Tag: Summit 2016

These Companies are Shaping the Future of Corporate Innovation

These Companies are Shaping the Future of Corporate Innovation

Jan 22, 2016 | , ,

By 2020, the laptop will take a backseat in importance to smartphones and wearable devices in the workplace, a recent study by Cisco said; in fact, today’s employees under the age of 35 already complete tasks faster using mobile devices and apps rather than personal computers. More than half of these so-called millennials consider themselves available for work 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and prefer working a flexible schedule, utilizing various mobile devices, rather than a 9-5 job in the office. This changing office culture is just one of the ways that technology is altering the corporate world, from how people work to how enterprises do business to how customers make decisions. The first major shift in the corporate world came in the 1980s, with the introduction of the PC. These computers made it possible not just to organize and store information more efficiently, but also gave professionals the opportunity to write their reports and keep their own records, rather than relying on a secretary or central typing center. The advent of email in the 1990s...

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Internet of Things: The next wave of our connected world

Internet of Things: The next wave of our connected world

Jan 21, 2016 | ,

A system called the Iron Dome intercepts rockets before they can hit the ground, saving human lives. A farmer using an application called CropX sets his irrigation system to deliver more water to certain parts of his field and less to others, increasing food yields while conserving resources. Two ancient human challenges, warfare and farming, have been completely transformed due to technology that increasingly connects all objects, ranging from hostile missiles to green sprouts of wheat. About 28 billion ‘things’ will be connected to the internet by 2020, according to a recent Harvard Business Review report. As advances zoom forward with the help of the sector known as Internet of Things, or IoT, the world is on a path to increasing connectivity, setting us up for myriad social and economic changes. The first internet-connected device that was not a computer was a toaster. In 1990, John Romkey created a toaster that could be switched on and off over the internet, following the challenge of Interop Internet host Dan Lynch. Although this started off as nearly a joke, the technology...

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The investor’s guide to the first-ever Crowdbuilding Hackathon

The investor’s guide to the first-ever Crowdbuilding Hackathon

Jan 20, 2016 |

Next week, thousands of investors will gather together in Jerusalem for OurCrowd’s 2016 Global Investor Summit (January 25-26). They’ll be joined by top tech innovators, startups, angel investors, VCs, and other industry leaders from around the world. In addition to hosting the ‘who’s who’ of the investment world, the roster of keynote speakers, we’ll also be introducing the first-ever Crowdbuilding Hackathon. What is ‘crowdbuilding’ you ask? One of the value-adds OurCrowd offers our portfolio companies is access to a community of over 10,000 accredited investors, with their own individual expertise, networks and resources. Crowdbuilding is the term we coined to define the action of investors leveraging their professional networks to help our companies grow and prosper. Imagine what we can accomplish in portfolio growth – live. At next week’s summit, 300 investors, partners and mentors will congregate in one room to help propel the success of some amazing startups, with the power of the crowd. Here’s a brief overview of what to expect at the 2016 Crowdbuilding Hackathon: An unprecedented opportunity to get involved in some of our best portfolio companies A chance to win some...

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Looking ahead to a more connected era of healthcare

Looking ahead to a more connected era of healthcare

Jan 20, 2016 | ,

When Frederick Philips bought a small factory in the Dutch town of Eindhoven in 1891, he manufactured light bulbs and exported them globally, just as the world was embracing electrical lighting. In an unexpected twist, in a physics lab opened for research into new and improved electrical products, Philips in 1918 developed a medical X-ray tube and set off on a long journey to become one of the world’s leading diagnostic and healthcare companies. Over the years, Philips has continued to innovate, applying new technology from many disciplines to the world of healthcare. Now, more than ever, the future of healthcare is poised for a revolution; a revolution based on applying the technology of cloud computing, internet of things, and mobile apps to the healthcare sector. Just as Philip’s X-ray tube emerged from a light bulb company, modern disruptive healthcare solutions are emerging from high-tech and data-analytic companies. Such solutions have the potential not only to improve human life but will also save the United States alone as much as $300 billion a year, according to Goldman Sachs. In fact, the...

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The Future Mobile: Ringing in the next generation of smartphones

The Future Mobile: Ringing in the next generation of smartphones

Jan 19, 2016 | , ,

Before mobile phones were developed in the 1970s, dreams about handheld phones that worked anywhere and everywhere were brought to life in the world of entertainment: in the 1960s, the character Maxwell Smart often talked on his famous shoe-shaped phone in the television series GetSmart. Before that, a 1931 children’s book, Conrad’s Ride to the South, portrays a man who keeps a phone in his pocket to use while he is out and about around town. After a series of vehicle-based phone systems were developed in the 1950s, the first handheld mobile phone was introduced by Motorola in 1973; weighing more than two pounds with a battery life of only 30 minutes before needing to be recharged for a full ten hours. Not only are today’s phones a fraction of that size and able to be recharged in minutes, but are for much more than talking.  Today there are more mobile devices than people on the planet. And there is still massive potential for the mobile market, with devices on their way to replacing, at least partially, not only...

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