Top Productivity Apps
According to a study of UK office workers, the average worker is only productive for 2 hours and 53 minutes. That’s right—you’re probably not even focusing for half of your… Read more »
4 Business Apps You Didn’t Know Your Startup Needed
If we’ve noticed anything that the startups that have successfully scaled out from tekMountain all have in common, it’s their organization. Don’t get us wrong—a company lives and dies by… Read more »
What We Learned From my AI Research
Prior to coming to tekMountain, my knowledge of new technology trends was very limited. Due to extensive research and meeting with people who work in the field, I was learned… Read more »
Top 6 Innovative Culture Ideas I Learned at tekMountain
Why do companies need an innovation culture? What exactly is an innovation culture? tekMountain helps to create the work environments that inspire leaders, business owners, and startups to think outside… Read more »
8 Reasons Why Internships are Important for Students
An internship is a temporary position in an organization for a student or recent graduate to gain work experience. During the summer of 2018, I was lucky to be selected… Read more »
Differences in Tech Cultures in Wilmington and Halifax
I come from Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. During my stay in Wilmington, I noticed some striking differences between the tech culture there versus that of my hometown. Wilmington is certainly… Read more »
Experiences I Will Take Away for The Future
Through the international internship program at tekMountain, I enjoyed many fascinating experiences. Whether it was the jam-packed meeting schedule with many brilliant entrepreneurs from a variety of sectors, or taking… Read more »
What I learned from my AI research
During the six-week highly intensive internship program at tekMountain, I focused on artificial intelligence (AI) and how it could relate to healthcare. I was tasked to create a new means… Read more »
How Microlearning Can Combat the Nursing Turnover Rate
By now you’re probably tired of hearing how dire the nursing turnover rate is, especially how it’s only going to get worse as one-third of the entire nursing workforce retires… Read more »
The Dawn of Voice Healthcare, part 2: Tomorrow’s medical assistant is already in your kitchen
Visit Amazon.com, open the drop-down menu beside the search bar, and you’ll notice something new: Topping the familiar list of departments is Alexa Skills. These are voice-driven AI capabilities for… Read more »
Shelter from the Storm: Help Housing Emergencies in Southeastern North Carolina
While most of the national media may have abandoned coverage of Hurricane Florence’s aftermath not long after the storm dissipated and flood waters had yet to crest, the communities that… Read more »
Top Education Apps, Part 3 : You don’t need to speak Turkish to talk turkey.
But it sure helps. When Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg participated in a Q&A at Tsinghua University’s School of Economics and Management in Beijing in 2014, he wowed his audience by… Read more »
Newsflash: Your Automated Emails Are Prime Real Estate
Marketing automation sounds like a startup founder’s best friend. Whatever you can do to save time while interacting with potential customers, right? Not so fast. Just take a moment and… Read more »
#ILMStrong
No matter where you are, you’ve likely heard much about the wrath of Hurricane Florence since it made landfall last Friday morning. If you live along the coastal Carolinas like… Read more »
Top Education Apps, Part 2: These Learning Apps Will Make You A Better Person!*
Coding, technology and more Whether you’re drawn to learn a new technology by personal interest or by a change in career, the unprecedented availability of free and low-cost training… Read more »
The software that makes us care about the internet
Ever think about what’s going on in your computer when you instruct it to cut and paste text? Seems simple enough, right? Ever think about what’s happening when you sign… Read more »
Top 4 Apps That’ll Make You an Instagram Marketing All-Star
Let’s face it. The hardest part of social media marketing, especially on Instagram, is finding that almost impossible balance between quality and frequency of content. You want your pics to… Read more »
Top Education Apps, Part 1: These Learning Apps Will Make You A Better Person!*
* Or, more likely, a better innovator As you’re developing your digital product, how useful would it be to upskill your programming if you don’t know it already? As your… Read more »
The Need for Telehealth Education
As the conversation around Medicare-for-All continues to heat up, the need for reliable cost-saving strategies throughout every aspect of healthcare becomes more and more stark, regardless of what type of… Read more »
Knowing what makes Millennials tick will make you think twice about Ping-Pong tables
You’ve seen this before: A photo of Google employees in the workplace and there’s seldom a gray hair in sight. Fact is, it’s not just Google. Most employees in the… Read more »
10 Steps To Launching a Podcast Your Startup Can Afford
Maybe your startup hasn’t generated any revenue yet. Maybe you haven’t even landed a single cent of seed funding. But you should definitely consider starting a podcast to help promote… Read more »
Healthcare biometrics comes of age—fast
Like a middle-schooler entering the teen years, the modest-sized market for healthcare biometrics is about to embark on a wild, bone-stretching growth spurt. As far back as 2015 the healthcare… Read more »
Is Your Company Using The Four Essential Types of Innovation?
Innovation is one of those words that gets repeated so often that it seems to mean everything and nothing all at once. Of course, in the scope of human history,… Read more »
The Dawn of Voice Healthcare, Part 1: The healthcare disruption we already know
With the announcement this past spring of an Amazon partnership with JPMorgan and Berkshire Hathaway and Amazon’s push into pharma with its purchase of Pillpack in June, the tech world… Read more »
Google Tag Manager: Your Startup’s Website Can’t Live Without It
When it comes to building your startup’s website, just the aesthetic concerns alone—page layouts, color palette, menu structures, etc—can give you a migraine. But your site content? Well, your company… Read more »
Where AI is driving applicant tracking
We’re all familiar with GIGO: “Garbage in, garbage out.” That holds true as much for data as (sorry to say) the human-resources supply chain. The quality of your company’s output… Read more »
Innovation within the corporation requires concurrent, separate paths
Things that don’t grow or change are inanimate or dead. The same is true of organizations. But for mature corporations, change is especially thorny. Real innovation can seem entirely out… Read more »
Soft-skills assessment: Harder than it looks
Employers often say that, given the chance between hiring a technologically skilled recruit with lousy people skills and a technology novice with a great attitude, they’ll take the greenhorn every… Read more »
Facebook Marketing Tips for Startups (Part III)
Sometimes, the hardest part of heading a startup is having to play catch-up—all the crash courses on essentials like accounting and budgeting and operations and more. Marketing is no different,… Read more »
Try Boosting Millennial Engagement Without All the Gimmicks
When it comes to their workforce behavior, millennials have been both praised and mocked for being the generation of Purpose. It’s as if no other generation before them ever cared… Read more »
These technologies will enhance your human capital
Take a look at what the blogosphere is tagging as the “hot’ HR trends of 2018, and they run along today’s cultural and economic fault lines: sexual-harassment training, payroll and… Read more »
Facebook Ads: Every Startup’s No-Brainer for Market Testing
As CEO, COO, CFO, and CIO of your startup, you probably don’t have time to add another hat like Chief Marketing Officer. But guess what? Congratulations. You’ve been promoted. While… Read more »
Talent-Supply Forecast: The Cloud with a Diminishing Chance of Pain
Making employees the focus of analytic activity has become a strategic competitive advantage for organizations at least as important as customer data and product performance. HR traditionally looked backward, reporting… Read more »
You’ve Got 1,000,000,000+ People Waiting To See Your Product (Facebook Marketing Tips for Startups – Part I)
Whether you’re on your Facebook Newsfeed, a Group page, an Instant Article, an In-Stream Video, Messenger App, Instagram, and beyond, you see them everywhere. Facebook ads. Some are annoying. Some… Read more »
Incubator or Accelerator? It’s NOT a chicken & egg question.
They’ve been called “Vital resources for startups.” “Great ways to grow your business.” And “Terrific for first-time CEOs.” But startup incubators and business accelerators are not interchangeable terms. It’s true… Read more »
Don’t Get Black Boxed: How Do We Regulate AI?
Everybody has a general idea of what a dystopian future would look like should machines run amok—something like Ex Machina meets Maximum Overdrive meets The Terminator. But what about all… Read more »
20+ AI conferences worth your money in 2018
Focusing on #medtech and #fintech If you’re serious about artificial intelligence—and if your business is in medtech or fintech, why wouldn’t you be?—you need to book yourself into an AI… Read more »
6 Must-Have Apps for Traveling to a Foreign Country
Traveling to a foreign country might be all about stepping outside of your comfort zone, but let’s face it—in the 21st century, there are some non-negotiables when it comes to… Read more »
Blockchain Identity Management, Part I
Most of us have at least heard of Bitcoin by now. Whether or not you still think it’s just the play money of geeks around the world probably depends on… Read more »
Reputation Management Is Hardly A Mindless Chore
Running a business nowadays, everything is optics. Whether you’re an international corporation, or a small town mom-and-pop, there’s not a single aspect of your company that’s safe from social media…. Read more »
5 Apps to Ramp Up Business in 2018
To Jill Duffy, contributing editor of PC magazine, “the meaning of productivity is highly personal, but ultimately, it’s about achieving goals. It’s about making the most of your time so… Read more »
$6 Billion Reasons Why Your Healthcare Organization Needs Digital Health
By the end of 2017, digital health hit almost $6 billion in venture funding. The toe-dipping phase is officially over, folks. Thanks to the combined effect in the past decade… Read more »
Hear that boom? That’s medical robotics.
Forget most of the predictable predictions and facile forecasts for healthtech in 2018—whether it’s blockchain, AI (particularly applied to diagnosis), IoT (and its serious vulnerability to hacking), mobile devices, and… Read more »
5 Health & Fitness Apps That Fuel the Creative Drive
If you ask someone why they don’t exercise, chances are you’ll get one of the following responses: “I’m too tired.” “I’m too busy.” “I just can’t get… Read more »
Bridging the talent gap: The nursing deficit, part 6
“Education and workforce systems in the United States are failing to keep pace with the changing needs of the economy, and employers are struggling to find skilled workers who can… Read more »
2018: When blockchain takes on supply chain for real
With the announcement this month of IBM’s joint venture with the container-shipping company Maersk, supply-chain management has fully entered the blockchain era. As an IBM Blockchain video demonstrates, the partnership… Read more »
Why the nursing shortage is sickening: The nursing deficit, part 5
There’s been plenty of gloom-and-doom conversation and hand-wringing lately about the looming nursing shortage. Understandable, considering the fact that nursing is the largest segment of the nation’s healthcare workforce, with… Read more »
Synergize your Biz with these Five Scheduling Apps
At some early point in the evolution of your business, you’ll need to optimize scheduling. It may be the schedules of the people you employ, whether a handful or a… Read more »
Integrity of Patient Identity
Even as you move throughout a single healthcare system’s various facilities–hospitals, physician practices, outpatient surgical centers, imaging centers, rehab centers, etc.–you are required to fill out identification forms before receiving… Read more »
The nursing deficit: The Obamacare Disruption, parts 3 & 4
Earlier installments in this series (here and here) have been exploring the reasons for the historic shortage in nurses currently looming over America. As stated by Georgetown University Center on… Read more »
Data Breach: Your Company Can’t Afford It
Just this year, in July, the personal data of 145 million people was stolen via the Equifax hack. In 2016, 3 billion Yahoo accounts were hacked. Large-scale data breaches are… Read more »
The nursing deficit, part 2
As it’s long been known, the supply chain of healthcare professionals, particularly nurses, is facing an historic shortfall in the coming years. A 2015 report from Georgetown University’s Center on… Read more »
The nursing deficit, part 1
Like climate change, we’ve been watching the looming shortage in the nursing labor market from a long way off. It’s well documented, and we’ve written about it here at tekMountain… Read more »
Cracking the code of nurse retention
Among the countless challenges facing employers, one perennial thorn is showing promise lately of yielding to data innovation: the problem of finding, hiring, and retaining the right people. To a… Read more »
How Your Company Can Ebb Millennial Turnover
Everyone likes to pick on millennials—even millennials. But a lot of the hate is actually unfounded, or, in the very least, oversimplifying. Nonetheless, millennials are very much changing up the… Read more »
5 Myths About Tech Entrepreneurs
In American society, we’re everyday inundated with so much media in the form of television, cinema, art, and journalism that it’s impossible not to get smacked in the face with… Read more »
Five tech industries to watch in 2018
While many of us at this time of year turn our thoughts to political elections, Thanksgiving menus and holiday gift-buying, business analysts are zealously forecasting what lies beyond the 2018… Read more »
Two’s a Company, Three’s a Crowdfund
There’s been a lot of chatter this past year about the excruciatingly modest trends in VC funding for startups. One one hand, we’ve seen Bloomberg reports that “There’s rarely been… Read more »
AI in Healthcare: Hype You Can Bank On
Industry leaders and legislators alike are still debating whether the Affordable Care Act promotes or hinders innovation, but it’s inarguable that healthcare technologies will continue to move forward, regardless of… Read more »
Women Entrepreneurs: The Force Is with Us
When we hear about the relative dearth of women in tech or the small number of female entrepreneurs, our attention may reasonably be drawn to Oh, So Sunny Silicon Valley… Read more »
Hitting the Hockey Stick: Wilmington’s Economic Development Investment in Innovation Companies
This blog was written by Cucalorus Connect 2017, Board President Tom Looney. Wilmington’s regional economic identity should be unwaveringly aligned to The Innovation Economy. Indeed, there is a strong data-driven case… Read more »
HR Tech Is About To Save Your Business A LOT of Money
We love to talk about all the latest and greatest tech in spaces like healthcare and education , because, well, those are high-visibility industries and they both promise innovation that… Read more »
The Nursing Faculty Shortage: How Are You Going To Cut Costs While Serving More Students?
There’s something about humans that, no matter our endeavor, we’re ultimately reaching for a panacea–a cure-all for cancer, the fusion reactor, a theory of everything–but almost always the most tenable… Read more »
It’s Time To Get Social with Your Entrepreneurship
In a time of national anthem protests, statue removals, and Dr. Seuss rejections, it’s hard to imagine where our current political fever pitch will take us next. But this sort… Read more »
Are You Ready to Gamble on Higher Ed Technology?
It’s only been 10 years since the release of the first iPhone, and yet it seems centuries of upgrades have already come to pass. From the first mainstream-adopted touchscreen to… Read more »
Believe the Hype.
In the age of social media, everything gets tremendous amounts of hype. The next iPhone release. Next #1 pick in the NFL Draft. Next unicorn. Next free marketing webinar that… Read more »
Gather intelligence. Stop speculating.
Among the trends in Big Data lately is the increased emphasis on “business intelligence” not only as a means toward data-driven decision making but also as a commodity for increasing… Read more »
Innovation, make nice with risk aversion
Let’s say you’re an employer needing to fill a position in your organization. You have two qualified candidates. Their major difference: One is an ex-felon with a years-long prison record…. Read more »
Is that Independent Contractor You’re Hiring Legally an Independent Contractor?
According to a recent earnings report released by Intuit, creator of TurboTax, the gig economy accounts for 34% of the current workforce. That number is expected to rise to 43%… Read more »
How 21st-Century Is Your HR Department?
As the percentage of college-educated people in the US continues to grow, the job market will get even more competitive than it already is–and that goes for employers, too. Not… Read more »
The name of the game is Pivot
Six years ago this Sep. 13, with the publication of The Lean Startup, Eric Ries gave us a vocabulary for talking about efficient, cost-saving business startups and innovation. One of… Read more »
How a Ton of Money Is Already Being Saved
Oftentimes, in any tech industry, it’s easy to get stuck talking potential rather than what’s in action right here, right now. When it comes to a space that evolves in… Read more »
A bird’s-eye view of Big Data components
Given the bewildering impact of Big Data on businesses of every size and kind, it’s no wonder that the space is complex and morphing before our eyes. In 2012 entrepreneur,… Read more »
Foster Innovation with Meditation
How much of your life do you spend in the present moment? Or, let me rephrase that: How much of your life do you spend driven by a cocktail of… Read more »
Even lean data can be big data
It’s the dullest of truisms to say, “Big Data means big bucks.” But it’s also true, and not so trite, to say that Big Data isn’t for everyone. Sure, forecasters… Read more »
AI in EdTech: Optimize or Become Irrelevant
We’ve all heard the cliché that a college education is an investment. But as tech continues to dramatically evolve the job market, both the learner and institution must ensure that… Read more »
Manage your Energy, Not Your Hours at Work
If you are anything like me, it sometimes feels immensely satisfying to burn the midnight oil up until all hours, 2am, 3am—even 4am. That mental push to force output up… Read more »
Think in Dimensions to Leverage Innovation
When’s the last time you stepped out of your comfort zone? Imagine this shift: You switch up your commute, grocery store, go-to sets and reps at the gym. You stray… Read more »
Big Data demands big strategy
As the chief analytics officer of a growing, innovative company, you have bigger fish to fry than to worry about whether “Big Data” is a singular or plural noun. But… Read more »
How Does Your Company Fit into the Future?: Artificial Intelligence vs. Machine Learning vs. Deep Learning
When we hear the term “artificial intelligence,” a variety of images are invoked—a mix of something like the robot from Lost in Space, Siri, and maybe some of the humanoids… Read more »
This is Your Brain on Multitasking
There is a thrilling hum at tekMountain—the underlying whir of gears turning in skulls, with a punctuation of the inspired keyboard across the sun-infused open-plan. Pod spaces emmenate the sound… Read more »
Level up your career: Build your Personal Board of Directors
So, you want to level up your career, but are too busy with your head in the clouds dreaming up the next big thing? Think again. Your success in business—whether… Read more »
Breaking Big Data down to size
Ever wonder how Google Translate can transform the text of a website written in Danish into American English that’s intelligible, mostly? It can do that because the translations are based… Read more »
To adapt in business, you must see with new eyes
The volatile, uncertain, complex, ambiguous, even chaotic, state of today’s business environment is a modern truism. Unenlightening as that truism may be, one thing that’s worth appreciating is the very… Read more »
Why Short-Staffing Nurses Won’t Cut It in Value-Based Healthcare
Every year in the U.S., 31 million tons of food ends up in landfills. Meanwhile, almost a billion people are starving. Sometimes, determining a solution is the easy part. Actually… Read more »
Quantifying hospitals’ community benefits just got easier
As acknowledgment of the “community benefits” that they provide, the majority of hospitals in the U.S. that operate as nonprofits (about 78 percent of all US community hospitals) are exempt… Read more »
The Most Likely Person To Start a Business Looks a Lot Like Your Grandparents
It’s not much of a surprise anymore to hear somebody say at a birthday party that 50 is the new 40 is the new 30 is the new 20. If… Read more »
Nursing Disengagement: Start Treating It in the Classroom
What’s the best cure for the flu? (This isn’t a trick question). Is it ginger ale and chicken broth? Sleeping all day? A nightcap of good whiskey? Wrong. Correct answer:… Read more »
Femtech on the forefront
If you are a woman, how often do you think about your pelvic floor? Sometimes, always or never? You know about the direct benefits of yoga on your physical, mental… Read more »
London Calling: Health Data Saves Lives
Can healthcare data revolutionize the understanding of human health and disease? According to The Farr Institute of Health Informatics Research, the answer is yes: better data science can use ‘big… Read more »
Are Vague Company Values Killing Your Startup from the Inside Out?
For many businesses, talk of “company values” only exists on their website. But, in light of the recent debacle at Uber, the type of culture you create from top to… Read more »
Medicine Man Technologies delivers high value to tekMountain
On May 25 and 26, tekMountain hosted representatives of one of the nation’s foremost cannabis consulting firms, Medicine Man Technologies, who delivered, free to the public, a massive amount of… Read more »
Let’s take nurse rounding out of the 19th century
We’ve all witnessed the hospital stay from hell. Whether the patient was you, yourself, a family member or a friend, we’ve seen what happens when patient contact with medical staff… Read more »
Cinch shut the opportunity gap
You’ve heard this statistic before: On average, women make 78 cents for every dollar that a man earns. You’ve also heard that women represent half of the U.S. workforce and… Read more »
Cultivate maternal health for a peaceful future
Who would you turn to if you didn’t know how to breastfeed your newborn? How do you nourish your body with nutritious foods to ensure your baby’s healthy birth weight—if… Read more »
Stem the high cost of low nurse engagement
If you’ve ever been on a date with someone who’s constantly checking the time or not paying attention to what you’re saying, someone who clearly would prefer to be elsewhere,… Read more »
If You Don’t Wanna Talk Money, Nobody Wants To Talk About Your Startup
Sweet are the coffee shop brainstorms, revelations in the middle of a hot shower, napkin diagrams, and late-night competitive research. This is the pure and innocent (mostly) phase of entrepreneurship,… Read more »
Why Women’s Health? Debunking the definition
Irregular menstrual cycles spurred on by stress. Tips to ease morning sickness queasiness. Complications from syphilis during pregnancy. Breast Cancer pink ribbons. Fiery-flip-on-a-dime mood swings. Breast self-exams. Which reusable menstrual… Read more »
“Build-measure-learn” now has a foamy head
One of the first things you’ll see when you enter tekMountain’s main entrance is the tekMtn Brewery. It’s a small craft brewery that serves several functions, like providing a place… Read more »
Let Go: How to Widen your Circles of Compassion
“Our task must be to free ourselves…by widening our circles of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.” —Albert Einstein, 1950 Mary Brannock,… Read more »
You’ll sleep better by outsourcing your CFO
Mentors to small and medium-sized businesses often identify SMB’s greatest challenges as time management, cash flow, and growth. A huge question that these challenges raise for startups is not when… Read more »
Here’s Why Your Nursing Turnover Rate Is Costing A Fortune
If 88% of US employees report overall satisfaction with their current job and organization, then it follows that most industries should reflect numbers in the same ballpark, right? But, when… Read more »
Your New #1 Criteria for Hiring: Must Be a Lifelong Learner
When it comes to tech news, no matter the topic, there’s a rabbit hole for you to wander down. And so an article about Alexa can easily lead to an… Read more »
To thrive, or not to thrive? We take Melbourne’s tech pulse
In between bites of flaky Aussie meat pie with mince gravy, navigating a new city and connecting with some of the top players in the Australian entrepreneurial tech scene, Mary… Read more »
What Could The “New Tobacco” Do For The Old North State?
Legislation permitting medical marijuana in North Carolina has been proposed repeatedly in recent years and may pass a little sooner than the Earth is consumed by the sun. Then again,… Read more »
North Carolina: A Tech Startup’s Competitive Edge
Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past couple of years, you’ll know that we at tekMountain have long been touting Wilmington, NC, as the up-and-coming tech hub… Read more »
Get Lost: Surrender to the Unknown
Melbourne, Australia There is something transcendent about your first time getting lost while backpacking in a foreign country. Lost due to perplexing maps in a language that you’ve only just… Read more »
Are You Setting Up Your Nursing Students for Failure?
If Netflix lets us decide our own TV schedule, and iTunes lets us mix and match entire discographies depending on our mood, then how long till education becomes user-centric, too?… Read more »
How Gender Bias in Medical Testing Deprives Women’s Health
According to the journal Nature, in a survey of medical studies across nine different medical journals in 2004, only 37 percent of participants were female. In order to work towards… Read more »
Compassion Fatigue: You’re Not Paying Enough Attention to Your Nurses
In a 2015 study, researchers analyzed a database containing survey responses from over one million healthcare employees regarding what they valued most in their job roles and workplace. From these… Read more »
Credentials Should Not Be A Nursing Student’s Greatest Pain
The national nursing shortage — well documented and oft cited — has no quick fix. According to researchers at the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce in 2015,… Read more »
Are We Giving Our Nursing Students the Wrong Career Expectations?
When we began to dabble in medtech, tekMountain encountered a software product that was transforming the clinical placement process for nurses, and we were so impressed by it that we… Read more »
Your womb rocks human-centered design: delve deeper
Imagine being on a prenatal visit. Then, imagine having to wait longer than you expected. You are finally seen by a hurried nurse who doesn’t have time to completely answer… Read more »
What’s Your Company’s Crystal Ball?
Imagine if you could get arrested now for a crime you were going to commit in the future. Oh, wait. There’s already a movie about that. OK. Imagine that you… Read more »
Why Your Startup Really is a Tribe
The most common reason reason that startups fail, according to a 2014 CB Insights study, isn’t inadequate cash, nor the competition, nor poor product. It’s “no market need.” Put another… Read more »
Healthcare, Meet ISAC, Your New Best Friend
On April 6, 2017, the House Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations met with healthcare industry stakeholders to discuss how to strengthen cybersecurity via public-private partnerships. As much as government at… Read more »
Give Nurses a Paddle
“Permanent whitewater.” That’s how Brene Brown—research professor, bestselling author and author of one of the world’s top five most-viewed TED talks—characterized the nursing profession. Now imagine yourself a novice swimmer… Read more »
If You Don’t Understand Your Employees, Another Company Will
Ever get in your car and suddenly Google Maps announces the ETA to your destination, except you never input a destination in the first place? That sort of predictive capability… Read more »
Healthcare at Breakneck Speed
An interview with Mike Rhoades, CEO of Blaze Advisors, LLC Mike Rhoades is founder and CEO of a boutique healthcare consulting firm specializing in supporting healthcare providers across all sectors… Read more »
The Death of the Buzzword: What Tech Should Learn from Philosophy 101
In the age of the #hashtag, even in high-concept industries like #tech, there’s a constant intersection between intellectual rigor and pop culture tribalism. Virality is all good and well for the advent of new ideas, but #buzzwords can prove superficial, even counterproductive within legitimate discussion. We often mistake new for profound. Don’t let your business fall prey to fashionability. It’s time to check yourself.
Is Your C Suite All Ruts and No Guts? If so, hire to disrupt
Whether you’re a hospital or multinational manufacturer using Lean methods to adapt to new realities, how do you get started? What types of people do you need to put in place? The culture of legacy organizations may not be the best fit for the startup sensibility or vision. Your enterprise team, its structure, its people and culture may not look like anything your organization has seen before.
Make Room, Interoperability and Cybersecurity, Here Comes Cognitive Health IT: Our Top 5 Takeaways from HIMSS17
This isn’t just some glorified LAN party in the basement of a Super 8. If medtech had a Super Bowl, or a WrestleMania, then Health Information Management and Systems Society’s (HIMSS) annual conference is it. Over 40,000 health IT professionals, clinicians, executives, and vendors from around the world converge for…
You Don’t Have to be a Startup to Go Lean
Every business prefers to run lean. It’s a virtue that seems exclusive to young, agile startups. But what does it look like when an enormous, major corporation adapts Lean methodology for improving the quality and speed of its output? It looks like an oxymoron. Yet major corporations like GE, ING, and Samsung have been implementing Lean strategies for years. Here’s why it will continue.
Is Your HR So Two Thousand and Late?
Democratization isn’t just a buzzword anymore; it’s yesterday’s news. Platform companies like Uber provide us with solid examples of how innovative networks can revolutionize industries overnight. But how does this line of thinking translate to HR Tech? This is the vital question that must be answered by every business in 2017 and beyond.
The growing disruption in nursing careers: Informatics
Nursing informatics is where patient care meets health IT. With the exponential growth in health-care data, the need to reduce health-care costs, the federal mandate for electronic health records (EHRs), and the need to deliver ever-improving care, the field is booming, placing demands on clinicians for specialized training and credentialing. Here’s a run-down of what you need to know.
How Can ePortfolios Revolutionize Health Care?
With the US landing in the middle of the pack when it comes to global standardized testing scores, we often talk about overhauling what we teach and how we teach hit. But now tech is shifting the debate to what we track and how we track it. When we talk of higher education, the need has never been greater to innovate the means with which student tasks and performance are tracked and analyzed. The overhaul begins with ePortfolios, especially in highly-regulated disciplines like nursing. Read on to learn what ePortfolios can do.
Gridworks Durham: Diverse, Holistic, Redemptive Innovation
An interview with Adam Klein, chief strategist at the American Underground Think about tech hubs in the Southeast, and one that comes immediately to mind is the American Underground. With… Read more »
Population Health: Big Data and the Big Idea
As Donald Trump prepares to take his presidential oath, one of the biggest questions surrounding his first 100 days is how he and Congressional Republicans will attempt to supplant Obamacare…. Read more »
Recent research into the traits of the entrepreneur
Our understanding of the entrepreneurial personality is changing. If you’re the type to challenge yourself to do 100,000 pushups and 50,000 sit-ups, you may agree with Inc.com’s Jeff Haden that… Read more »
What is in store for Medtech, Edtech, and HR Tech in 2017
Despite thousands upon thousands of years on Earth, it apparently wasn’t until the year 2016 became a meme that humans realized that everyone gets old and dies. Even Willy Wonka…. Read more »
Looking Ahead by Glancing Behind
tekMountain’s 10 most-read tech-innovation posts of 2016 An old adage says you can’t know where you’re headed without understanding where you’ve been. It could be seen as the basis for… Read more »
The Perfect Pitch Deck
In our first installment of Pitching 101, it was all about defining yourself as a company and understanding your competition. Now it’s time to actually put together your pitch deck…. Read more »
The Holy Grail of medtech innovation under MACRA
Six niches in need of medtech innovation “MACRA” sounds big: Medicare Access & CHIP Reauthorization Act of 2015. And it is big. The final rule, published in November, runs 2,100… Read more »
Need a Marketing Video for Your Startup?
You know those how-to blogs filled with tips that make creating your own marketing video as easy as videotaping your sleeping cat? Take a closer look at the well-intended tips, numbered tricks and bulleted techniques, and you’ll notice that the advice falls into recurring patterns but is often thin on substance. What are the blogs leaving out? Which techniques really work? Here’s a glimpse.
Collaborations & Appreciations
This blog post was originally going to be a cut-and-fold printout of a pilgrim hat. Just the printout. Nothing else. But then we decided that, even for a light-hearted article, a little substance and perspective wouldn’t hurt.An old Thanksgiving tradition is to go around the table one-by-one, each person saying what he or she is thankful for. So let’s all join hands and do just that, incubator-accelerator style.
5 Pitch Videos from SmartCamp 2016 – Wilmington
On Friday, November 11, 2016, Wilmington and 28 other cities around the world kicked off SmartCamp 2016, an annual global pitch competition put on by IBM and LAUNCH. With tekMountain as the Wilmington host, six applicants were chosen for a half-day startup bootcamp followed by a live pitch competition. Read on to find out who won!
Talent analytics: How aRefChex fills a niche in HR tech
The expansion and integration of HR technologies is often cited among the major tech trends of 2016. Automated reference checking and employment verification promise huge rewards, provided the solution answers the mandates of the Federal Credit Reporting Act. Here’s how one tech company, aRefChex, is succeeding by fielding “the only HR-compliant reference-checking software out there.”
3 Videos That Make Viral Look Easy
Which video do you think is more likely to go viral? A 30-second trailer of Brad Pitt running through a burning building, or a 30-second phone video of Brad Pitt dancing at a local bar? It’s Two-Step Brad Pitt all day. But why? One word: intimacy. Read on to see how your company can learn from a less costly, more intimate approach to marketing and ad campaigns.
Connect & Synergize
Wilmington, NC, hosts the 2nd annual Cucalorus Connect Conference, Nov. 9–13If you know what a cucalorus is, then pride yourself for your esoteric knowledge of moviemaking. If you know what the Cucalorus Film Festival is, well, then you’re really on to something unique — what the Huffington Post earlier this year called one of the “10 Best Film Festivals You’ve Never Heard Of.”
IBM SmartCamp 2016 Kicks Off in Wilmington in November
Wilmington’s participation in the upcoming IBM SmartCamp 2016, the famed global pitch competition for early-stage startups. It’s what the 2015 SmartCamp winner, Jessika Lora, has called “the American Idol for startups.” From Amsterdam, Austin, Boston and Bangkok to Dallas, Dubai, Seoul and Singapore, plus 29 other major world cities — this is now the playing field for the Port City.
RJ Tech Tour in ILM: 10 Takeaways from Paul Singh’s Keynote
36 cities in, and Paul Singh’s Results Junkies Tech Tour hit Wilmington last week. From talks and panels about building and promoting your company, securing funding, accessing state resources for startups, and advice from successful founders and investors alike, the tour stop was all about cutting the fluff and buckling down for some straight talk. Here are the top 10 Takeaways from Singh’s keynote.
Hybrid Jobs Are the Future: Why Learning To Code Can Make You More Money
Though computer programming jobs are projected to decline over the next decade, the need for coding skills throughout the general workforce is greater than ever, and will continue to rise. As our economy becomes more digitized, more and more industries beyond just computer programming will require workers to boast an umbrella of skill sets, and coding sits at the top of the list. Read on to see how coding can beef up your résumé.
The Mothers of Medtech Invention: A New Era of Devices
If necessity — and science — are the mothers of invention, then the latest wave of innovative digital medical devices is giving birth to its most promising offspring. With the launch of the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, the prospects are nothing less than historic. Here’s a roundup of what we may expect.
Tech Venture Conference 2016
On September 13th & 14th at the Raleigh Convention Center, the Council for Entrepreneurial Development (CED) hosted its annual Tech Venture Conference, where the Southeast US’s entrepreneurial elite mixed with up-and-comers in a 48-hour innovation blitz. From company showcases to product demos, from speeches to customized workshops, it was like speed-dating meets BattleBots at a business seminar.
Interoperability: Connecting the Dots to Connected Health
Have you ever been peeved when your phone can’t retrieve your calendar from the cloud? Imagine your frustration if you were admitted to a hospital with an electronic health-records system that’s incompatible with your doctor’s system back home. Interoperability is the Gordian knot that entrepreneurs and clinicians are striving to untie, to integrate services and devices across the continuum of care.
Digital Health: A big sky of opportunity
“The more uncomfortable something is, the more we know we are driving change.”–Harriet Green, CEO, IBM IoT, Commerce and Education Businesses divisionsWhen you’re flying a two-seater prop at 2,000 feet, a 500-ft drop in altitude could be enough to make you a groundling once you’ve been reaquainted with your stomach. But in a jetliner at 30,000 ft, a 500-ft dip is butterflies in the belly and a bit of spilled merlot.So the relative slump in deals for digital-health startups so far this year shouldn’t give you pause. There’s good reason to think it’s a patch of thin air in a big sky. CB Insights not only projects this to be a record year in funding to private companies, they’ve also reported the kind of optimism that calls digital-health disruption the health care industry’s “space race.”
Innovation Partnerships: Don’t Let Your Business Become Predictable
Let’s say you’ve lived in the same house for 30 years. Couches have come and gone. Armchairs and end tables have been rearranged in every thinkable way. The bathroom was blue, now it’s all earth tones. That ceiling fan was once a lopsided chandelier.
How Cities Foster Innovation: Part Two – What Can Wilmington Do?
In Part One, we used Accenture’s Openness, Infrastructure, and Leadership chart as a template to discuss five major U.S. tech hubs and how their respective public sectors contribute to an innovation ecosystem. Now we’d like to address how Wilmington as a city does or doesn’t fulfill some of these integral…
The Wilmington Startup Social: Local BBQ, Striking Copper, surfboards and endless innovation
It was 96 degrees in the shade in Wilmington July 29th. But it was cool as all getout in the ground-floor rec room of tekMountain at CastleBranch as some 350 entrepreneurs, startup founders, investors, tech innovators and tM@CB employees gathered for the first ExitEvent Startup Social held in the Port City, hosted by tekMountain.
tekMountain Internship: Flexible, Engaging, Enhancing
Albert Einstein once said, “The only source of knowledge is experience.” But what’s the source of experience? For a student trying to find a way to fill his or her summer months, the answer is an internship.
Connecting Mentors with Entrepreneurs: MIT’s Venture Mentoring Service Model
In our digital world, the next big thing is already old news. Whether it’s a hot product or the latest big-splash startup, give it a week and we’ll already be raving about something else. But before any of these companies even hit the market, chances are somebody from the outside has been helping them along the way.
You’re not pre-screening your employees? Seriously?
Imagine you’re an entrepreneur contemplating a new hire. Along with the many stressorsthat new hires pose for startups, you’re faced with the prospect of getting to know everything you can about a complete stranger. Fast. That’s where background-screening companies, a.k.a. consumer reporting agencies, come in. And they can be among your finest allies as you scale up.
How U.S. Cities Foster Innovation: Part One – The Major Tech Hubs
Everybody talks innovation ecosystem, but who’s actually doing something about it? For some nascent tech communities, it’s still a pipe dream. For other, more developed regions, this innovation ecosystem isn’t just a buzzword–it’s the way of life.
When Scaling Runs Up Against Staffing
Early-stage tech startups attempting to scale are vexed by questions about staffing: When should I hire my first employee, and whom? Would hiring a newbie who needs no retraining be cheaper than a seasoned professional? Should I hire on a contractual or salaried basis? What compensation options exist? Here’s a snapshot of the HR implications tech startups face when hiring new staff.
Cape Fear Women in Tech: Ethos in Action
At your next tech conference or event, take a look around you. Chances are you’re in a roomful of mostly men. Even the world’s 11 largest tech companies average only 30% women in their workforce in a nation whose overall workforce is 59% women. But instead of just diagnosing the problem, Emilyanne Atkinson and Audrey Speicher are trying to help solve it with their now year-old nonprofit, Cape Fear Women in Tech.
Startups, repeat after me: Why, why, why, why, why?
As your company scales, you need to adapt, to avoid wasteful disruptions while preserving agility. When disruptions occur, the “5 Whys” is a flexible, inexpensive, effective technique you can implement to get to the root causes of the problem. Learn the basics of this method developed as part of the Toyota Production System’s just-in-time production.
Reinventing the Climb: tekMountain’s Two-Year Wrap-Up
With only 24 months gone, Brett Martin Founder to proceed CEO o CastleBranch and tekMountain, along with the Director Sean Ahlum and the rest of the executive team, have transformed a tiny incubator / accelerator into the heart of southeastern NC’s innovation ecosystem. What was once only a few companies is now 24 and counting, with markets as diverse as real estate investment, pet health technology, digital marketing and design, home improvement, and other industries in the life sciences, business services, and technology fields.
What’s Your Story
In a world where even Hot Pockets can jump on the “artisanal” band wagon, it was strangely refreshing when Domino’s ran commercials about how terrible their pizza was. This mea culpa campaign was hardly the first of its kind, yet why was it so effective? Because it was one word: human. In this second installment of Pitching 101, we’ll talk about how the more customer-centric your brand story is, the less time you’ll spend apologizing.
Hot new startup segments in SENC
In the eye of the seasoned venture-capital investor, North Carolina’s Port City of Wilmington has a long way to go before it’s a fully realized startup ecosystem. But the pieces are falling into place particularly across three fast-moving segments: marine & life science, business services, and high technology. Find out what the buzz is all about with Wilmington’s sea-level startups.
Pitching 101: Every Startup’s Pre-Pitch Checklist
So you want to hit it so big that your company name becomes an everyday verb. But before anyone can google your Mission page, there’s some serious soul-searching you might’ve glossed over. You may think it’s time to begin pitching investors, but, chances are, you haven’t asked all the right questions, the same questions that might blindside you in the middle of an incredible pitch opportunity. Here’s how to really make yourself capital-friendly.
Legal Issues for Startups — What to Do Before “Life Happens”
Did you know that your future goals for scaling your startup influence the type of legal structure you elect for your business today? … That, chances are, your home state may not be the best place to incorporate? … That oftentimes your startup’s only real protection against competitors is your intellectual property?Find out why specialized legal counsel may be the best money you’ll ever spend.
Would you like your own personal guide to the eLearning world?
When most people think of eLearning, they either have no idea what it is, or they remember those fast-food training videos from high school (you know, the ones from back in the ‘80s when every instructor was an overzealous guy with a mustache). Well, things have evolved a bit since then. Read more to find out how online collaboration software and virtual reality are revolutionizing education and workplace training.
Tek’s ideas are bigger than he is
Meet Tek. Tek’s ideas are bigger than he is. Tek’s ideas could change the infrastructure on which modern society is built. Tek’s ideas could change the landscape of the future. Tek’s ideas are in reach – hell, Tek is only steps away. But Tek can’t get there by himself. Tek doesn’t have a Daddy Warbucks. Tek needs help. Who can help Tek make the connections that will change Tek’s fate?
Get a Glimpse of GSV. Get a Glimpse of the Future
GSV LABS, a modern merchant bank, is the biggest name in business investment and innovation in the world today. Having helped incubate and accelerate some of the world’s biggest tech ventures such as facebook, Spotify, and Pinterest, has made GSV best-in-class for business growth.
Coding: A Pillar of Wilmington’s Tech Edifice
Coders are to the tech industry what skilled carpenters are to new-home construction: the framers upon whom the entire edifice depends. One way of building the coder base in #Wilmington is to assume responsibility for training a skilled, talented, state-of-the-art work force. Here’s why framing in the coding infrastructure is crucial to Wilmington’s tech infrastructure. #tekmountain #coding
Tek sees his chance
Tek sees his chance. Tek sees his next step. Tek is not living on a prayer, in fact, Tek is halfway there. Tek just needs someone to help bear the beast of burden. Tek is done living like a rolling stone – who can help Tek out of limbo and onto solid ground?
Who’s The Real MVP
Who’s the real MVP? Not who, but what – your minimum viable product. This is often considered to be a stripped-down version of a new product idea that has just enough features to gather measurable learning about itself and its potential market. But this classic definition can be somewhat restrictive. Which MVP strategy works best for you?
Make Your Startup Go Viral!
Haven’t gone viral yet? What’s missing from your marketing playbook? Chances are you’re slowly making the move from old-school advertising to more tech-savvy maneuvers. You want to speed up the process, but the mediums and methods keep multiplying, whether it’s the rise of effective mobile ads, or the latest live-streaming app that gives the world a look at your company via product demos, conferences, interviews and much more.
Wilmington, NC: The Best Up-and-Coming EdTech Location
As an edTech entrepreneur who is looking for the best place to harvest your business, you are faced with a tough question: Where will it grow best? On the surface it may seem like there is an endless slate of options, but dig a little deeper and the answer is clear; Wilmington, North Carolina outshines the rest.
When Startups Hit the Roof
You’ve chosen your approach. You’ve clipped in and begun the ascent. Then, with your every fiber scorched, you hit a roof – a horizontal overhang that threatens to block you from summiting. You’re not going to let this stop you. Not now.
