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.
For years, we've been told that entrepreneurs are key to South Africa's economic growth and job creation. If we had any hope of escaping quarter after quarter of sluggish growth (or recession), we were told, we needed to support and invest in entrepreneurs.
Image: Philani Sangweni, managing partner at Entrepreneurs 4 Entrepreneurs (E4E) Africa
On Monday, September 14, 2020, the USPTO issued a press release announcing the launch of “a major initiative aimed at expanding invention, innovation, and entrepreneurship in the United States.” As the USPTO describes, the initiative stems from recommendations to facilitate women and minority participation in innovation and invention because the USPTO’s own 2018 “Success Act” study found that both women and minorities were underrepresented in patents as inventors.
In the past few months, we’ve seen a stark contrast between the modest pace of typical change management projects and the rapid innovation that is stimulated by a crisis. Take, for example, a large retailer that in 2018 began working on the concept of curbside pickup as a way to reinvigorate deteriorating sales. The company launched a well-planned change initiative to introduce the concept across functions and to counter passive resistance.
On Monday, September 16, 2020, the USPTO issued a press release announcing the launch of “a major initiative aimed at expanding invention, innovation, and entrepreneurship in the United States.” As the USPTO describes, the initiative stems from recommendations to facilitate women and minority participation in innovation and invention because the USPTO’s own 2018 “Success Act” study found that both women and minorities were underrepresented in patents as inventors.
Oxford is well known for its university, one of the oldest in Europe and considered to be one of the best in the world. Recently, the University of Oxford has been the center of attention thanks to an experimental Covid-19 vaccine that the university is developing in partnership with big pharmaceutical companies. If successful, the vaccine, already in phase III testing, could be one of the first to get approval for this new disease.
Private equity and venture capital funding are both considered alternative investments, but there are significant differences between the two. Private equity and venture capital are two ways business owners can shore up cash to run or grow their enterprise. Many business owners think these two funding options are interchangeable, but there are big differences.
For decades, efforts to satisfy customers have been built around demographics – capitalizing on race, ethnicity, gender, income, and other attributes. Today, in this age of pervasive social media and two-way communication, the focus needs to get beyond demographics into personalities. Customer personalities define customer experience, and sets what they love, and what they hate.
Image: https://blog.startupprofessionals.com/
A recently released report reveals how one entrepreneurial ecosystem is responding to the pandemic.
To get to the top and remain there, businesses must constantly develop new capabilities as they leverage existing ones. Keeping both priorities in play is tricky in the best of times, which is why legacy companies of late have been increasingly outsourcing innovation to tech start-ups via partnerships or outright acquisitions, a trend that has generated tremendous value for start-ups and their investors.
The U.S. might be falling behind Europe and China when it comes to the adoption of electric vehicles, but there's one thing that the U.S. — well, specifically California — has been been able to do uniquely well: Over nearly two decades, California has seeded and grown the world's first EV innovation ecosystem.
Say what? Here's how it worked for the web: After the first major internet companies such as Google made it big, a wave of employees went on to create the next-generation of web startups using funds from Silicon Valley and their personal earnings from the success of the company. Sometimes Google would even end up acquiring the startups it indirectly had helped create.
W
hile COVID-19 has fundamentally changed the way we all live and work, the pandemic has not affected all equally. It has brought to light existing disparities in both our health and economic systems. Women and people of color are more likely to be essential workers—with a higher share of employment in health care, social work, and grocery—putting them at greater risk of exposure.
WASHINGTON – U.S. Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross announced today that 52 organizations — including nonprofits, institutions of higher education, and entrepreneurship-focused organizations — from 36 states will receive grants totaling $35 million to support entrepreneurship, acceleration of company growth, and increased access to risk capital across regional economies.
Talking about how to handle failure as an entrepreneur might seem easy from a distance. But once you find yourself in that ugly rut, you might wish you never trundled the entrepreneurial path. Many compare the feeling to a bad break up, which is what it is.
I remember back in college, my project supervisor talked to me about the wonders of failure. He said failure is a ladder through which an entrepreneur can attain the next phase. As a naïve entrepreneur, I never really grasped the concept or realized how tormenting it would be.
The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) announced yesterday a major initiative to “build a more diverse and inclusive innovation ecosystem by encouraging participation demographically, geographically, and economically.” Dubbed the National Council for Expanding American Innovation (NCEAI), the project includes 29 representatives from industry, academia, and government, and was conceived based on recommendations made in the USPTO’s 2018 SUCCESS Act study and congressional report transmitted to Congress in December 2019.
Image: Source: https://www.uspto.gov/initiatives/expanding-innovation/national-council-expanding-innovation/about-national-council
When Netflix announced this summer that it was elevating Chief Content Officer Ted Sarandos to co-CEO, sharing the title with founder Reed Hastings, the move cut against conventional wisdom. Salesforce.com, SAP, and Oracle all had abandoned co-CEO structures within the last year, leading The Wall Street Journal to ask: “Co-CEOs Are Out of Style. Why Is Netflix Resurrecting the Management Model?”
Isn’t it amazing that some people you know always seem to be working hard, but never seem to get anything done? As an entrepreneur, you need to avoid partnering with these people, or hiring them into your startup. The challenge is to find people who get things done, as well as work hard. LinkedIn profiles and resumes still focus too much on responsibilities rather than results.
When New York State first issued a face-covering mandate back in April, I wasn’t even sure where to buy one. Positive cases of COVID-19 were skyrocketing, and it was nearly impossible to get your hands on this new, literally must-have accessory.
The global economy can seem like an abstract concept, yet it influences our everyday lives in both obvious and subtle ways. Nowhere is this clearer than in the current economic state amid the throes of the pandemic.
This voronoi-style visualization from HowMuch relies on gross domestic product (GDP) data from the World Bank to paint a picture of the global economy—which crested $87.8 trillion in 2019.
Image: https://www.visualcapitalist.com
A new venture capital fund will start investing in Wisconsin's university and college entrepreneurs this fall after closing on $6 million in fundraising.
The Winnow Fund, a seed-stage venture capital fund led by Richelle Martin, announced the fundraising in a news release Monday.
The Winnow Fund plans to start investing in November. The fund plans to invest in existing startup companies and entrepreneurs at colleges and universities in Wisconsin. It will continue to raise funds for another couple of months.
No CEO doubts the importance of measuring their company’s performance properly. Yet the executive teams I’ve assisted over more than 25 years generally struggle to engage with the challenge. As one CEO put it to me, “when we get to corporate KPIs their eyes glaze over.” Or, as another said “they (the managers) start looking for the exits.”
A new venture capital fund is the brainchild of a Durham native who spent eight years working at hedge funds in New York City before returning to the Triangle to start his own firm.
