Posts Tagged: "venture capital"

Turning Your Patent into a Business: A Practical Guide to Equity Crowdfunding

Once your patent has been awarded you may still need additional capital to turn that patent into a business. Fortunately it is not as difficult to find investors as you may think. Equity crowdfunding is on the path to surpass venture capital as the preferred way for start-ups and small businesses to raise capital. In a nutshell, equity crowdfunding is the sale of equity (or debt) in your business directly to investors using an online platform instead of a stock brokerage firm.  It is also less expensive than hiring one. Although direct to investor funding over the internet has been around since the late 1990s, it came of age with the JOBS Act in 2012.   

How the U.S. Can Inspire the Next Generation of Innovators

An unfounded belief persists that entrepreneurs are the primary innovators. However, in a study of the top 30 innovations of the last 30 years up through 2009, as judged by Wharton professors, shows innovations that most affected society were conceived by company workers, not entrepreneurs, according to Dr. Kaihan Krippendorff, a Wharton alum and self-described study author… So in order to encourage innovation, these characteristics of employee-innovators should be developed early on, according to Krippendorff. Logically, not only would that increase the level of innovation but also ease the task of innovation management.

How Can More Lawyers Become Tech Company CEOs?

Most CEOs won’t make a move without first consulting their general counsel or other legal adviser. But the general counsel seldom rises to the CEO spot. Why is that? Many corporate counsels work in large companies where each department—including legal—has very specific responsibilities and boundaries. Therefore, it’s harder for attorneys to get involved with key business, non-legal, initiatives that could demonstrate C-level potential. But the path from general counsel to CEO is becoming a lot more common.

How the U.S. is Killing Innovation and why it Matters for Entrepreneurs

The engine that made America a greatest economic power was a patent system that led to tremendous innovation by incentivizing entrepreneurial inventors.

What ‘The Economist’ Doesn’t Get About Patents

In what can only be characterized as a bizarre, rambling, and intellectually dishonest article, ‘The Economist’ has inexplicably taken the position that patents are not necessary for innovation. The complexity of innovation today and the required investment necessary to innovate, as well as the highly speculative nature of innovation, seems lost on the author. It is surprising, and disappointing, that a publication like The Economist would turn a blind-eye to the underlying financial realities of innovation. Truthfully, The Economist owes its readers a sincere apology for this entire article. Some could, and probably should, call into question the motivations for building an anti-patent argument upon such a rotten foundation.