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.
In the case of smartphone makers, a rising tide does not lift all boats equally. According to estimates from Canaccord Genuity, Samsung has shot further ahead of the pack as the world's largest smartphone manufacturer, shipping 56.3 million units in the third quarter. Apple is in an increasingly distant, but still formidable, second place. Apple's consolation is that it still takes a larger share of industry profits, despite shipping approximately half as many units as Samsung.
If an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, a new technology developed by the Department of Homeland Security might have been worth its weight in gold during Hurricane Sandy.
That technology is a gigantic inflatable plug that might have prevented the massive flooding of New York City's subway system caused by the storm. In simulations, the plugs--originally developed to combat terrorist attacks and now being evaluated at West Virginia University--have proven to be effective at limiting flooding in tunnels.
For the majority of accredited investors, putting funds in an early-stage startup is no better than pissing thousands of dollars down the drain.
In the past, angel investors have been multi-millionaires, even billionaires. They are classified as “sophisticated” or “experienced,” primarily because they can afford to pour $25,00o, $50,000 or more into over a dozen early-stage startups.
To succeed at the high-stakes, low-odds investment game, you’ll need a diverse portfolio of high-calibre companies.
If you spend any time hanging around founder and CEO types and ask them what their biggest problem is, you’ll hear “recruiting developers, engineers and UX/UI designers”. It’s the complaint that lead us to tackle the problem with the founding of DeveloperAuction.
The fact is, since LinkedIn was created (90% of revenue is from the recruiters sending solicitation emails, to the point where the average Silicon Valley developer gets 100+ recruiter emails per year), nothing new has come along in the recruitment space.
Sure, there’s a bunch of companies that help you filter applicants, manage the “jobs” section of your website, do video interviews or code tests. But none of them really solve the fundamental problem of “not enough quality applicants”.
Oh come now, you might say. Everyone? Everyone must become an entrepreneur?
You are right to be skeptical if you define entrepreneur as someone who creates a for-profit business. But that is a very limited definition. It doesn’t include people who start things for social reasons. Or community reasons. And it certainly doesn’t include people in organizations who take an entrepreneurial approach to solving the challenges they (and the enterprises that employ them face.)
Betty Garcia embraces the term “immigrant entrepreneur” as a badge of pride.
She says her family hasn’t had it as easy as native-born Americans in turning Tortilleria Sonora, whose name hints at both the product and her family’s origins, into a successful business.
“It’s important to recognize backgrounds,” said Garcia, 37, who has helped her Mexican parents run the Des Moines shop for the last four years. “Not to put any other culture down, but Americans have it easier because they are more knowledgeable about the system and have grown up with more tools and resources.”
Remember before, when you were starting off, and weren’t as cool and as important as you are now? You’re glad those days are over, but you have a responsibility to those who haven’t reached the “stage” yet.
Conference VIPs fall into two categories: those who let their fame go to their heads, and those who don’t. The former act like jerks, and the latter continually inspire with their openness, courtesy and enthusiasm. In hopes that all VIPs can be convinced to be kinder, gentler members of the community, I’ve drafted these guidelines: Conference Networking Etiquette for Big Shots.
We all know that the costs of starting a web service are dramatically lower than ever before: it’s simpler and easier and faster to deploy. At the same time, services can be distributed through readily available channels such as social networks, search and app stores – all of which can be measured.
The rise of open source, cloud computing and the newly created distribution channels has also dramatically changed how solutions and businesses are created – known as “lean methodology” – and has been embodied by The Four Steps to the Epiphany by Steve Blank and The Lean Startup by Eric Ries.
![figure Figure 1 Source Data: Excel file At the time of their graduation, most foreign recipients of U.S. doctorates planned to stay in the United States.[2]](http://www.innovationamerica.us/media/Editor/Figure1-13177100.png "Figure1-.png")
The proportion of foreign nationals among individuals who earned a research doctorate in science, engineering, or health (SEH) in the United States has followed a general upward trend since 1960 (figure 1). Foreign citizens' share of U.S.-earned doctorates in SEH was about 17% during 1961–70 and by 2010 had reached nearly 40%.
Employment characteristics among doctorate recipients are closely related to degree fields and may vary by the location of employment. A large majority (93.5%) of the recent (2001–07) recipients of SEH doctorates who reported working as of 1 October 2008 were working full time.
Data in this InfoBrief are from the 2008 Survey of Doctorate Recipients (SDR) and the 2010 Survey of Earned Doctorates (SED).
IBM’s Venture Capital Group is a really interesting cog in the startup machine. It’s not a fund and yet, through it, IBM has managed to invest in a bevy of startups that align with its Smarter Planet initiative.
Smarter Planet is an umbrella concept under which IBM aims to uncover and foster technology that moves society forward in big ways. Think about smarter systems across just about every industry that can lead to things like improved electrical grids, traffic management systems and protection online — to name a few examples.
IBM’s SmartCamps attempt to uncover startups working on these kind of problems. The camps connect VCs, mentors and startups, and then, intriguingly, sits back. IBM’s Venture Capital Group doesn’t invest in startups directly, nor does it actively nurture them. Instead, VCs do the work, and happily too, as selling a company on their roster to IBM, an IBM partner or client is a compelling exit. IBM also invests in VC funds, about 70 around the world.
With an Internet connection and some free time you can hear lectures and advice that Ivy-league college students and entrepreneurs are privy to — and at a much lower cost than they pay.
Online learning community creativeLIVE offers live streamed courses with famous photographers, designers and business leaders. Classes are live streamed in HD from the company’s studios in Seattle and San Francisco. The classes are free when they happen, and if you want to own the content you can purchase it for download at a later date for about $99-$149.
With each session, there are two students who monitor the Twitter feed and Facebook page to find your questions and ask them in the session. Past instructors include Tim Ferriss, Ramit Sethi, Pulitizer Prize winner Vincent Lafort and Emmy nominee Gale Tattersall.
An online chat room is the preferred means of communication for 410 Labs, even when the team is crammed together in the company’s single-room office. So when Hurricane Sandy kept everyone at home, it was business as usual for the Baltimore technology firm. Well, almost.
Is it possible to be successful in business and not fulfilled? The answer is a resounding yes today, and I’m convinced that it will be even more true tomorrow, as young idealistic entrepreneurs try to adapt to the long-standing business culture where success is only measured in the money you make for yourself and your business.
That isn’t very fulfilling to the growing number of entrepreneurs whose vision and satisfaction comes from making the world a better place, and enjoying a leisurely lifestyle with friends and family. In fact, it’s already a problem with more successful entrepreneurs than you know, based on a recent book by serial entrepreneur Brian Gast, “The Business of Wanting More.”
As Hurricane Sandy makes her exit, she highlights the challenges and pitfalls of leading through crisis. My first turn-around assignment was my very first management role, as Director of Research at Bernstein (a job I think almost all my colleagues turned down before I was naïve enough to accept). Since then, I’ve done well more than my fair share of leading businesses through turn-arounds and crises, and made plenty of mistakes (and seen other managers make some career-ending ones). These are a few of the leadership lessons learned:
Be available. Be heroically available. It feels a lot better during times of turmoil to close your door and work things through. This only adds to an organization’s stress level. The most notable act of leadership that I saw during the downturn was when one of my colleagues hosted a call for Financial Advisors on some investment products that had gone very bad; he offered to stay on the open-mike call until every last question was answered. He was on that call for six solid hours, until well after 10pm. And many of the “questions” were not questions, but simply venting. It was uncomfortable, but it was ultimately appreciated.
SOME 70 million immigrants have come to America since the first colonists arrived. The role their labor has played in economic development is widely understood. Much less familiar is the extent to which their remarkable innovations have driven American prosperity.
Indeed, while both Barack Obama and Mitt Romney have lauded entrepreneurship, innovation and “job creation,” neither candidate has made comprehensive immigration reform an issue, despite immigrants’ crucial role in those fields. Yet understanding how immigrants have fueled innovation through history is critical to making sure they continue to drive prosperity in the future.
It is a busy day today. In addition to announcing Bill Trenchard’s arrival at First Round Capital, we're also excited to share a new firstround.com website experience with the world.
Coming into this redesign we knew we wanted to do a few things differently. Almost all websites for venture funds focus on partner bios and logos of their portfolio. For us, we had a few unconventional goals in mind - we wanted to:
A small business entrepreneurs biggest enemy is FEAR and its biggest ally is WTF – Working Through Fear.
Karl Albrecht, Ph.D., is the author of more than 20 books, including Practical Intelligence: the Art & Science of Common Sense. In an article posted on Psychology Today, he says:
“There are only five basic fears, out of which almost all of our other so-called fears are manufactured (which are not listed above), and that the more clearly and calmly we can articulate the origins of the fear, the less our fears frighten us and control us.”
If you were asked to name the most important innovation in transportation over the last 200 years, you might say the combustion engine, air travel, Henry Ford’s Model-T production line, or even the bicycle. The list goes on.
Now answer this one: what’s been the single biggest innovation in education?
Don’t worry if you come up blank. You’re supposed to. The question is a gambit used by Anant Agarwal, the computer scientist named this year to head edX, a $60 million MIT-Harvard effort to stream a college education over the Web, free, to anyone who wants one. His point: it’s rare to see major technological advances in how people learn.
People's bodies know a big event is coming just before it happens, at least according to a new study.
If true, the research, published Oct. 17 in the journal Frontiers of Perception, suggests something fundamental about the laws of nature has yet to be discovered.
"The claim is that events can be predicted without any cues," said Julia Mossbridge, a Northwestern University neuroscientist who co-authored the study. "This evidence suggests the effect is real but small. So the question is: How does it work?"
Previous Martin Prosperity Institute Insights have looked at the relationship between the population and GDP share for U.S. metropolitan areas. This Insight will look deeper into these findings, by looking at metros in relation to two additional variables-awarded patents and Creative Class occupations. While previous Insights have looked at metro population and GDP shares in relation to U.S. totals, this Insight will examine the percentage shares of each of these four variables relation to the U.S. metro total.
The top 5 metros that contribute the most to the U.S Metro Creative Class are New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Washington and Boston. These 5 metros contribute to 23.33% of the total U.S. metro Creative Class occupation total. The top 10 largest Creative Class metros contribute to 35.04% of the total share and the top 25 contribute to 53.09%. These metros contribute a higher percentage to the total Creative Class metro total than the top 25 most populated metros contrib- ute to total population (49.19%), but less of a percentage than the top 25 GDP metros contribute to total GDP (57.09%).
