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.
During my years in the industry as a mentor, teacher, solopreneur and serial entrepreneur, I’ve met many other entrepreneurs across the world. Some have succeeded monetarily beyond their own wildest dreams, many have failed, and many of the latter have picked themselves up and persevered to enjoy eventual success.
St. Paul – Launch Minnesota, the Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development’s (DEED’s) new statewide collaborative effort to accelerate startups and amplify Minnesota as a leader in innovation, is now accepting grant applications online. The Innovation Grants are designed to advance the most promising, innovative and scalable technology startups in Minnesota.
Many countries, like the US and China, have huge populations spread out over a vast area in dozens or hundreds of cities and towns. But in some parts of the world, the big city dominates.
The United Nations provides estimates of the populations of the world's countries and large cities. The database includes estimates for the populations of over 1,800 major urban areas with at least 300,000 residents.
John Thornhill talks to Scott Kupor, managing partner at Andreessen Horowitz, about his book Secrets of Sand Hill Road: Venture Capital and How to Get It, about the conditions needed to grow tech companies and the potential drawbacks of a venture capital dominated market.
It’s a big sustainability week for Google. The technology company announced November 5th that it would create a new startup program focused on sustainability products.
Kate Brandt, Google’s Sustainability Officer, announced at a tech conference that the company would help create a community of sustainability investors, a notoriously difficult niche of startups. The Google For Startups Accelerator will help with startups focused on the UN Sustainable Development Goals, according to a blog posted by Google. Some of the goals include gender equality, good health, clean water and sanitation, affordable and clean energy, responsible consumption and production and sustainable cities and communities.
In accordance with H.R. 5667, Sec. 108, enacted in Public Law 106-554, as amended by H.R. 1540, Sec. 5137, enacted in Public Law 112-81, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine is to review the Small Business Innovation Research and Small Business Technology Transfer (SBIR/STTR) programs at the Department of Defense, the National Institutes of Health, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the Department of Energy, and the National Science Foundation. Building on the outcomes from the Phase I study, this second study is to examine both topics of general policy interest that emerged during the first-phase study and topics of specific interest to individual agencies.
Your company believes everything should always go as planned.
You still have to do your regular job.
The project’s completion date is disrespectful of the work content.
Your company doesn’t recognize the difference between complex and complicated.
The team is not given the tools, training, time and a teacher.
You’re asked to generate 500 ideas but you’re afraid no one will do anything with them.
Call it a new trend or the next iteration of R&D, but corporations are taking “innovation” seriously, putting their dollars toward hosting, marketing and building in its name.
Now, as we find ourselves in the last third of Corporate Innovation Month, we’re continuing to check in with Philadelphia’s biggest companies about how they’re impacting local communities and leading the way for upcoming entrepreneurs.
Image: Based within Pennovation, JPOD Philadelphia looks to offer mentorship to local entrepreneurs. (Rendering courtesy of Johnson & Johnson)
Startup accelerators play a major role in the growth of startups as these back the companies during the nascent stage and help them turn successful. So, to help tech startup founders get the support of the right accelerators, the research team at Startup Heatmap has come up with an interesting report about the accelerators of Europe.
The House of Representatives passed the Crowdfunding Amendments Act (H.R. 4860), which would expand permissible uses of crowdfunding.
Representative Patrick McHenry (R-NC), who introduced the bill alongside Maxine Waters (D-CA), said that it was designed to reverse the decline of small-business lending and loans by encouraging investment crowdfunding. Specifically, the bill would:
This year’s Women to Watch in venture capital invest in some of the hottest areas of technology and life sciences, from machine learning and fintech to genetics and genome-editing tool CRISPR. They come from a range of backgrounds in business, government and academia, while their venture-capital firms span some of the largest firms in Silicon Valley to new firms seeking to carve out new pieces of the industry.
How is it that only a few business leaders and entrepreneurs seem to drive exceptional results and disruptive innovation in this rapidly changing market economy (marketquake)? These few seem more adept at executing market and technology turns, not just incremental evolution. They consistently take bold steps to stay ahead of the curve, often contrary to conventional wisdom.
Image: https://blog.startupprofessionals.com
The current U.S. administration sees China as the United States’s principal global rival, and it has effectively declared economic war on the country. Its justification for this is largely that China is (1) stealing American jobs and (2) pirating American intellectual property. Data collected by the Long US-China Institute suggest that China is far less guilty of these crimes than many policymakers and commentators would have us believe.
The gleaming biomedical sciences and engineering building that just opened in a technology corridor of suburban Maryland testifies to the power of a novel idea: Offer degrees from several public universities through one commuter-friendly campus, and the students will come.
The Universities at Shady Grove, near Interstate 270 in Montgomery County, has enabled thousands of transfer students to earn bachelor’s and master’s degrees in the past two decades from an array of schools in the University System of Maryland.
About 1,500 new companies are founded every day.
However, only a fraction of these entrepreneurial pursuits will eventually operate on a grand scale. With many of these companies propelled by venture capital funding, how do investors provide the cash—and get a piece of the startup pie?
This week on Startup Street, one of India’s most active state startup programmes has been recognised as the best in the world. A look at why Kerala’s startups are thriving. India continues to reinforce its position as the third-largest startup ecosystem. And a U.K. drugmaker eyes opportunities in China.
Here’s what went on...
Kerala Startup Mission Ranked The Top Public Business Accelerator The Kerala Startup Mission, a state government initiative, has been recognised as the world’s top public business accelerator.
UBI Global, a Stockholm-based intelligence company, awarded the position to KSUM in the World Rankings Report 19/20. Other contenders include Belgium, Spain, Russia and Ireland. The award ceremony was held at World Incubation Summit for Best Programmes in Doha, Qatar on Nov. 8.
Homelessness is a tragedy that strikes thousands of Americans every year. As we move into the winter months, nights are getting colder, and it's increasingly dangerous for people without access to shelter.
Every year, the Department of Housing and Urban Development publishes a report to Congress on the state of the homeless population in the US. One of the core elements of the report is a "point in tim
From lack of product-market fit to disharmony on the team, we break down the top 20 reasons for startup failure by analyzing 101 startup failure post-mortems.
After we compiled our list of startup failure post-mortems, one of the most frequent requests we got was to use these posts to figure out the main reasons startups failed.
Startups, corporations, investors, economic development folks, academics, and journalists all wanted some insight into the question:
“What are the reasons startups fail?”
For those that lived through the devastation and horror of the HIV/AIDS epidemic of the early 1980s, effective treatment, let alone a cure for Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV), seemed unimaginable.
Some three decades later, a host of Maryland life science companies and research organizations are getting closer to making what was once unthinkable, real.
So little was known about this devastating immune disorder in the early phases of the HIV/AIDS epidemic.
In my role as a mentor to entrepreneurs and an angel investor, I find that too many are stuck in this myth that a good pitch, and good marketing content, should consist of more product features, and more hype on customer benefits. Naturally, these are important, but real winning content has to start with a story that excites people’s imagination, and pulls them in emotionally.
