You're cross-eyed from monitor glare, comatose from lunch digestion, and you don't even realized you just opened up Facebook: It's 2:55 in the afternoon, the time of day when productivity dies.

Deconstructing the dip

LondonOffices.com's recent poll of 420 British office workers, while not incredibly scientifically robust, does provide some interesting insight into the workday rhythm.

The respondents said that 2:55 p.m. was the low point of the day's output: Most folks said they were either checking social media or planning for their evening--perhaps heading to the "pub" or getting a game of "footie" together.

Culture is one of those things in Silicon Valley that has become nebulous. Everyone wants to have a great culture, but few really understand what it means and how to build it, outside of ping-pong tables and weekly happy hours. Justin Moore, CEO of Axcient, believes that culture, more than anything else, is the key defining attribute of success in tech and must be built starting on the very first day of a company’s life. “This is not about fuzzy, holding hands around a campfire, kumbaya stuff. That’s not what values and culture and mission is about. This is about building an organization for success. This is about winning. This is about doing the tactical things to make sure your organization and your people are aligned around the same thing,” Moore shares.

The Science|Business Innovation Board has released the results of two studies, one examining the success factors behind university spinouts and the other exploring views on a European grace period for patents.

A Grace Period for Patents:  Could it Help European Universities Innovate? reveals that European technology transfer managers strongly favour an EU grace period for patents, saying it would remove a significant disadvantage for university inventors, increase patent activity on campus and support innovation. The study is based on a survey of European technology transfer offices about patent practice and perceptions.   

Europe’s technology transfer managers agreed 2-to-1 that a grace period is needed, according to the survey, and more than half say they often feel at risk for losing patent opportunities due to premature disclosure of an invention.

The winners of the 5th annual Academic Enterprise Awards have been announced at a conference that brought together Europe's innovation leaders to discuss the importance of research, innovation and entrepreneurship

Denmark provided its first winner of the ACES awards – the only pan-European awards for academic spin-outs – at a ceremony in Brussels this evening. It was joined as winners by founders of spin-outs from universities in France, Switzerland and the UK in a competition that proved that Europe's universities can buck the continent-wide recession. Despite what is widely seen as an investment famine, these spin-outs all managed to attract funding to capitalise on Europe's ofworld-ranked research to create enterprises with the potential to be world-beaters.

Danish company ABEO, winner of the Materials and Chemicals Award, uses ideas developed at the Technical University of Denmark and Copenhagen Business School to produce pre-formed concrete, which improves the cost-effectiveness and environmental performance of concrete constructions as well as saving on CO2 emissions.

As the CEO of an economic development organization that accelerates the growth of innovation clusters in Northeast Ohio, I connect with influential people to position the region as an innovation hub, raise visibility of its technology assets and attract resources. In this role, I make sure my organization, NorTech, effectively uses its industry expertise in advanced energy, flexible electronics and water technologies to align and leverage our cluster member’s assets to build a globally-competitive economy.

Globalisation has meant urbanisation, and by 2050, 70 percent of the world’s population will be living in cities. What should we do to survive and thrive in this brave new world?

In just half a century, the island nation city-state of Singapore has transformed itself from a fishing village to a global financial centre, hailed as a bastion of urban livability, environmental sustainability and economic efficiency. In 2012, it ranked first in the World Bank’s Ease of Doing Business Report, fifth in Transparency International’s index of least corrupt nations and number three in INSEAD’s Global Innovation Index.

Health Tech Hatch, a site launched last fall as a crowdfunding site specifically for health startups, is joining forces with one of the biggest crowdfunding platforms on the web, Indiegogo.

From the beginning, the company planned to help health startups both crowdfund and beta test their products with patients and physicians. But now, founder and CEO Patricia Salber said Health Tech Hatch plans to focus more closely on the beta testing side, while working on the crowdfunding piece through Indiegogo.

Venture capital (VC) used to be a great business. But in the 13 years since the NASDAQ peaked at 5,049, the VC business has not kept up with the S&P 500. In the last few years, some VCs have adapted by following five strategies that could revive the industry.

The dot-com crash divides the industry’s good from its bad. In 1999, the average fund earned a 10-year IRR of 83.4% — but by September 2012, that figured had dwindled to about 6.1% — comparing unfavorably to the much less risky S&P 500 which earned an 8% average return over the preceding decade, according to Cambridge Associates.

Through collaboration between Johnson & Johnson Innovation and the California Institute for Quantitative Biosciences (QB3), Janssen will create a 5,000-square-foot lab space within QB3’s 24,000-square-foot incubator space in San Francisco.

The company said that the new Bay Area incubator will use the San Diego model for its innovation space.

Janssen Labs, a 32,000-square-foot San Diego life science innovation center that is part of Janssen Research & Development LLC, currently houses 18 companies in modular lab spaces and offices. The Janssen Lab model is quite new — it opened a year ago with four companies, and has since grown significantly.

— Meghana Keshavan

When it comes to taking diet advice from a physician, size matters.

A team of researchers from the Johns Hopkins University schools of public health and medicine examined the impact of primary care physician BMI (body mass index) on their patients' trust and perceptions of weight-related stigma. They found that overweight and obese patients trust weight-related counseling from overweight physicians more than normal weight physicians, and that patients seeing an obese primary care physician were more likely to perceive weight-related stigma. The results of their research are featured online in the June issue of Preventive Medicine.

NIH has reissued its Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Omnibus Grant Solicitation announcement, which states that small businesses that are majority-owned by multiple venture capital operating companies are eligible to apply for (1) these SBIR grants and (2) any other NIH SBIR funding opportunities announced after January 28, 2013.  The NIH grant solicitation announcement can be found here.

With this re-issuance, small businesses that are majority-owned by multiple venture capital operating companies (VCOCs), hedge funds and/or private equity firms are now eligibleto apply to the NIH SBIR program and compete for up to 25% of NIH’s SBIR set-aside.

Developed by Wharton professor Ian MacMillan and Columbia professor Rita McGrath, discovery-driven planning has become an essential tool in exploring and developing the viability of a new business venture. Professor MacMillan began this research in the early 1990’s by studying venture capitalists and was surprised by the differences between actual and planned performance of VC investments.  Through his research he realized VCs reduce the expense of a poor venture by only providing ventures a small about of money up front.  If the investee is not being successful VC firms can withdraw quickly with limited loss. When working in uncharted markets, the key is to reduce the assumption to knowledge ratio over time and ahead of substantial investment.  He saw how the process VCs use of making increasing incremental investments over time as confidence in a venture increases could be helpful to entrepreneurs and he systematized the process in what is now known worldwide as discovery-driven planning.  The relevancy of the tool Professor MacMillan developed over 20 years ago was a discussion topic at the most recent Wharton Reunion Weekend.  

Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer caught a lot of flack for her mandate prohibiting working from home, but new research from MIT seems to back up her decision. The study, published in Nature, concludes that cities with higher rates of face-to-face interactions among citizens — what the researchers call “social-tie density” — are more productive than those where citizens interact less frequently. If valid, though, their findings could do a lot more than validate the decision by one of tech’s most-scrutinized CEOs — they could help save the world.

Three years ago, Greater Louisville didn’t have any business accelerators. Now, it has at least five. And that’s a great development, according to representatives from those five accelerators, who spoke Wednesday at the monthly meeting of Venture Connectors, a nonprofit organization that connects entrepreneurs with investors. The meeting was held at the Muhammad Ali Center.

New York’s 10 economic development regions will compete for up to $750 million in the third round of funding in Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s regional council program.

That figure includes $220 million in competitive funds from Empire State Development and $530 million through a consolidated application from 13 state agencies to support economic development projects that align with each of the ten regional council’s strategic plans.

The geography of our world is one of the great cultural invariants. There can hardly be the person on the planet who isn’t familiar with the shape of the continents and how they dovetail together or of the Earth is a pale blue sphere orbiting the Sun with seven other planets.

Given a three-dimensional model of the solar system, almost everyone can zoom in from beyond the Oort cloud to the planet Earth and then even further to the street where they live. It is powerful shared knowledge.

Healthcare providers are taking telemedicine to new heights, with the market seeing growth of a whopping 237 percent within a five-year period, according to a new Kalorama report.

Officials say the telemedicine patient monitoring market grew from $4.2 billion in 2007 to more than $10 billion in 2012. According to the report, the market itself is considered small- to moderate in size but makes up for it with its notable number of competitors and "increasing awareness of effectiveness."

If your organization is conducting innovation leadership training, the odds are it’s failing.  And there’s a very simple reason why:  You are focused on training leaders to lead people, rather than training leaders to build and lead systems.  And if that’s the case, you are surely failing.

Our culture tends to place an inordinate amount of attention on the individual leader.  We want to idolize our organizational leaders as heroes, and we want to think of individuals as the prime cause of things like innovation.  We write case studies about innovative institutions and innovative ideas and generally attribute the innovation to the individual leader . . . the great, daring, breakthrough thinker.   No wonder that when we set out to create training and development for innovation leaders we tend to think about  . . . the individual leader.  And as a consequence, we tend to think about what individuals can do in an organization to create or encourage innovation . . . in other individuals.

The Center for Innovative Technology (CIT) announced today that MACH37™, America’s first market-centric cybersecurity accelerator, will begin taking applications on June 6 for its inaugural 90-day session starting September 16, 2013.

Pete Jobse, CIT President & CEO, said, “The creation of the MACH37™ recognizes that cybersecurity is not only one of our Nation’s top security priorities, but also one of the most significant innovation challenges facing a networked society. The creation of new cybersecurity products is the only path forward to ensure continued advances in network-based communication services.”

Jobse said that the accelerator models successful practices used in existing accelerators, such as the Y Combinator, TechStars and 500 Startups. It takes candidates, or cohort companies, through an intensive three-month program that transforms innovative cybersecurity product ideas into validated, investment-grade early-stage companies positioned to be the next generation of cybersecurity providers.

Pathologists and clinical laboratory professionals who regularly analyze images will be interested in the findings of a research study designed to assess how the phenomenon called “inattentional blindness” among radiologists could cause them to possibly miss things hiding in plain sight.

‘Inattentional Blindness’ Occurs Even Among Highly-trained Radiologists

In a recent study, psychological scientists from Harvard’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital found that 83% of radiologists didn’t notice an image of a gorilla embedded in a computed tomography (CT) lung scan.