than 30 air purifiers.

Robot vacuums have certainly changed how we clean our floors, but wouldn't it be nice if they could clean the rest of our houses too? Introducing the AlfaBot X6, the glass cleaning robot that can literally clean any surface hands-free and while it might sound too good to be true, this smart machine has a 4-star rating from over 400 Amazon shoppers.

Image: Hands-free cleaning at its best! This robot cleaner makes it super easy to clean out-of-reach windows and mirrors. Photo: Facebook

If you go to Ikea in Hamburg, Germany, and buy a bookcase or a rug, the store will loan you an electric cargo trailer so you can easily take your purchase home without using a car. (The service, free for three hours, is also available at Ikea stores in five other German cities.) The trailer, designed by a company called Nüwiel, attaches to any bike or can be guided by hand down the sidewalk, carrying all of the weight by itself.

Image: courtesy Nüwiel

Like there is to most things in life, there’s a pattern with millionaires. The world’s richest entrepreneurs, businesspeople, founders and CEOs have several things in common (and no, we don’t mean the money). Sure, there’s acumen; the ability to take the right risks and good decisions (with some wrong turns, of course). They are also always curious, trying to find out more so they can know more and then, in turn, do more. And then, there’s managing time like a boss (literally). They can structure their day to maximise it, and almost invariably function best with a routine they can adhere to on most days.

Image: Elon Musk. (2022, November 13). In Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elon_Musk

The University of Maryland Strategic Partnership: MPowering the State (MPower) has announced that it is establishing an Institute for Health Computing that will focus on artificial intelligence and advanced computing to further develop the field of precision medicine and improve health care for patients across the state.

The new institute will be located in North Bethesda under the combined leadership of the University of Maryland, Baltimore (UMB) and the University of Maryland, College Park (UMCP), in collaboration with the University of Maryland Medical System and Montgomery County, Maryland.

In Heinz’s squeezable upside-down ketchup bottle, the plastic cap is designed to dispense a standard blob of sauce without spilling. It works. But it can’t easily be recycled, so the Kraft Heinz Company decided to design an alternative. Nine years later—after 185,000 hours of product development, $1.2 million in investment, and 45 different iterations—a new design will be rolling out in the U.K. within the next couple of months.

Every year for over two decades, TIME editors have highlighted the 100 most impactful new products and ideas. This year, in a rapidly shifting world, innovation boomed. So in 2022, for the first time ever, we selected the year’s 200 Best Inventions.

Image: Photograph by Sergiy Barchuk for TIME

You’ve heard the adage that the best leaders frequently say, “no.” But it’s one thing to hear the advice and another to experience it. I didn’t believe in the power of that phrase until I actually started saying “no” with intention. As a result, I watched my revenue grow threefold while clocking half the hours and enjoying my work far more than before.

Serial entrepreneur Mark Cuban has built his $4.6 billion fortune thanks to his strong business acumen, as well as his ability to spot potential in other entrepreneurs. To date, Cuban has invested in over 400 startups, Forbes reported.

EPFL scientists have discovered a rare gene in the tumors of some colorectal cancer patients. This finding could lead to more accurate diagnoses and, eventually, personalized treatments that target the protein expressed by the gene.

Image: This finding could lead to more accurate diagnoses and, eventually, personalized treatments that target the protein expressed by the gene. (CREDIT: Creative Commons)

Finding the right tech gift can be a daunting task. There’s so much ground to cover, so many different sets of interests, from the audio nerds to the gamers and everyone in between.  It’s like trying to find a show to binge on Netflix right — The vast amount of options can leave the average gift giver paralyzed. It can be hard to take stock of the endless wave of new gadgets and select the right ones. But we’ve got you covered, whether you’re searching for some new over-ear noise canceling headphones or you need a new gaming console or a record player that is perfect for novice record collectors. Below we have a perfectly curated list of the best of the best tech gifts from brands like Bose, Sony, Apple, Nintendo and much more.

Image: https://www.insidehook.com

A new technology developed by UZH researchers enables the body to produce therapeutic agents on demand at the exact location where they are needed. The innovation could reduce the side effects of cancer therapy and may hold the solution to better delivery of Covid-related therapies directly to the lungs.

Vertical farmers, known for growing herbs and salads indoors, have made a breakthrough in the quest for global food security: cultivating wheat in the same controlled environment.

Amsterdam-based startup Infarm grew wheat without using soil or chemical pesticides, and with far less water than conventional farming. The first indoor farming company to grow a staple crop is a milestone for a nascent industry that’s attracted venture capital funding on a promise that its technology can help feed the planet.

Image: Indoor wheat cultivation at Infarm.Source: Infarm

As the turn of the year approaches, the annual ritual of identifying tech trends and making predictions for the next solar orbit swings into action. Such exercises are always interesting but also inherently risky – particularly in uncertain times such as those we have recently experienced and continue to live through.

For example, few at the end of 2019 would have forecast that the world of work would be turned upside down during the following year by a global pandemic, leading to an unprecedented focus on devices and services that facilitated remote working, and ushering in a likely permanent shift to a hybrid model.

There are a surprising number of parallels between entrepreneurship and crisis public relations.

While you've probably heard that you're the average of the five people you spend the most time with, I bet you haven't heard that being part of an entrepreneurial peer group increases your chances of successfully navigating a crisis. Here are five reasons it does.

Solar farms here on earth are generating an increasing amount of power for the grid, but they suffer from some obvious problems. They can’t generate power when it’s cloudy or at night. And they are very far away from what’s actually generating the power: the sun. But transport that structure all the way up through the Earth’s atmosphere and into outer space, and it could beam a constant supply of power down to Earth. That’s the big idea being presented to the European Space Agency (ESA) in November 2022, as part of the sci-fi sounding Solaris project.

Image: ©European SPS Tower concept/courtesy ESA

If you ask someone what they want to be when they grow up, it’s more an exercise of imagination than prediction when you consider that 65% of children going into elementary school today will work in jobs that do not yet exist. Why? The workforce is quickly transforming as technology evolves and societal needs change. Companies within the last few years had to quickly adopt and implement new technologies to digitize their processes as the world shut down due to the pandemic. Now, organizations are reassessing the structures they put in place and identifying what worked, what didn’t and where to go next.

The average person spends as much as three hours a day managing their work email, according to a study by Adobe. That stat almost sounds hard to believe, until you think about how often you get a notification, stop what you're doing, open your email app, read a message, and then try to figure out what you should do with it. It happens all the time, and that time adds up.

Image: https://www.inc.com/