We are moving into the Augmented Age - an exciting time to be alive!!

Jeff Kowalski and Hugh Herr talk about the Augmented Age and how technology can eradicate disabilities!

Hugh lost both legs from frostbite, and instead of seeing this as a disability, saw his body as a blank canvas to improve his body using technology.... and now can climb better than before!!

Just like many people wear glasses, we will be wearing augmented parts of the body to improve the way we perform. We will be having implanted chips into our brains to store data and process information in ways that we could never have done without the assistance of technology!

Venture Capital in Australia: Uber for...... A sharing economy

Venture Capital in Australia: Uber for...... A sharing economy: Uber for carers and seniors  - Honor   Honor raises $20m - Matching Carers with Seniors What it is:  Honor  matches seniors with professiona...

Jobly - tailoring jobs for people

Extract from Brian Rashid

http://www.forbes.com/sites/brianrashid/2015/12/26/want-to-eradicate-joblessness-let-jobs-find-people/

Vint Cerf, father of the Internet and David Nordfors started the Innovation for Jobs leadership forum, i4j. They say that the the large numbers of unemployed and unhappy workers are an underutilized resource and customers for better jobs. 

They invented Jobly, a vision of a company that tailors jobs for people (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-nordfors/how-innovation-can-disrup-unemployment_b_5616562.html).

 Similar to a dating site, you as the job seeker express your interests, passions, and skill sets, and Jobly finds the perfect match. Then they take a percentage of the money you make. If you notice, this is much different than the current job seeking process; one in which the job seeker tries desperately to fit into the ‘box’ the employer has created in order to secure the job.

 Jobly find jobs that want your exact skill sets and connect you. Then they take a percentage.

We will create a world where jobs apply for people, instead of people applying for jobs. 

These questions will be answered at ‘The Innovation for Jobs Summit’ at the end of January.

The founders of Jobly are incentivized to find people work they love. They work for the seeker not for the company!

The job seeker is incentivized to hone their skills and clearly communicate their desires. 

Those offering the jobs get talented applicants who are excited about working for them.

Australia's $1B innovation Initiative

The Most valuable capital is human capital, which is why we need recruit, train and maintain this amazing resource! 

We need to create an environment where companies , entrepreneurs can innovate, take risks and be supported by private industry, and for these supporters to be applauded and rewarded.

The 4 pillars of the Innovation Package:-

- Culture and Capital, 

- Collaboration, 

- Talent and Skills, and 

- Government as an Exemplar.

Includes 

- entrepreneur visas - encourage talent to come to Australia

- cash for CSIRO, 

- tax breaks,

- Education as a key pillar  

- Changes to bankruptcy laws - easier to fail 

- Cgt exemption for investors in startups with 3yr + gestation 

- Generous income tax rebates for retail investors 

- Funding to align and connect university research to business

- Encourage smes to bid for it work for government 

The package's major initiatives are:

• $106 million in tax incentives for "angel" investors, who provide seed funding in the early years of a venture's creation
• $75m to the CSIRO's data research arm Data 61
• $30m for a Cyber Security Growth Centre to create business opportunities in cyber security, which the Government spends $5b on each year
• $15m over four years towards a $200m CSIRO Innovation Fund
• $10m over four years towards a $250m Biomedical Translation Fund, in partnership with the private sector

Tax: 

The tax incentives for investors will be modelled heavily on the United Kingdom's Seed Enterprise Investment Scheme.

Investors will be able to get a 20 per cent tax offset, rather than a deduction and a capital gains tax exemption. The offset model has been chosen instead of a deduction as it benefits people more evenly across income groups. This will cost $106 million over four years, with most funding kicking in after 2017.  For example if someone invests $200,000 and claims the offset they will reduce their income tax by $40,000. Then if the investor sells their shares three years later, their initial $200,000 will be exempt from capital gains tax. 

The aim is to encourage more private sector investment in start-ups, 

(My view is this will cost +$1b and will be money well spent!! )

 University funding incentives for business to make greater use of the university sector, making use of the 70pc of Australia's PHD students, the government will allocate $127 million over four years of research block grant funding towards collaboration between industry and universities. This includes new arrangements to measure the "non-academic impact and industry engagement" of universities, with the first national assessment due in 2018.

Visas: There will be a new entrepreneurs visa created to bring in international talent, and post-grad students with STEM or ICT talent . Visas will be fast-tracked for permanent residency to begin by November 2016. This will cost $1 million from 2015 to mid 2017

Offshore 'landing pads': The government will encourage Australian entrepreneurs to more easily travel to Silicon Valley, Tel Aviv and three other unknown locations, likely in Europe and Asia. This will cost $18 million over four years. This will be an interesting programme!! 

CSIRO:  $200 million to the CSIRO  placed into an innovation fund aimed at co-investing in new companies and existing start-ups developed by the CSIRO itself, publicly funded research agencies or universities. Only $15 million funded by budget- balance by receipts from Cairo royalties and private capital .

If some of these policies are not as successful as we like, we will change them. We will learn from them. Because that is what a 21st century government has got to be," said Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull.

Why Mature Companies Meed Innovation

Large companies have to learn to operate ambidextrously, and continue to pursue their core areas of expertise while experimenting elsewhere. Many companies have already started to go this route by acquiring start-ups. In our interview, Jerome S. Engel explains how large companies and start-ups can help one another to promote innovations.

Professor Engel, in 1980 you moved from the northeastern U.S., which is dominated by large companies, to San Francisco and Silicon Valley. What were your impressions?

Engel: When I arrived in Silicon Valley, the revolution of the personal computer was in full swing. Many companies were involved in this wave, big companies like IBM and success stories like Apple — and all kinds of start-ups. There were lawyers who knew what the needs of these garage companies were; there were loads of inventors and venture capital providers. Silicon Valley was — and still is — a very lively ecosystem. One thing I noticed was that all the companies there shared an urge to dominate new and growing markets. They didn’t think regionally; they immediately thought globally. From the very beginning, for example, the design company Autodesk, which I helped found back in 1982, wanted to create design software that would be used around the world.

Is it possible for large, established corporations to be as innovative as the start-ups you describe?

Engel: No, not in such a disruptive manner. Innovations, such as the ones developed by start-ups in Silicon Valley and elsewhere, don’t fit easily into the relatively rigid structures of large companies, because they rely on constant experimentation, and they’re accompanied by a lot of uncertainty. For a long time, on the other hand, the innovations supplied by established companies have been incremental, consisting in small steps. They generally only improve on what’s already successful. As a rule, a corporation will also take care not to promote innovations that undermine its own business model. To make up for this, however, large companies are masters at putting plans into action – whether it be improving their products, manufacturing them efficiently, or global sales and marketing. If companies manage to use this backbone to take a more playful approach to innovation in individual fields — and pursue a strategy of relying on their strengths for support while taking some risk — then they can be very successful too. But courage is needed to take that step.

Aren’t there also fields of innovation that simply can’t be served by start-ups?

Engel: Sure. An example would be nuclear technology. Commercializing that is not at all a straightforward matter; it’s extremely capital intensive; and it’s subject to very stringent national and international regulations. Another field is automotive technology. But there are exceptions here too. As you can see in the case of electric car maker Tesla, a start-up can be successful in this area, if it doesn’t have to show deference to any existing business models — and has the necessary startup capital, of course.

Innovations, such as the ones developed by startups in Silicon Valley and elsewhere, don’t fit easily into the relatively rigid structures of large companies, because they rely on constant experimentation, and they’re accompanied by a lot of uncertainty.

But established companies and start-ups can benefit from one another, as is the case with so-called open innovation models.

Engel: That’s right, corporations and start-ups can complement one another with their own particular strengths. But there is still room for improvement in the open innovation model with regard to the interaction of large companies and recently established market participants. Large companies have to learn to operate ambidextrously, and continue to pursue their core areas of expertise while experimenting elsewhere. Many companies have already started to go this route by acquiring start-ups that might not involve their core business and letting them operate largely on their own. Siemens, for example, does this very well with its Technology to Business (TTB) centers in Shanghai, Munich, and Berkeley. Whenever new technologies or new trends emerge whose development holds great potential, the TTBs’ scouts are on the lookout for start-up companies that may be of interest to Siemens. This way, the company ensures that promising innovations from all sources, whether developed inside or outside Siemens, can be developed into new products and services to power their business. There has to be room in established companies for this kind of true open innovation. 

Everyone thinks of Silicon Valley when it comes to innovation in the digital age. Many have tried to copy it, but so far, no one has been as successful as the original. What characteristics of that innovation cluster can be transferred to other places?

Engel: Silicon Valley is not the only innovation cluster, although it’s a very successful one. There are also innovation clusters in Israel, Germany, Taiwan, and other places. They all have similar characteristics. And that goes beyond just a certain set of components and players, such as start-up founders, venture capitalists, and established companies. These ecosystems are characterized above all by a certain behavior: highly mobile resources, money, people, and knowledge. Think, for example, of Mark Andreessen, who founded the web browser company Netscape and is now a venture capitalist. The people involved in Silicon Valley are constantly striving to create and drive forward innovations that have the potential to change the world — and they are willing to experiment and also fail. And ultimately, they’re pursuing goals that they can’t achieve alone but only collectively. Entrepreneurship and innovation are the order of the day here, and it can pay off in a big way for many — not just those at the top. the Twitter IPO created about 1,600 millionaires at one stroke; the Facebook IPO over 1,000. Add to that the ripple effect as that wealth is consumed and you can see that it can have a massive effect in terms of energizing and motivating an entire community.

About Jerome Engel

Venture capitalist, company founder, and university professor Jerome S. Engel is an innovation expert and senior fellow at the University of California at Berkeley, where he established the Lester Center for Entrepreneurship in 1991. He has also founded start-ups, including Internet company Allbusiness.com, which has provided support to young companies with information and helpful links, and was acquired by TV broadcaster NBC in March 2000. Today, he manages a venture capital fund with a partner. In recent years, Engel has been devoting much of his attention to innovation clusters, which tend to differ from regular industrial centers in their dynamism and willingness to call into question established business models. Engel edited the collection of essays titled Global Clusters of Innovation: Entrepreneurial Engines of Economic Growth around the World, a 409-page volume published by Edward Elgar Publishing Ltd in late 2014.

Venture Capital in Australia: Building our Future - Nurturing our Innovators

Venture Capital in Australia: Building our Future - Nurturing our Innovators: 1n 2002 BSI identified a need to support innovators.... 13 years on, with innovation squarely on the agenda, and 13 years of blood , sweat a...

Innovation needs to be in the DNA of everything we do... no industry is sacred

Vivek Wadhwa has written an excellent piece in the WashingtonPost on how innovation is in the DNA in everything we do.

Clayton Christensen's theories in his book "the Innovators Dilemma" was a guiding light to innovators to innovate... his ideas being used by the likes of Proctor and Gamble, GE and 

Salesforce. 

Are his theories still relevant?

The old way was to separate the innovative disruptors from the core businesses; to put them in new company divisions. 

We are now in an era in which technologies such as computing, networks, sensors, artificial intelligence, and robotics are advancing exponentially and converging, thereby allowing industries to encroach on and disrupt one another.

Competition doesn't come from lower end of the market anymore... they come from completely different industries.... 

Apple disrupting music and computing industry and now disrupting healthcare and finance industries. 

Automobile Companies (Uber) delivering flu shots with Uberhealth!

Tesla becoming an energy company - providing solar powered energy and battery power  for homes enabling them to be disconnected from the grid. 

Google and Facebook providing Wifi Internet Access everywhere using drones, microsatellites and balloons. disrupting the telecommunication industry.... looking to monetise data, vs charging for usage.