Top 3 Blog Posts from Nebraska Global

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Not only was 2015 our biggest year for the Don’t Panic Labs blog, it also saw the launch of the Nebraska Global blog. Tom Chapman and Adam Hunke have been publishing some great content from the investment and entrepreneurship standpoints during the past few months, and we look forward to what they have store for…

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ConAgra’s Departure Is Our Opportunity

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News of ConAgra moving their corporate headquarters from Omaha to Chicago created quite a stir last week. Not surprisingly, much of the news has been quite negative. And with roughly 1,300 jobs leaving (approximately 1,000 from layoffs and 300 from relocation, according to the Lincoln Journal Star’s October 1st article), it’s likely that many of…

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Viewing Product and Service Failures as an Opportunity

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As a startup community we spend quite a bit of time focusing on processes and techniques for designing products, discovering product/market fit, scoping/building/iterating on MVPs, and ultimately acquiring customers. And rightfully so — these are the fundamental actions of creating sustainable innovation. But there’s one aspect that I feel is overlooked in the early stages:…

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Better Through Partnership: National Research Corporation and Don’t Panic Labs Improve Patient-Provider Interaction

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Don’t Panic Labs works across industries, and with clients large and small. Each of these are excited about different aspects of DPL’s offerings. For example, one unique partnership is with Connect. This company is a joint venture with National Research Corporation (NRC), a large Lincoln, Nebraska-based provider of services to healthcare facilities. Specifically, Connect helps…

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Resources on Innovation

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As we work with corporations seeking to innovate and entrepreneurs pushing the envelope, I’m frequently asked to recommend resources to help accelerate their learning curve. Here are a few resources that have been very influential for me. General Resources The Lean Startup by Eric Ries consolidates a ton of resources into a method to help…

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On Innovation

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Over the years, I have worked with a number of large and medium-sized companies on innovation related efforts. All have expressed the desire to innovate, but most have fundamental issues that prevent internal innovation from succeeding. At Don’t Panic Labs, we work with companies to help overcome technical limitations, but many of the fundamental challenges…

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Big Omaha Is Dead…Long Live Big Omaha

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I have been to every Big Omaha since its debut in 2009. I do not think that this means very much other than I have the ability to contextualize this year’s event through the lens of time. This was not the best Big Omaha, but it also was not the worst. The speakers were interesting…

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Non-Social Startups

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We see a lot in the news about startups that seem to be primarily focused on social media and hype. Often, it seems they only want to acquire users but provide them no (or very little) value. But what we don’t hear about very much are what I like to call the “others”; the startups…

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Thoughts on the Inc Magazine 500 CEO Survey

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Hopefully everyone has heard that Nebraska’s own Hudl was named to Inc. Magazine’s 500 Fastest Growing Private Companies in America. Major props to their team for their extremely hard work and smart choices (and a little bit of luck) during the last seven years. Hopefully, you’ll see us on the list in the next few…

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What Are You Doing This Summer?

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It’s not too hard to imagine summer with all the spring-like weather we’ve experienced during the past few weeks (the recent cold-snap not withstanding). But regardless of what the calendar says, it’ll be here before we know it. That means it’s time to start talking about our Summer Internship Experience we’ll be hosting again this…

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