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.
Creativity generates things that are novel and useful. Make them successful, and you’ve got innovation. There can be no innovation without creativity.
We associate creativity with innate ability that only some have; with transparent happenings that can’t be codified; with eureka moments that come from the subconscious. If anything defies process, it’s creativity. So let’s not use process to squelch creativity, let’s foster behaviors that spawn creativity.
The hammer throw, one of the most unusual events in the 2012 Summer Games, is a lot like a particle accelerator. For those who may not be familiar with the hammer throw, here’s a quick rundown:
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t was enough to make a trio of heavily tattooed young men stop their playful splashing and to prompt a small boy to run to his mother in alarm: a woman rising out of the choppy waves of the sea, her head wrapped in a neon-orange ski mask.
As she made her way toward the shore, more people stared. A man floating in a yellow inner tube nudged his female companion, who muttered the question many others must have been asking themselves: “Why is she wearing that?”
What's happening in small business today?
1. Is the CARD Act hurting small businesses trying to get credit? It's no secret that small business lending has clammed up since the recession started for a number of reasons, including weaker demand, a weak real estate market making it tough to get home equity lines of credit and tougher overall lending standards. But another factor may be the CARD Act, which went into effect in 2010, offering new protections for consumer credit cards (but not business cards), making many business owners shift their credit to personal cards.
While it's still unclear how much the CARD Act affected small business borrowing, it could be substantive, says Bloomberg BusinessWeek contributor Scott Shane.
“Is Cloud Computing really cheaper?” Of all the questions asked at a recent event, this particular one was the most difficult to answer. Earlier this week I was at the New Jersey Institute of Technology as the host of CloudCamp, a “un-conference” created to inform and educate on various cloud computing topics. Since the launch of the unconventional series of events more than four years ago, it has grown to more than 300 cities around the globe. Over that time a lot of things have changed in the tech world. The discussion has shifted from a question of what is or isn’t cloud computing, to one of what can be done with cloud computing?
Stupid people believe in angels. That's one of Aaron Sorkin's go-to banter formulas that was recently repeated by Jeff Daniels's character Will McAvoy in his opening rant in HBO's Newsroom. One of the many reasons America is not the greatest country in the world, McAvoy tells a college audience, is that America leads the world in "the number of adults who believe angels are real."
Sorkin, and others who share his view, would probably be surprised to know just how irrational we all are. Not all of us believe in angels, but we regularly attribute human behaviors to inanimate objects, such as toys. We speak to animals. We yell at computers. We think that burying a Red Sox jersey in Yankee stadium will affect the outcome of baseball games.
Ron Lieber has a column in today's New York Times called "A Financial Plan For The Truly Fed Up" where he lists some alternatives to investing your savings with the banks and brokerages that make up Wall Street.
His roadmap is basically what the Gotham Gal and I have been doing since the aftermath of the financial market meltdown in 2008. We invested pretty heavily in the stock market as the market was melting down in 2008 and I blogged actively about that here at AVC. But we took our gains early, in the first half of 2009, and then have more or less stayed out of the stock and bond markets since then (we do use our portfolio company Covestor's service).
Webster's defines a valley as "a stretch of low lands between hills or mountains." But for a growing number of tech entrepreneurs and workers, "Silicon Valley" is a squared-off patch surrounded by water, not mountain ranges.
Consider this: San Francisco has led the world in venture capital funding for three years running, and the city has more than 4,000 startups in the South of Market area alone, according to San Francisco tech incubator the Hatchery.
Of course, the South Bay remains the home of Silicon Valley's dominant companies: Apple (AAPL), Google (GOOG), Oracle (ORCL) and Hewlett-Packard (HPQ). And the venture capital industry is still all but run from Sand Hill Road in Palo Alto.
I love it when a twitter concept becomes a blog post. I read an article today that has something to say about innovation, even though the article is really about branding. The article claims that brands have to serve something. As Dylan said, you can serve the devil, or you can serve the Lord, but you're gonna serve somebody. New products and services, if truly innovative, are going to serve somebody. And, likely, anger some other people. We have to adjust our thinking as innovators to stop trying to please everyone, and build products and services that service something.
Those of us who love the idea that wind-generated power could help reduce some of the world's fossil-fuels addiction are conflicted by stories of possible health side effects (headaches and worse) as well as the negative impact that some wind farms have had on bats and birds. Not to mention the noise and the aesthetics.
But what if you could make a wind turbine with no blades at all?
Yes, I know I just wrote about the world's longest blade which is fascinating in and of itself, well I just read this item over at TreeHugger detailing a scheme by a company called Saphon Energy to redesign the turbine layout to eliminate blades. Not only will this help with some of the noise concerns and danger to wildlife, but it will help turbines be more efficient, according to the company.
After more than eighteen months investigating the Department of Energy Loan Guarantee program, the House Energy and Commerce Committee yesterday passed H.R. 6213, the “No More Solyndras Act” by a vote of 29-19. The bill prevents loan guarantees for any applications submitted after the end of 2011, and would place new restrictions on application reviews and existing loans.
The NVCA, along with TechNet, ACORE, SEIA and E2, put out a statement against the bill saying that the program should be reformed, not shut down. Our statement read in part, "While the DOE Loan Guarantee Program can be improved, elements of the ‘No More Solyndras Act’ go far beyond reasonable reforms and threaten to shut down a successful policy that has helped drive billions in private capital investment, supported tens of thousands of badly-needed jobs and spurred innovation across the sector.”
Have you ever wondered why some people eat whatever they want, never say no to desserts, rarely if ever exercise, and never appear to gain weight? On the other hand, you do all the right things and keep putting on pounds.
Suzanne Somers, television star, sums up the problem.
"Around age 40 I put on 20 pounds. I had always had a perfect metabolism. But my metabolism betrayed me as it does most people, except for a very rare few, who will always be thin."
Contrary to what most of you might guess, the highest rate of entrepreneurial activity over the last few years is not Gen-Y young upstarts, but Baby Boomers in the 55-64 year age group. In fact, according to a study by the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, these Boomers are actually driving a new entrepreneurship boom.
Some people are calling entrepreneurship the ‘new mid-life crisis’ for the 76 million-strong demographic once thought to be over the hill. Partially due to the economy, but also due to longer, healthier lives and changes in job tenure, 62% of working Boomers are now expected to stay in the labor force, with real power and influence, for at least nine more years, to 2020.
A term I’m hearing more and more these days is “social entrepreneur.” In the simplest of terms, these are people who seek to generate “social value”, rather than profits, and use traditional business principles to create and manage a venture to make social change.
On the surface, this sounds like entrepreneurs who want to build a non-profit organization. Yet the term seems to be more often associated with people whose work is targeted toward long-term socio-economic change. Think Margaret Sanger (birth control) or Mahatma Gandhi (non-violent), as opposed to the leaders of the Cancer Society or Goodwill Industries.
This week I had two meetings with CEOs of companies we’ve recently invested in where the question of “what is an ideal board meeting” came up. I’m writing an entire book on it called Startup Boards: Reinventing the Board of Directors to Better Support the Entrepreneur so it’s easy for me to define my ideal board meeting at this point since my head is pretty deep into it intellectually.
One of the things I always suggest to CEOs is that they be an outside director for one company that is not their own. I don’t care how big or small the company is, whether or not I have an involvement in the company, or if the CEO knows the entrepreneurs involved. I’m much more interested in the CEO having the experience of being a board member for someone else’s company.
IN December 2008, Georgette Kaplan and her two daughters, Stephanie and Jamie, felt as if they were receiving a wonderful holiday gift.
Products from their personal-care company, Ms. & Mrs., were going to be showcased on “The View,” the ABC talk show, as part of its seasonal gift guide. Giddy with anticipation, the women huddled around a television in their Chicago office on the day of the broadcast as heavy snow fell outside.
Last Friday, the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) filed final, amended policy directives for the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) and Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) programs. The amended policy directives seek to implement changes made to the programs regarding SBIR/STTR reauthorization provisions included in the FY 12 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA).
The Small Business Innovation Development Act of 1982 (SBIDA) and the Small Business Research and Development Enhancement Act of 1992 (SBRDEA), which established the SBIR and STTR programs, require SBA to issue policy directives that provide general guidance to the Federal agencies participating in the programs. Participating agencies may adapt their SBIR and STTR programs to best suit their specific needs so long as they comport with the general guidelines established by the policy directives, and the SBIDA and SBRDEA, respectfully.
Through the SBIR Program, 11 federal agencies make high-risk capital available to fund R&D at the nation’s most innovative small companies. Each year, federal agencies with extramural research and development budgets that exceed $100 million are required to set aside a specific percentage of that budget to be competitively awarded to small U.S. firms under the SBIR program. The SBIR allocation is 2.6% in federal fiscal year (FY) 2012, increasing to 3.2% in FY2017.
Federal agencies with extramural R&D budgets over $1 billion are also required to participate in the STTR program by allocating an annual set-aside of 0.35% (FY2012). This percentage will increase to 0.4% in FY2017.
At any given time, you will see tenants and members of the East Lansing Technology Innovation Center (TIC) and the Hatch popping into each other’s offices, either for advice; to ask for help in setting up a printer; or just to say hello.
The East Lansing TIC is business incubator and home to technology startup companies. The Hatch is a co-working office that offers memberships to students who are enrolled at least half-time in a higher education institution in the Lansing region.
There is no substitute for diving into the key details of a new startup. Executives from large companies have sometimes long forgotten how to do this (“My people will contact your people to work out the details.”). Others hire consultants, or outsource much of the real work. These executives won’t survive long in a startup environment.
An obvious reason is limited funds, but a more important reason is the need to know and intimately understand what is really going on in the business and the market. A diligent entrepreneur should certainly work the important details for his or her startup, especially when it comes to assessing any negative fluctuations in the business.
