Business in the United States has experienced seismic shifts in the last decade, and business schools are no exception. These developments have been fueled by technology, the global financial crisis, cultural shifts, and the introduction of Gen Y into the business world.

Traditional MBAs, which have usually focused on accounting and finance, have a hard time producing the type of business leaders companies are currently looking for. Specifically, companies want ethical problem solvers with strong digital and entrepreneurial skills, who are team players and work well in diverse environments. Yet, a 2008 study of top business schools found that curricula lacked valued “thematic elements” such as soft skills, information technology, globalization and corporate and social responsibility.

With just days to go before the Rio+20 Earth Summit, many are speculating about how many world leaders will show up and what kind of agreements they might reach on the key agenda items: Creating a "green economy" and establishing an "international framework for sustainable development".

It is no coincidence that these two items appear side by side. The term "green economy" was coined years ago - even before the first Earth Summit in 1992 - to provide a new lens through which to examine the links between economics and sustainability.

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius on Friday announced the recipients of 81 new Health Care Innovation Awards made possible by Affordable Care Act. The awards will support innovative projects nationwide designed to deliver high-quality medical care, enhance the health care workforce, and save money.

Combined with the 26 awards announced last month, HHS has distributed money to 107 projects that plan  to save the healthcare system an estimated $1.9 billion over the next three years.?

While writing this post, my mood will vary. I’ll enjoy the beginning – riffing on a new idea is always exciting – but I’ll inevitably hit difficult patches. A few cat memes and visits to Facebook might resolve the mental strain, but eventually, a feeling of guilt will pull me back to this article, eager to continue on, with this sentence.   

The relationship between mood and creative output is delicate; one moment we’re inspired, the next we’re questioning our competence. This, of course, is what the creative process is all about: the ebb and flow between impasse and insight. The secret is to stop hopscotching the Internet – the status update and tweet can wait – and get the creative juices flowing, hopefully enough to finish your next paragraph.

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The world of information technology is always changing. But over the last six years it has started to change more rapidly with the genesis of cloud providers, the growth in the number of giant webscale companies, and the widespread use of virtualization in enterprise environments. A new era is upon us.

In the next five years a new way of thinking about, constructing and operating IT will emerge. Data centers are no longer the size of mini-marts but instead are mega-marts like Rob Roy’s 2.2 million square foot Switch data center in Las Vegas. Servers are no longer the unit of computing, but instead are being taken completely apart or are a mere component in the new data-center sized computer, a trend being pushed by Frank Frankovsky at Facebook and at the Open Compute Foundation.

Over the next few years, we’ll likely be seeing more stories about things like Merck’s $90 million translational research center for scientists, entrepreneurs and venture capitalists; Sanofi’s partnership with Third Rock Ventures to launch a new biotech company; and Johnson & Johnson, GSK and Index Ventures’ new fund.

That’s because open innovation and cooperation in the pharmaceutical industry will continue to gain traction as patent losses and R&D cutbacks force drug companies to look outside of their own walls for promising technologies, according to a new report from GBI Research.

Startup Genome analyzed 3,200 high-growth technology startups to answer this daunting question:

Why do startups fail?

It came away with this beautiful, informative infographic:

Here’s an interesting new factoid about obesity: The world’s population has 17 million tons worth of extra fat. And almost one-third of that is from the U.S. alone, despite the fact that it only holds 5 percent of the population. That’s according to a new report published in BMC Public Health about obesity’s threat to the food supply. That’s is fueling a vibrant obesity treatment market, which is seeing an increasing number of new startups emerge, especially in the minimally invasive surgery and mobile health arenas.

Who’s the biggest of the big? By 2018, Novartis will edge out competitors Pfizer and Sanofi to become the top-selling drug company, predicts a new EvaluatePharma report. Gilead Sciences will be the Top 20′s biggest mover, the report says, due to its strong HIV franchise and its hepatitis C candidate acquired through its Pharmasset acquisition.

The European venture capital firm Index Ventures has raised 350 million euros ($442 million) to invest in early stage start-ups in both Europe and the United States.

The announcement comes despite bleak prospects for Europe’s economy, which continues to suffer from the Continent-wide financial crisis.

You are cordially invited to join this important workshop to gain an in-depth understanding of New York’s innovation ecosystem, meet regional leaders, and learn how to access powerful investment and funding opportunities.

Agenda:

Welcome Comments 9:45 am - 10:00 am    

• Thomas Moebus, SUNY Levin Institute

Innovate NY Fund: New $26 Million Seed Fund 10:00 am - 11:15 am

• Steve Cohen, Deputy Commissioner, Empire State Development Corporation      
• Jordan Levy, SCP Buffalo Incubator LP      
• Brian Model, Stonehenge Capital Company      
• Nada Jain, Golden Seeds      
• Mark Fasciano, Canrock Ventures LLC      
• Jennifer Tegan, Cayuga Venture CVF IV LP      
• Theresa Mazzullo, Excell Partners LLC

Yammer just got sold to Microsoft for over a billion dollars.  Jive Software, the leader in "social software for the enterprise" is another Valley company, and it's worth over a billion, too.  Salesforce, Successfactors, Netsuite... go down the list of Enterprise SaaS companies and not a single one of them is in New York City.

But isn't New York City the center of crappy enterprise IT experiences?

How is it possible that a small team of hackers hasn't escaped from the biggest midtown companies with a plan to free all of their enterprise brethren from cruddy software?  Why is enterprise disruption completely dominated by companies outside NYC?  We've made headway in just about every other area.  Hell, we even made parts of the Mars rover, but off all things to suck at... Enterprise?  Srsly?

Ten years ago Johns Hopkins Medicine International, where I am the CEO, joined forces with Anadolu, a Turkish charitable foundation, to build and operate a state-of-the-art medical centre in Istanbul.

The project's success would depend on putting the right executives in place. Hopkins was prepared to draw them from within its own ranks, but Turkish law prohibits non-citizens from running hospitals.

And yet, finding qualified Turkish executives proved impossible. How could we manage a large, complex project in a country whose laws prevented us from hiring the right people for key leadership roles?

One thing we’ve learned over the past several decades is that we live in an ever-changing world.  There was a time when America was the unquestioned global leader in manufacturing.  That changed to include Germany and Japan… which, in turn, changed to include China and other nations.  Now, there is ample evidence that our world is changing or about to change once again.  Are we ready for this change and will this change be good for us?

Last week I had the opportunity to attend the second Clinton Global Initiative – America (CGI America) where Advanced Manufacturing was a major focus.  Different from most gatherings of this type, the CGI asks participants for specific, measurable “Commitments to Action” to effect the kinds of changes necessary to forge the American role in global manufacturing – i.e. to advance manufacturing.

While more money is usually better, more money doesn’t lead to better performance and results. More money is a motivator, but it’s not the motivator.

As employees, we often want three things from our employers:

• The freedom to create VALUE 
• The feeling of being VALUED 
• The fulfillment of doing work that aligns with our VALUES. 

Employers never promise these things explicitly, but we can look for them in our current organizations or in new organizations when we make career choices–and as entrepreneurs, we can seek to create them for our own employees:

Venture capitalists are great financial engineers. What they don’t know about preference shares probably isn’t worth knowing – and so it should be. Yet it strikes me that this trend for VC houses to be dominated by finance guys is a peculiarly UK and European phenomenon.

In North America, VC firms have a diversity of talent split fairly equally across finance, entrepreneurial and industry backgrounds – i.e. people who can do deals (the easy bit!), people who can build successful businesses and people who can create new markets. If the UK wants to replicate the successes seen in the US, perhaps now is the time to accept that VC houses need to be providing more.

Successful entrepreneur Jackie Baptist and independent film producer Elizabeth Dell announced this week their upcoming new documentary film She Means Business dedicated to shedding important light on the major triumphs, experiences and insights of women entrepreneurs today.  The film, which is in the fundraising stage via Kickstarter, explores the key challenges female entrepreneurs face and offers education, inspiration and information to help women overcome these challenges and move forward with their entrepreneurial ventures with greater success.

Stewarded by top advisors including Sonja Hoel Perkins of Menlo Ventures and Broadway Angels, Jeanne Sullivan of Starvest Partners, Judy Robinett of Illuminate Ventures and Grow America, Joy Marcus of Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Janet Hanson, CEO of 85 Broads and successful entrepreneurs and filmmakers Jacqueline Baptist and Elizabeth Dell, respectively, She Means Business has already garnered attention from leading movers and shakers in the world of entrepreneurial women, and various large media outlets. It counts among its supporters Tim Draper, Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Paul Holland, Foundation Capital, Monica Smiley, Publisher/CEO of Enterprising Women, Marsha Firestone, Founder and President of Women Presidents’ Organization and many others.

Work appears to be taking its toll on the relationship between dads and their families, a new study finds.

CareerBuilder’s annual Father’s Day survey found that 22 percent of fathers say their work has negatively affected relationships with their children, while 26 percent believe their job has hurt relationships with significant others.

The survey reveals the immediate struggle to achieve a work-life balance dads face once their kids are born. Two-in-five working dads who had a child in the last three years didn’t take any paternity leave, while nearly 60 percent took a week or less.

Sorry Japan, America is once again the home to the world’s fastest supercomputer — for the first time since November 2009.

The newly created “Sequoia” cluster at the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory scored a whopping 16.32 petaflops with the Linpack benchmark, according to a new list released by Top 500 Supercomputer Sites today. The cluster ousts Fujitsu’s “K Computer” in Japan, which now sits at the No. 2 spot with 10.51 petaflops using the same benchmark.

The APEC Startup conference that just wrapped up in Seoul signaled stepped-up interest within the 21 APEC member nations in policies that promote new firm formation as ameans of “booting up” economies. Interestingly, the drive for this effort is being led not by the United States, but by South Korea which has taken big strides over the past two years to rebuild its own startup ecosystem.

On an earlier visit, I observed that despite Korea’s track record for highly innovative big firms, a negative attitude towards “risk” and “failure” had been blocking the emergence of new innovators. On my trip to Seoul last week to open the APEC meeting, it was clear that a new generation of thinking has emerged focused on making the nation a cultural capital for entrepreneurship.