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Two big crowd-funding questions – The Term Sheet: Fortune’s deals blog Term Sheet
Ever since the JOBS Act passed earlier this month, I’ve been inundated with PR pitches about new crowd-funding platforms. So many, in fact, that I’m surprised a crowd-funding platform hasn’t been formed to help seed all the other ones.
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Berlin Cracks the Startup Code – Businessweek
On a rainy day in March 2011, Ciarán O’Leary and two colleagues crammed into a Berlin taxi and raced for the station to catch a train back to Hamburg. While snaking through the city streets, it hit him: Leaving Berlin was a bad idea. “We looked at each other and knew in that moment that we’d be crazy not to move here,” says O’Leary, a partner at the German venture capital firm Earlybird. “There was just so much happening—founders everywhere, in every bar, cafe, every corner.”
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The 8 Essentials of Innovation – Forbes
You might hear that innovation depends on creativity or on new ideas but leading practitioners have gone beyond that. In fact in my experience many companies still only pay lip service to innovation. Those who are looking to do innovation well, in contrast, are either pioneering or looking to develop eight new elements. Here are those eight new attributes of really good innovators.
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Setting up courses in the cloud is a trend in online learning. Whether you are a training company, a non-profit trainer, an experienced hobbyist, or an educational institute, at some point you will want to tap into the cloud, attract new learners from around the globe, and start learning collaboratively.
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Renee Blodgett: Entrepreneurs Should Think Globally Far Beyond Silicon Valley’s Borders
While Silicon Valley may be the “hub” for technology startups and where the world thinks the top creativity and talent reside, there is plenty of innovation coming out of other parts of the world.
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4 Ways To Create Brand Content People Actually Care About | Fast Company
We sing the praises of brands that appear to effortlessly lead the social conversation–Tom’s Shoes, Virgin America, Chipotle–while simultaneously hitting “refresh” on our Facebook likes, completely missing the point.
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Teen Entrepreneur Camp Comes to Fruition – MarketWatch
Quantum Learning Network (QLN) announces a partnership today with the Network for Teaching Entrepreneurship (NFTE) to launch SuperBizCamp, a “mini-MBA” style course in entrepreneurship for teens at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles. Each participant in the program will develop an original idea and then create a sound business plan to bring their idea to life. At the end of the program, students present their proposals to a panel of judges for a chance to win seed capital.
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New NY Startup Incubator for Female Mobile Entrepreneurs – NYConvergence.com
NY has a new startup incubator program that caters to female entrepreneurs in the mobile industry.
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The Reality of Being Online | Entrepreneur Magazine
The challenge facing brands today is harnessing and exploring the best digital techniques and channels available to them to deliver truly relevant, engaging solutions to business problems. But where to begin?
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Smartphones are Transforming the Retail Industry | Entrepreneur Magazine
Just as the proliferation of personal computers and Internet access in the 1990s aided the emergence of e-commerce, the rising consumer adoption of smartphones is transforming the retail industry, says consulting firm The E-tailing Group Inc. and digital marketing firm Acquity Group LLC.
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The Global Information Technology Report 2012 – Living in a Hyperconnected World (April 2012)
Last year, the Global Information Technology Report (GITR) series celebrated its 10th anniversary. The World Economic Forum, in collaboration with INSEAD, initially began this project to explore the impact of information and communication technologies (ICT) on productivity and development as a component of the Forum’s research on competitiveness. To this end, over the past decade the Networked Readiness Index (NRI) has been measuring the degree to which economies across the world leverage ICT for enhanced competitiveness.
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Employment in South Africa grew at the annualized rate of 6.8 percent for the month of March outstripping growth in the previous two months, the latest installment of the Adcorp Employment Index says.
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Network for Teaching Entrepreneurship New England Announces Adopt-A-Class Program – MarketWatch
The New England chapter of The Network for Teaching Entrepreneurship (NFTE), an international non-profit dedicated to inspiring young people from low-income communities to stay in school and recognize business opportunities, today announced the Adopt-A-Class program as a way for businesses to give back to the community
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Big push to increase student entrepreneurship at ASU pays off | Virtual-Strategy Magazine
On the heels of a year full of big wins and national accolades, the Edson Student Entrepreneur Initiative launched a campaign to increase awareness of entrepreneurship within the student body at Arizona State University; and it worked. Applications to the Edson program totaled 338, a 35% increase from the 250 applications received in 2011.
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Fuel And Electricity Hikes Dampen Business
The recent fuel and electricity price increases, and the planned levy on petrol and diesel, may force business owners back to the drawing board and present an opportunity to review their operational efficiencies, says Kobus Engelbrecht, marketing head of Sanlam Business Market.
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B-BBEE Amendment Bill 2011 in South Africa: For better or for worse?
Black Economic Empowerment (BEE) has become a reality that businesses in South Africa have to live with; given the on-going debate on the proposed amendments to the Broad-Based Black Economic Empowerment Act No. 53 of 2003, it has recently become a topical issue. This bill aligns the various laws relating to black economic empowerment in South Africa on 9 December 2011.(2) The Amendment Bill comes on the counsel of the Presidential B-BBEE Advisory Council. The question is, are these amendments really necessary?
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Winning the Global War for Tech Talent – Jack Mollen – Harvard Business Review
It is time for immigration reform that will keep more top technical talent in the United States. Today, American colleges and universities are educating foreign nationals who come here to earn advanced degrees in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM fields). We educate them, and then U.S. immigration regulations force them to leave our country to return home, where they contribute to economic growth and the success of our competitors overseas. That has to change.
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Desks for Startups: Infrastructure for entrepreneurs or budding startup bubble? — Technically Philly
If you have a startup in Philadelphia that has outgrown your local coffee shop, but doesn’t want an office or a storefront, well, you’re in luck.In the last six months, the number of low-cost desks for technology startups, often coupled with mentorship and business services, has exploded — more than doubling by some counts. And, as you might expect, that growth has also sparked a debate: is the development of an infrastructure necessary in a maturing entrepreneurial market or is there a budding bubble of startups servicing other startups?
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2012 State of Global Open Innovation
InnoCentive commissioned research firm Forrester in late 2011 to conduct an open innovation (OI) study on its behalf. Forrester interviewed 229 OI decision makers via a web-based survey, in addition to thirteen in-depth phone interviews with senior OI executives, within large organizations (mostly commercial but also public sector) across a wide variety of industries.
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Zoosk launches couples profiles with new features
Keeping up with the current trend for couple’s apps, the dating and romantic social network Zoosk is launching Couple Profiles. This way lovebirds can chart their relationship on a joint profile. Sounds like a joint bank account for social credit.
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Delivery Hero Raises €25 Million, Acquires OnlinePizza Norden
Online food ordering company Delivery Hero, one of Berlin’s hottest startups, has raised another round of funding, bringing its total capital raised to 40 million euros.
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Design A Room: Jennifer Jones | Entrepreneur Magazine
One of the biggest challenges facing entrepreneurs in the specialised services industry is how to commodotise their offering. Doing so allows them to extend their earning potential beyond the number of hours they can bill, but when the services you provide rely on your personal expertise and hands-on involvement, it can be tricky.
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BEE, skills shortage hamper entrepreneurship | ITWeb
SA has the potential to be the Silicon Valley of Africa; however, it lacks the full understanding, government support and proactive development of intellectual property rights in order to foster entrepreneurship.
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MXit to enable entrepreneurs | ITWeb
It is as sad as it is true that our country’s youth unemployment figures hover at just over 50 percent, and many traditional industries are reluctant to take on young graduates.
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Tossing young entrepreneurs a rope – The Star | IOL.co.za
It is as sad as it is true that our country’s youth unemployment figures hover at just over 50 percent, and many traditional industries are reluctant to take on young graduates.
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Business by numbers: Entrepreneurship | Build it Kenny, and they will come…
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The Gravitational Force of Social Entrepreneurship
A cleansing wave of corporate reform is washing over America. One by one, states are adopting new legislation that gives corporate directors legal protections for making decisions to maximizestakeholder value in addition to shareholder value. These new corporate structures are spawning an ecosystem of entrepreneurs and investors eager to build firms that simultaneously scale profits and social or environmental impact.
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Europe’s Information Society Newsroom
Neelie Kroes, Vice-President of the European Commission responsible for the Digital Agenda
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The New Map of Mobile Innovation: Some Surprising First Lessons
Almost two months ago, infoDev launched an online challenge to aid digital job creation in developing countries. The challenge, called m2Work (after mobile microwork), asks participants to identify real-world problems that could be addressed by millions of underprivileged people equipped with Internet-connected mobile phones. The challenge is still ongoing: most of the $40,000 prize money remains on the table, and anyone can submit ideas until April 2. Even so, a lot has already happened. Over 600 ideas have been submitted, and the jury has awarded four initial spot prizes.
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Showcasing research, innovation and entrepreneurship | Northeastern University News
A sustainable urban housing prototype, a sensor-laden shirt that tracks exercise effectiveness and an interactive computer game for people with physical disabilities were among the student and faculty research projects showcased Thursday at RISE:2012, the university’s research, innovation and scholarship expo.
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THIS IS NASA’S MOST DETAILED INFRARED VIEW OF OUR NIGHT SKY, ASSEMBLED FROM 2.7 MILLION PHOTOS AND 15 TRILLION BYTES OF DATA.
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Three Rules for Innovation Teams – Harry West – Harvard Business Review
Our business at Continuum is design and innovation (if you’ve used a Swiffer or pushed a new Target shopping cart, you’ve encountered us), so naturally we are always looking for ways to innovate how we innovate. Three refinements to our team approach are making a difference: actively managing creative friction; making project rooms the focal point of the work environment; and pushing as much creativity into commercialization as into conceptualization. Follow these rules, and you’ll see a dramatic difference in your own team’s ability to innovate:
chrisvermeulen 