Startup founders, while their venture is still revenue-free, are not really self-employed. Unless they’ve also got a day job, they’re technically unemployed. This fact opens up opportunities for some really imaginative startup incentives
MySpace ex-CEO launches one, Dave ‘colourful language’ McClure hosts an LA Acceleratorfest, TechStar’s Brad Feld on Accelerators vs. Incubators, Cisco’s in-house guy goes solo, and much more
What’s happening to bioengineering, in the ‘post-life-synthesis-announcement’ era?
Renowned educational critic Steve Peha is unconvinced that any of the current or proposed major educational reform initiatives will change anything. Ever.
Science is ‘going virtual’ in a big way: rapidly escalating computing horsepower is turning lots of real-world research into simulation-based experimentation. Is this helping or hindering the latest open science initiatives?
There’s a growing interest in introducing an entrepreneurial approach to innovation, whether its happening inside or outside the established organisation
At 12 am one night in 2007, a revolutionary engineering idea popped into Michelle Khine’s head. The rest is history (and chemistry, physics, biotech, nanotech, solar: she seems unstoppable)
They often seriously hate each other, administration and street folks. But some people out there just don’t care who hates them: they help these seemingly implacable haters help each other, they save lives and they save everyone money
No, you don’t need to be a brain surgeon to find this fascinating: bio-integrated electronics is full of unimaginably weird but useful things you can do with things like, you know, live brains. It’s all about making electronic things rubbery
If Artificial Intelligence is going to automate the world’s entire workforce, we’re all going to need to give up any hope of employment and become startup entrepreneurs and innovation investors instead. They couldn’t possibly automate those, could they?
Startups from Y Combinator, TechStars, Dave McClure’s 500 Startups and Idealab tell us what life feels like, including being rejected by Y Combinator and successfully reapplying!
No dead cows, just real, sustainable beef, made with nothing but yummy stem cells and a touch of magic! All yours for a sizzling €250,000 each. And they’ll get cheaper and cheaper with every passing year (can we call that Moo’s law?)
Is it just all about ‘making the right noises’, or can they make a real difference?
Government is understandably fed up with being blamed by society when it doesn’t handle things perfectly, so it wants to be seen to be handing at least some of the responsibility for doing things back to society, but…
The move away from traditional VCs to Angels features strongly in talk about startup investment. So this seemingly contrary view from the very heart of Silicon Valley is intriguing
He asked some industrial designers to come up with something that was “Bob Dylan songs”. His cryptic demands have been described as ‘intentionally unreasonable’. But maybe that’s why they worked
Are astonishing recent successes with word-free math teaching making a mockery of the traditional textbook approach?
Startup mentoring is education. Why can’t existing government-backed student loan schemes be extended to include startup founders attending accredited startup accelerator programmes?
An onstage tournament in which in-house advocates from either side make their case in front of a live audience and we all try to read between the lines
Carmack systematically trashes proceduralism
They have another mission-critical job that you probably didn’t know about. They are required to make air travel on this planet safer, more efficient and more environmentally friendly for everyone
‘Nobody should claim to be doing innovation’ already sounds like a pretty shocking proposition, but it soon becomes clear that conventional ideas are the last thing to expect from the conversation captured in this extraordinary video
And all that was BEFORE she got into the VC business, and not just the old-style VC business: she does mentoring at TechStars, invested early in UStream, and is CEO of Get Satisfaction, a 50,000+ customer startup which uses social media to support customer relationships
Die-hard sceptics still regarding it as little more than a convenient excuse for a lack of interest in or dedication to study may be surprised by this video, which reflects impressive academic achievement in a discipline which simultaneously challenges, derives value from and provides support for the cognitive distinctiveness that dyslexia represents
The Economist calls you a post-materialist: you don’t feel driven by materialist ambitions. You just need enough to maintain your existing lifestyle, rather than improve it. But what does ‘not being your own boss’ mean in this context?
Nobody invents everything they do, innovating all of the time. Most of the time, we are part of the community, resisting newer untried innovations merely by not abandoning older accepted ones. It’s important for innovators to regularly remind themselves about how it feels to be “everyone else”
Looking for a video covering the latest developments in the interface between flesh, mind and machine, from fully functional transplants to limb replacements offering superhuman capabilities?
The detail of our individual genetic makeup is already being used to make diagnoses and treatment decisions, albeit in a slow and cumbersome way. The sheer scale of the computational horsepower that doing this in real time will demand promises to bring the hulking mainframe computer back from the grave
For a first-time startup, when the real excitement of early innovation is happening, the daunting business of M&A is usually the last thing on anyone’s mind. But research is showing that the later it starts, the higher the risk
They’ve got until October, then the US Postal service expects to run out of money. This video shows Congress trying to find out “Where have all the letters gone?”
Please, no more innovation! Just let us come to terms with the last lot of changes! We prefer standardisation to innovation! This is the sector where innovators are really gladiators
When things go wrong, you could sometimes be forgiven for imagining that big institutions are indifferent to the effects of social media. This video should clear that up, at least for these household names, which seem fully engaged
What’s it like being interviewed by Paul Graham when you’re applying to Y Combinator? Watch this unmissable video of intense grilling and inspired brainstorming in front of a live audience
The offshoring phenomenon has provided strong support for the claim that simply increasing the number of suitable graduates will produce enough ‘potential for innovation’ to restore growth and jobs. Until now.
A YouTube clip of Led Zeppelin’s Jimmy Page playing a slow soulful country music version of a classical Chopin prelude with jazz-style backing at London’s Royal Albert Hall accompanied by a giant church organ. He was using a guitar internally modified so that you could bend its B string by pulling down against its shoulder strap peg in 1983
Fred Wilson (the VC world’s leading blogger) makes an insightful comparison between first time and serial entrepreneurs. I was thinking through the ‘who do you go to?’ question
Tractors, farm equipment, built at around one eighth the cost. Industrial equipment too. Superior design. Handmade quality. Problem? Investment. Solve it, and Jakubowski becomes a household word. That might just happen anyway.
Apart from biology, our physical world is mostly either dumb, rock hard, or both. We use that hard, dumb stuff to make durable things like tools, vehicles and buildings. Biology, although soft, squishy and smart, somehow also manages to grow incredibly hard things, like shells and teeth. Maybe biology can teach us better ways to make hard stuff too
Googlers get taught how to think more creatively about exploring business models. We mere mortals can sit and watch while guru Alex Osterwalder talks us through the ideas in his bestselling book
This lab is turning the way social science research is conducted on its head, and that’s not just because the whole thing is online
This astonishing video takes environmental innovation to its outer limits: you’ll need to be pretty imaginative to find a way to invest in the ideas it explores
Apart from being about new ideas and leadership (which is, after all, the entire reason for the list) there’s not much in common between these volumes, other than each one focussing on some unique but pertinent aspect
Does this talk, four months before the announcement offer the best insight into the thinking behind it?
Surprisingly, these influential and outspoken panellists, who you might expect would have opposing views on just about everything, seem to be having a candid, but surprisingly civil conversation about a very controversial subject: was it something in the water?
‘My twelve year old son has autism, and has a terrible time with math. We have tried everything, viewed everything, bought everything. We stumbled upon your video on decimals, and it got through! Then we went on to the dreaded fractions. Again, he got it! We could not believe it! He is so excited.’
Video curation, the final frontier. These are the voyages of the iij Enterprise. Her ongoing mission: to explore strange new innovation videos, to disregard things that have caused them to be ignored or dismissed and to put them into context
You’ll need to watch this video if your knowledge of the issues has so far been mostly constrained to news coverage
It looks like the enviable track record of startup accelerators like TechStars and Y Combinator derives from identifying something you might call ‘Foundational Capability’ as the basis for startup success, but there is a dark side
This starts off as a talk about startup methodology but somehow manages to morph into a sales pitch for an intriguing new solar technology. If you’re able to keep up with Bill Gross’s sometimes ferocious pace of delivery, stick with it, it’s well worth the ride
It’s a funny old world where it takes Wired Magazine to show the medical fraternity how truly unintelligible (but life-critical) gibberish can be transformed in ways that allow us to take control of our own well being