A new non-profit advocacy organization, New Cures for Cancers, recently announced its launch and the opening of its website.  The mission of the organization is to give cancer patients and their families and friends a podium to tell their stories and to demand judicial and legislative advocacy to motivate new diagnostics, personalized medicines, and drugs to treat cancer.

Image: https://www.patentdocs.org

Michael Lenardo, M.D., Chief, Molecular Development of the Immune System Section NIAID/DIR, joins Rich Bendis on BioTalk to discuss his work at NIH, his recent election to the National Academy of Medicine, and advice for fellow scientists

Listen now on Google Podcasts http://bit.ly/2Ws6L0v, Apple Podcasts https://apple.co/2WupsAq, and TuneIn http://bit.ly/2Pve2ex

Michael Lenardo attended the Johns Hopkins University and graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in Natural Sciences in 1977. He then attended Washington University in St. Louis, Mo. and obtained his Doctor of Medicine (M.D.) in 1981. He carried out clinical and research training at the University of Iowa from 1981-1985. He was then a Research Fellow at the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research at Massachusetts Institute of Technology with an adjunct appointment at Harvard Medical School. During this time, he carried out molecular biology research under the mentorship of Nobel laureates David Baltimore and Philip Sharp. He was then appointed Section Chief in the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, National Institutes of Health from 1989 to the present, directing research on T-lymphocyte regulation, HIV-1, and genetic diseases of the immune system. He has served on the editorial boards for the European Journal of Immunology, the Journal of Experimental Medicine, Science magazine, and Biology Direct. He is an Adjunct Professor of Pathology at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, and a Visiting Fellow at Cambridge University. He has founded or co-founded several joint research programs including the NIH-Oxford-Cambridge Biomedical Research Scholars, the NIH-University of Pennsylvania Immunology Program, the NIH-Marshall Scholars, the NIH-Rhodes Scholars, the National M.D./Ph.D. partnership program, and the NIH-Institut Pasteur Infectious Disease and Immunology Program.

From the North Sea to New Jersey, offshore wind tenders have been successfully awarding gigawatts' worth of contracts to bankable, sizable and increasingly economical projects.

This year has been dominated by falling prices, with offshore wind joining its onshore cousin and solar PV in beating some conventional power prices.

Among other drivers, venture capital plays a significant role in enabling ventures to grow. According to KPMG, over $254 billion was invested globally via venture capital financing last year. Valuations seem out of control, as data from the aforementioned KPMG report shows that a Series A round in 2010 had, on average, a pre-money valuation of $6 million. In 2018, that number rose to $20 million. Has that much changed in eight years?

Armed with some data from our friends at CrunchBase, I broke down the largest US startup funding rounds from October 2019. I have included some additional information such as industry, company description, round type, founders, and total equity funding raised to further the analysis.

Image: https://www.alleywatch.com

The Centers for Medicare and Medicare Services this week announced the 25 participants selected to move on to the next round of its Artificial Intelligence Health Outcomes Challenge.

WHY IT MATTERS Launched this past March by the CMS Innovation Center, in collaboration with the American Academy of Family Physicians and the Laura and John Arnold Foundation, the AI Health Outcomes Challenge aims to give innovators a showcase for how they're developing AI and machine learning technologies, deep learning tools and neural networks.

Cities that embrace new economic models will attract a greater share of business and investment according to new research, which says that strong economic fundamentals are no longer a city’s main draw.

Demand and Disruption, a report published by JLL in conjunction with The Business of Cities, cites the innovation economy, the experience economy, the sharing economy and the circular economy as changing the competitive equation for cities.

Image: https://cities-today.com

Every entrepreneur and business leader waits too long before really working on the legacy that he wants to leave to society and his family. They realize too late that they don’t really want to be remembered for how many hours they spent on airplanes, how many emails they produced, or even how much money they made for the business.

The primary responsibility of management is to allocate resources in the way that best achieves business objectives. If there are three or four options to allocate resources, which is the best choice? What is the time horizon for the decision? Is it best to hire more people? Why not partner with a contract resource company? Build a new facility or add to the existing one? No right answers, but all require a decision.

Image: https://www.innovationexcellence.com

The facility lies midway between Munich’s city center and its international airport, roughly 23 miles to the north. From the outside, it still looks like the state-run farm it once was, but peer through the windows of the old farmhouse and you’ll see rooms stuffed with cutting-edge laboratory equipment.

In a newer building at the back of the farm, Barbara Kessler pulls off her sneakers and sprays her bare feet and hands with antiseptic. The wiry veterinarian steps over a taped line in the shower room, leaving behind everything she can from the outside world: clothes, watch, earrings. She scrubs her body and hair—a buzz cut, so it’s easier to manage these frequent washings.

Image: The black-spotted piglet was born as a singleton rather than as part of a litter, and its mother had trouble making enough milk for her baby, so he is being raised without her. Piglets need company, so an animal from another litter is now sharing his crate to keep him company. The toys keep them from getting bored. LAETITIA VANCON

Congratulations, you got into Stanford University. You beat 22 other candidates vying for each coveted place. For you, competition doesn’t quite stop there: being best in class boosts your prospects. But the real fighting now will be over 7,100 undergraduates and 9,400 graduate students, not between them. Technology giants and sexy startups all want this brainpower. So do venture capital (vc) funds. All go to sometimes absurd lengths to get it.

When it comes to MBA rankings, there was a big surprise this week on a debut list of the best business schools for entrepreneurship. It’s not only that Washington University’s Olin School of Business won top honors in the ranking by PoetsandQuants.com and Inc. magazine. It’s that Harvard Business School failed to even make the top ten.

Image: White boards and Post-It notes are common in Startup Garage, the iconic course on entrepreneurship ... COURTESY OF STANFORD GSB

For Kalaari Capital, staying ahead of the curve is a necessity. As an early-stage venture capital firm, it invests in new trends and technologies that they think would bring change and cause disruption across sectors.

“We aspire to stay ahead of the curve and bet on business models and emerging trends and emerging sectors three to four years before they become a norm,” said Kalaari’s managing director Rajesh Raju in an interview with Entrepreneur India.

When startups need funding, angel investors can be an attractive alternative to debt financing.

"Angel investing is the act of providing funding to early-stage startups before they're ready to raise venture capital," says Ryan Feit, co-founder and CEO of SeedInvest.

Once the domain of high-net-worth investors, angel financing has become more accessible thanks to the passage of The Jumpstart Our Business Startups Act. The act removed some of the regulatory restrictions surrounding financial angels and their investment activity.

In 2014 ClimateLaunchpad* started out as a green business ideas competition in Europe. The platform offers training and coaching in entrepreneurial skills and is the springboard to successful and scalable cleantech businesses.

As part of the EIT Climate-KIC offerings, the first ClimateLaunchpad event attracted some 200 participants from 10 European countries. In the past 5 years, the competition has grown immensely. This year it accepted a record total of 2,600 business idea applications from 53 countries across all continents.

Much has changed for women entrepreneurs since the early 1980s.

In 1982, the first in-depth academic research was conducted looking at their lives. Before that, no one had ever taken the time to examine their experiences, their challenges, and their motivations.

Image: https://entrepreneurship.babson.edu

Passion is the most intrinsic attribute for any entrepreneur. It is passion that fuels the entrepreneur to commit and put their whole self towards achieving a vision; it is the same passion that propels the entrepreneur to take risks and be innovative in their approach. I have commonly noticed that driven by the vision, as an entrepreneur rolls out action steps to achieve results, little by little they get caught up in the race to achieve the outcomes. If the entrepreneur develops an attachment to achieving outcomes, there is danger of losing sight of the vision.

New York City Comptroller Scott M. Stringer on Wednesday released a comprehensive new report on the creative economy in New York City, showing the sector is responsible for some $110 billion in total economic activity.

The largest number of creatives were moving to the Brooklyn neighborhoods of Bushwick and Bedford Stuyvesant, according to the report.

Also, growth and earnings ratios indexed on average higher amongst those employed in the creative field than any other sector. Stringer recommended the city pay attention and invest more into the creative economy:

Image: https://www.bkreader.com

Take it from an entrepreneur like me: Raising money is one of the greatest challenges in getting a startup off the ground. For female-founded startups, the fundraising playing field is particularly lopsided—so much so that anyone who values women’s economic advancement should pay attention. A recent report by the National Venture Capital Association and Pitchbook found that in the first half of 2019, investment in female-founded startups accounted for just 2.9% of total venture investments, only a slight improvement from 2.3% in 2018.

Regardless of your definition of success, there are, oddly enough, a great number of common characteristics that are shared by successful businesspeople. You can place a check beside each characteristic that you feel that you possess. This way, you can see how you stack up. Even if you don't have all of these characteristics, don't fret. Most can be learned with practice and by developing a winning attitude, especially if you set goals and apply yourself, through strategic planning, to reach those goals in incremental and measurable stages.