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.
When it comes to innovation, I have two questions. The first is: where do people find inspiration? And the second is: where do people find inspiration? By the first question, I mean what inspires people. We’re all familiar with sites like Pinterest, where you can discover new things and collect stuff that you love. Or the non-profit TED, whose mission is to spread ideas.
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There I was, standing in the middle of a dirty living room. My dog barking uncontrollably, my husband asking me questions about money, and my mind thinking about emails that needed to be returned. I had finally reached my breaking point. To say I was overwhelmed would be an understatement. As I stood there, my brain slowly began to shut down. All I really wanted was to curl up on the couch, and be left alone for eternity. Since I could remember, I’ve always wanted to be my own boss and work in film. When the universe delivered both, I realized I didn’t really understand what I had asked for. Don’t get me wrong, I love my job and I love what I do, but at times I found myself going into overwhelm, and soon after hitting a brick wall. Between being the Director of Social Media and Marketing & a partner at the Bushwick Film Festival, being married, owning a dog, having grown up duties like paying bills & cleaning the house, I found myself falling behind not only in work but also in life.
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Last night the ridiculously over-entitled folks on Capitol Hill decided that their personal politics were more important than the smooth workings of a country of some 319 million people and forced a shutdown of the mechanisms of government. Yes, this means National Parks are effectively closed, some museums are shut, all sorts of medical services may be affected, and the already damaged dollar takes an enormous whack on the international stage. But did you know that the shutdown also means NASA is not going to alert you via Twitter if an asteroid is going to crash into the Earth?
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It's fall and for college students, you know what that means: It's back to school. If you're girding for bad cafeteria food and all-nighters, you're smart. If you're also pondering a startup idea, you're probably crazy. That said, if you can write a business plan in between term papers, the university setting is one of the richest environments on earth for young entrepreneurs.
“I've been incredibly fortunate in that my university has offered some amazing resources that have helped me grow my business,” says Jonathan Weber, founder of the Stroudsburg, Pa., web-design startup Marathon Studios Inc. A senior at East Stroudsburg University in Pennsylvania, Weber appreciates free office space in an on-campus business accelerator, access to grant money and a network of contacts.
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An early-stage investment fund founded by Revolution has raised $200 million in commitments, blowing past its $150 million goal. The new fund, Revolution Ventures, will invest in technology firms, mostly under $10 million in revenue, that are seeking to disrupt traditional industries.
“We are doing the things that we’ve been doing for the last decade,” Revolution co-founder Steve Case said. “Trying to find early-stage companies that are using technology to disrupt traditional industries, create new business models and have all kinds of different aspects that we find interesting.”
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Evolent Health, an Arlington, Va.-based provider of a population health managed services solution, has raised $100 million in Series B funding. TPG Growth was joined by return backers The Advisory Board Co. and UPMC Health Plan. www.evolenthealth.com Palantir, a big data company focused on the financial services and government sectors, has raised $197 million in new funding, according to a regulatory filing.
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You worked long, sometimes fruitless hours to make your startup a reality. Endless meetings, pitches and late-night work sessions later, it's hard to imagine walking away. Or is it?
We asked nine successful entrepreneurs from YEC what exactly it would take for them to walk away from their startups. Here's what they said:
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If you think success is hard, how about taking a step back and seeing what looking at yourself in the mirror 20 years from now will feel like if you choose to fail. Yep, I said choose. And this doesn’t just happen on January 1st of each year with another resolution. The choice to succeed in life and business is one I make daily. Here are 6 things that I have incorporated into my daily dose to become my best CEO.
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Entrepreneurs are risk-takers, sacrificing everything to change the world. Let me know if this sounds familiar: A father of four risks his house and the livelihood of his wife and children in an effort to pursue his dream. After taking another mortgage on his house, his business flourishes and it all works out. But what happens when it doesn’t?
Embracing risk is important; it’s part of being an entrepreneur. However, a fundamental difference exists between taking calculated risks and being reckless altogether.
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These days, having a strategic investor or partner has become almost a matter of survival for healthcare startups.
Corporate investing and partnering has really taken off over the last few years as pharma and medical device companies have opened their doors and wallets to find innovation outside of their four walls.
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It’s an exciting time to be a venture capitalist. As an investor at NEA in Silicon Valley, I’m seeing some of today’s greatest technology and business revolutions up close:
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The manufacturing of pharmaceuticals and medical devices is becoming increasingly complex. Companies are expanding their product portfolios to meet rapidly changing markets and lengthening product life cycles. Emerging economies want more affordable products. Quality and compliance issues are rising because products are more complex and regulatory scrutiny is stricter. And the number of drug recalls is increasing. Yet the supply chain remains fragmented and incomplete, with weaknesses that put patients at risk, cost billions in value, and lessen the health-care sector’s ability to take on the challenges it faces. (For more, see our video interview with McKinsey director Katy George on how improving the health-care supply chain will benefit companies across the industry.)
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The thing about meeting Arianna Huffington is that it’s kind of magical: coconut water appears in your hand, books alight upon your lap, and nestled amid the tension of the Huffington Post newsroom, her office is a pocket of tranquillity, even with the muted big screen of cable news and assistants darting in and out with this or that beverage.
Image: Arianna Huffington
Perhaps you've heard: Sitting is the new smoking. For years, a growing body of research has shown sitting for extended periods of time, the way most of us do for 50 to 70 percent of our lives, can cause a host of issues from lower back pain to diabetes to an increased risk of death.
Americans moving to New Jersey earned higher incomes than those relocating to any other state last year. Those making their homes in Massachusetts and Vermont tended to be more college educated. In sunny Florida and Arizona, new residents were most likely older.
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HANOVER, N.H. -- Dartmouth College is opening a new center to help students become entrepreneurs in business and social ventures.
The Innovation Center and New Venture Incubator is expected to open early next year. Dartmouth President Phil Hanlon described it during his inaugural address earlier this month, calling student innovation a "well of unlimited creativity and potential" that must be nurtured.
Bureaucracy is one of the dirty words in business. Nobody wants to publicly admit their company is bogged down with too many layers of management, or needs a dozen committees to sign off on every little decision. For a couple years now, I’ve been hearing entrepreneurs complain about suffocating bureaucracy in pharma.
Innovation success stories are all strikingly similar: a bright idea, supported by a zealot-innovator who sees it through. The windfall of goodies follows.
But failures happen for all sorts of reasons, and they often occur even when the idea is sound. This is especially true for business model innovations — when the new idea is not a product, service, or technology but a different way of engaging with the customers and earning revenue from them. Large organizations in particular struggle to implement these kinds of innovations, which is why you most often see them in the context of entrepreneurial ventures.
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Earlier this year Sun Yat-sen University, a well-regarded institution in Guangzhou in the Guangdong province of China, announced that the university and affiliated hospitals were entering into a novel collaboration with Johns Hopkins Medicine. The agreement would see Hopkins faculty working bilaterally with Sun Yat-sen’s medical faculty both in China and at Hopkins in order to help the university become a world-class biomedical research institute. The deal has significant implications for U.S. hospitals because, facing declining revenues, international collaborations like these offer a new path for growth.
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