Perpetual Innovation

Category: business incubator

  • Rise of the Rest – Entrepreneur Tour. 5 Cities at a time.

    World Stock Markets:

    Steve Case from AOL fame is one of the judges going round hitting up start-up business ideas, 5 cities at a time. The south of USA is next.

    Revolution, Google for Entrepreneurs, and UP Global

    This UP Global initiative is an interesting approach by Google ventures and others to identify and fund new venture ideas.

    A very cool approach to jump starting innovation anywhere and everywhere around the world. That the winner gets a boat-load of money and and a blast of publicity is a rather nice perk to the whole process.

    See Google Ventures here: http://www.gv.com/about

    See Case Foundation here: http://casefoundation.org

    I Like the title of an article on the Case Foundation web site: “Running business as if the future matters.”

    Steve’s come some distance since the time when the guppy-eat-the-whale daze of the DotCom error when AOL bought out TimeWarner. This buy-out-merger resulted in one of the greatest indigestion from over-eating of all time.

    Read about this Maalox moment in a 2005 book: “The failure of the AOL-Time Warner merger is the subject of a book by Nina Munk entitled Fools Rush In: Steve Case, Jerry Levin, and the Unmaking of AOL Time Warner(2005).” (Steve Case, 2015, Life and Career, para. 10).

    Steve has had a very impressive log of ventures and philanthropic organizations since the AOL days.

    Reference

    Steve Case. (2015, March 12). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 14:34, March 16, 2015, from http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Steve_Case&oldid=651091501

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  • To Incubate or not to Incubate

    Marshall Goodman: Ex-administrator For USF Helping Collier County | TheLedger.com:

    This answers the age-old questions: To Incubate or NOT to incubate?

    A: Incubators definitely have advantages for cluster development and rapid business startup.

    But, that doesn’t assure that it is a great investment for that governments to jump into.

    Where do old business incubator guys go when they get old?

    A: They go to Collier County, of course. Think Naples and Big Cypress National Preserve.

    Here’s a longer version of the story by Maria Perez in the Maples Daily News (and TBO.com).

    During that time about 2010, we were trying to meet with Goodman to springboard off of the wild success he was having with 3 incubators. No success, for us on a meeting. All three incubators were rumored to be full and hugely successful. In Highlands County, we were aiming to advance the inventions from USF that were better commercialized in the heartland of Florida, not the cities.

    Well let’s see how far $3.8M goes in Collier county. With an assurance of 10 to 15 companies within 6 months, how can they possibly go wrong?

    Can’t wait to see where this one goes.

    Keywords: Business Incubator, Economic Development
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  • Florida Business Incubation Association: Florida Incubators

    Florida Business Incubation Association:

    Business incubators are so very cool. Generally they bring together all the components a business will need to get started or to expand. This usually includes funding sources. But as important are the key services that every organization needs. Business advice (often tied in to the SBA’s Small Business Development Centers — SBDC)… Accounting, IT, Intellectual Property protection (patents, TM, C,…), secretarial services, etc. Lots of marking help are critical, web site, search engine optimization and more…  See the SBDC for Florida.

    Frequently incubators are tied in to the science departments of universities so the inventions of the academic world can be transported into the business world.

    An entrepreneur (or two) can’t do everything within the startup business. The incubator helps coach them into giving up some of the jobs at the company so that they can focus on one (or two).

    Often there are reduced costs for incubatees who are accepted into an incubator…

    There always is a graduation process for the incubatee as he/she grows up to be an adult company!:-)

    Incubators often have internal and external networks to help engage veterans and peers in their efforts.

    Here’s the place to go for Business Incubator info — National Business Incubator Association: https://www.nbia.org/
    * Find your incubator here based on region and or type of incubator.

    Check out the incubators in your area:
    * Florida … or Florida Business Incubator Association…
    * Georgia
    * California

    Business incubators are some times called accelerators, since they accelerate the process of a business moving forward.

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  • Patent law changes alter entrepreneurs' planning

    Patent law changes alter entrepreneurs’ planning:

    This is a nice article by Laura Baverman about patents and how they needed to be integrated into the business plan and entrepreneurs’ strategy. Since the US is now first-to-file, inventors must get their foot in the proverbial patent door early, often with a provisional patent while the details are being worked out.

    This article also slips in the key provisions related to the laws and fees that were enacted in March of 2013.

    Although the fees have all been dramatically increased, especially the follow-on maintenance fees, there is actually a micro-entity option that is only 25% of the full fee structure for large entities. (To qualify as micro, you must not have a high income and not have too many patents in your name.)

    There are a few things that are are perfectly touched on in such a short article. There’s a quick look at the staging process to protect the invention without bankrupting the small inventor. There’s a side story about the great use of a business incubator for a specific company, EnerLeap, the next-best Lithium battery.

    There’s the indication of how IP must be specifically budgeted into the business plan. Your business plan must have the budget for IP, it must have the timing for IP expenses (patent, TM, Lawyer, R&D, engineering, etc.), and it must accommodate contingencies for litigation.

    Of course, you still want to include the high margins and royalties from licensing in your income stream, you simply need to demonstrate that you have a sound plan for getting to that point.

    Great article Laura!

    Check out the Patent Primer 2.0, part of the Perpetual Innovation(tm) series, by Hall and Hinkelman (2013) at: http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/SBPlan   … or … Kindle eBook at: www.TinyURL.com/IPPrimer2

    Visit SBP’s IP web site at: www.IPplan.com 

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  • Ceres Monthly Newsletter – Flaring of Gas/NatGas

    See this blog over at SustainZine: http://sustainzine.blogspot.com/2013/08/smaller-cities-get-startup-style.html

    Ceres Monthly Newsletter:

    This report starts to document the amount of gas (nat gas) that is flared in the production of oil/gas.

    In the US we can’t get the nat gas to market, so it is imply flared in many cases. The oil (wet particulates) are much more valuable so that is shipped by pipe if possible, but by truck or train if not.

    One statement from a CEO in the oil patch has commented that half of the nat gas produces in the US is being flared. Safety, of course is critical. But this is a humongous waste of energy and environmental waste as well.

    Check out the article and then look at the report here: http://www.ceres.org/resources/reports/flaring-up-north-dakota-natural-gas-flaring-more-than-doubles-in-two-years/view

    Basic economics is one approach to this issue. If NatGas were more valuable, then there would be very little flaring. Right now it is about $3.50 (per … unit) in the USA. So Nat gas is a byproduct of the production of oil unless it can be readily distributed to market (pipeline).  But for the world markets, NatGas is very valuable, let’s say $10. If we can bridge the gap from domestic only to world, then the price would jump and the flaring would, well, burn out. 🙂

    The key is liquefied natural gas (LNG). Not coincidentally, LNG is the trading symbol of Chaniere Energy, one the the leading players in infrastructure for exporting LNG.