Today, along with Deutsche Bank Americas Foundation, the Garfield Foundation and the Lawrence N. Field Center for Entrepreneurship at Baruch College, we announced the five finalists of Competition THRIVE. The competition is designed to generate business plans that will address the challenges faced by immigrant entrepreneurs, including access to credit, financial management, language barriers and access to business networks. The finalists include:

By Fiona Peach, Assistant Vice President, and Andrea Moore, Project Manager, Economic Research and Analysis

New York City’s tech scene has been getting a lot of attention lately, including our most recent StatsBee post about NYC’s tech boom in 2012. A

D-Shape's "Digital Concrete" 3D printing concept won the grand prize of $50,000. Photo credit: Trista Sordillo/NYCEDC

Congratulations to the winners of Change the Course – The NYC Waterfront Construction Competition, which is designed to provide innovative and cost-saving solutions for completing marine construction projects and maintaining waterfront infrastructure in New York City. Three winners, D-Shape, Andrew Rella and John Sheridan of The Sheridan Corporation, will be awarded a total of $90,000 for their selected ideas. The concepts will be presented to New York City agency...

Meet the robots that keep you safe, explore the reaches of space and take the place of your pet parrot.

Join Honeybee Robotics, HUGE and NYCEDC for Extending Human Reach, an evening of thought-provoking presentations and exciting live demonstrations in celebration of National Robotics Week. Extending Human Reach showcases the full range of robotics activity in the City, from the application of advanced academic research to the startups aiming to make robotics accessible to the public.

Presenters include Stephen Gorevan, a pioneer of space robotics who is also co-founder and Chairman of Honeybee Robotics. He...

View the PDF for map legend

This week, NYCEDC announced a vision plan for Webster Avenue, a major thoroughfare extending from the neighborhoods of Melrose to Woodlawn in the Bronx. The vision plan focuses on the approximately 1.5-mile long section between Fordham Road and Gun Hill Road, where a convergence of City initiatives and private investment is poised to transform Webster Avenue into a vibrant mixed-use district that serves the needs of culturally diverse...

When you invest in your employees, everybody wins. Enter the NYC Business Innovation Challenge.

This week, NYCEDC and Next Street launched the NYC Business Innovation Challenge, which is part of NYCEDC’s LINK initiative to better connect the City’s low-income residents with emerging opportunities. NYC Business Innovation Challenge is designed to help businesses better engage their employees to drive higher productivity and increased revenues. This Challenge invites...

The Leaning Tower of Pisa. Photo credit: David Kenny via Flickr

By Grace Cheung, Senior Marketing Manager

We’re all familiar with the Leaning Tower of Pisa. What’s lesser known is that around 20 years ago, the famous tower – dating back to the 1100s – was on the brink of collapse. To reinforce the structure, engineers had to come up with an ingenious solution. By placing lead weights on one side of the tower and removing tons of soil underneath the building, opposite its lean, the tower...

Today we announced the six finalists of New York’s Next Top Makers, a competition to promote innovation in New York City. Next Top Makers is designed to act as a business accelerator for New York City-based product entrepreneurs, inventors and makers, where finalists will receive assistance on the path to commercialization in the form of studio space, business support and mentorship from industry experts, including Adafruit Industries founder Limor Fried (recently named Entrepreneur Magazine’s 2012 Entrepreneur of...

NYCEDC and Hudson River Park Trust asked for innovative concepts on how to change the course of waterfront construction and help build and maintain waterfront infrastructure in a more cost effective and sustainable manner. Meet the competition winners and hear their creative ideas for Changing the Course of building and maintaining our waterfront! Presentations will be followed by Q&A and Networking session.

This event, which will be held at the National Museum of the American Indian New York in Lower Manhattan, is free to attend.

Today, Mayor Bloomberg and NYCEDC announced the “LINK” Initiative (Leveraging Innovations and our Neighborhoods in the Knowledge economy), eight new programs designed to connect low-income New Yorkers with opportunities in the city’s knowledge economy. 

These programs are designed to strengthen the skills and employability of New Yorkers with low incomes and to foster business activity that provides employment opportunities for those with less formal training, helping to alleviate key challenges that prevent many from moving up the economic ladder. The LINK Initiative aims to increase...