start-ups

Why Smart Startups File Patents

Startup companies, unlike our “too big to fail” banks, can’t afford to make too many Enormous Mistakes without perishing or losing much of their value. One of the Enormous Mistakes that some startups make is neglecting intellectual property. That includes neglecting opportunities to protect their business, as well as the need to make sure they …

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The Tsunami of External Fatigue

Innovators and business leaders doing their best to achieve commercial success need to understand the set of innovation fatigue factors that they face. These include personal factors due to the bad behavior of individuals; corporate or organizational fatigue factors reflecting inadequate systems, culture, or flawed judgment; and external fatigue factors due to the burdens of …

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Engineers Interested in Innovation, Startups, and IP: Join Us at the 2010 AIChE Annual Meeting

Chemical engineers interested in innovation and entrepreneurship should consider attending the AIChE 2010 Annual Meeting in Salt Lake City. On Wednesday, Nov. 10, I will chair a session featuring four outstanding speakers on topics that should be of interest to many engineers, including university researchers, corporate researchers, and managers. If you are conducting research that …

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Thinking Beyond Ethanol

Ethanol as a biofuel may soon reach practical limits in the US and frankly is clouded with questions about its economic and environmental utility. However, the fermentation systems for producing ethanol can be adapted to produce much more valuable products using special microbes developed at some of the most promising green energy and biotech companies. …

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Amyris: Great Story of Open Innovation and Renewable Products

In my ongoing work on analyzing the intellectual property landscape in biofuels, one of the most impressive companies I’ve run across is Amyris, a renewable products company whose clever use of synthetic biology goes far beyond biofuels. Amyris was founded by Kinkead Reiling, Neil Renninger, and Jack D. Newman who met at Berkeley and founded …

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Guerrilla Development: Brian Argo Shares Innovation Lessons from His Work with Solar Cells

Today I’m pleased to share a guest column from a friend, Brian Argo of Brian Argo & Associates LLC. Brian specializes in technical scouting, intellectual property searches, and formulation of cleaners and personal care products. He has a wide variety of experience in innovation and offers an interesting perspective that I thought would be useful …

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The Death of Angel Investing? Possible Unintended Consequences of a Financial Reform Bill

The lifeblood of innovation is capital. Investment of capital is the primary difference between great ideas and great teams that go nowhere and those that change the world. From the airplane to the iPod, from wonder drugs to wonder software, innovation requires invested capital to bring concepts to commercial reality. Angel investors play a crucial …

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Beware the Unintended Innovation-Killing Consequences of Laws and Policies

The road to innovation fatigue is paved with good intentions embodied in laws, regulations, and even corporate policies. Leaders at all levels must be aware of uninteded innovation-killing consequences that may follow from their good intentions. Staying in touch with the “voice of the innovator,” as we advocate in Conquering Innovation Fatigue, is vital in …

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Singapore, the Lion City of Innovation: Interview with Boon Swan Foo, Executive Chairman of Exploit Technologies

Almost like something out of a Utopian science fiction novel, two neighboring research communities, Fusionopolis and Biopolis, stand as R&D beacons to scientists and companies across the globe, rising from the small island nation of Singapore and its remarkable research park, One North. Fusionopolis and Biopolis are visible fruits of a dramatic new focus on …

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