The Abell Foundation underwrote a comparison of Baltimore’s innovation ecosystem with that of Boston. Sean Pool and Matt Van Itallie, of Canterbury Road Partners, undertook the work and their report is telling of the challenges in front of us, but also reveals great promise of the resources we already have and what Baltimore’s innovation ecosystem can become. The full report can be found on the Abell Foundation website.
This video is the first in a series about Startup Shell, the first student-founded, student-run venture incubator at the University of Maryland.
The Startup Shell is a vibrant co-working space at UMD where talented students guide their colleagues through ideation, research and development, product prototyping, business model creation and more.
Startup Shell is located in the Technology Advancement Program (TAP) incubator, an initiative of the Maryland Technology Enterprise Institute (Mtech) in the A. James Clark School of Engineering.
Target has joined one of the growing trends in healthcare: innovation challenges. It announced on Monday two contests: one will seek a solution that helps people make positive lifestyle and prevention choices, while the other will gather ways to help people live well with a chronic condition.
The Target Simplicity Challenge will reward the creators of the winning ideas $25,000 apiece, their own Target-branded flip camera, and a chance to partner with Target to develop the concepts. The deadline for ideas is Oct. 24 and winners will be announced by January.
Maryland entrepreneurs are getting the chance to bring their small business plans directly to a panel of angel investors who could bring those ideas to life.
“The one thing we want to do is bring your story back with us,” said Mike Binko, founder and co-chair of Startup Maryland. “We want to put a big spotlight and a big megaphone in your hands to tell your story in your words.”
Harvard University has partnered with several venture capital firms to launch The Experiment Fund. The Experiment Fund is starting with $10 million and was co-founded by Harvard alumni Patrick Chung (New Enterprise Associates) and Hugo Van Vuuren. Accel Partners and Polaris Ventures is also associated with The Experiment Fund.
Two of the world’s most prolific technology entrepreneurs, Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg, are known for being Harvard University dropouts. Why did they drop out? Possibly due to lack of resources at the University. Mark Zuckerberg moved to Silicon Valley from Harvard University to raise VC funding for Facebook in May 2004 and never looked back.
University System of Maryland increased the number of new companies formed out of university technology by 29 percent in fiscal 2013 and is aiming to keep up the pace this year.
The university system credits the growth in new businesses in part to its heightened focus on entrepreneurship and transforming university research to commercial technology. Assistant Vice Chancellor for Information Technology Suresh Balakrishnan said the university system will look to continue adding new companies by looking for new ways to support startups, such as an investment fund.
The Johns Hopkins University edged closer to the top 10 of national universities on the U.S. News and World Report annual rankings, which were released Tuesday.
U.S. News moved Hopkins up one spot to No. 12, just behind Dartmouth University and tied with Northwestern University, in the most-often cited of numerous college rankings. It was the highest ranking for Hopkins in 14 years. As expected based on prior rankings, Princeton, Harvard and Yale remained in the top three spots, in that order.
Biotech venture capitalists, as a group, haven’t had much to cheer about the past few years. But this is shaping up to be the year the storyline changes, thanks to the ripple effect from the biotech IPO class of 2013.
The story of biotech venture capital over the past few years, as many readers know well, has been mostly about struggle. Many firms haven’t been able to scrape out returns, and they’ve reacted by grasping for new investment models, pushing partners out, veering into other sectors, or shutting their doors. The historic shift, which came about a decade after the genomics bubble, left only a few firms with the desire and capability to make the edgiest, riskiest, and potentially most innovative investments in life sciences.
I visited cardiologist Eric Topol at the Scripps Green Hospital in La Jolla, California, one day this summer. He’d had a busy morning seeing patients and, by about noon, was claiming to have already saved the medical system tens of thousands of dollars using his iPhone and a pocket-sized ultrasound machine. Then he pointed to the stethoscope in his pocket and said he hasn’t used it in three years. “I should just throw it out,” he said. “This is basically a worthless icon of medicine.”
Topol is perhaps the most prominent advocate in the U.S. of how digital technology can lead to less expensive health care, and he invited me to see the savings in action. As we lope toward the exam room, Topol, slightly hunched and repeatedly turning to deal with questions flying at him from his staff, seems slightly rattled by the commotion and barrage of demands, but a calm sets in the moment he enters the exam room. He folds his arms across his chest as a young colleague updates him on the patient’s history. Topol introduces himself to the 85-year-old man, who has been tiring easily as of late, and then the doctor immediately pulls out his iPhone.
While U.S. job growth was less than economists expected in August – increasing by 169,000 – the healthcare sector remained a bright spot, adding 32,700 jobs, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ jobs report issued Friday.
In the healthcare sector, ambulatory healthcare services had the most growth, with 26,600 added jobs. Hospitals saw the least growth, adding only 900 jobs in August. Home healthcare services and nursing and residential care facilities continued to be solid, adding 9,500 jobs and 5,200 respectively.
