I may be a bit old-fashioned, but I have always looked at a business first for its potential ability to be self-sustaining, and provide reasonable profits to feed my family, my lifestyle, and my retirement. Then secondly, I look for it to be a business I can enjoy, with the potential to change the world. Today, these top priorities of many entrepreneurs seem to have reversed.

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Recent research has documented how, since the end of the recession, more and more college students have been drawn to the study of science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) disciplines.1 In fact, several of the fastest-growing disciplines are part of STEM, suggesting that students nationwide recognize the career opportunities and demand in these fields.

To better understand trends in STEM, especially as these apply to Illinois, the 2015 edition of the Innovation Index talent issue offers a comprehensive analysis of Illinois’ high-tech economy through the lens of supply—STEM degrees granted in the state—and demand—employment in STEM fields. The analysis focuses on the concentration of STEM studies and occupations, growth over time, and the state’s performance compared with the national average. The issue also examines the contribution of immigrant students to Illinois’ STEM talent pool, the fastest-growing high-tech industries and occupations in Illinois, and the emergence of “hybrid jobs” that require both STEM and non-STEM skill sets.

Dell's $67 billion purchase of EMC is the biggest pure tech acquisition ever. (AOL's $162 billion buy of Time Warner in 2000 was larger, but Time Warner was a media company, not a tech company.) This chart from Statista shows some of the largest tech acquisitions of the past decade, measured in 2015 dollars. 

There are a lot of dogs on the list.

Image: http://www.businessinsider.com

Almost all of today’s biggest companies came into being through the work of a founder and family. Over time, in developed markets, ownership tends to become dispersed. Less than one-third of the companies in the S&P 500, for example, are still controlled by founding families. The picture is quite different in emerging economies. Approximately 60 percent of their private-sector companies with revenues of $1 billion or more were owned by their founders or families in 2010. And there are good reasons to suspect that proportion will only increase. As brisk growth propels emerging regions and their family-owned businesses forward, our analysis suggests that an additional 4,000 of them could hit $1 billion in sales in the years from 2010 to 2025 (Exhibit 1). If that’s how things shake out, such companies will represent nearly 40 percent of the world’s large enterprises in 2025, up from roughly 15 percent in 2010. Developing an understanding of them, therefore, is fast becoming a crucial long-term priority for would-be investors. What follows is a brief guide to their attractions—and some complicating factors.

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My guest for this week’s episode of the Future of Work podcast is Sophie Vandebroek. Sophie is the CTO of Xerox and the President of the Xerox Innovation Group, she also has her Ph.D in Electrical Engineering from Cornell. Sophie shares her extensive knowledge with us today, including her fascinating perspectives on Innovation. We dive in to her personal and corporate history, which is a very inspirational and relatable story. We look at the Five Best Practices for Innovation, focusing on who is going to be effected by the results of your company’s Innovation, the end user. We also go into great detail on how to establish an Innovation culture, providing the resources for the proper research and development, and allowing flexibility and freedom to test and try many different solutions for products and services that will fulfill the needs of the consumer.

With more aspiring entrepreneurs graduating from New Mexico’s emerging business accelerators and local startup mania taking root, many new businesses will, eventually, need to find private investment to grow and prosper.

But local venture funding is hard to come by these days and national competition is fierce when seeking backing from out-of-state investors.

Every startup is built on a number of assumptions and undoubtedly some of them will be incorrect. At Dreamit, I’m always stressing the importance of accurately identifying those assumptions and de-risking them as early in the process as possible.

A simple example I like to use involves the e-commerce shoe company Zappos. One of the key assumptions Zappos was built on is the idea that people are willing to buy shoes online. From our 2015 perspective that sounds glaringly obvious but in 1999 that wasn’t the case. The founders tested the market early on and determined there was a demand for the service. It would’ve been a waste of energy and resources to develop the idea if that base assumption had turned out to be wrong.

There is a cliche in the financial world that has been around forever.

“Two things drive decisions: Greed and Fear”

For the past few years, we’ve been a zone where greed has been dominating. Every now and then a little fear creeps in and then gets squished into the corner by chants of “things are different this time” and “that’s just PTSD from the Internet bubble.”

Recently, the fear seems to be sticking around. There are plenty of people trying to kick it away, shake it off, or ignore it. But it lingers. And the smell of it gets stronger.

No matter how you swing it, people are serious about their music festivals.

But, it isn't just about the people who are interested in music festivals but also businesses who are interested in increasing their brand awareness, community outreach, and/or sales. Imagine thousands of potential customers packed in a relatively small area.

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Perhaps you’ve taken a new job, or your colleague was just promoted, and now your boss is younger than you. How do you put age aside and focus on what you have to learn from your manager? How do you keep your ego from getting in the way of your relationship? And what can you do to best support your boss—which is your job no matter your manager’s age?

Your brain is for thinking, not for storing a long list of random things you need to do.

"When you’re juggling a lot of tasks, things will fall through the cracks, and lists are amazing for keeping yourself on target and getting things done," says Paula Rizzo, author of Listful Thinking: Using Lists to Be More Productive, Highly Successful, and Less Stressed.

Read more >> As senior health producer at Fox News, Rizzo was used to creating checklists of questions and shots to get. When she started to look for an apartment in New York, she realized how important lists can be in all situations—but only if they’re used correctly.

You may feel super productive by pulling all nighters, but you’re actually less productive when you're running on very little sleep. Insufficient sleep can not only inhibit concentration, but can also cause anxiety, irritability, and affect your ability to retain information, which all results in poorer productivity.

Those who are most productive know the importance of hitting the sack, and they have particular sleeping habits that we should all mimic.

Canada will hold a general election on 19 Oct and with the economy confirmed on 1 Sept to have been in recession in the first half of 2015 due to the collapse in oil prices, the three main political parties have policies to improve on the dismal innovation performance. However, Jim Balsillie, co-founder of Research In Motion (RIM), now BlackBerry Ltd., says the maker of the world's first smartphone, was an anomaly in Canada and the country "isn’t equipped for global competition." Last July Damien English, minister of state for research, promised that Ireland would have a new "ambitious and visionary" strategy for investment in science by October — a visionary strategy may not be a credible one and policymakers need to understand the difference between invention and innovation.

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Trust is essential when building a healthy and productive work environment. Whether you’re leading an entire department or you work hand-in-hand with just a few coworkers, it’s important to build trusting relationships. Trust is essential to maintaining the company’s brand as well as supporting a healthy and fun work environment.

WeWork, a startup that leases office space to other startups, is now worth $10 billion, but a leaked investor presentation suggests the company is betting heavily on its new co-living venture, WeLive, and that its long-term financial situation may be perilous. BuzzFeed's Nitasha Tiku reports that in the presentation, WeWork estimates WeLive will provide the company with 21% of its revenue by 2018.

Image: WeWork cofounders Miguel McKelvey and Adam Neumann - WeWork

"Shark Tank" co-star and Herjavec Group CEO Robert Herjavec shares his top cybersecurity tips.

The Herjavec Group is one of Canada's fastest-growing technology companies and the country's largest IT security provider.

Athletes have a limited window to make their mark before their physical abilities and performances are dulled by the effects of age.

Could venture capitalists, who compete in Silicon Valley’s fast-paced tech arena, also be in a race against time?

One prominent venture industry figure says an analysis of industry data suggests a close correlation between VC investing results and age. 

This week was unusually busy on the tech-media circuit in Silicon Valley, as several publications — Fortune, Re/code, and Vanity Fair — hosted events featuring big-name tech execs and investors.

We talked to a lot of these execs, as well as the quieter folks behind the scenes, at the events and the parties afterward, and a common theme shone through: Everybody agrees we're in a tech bubble.

Baltimore — IN 1975, a San Diego woman named Marjorie Rice read in her son’s Scientific American magazine that there were only eight known pentagonal shapes that could entirely tile, or tessellate, a plane. Despite having had no math beyond high school, she resolved to find another. By 1977, she’d discovered not just one but four new tessellations — a result noteworthy enough to be published the following year in a mathematics journal.

The article that turned Ms. Rice into an amateur researcher was by the legendary polymath Martin Gardner. His “Mathematical Games” series, which ran in Scientific American for more than 25 years, introduced millions worldwide to the joys of recreational mathematics. I read him in Mumbai as an undergraduate, and even dug up his original 1956 column on “hexaflexagons” (folded paper hexagons that can be flexed to reveal different flowerlike faces) to construct some myself.

Malcolm Turnbull has promised a new innovation policy for Australia by Christmas. Bill Shorten has pledged to be a "jobs prime minister for the new economy". For the first time in a long while, the political rhetoric matches a genuinely huge national policy challenge.

In the past 15 years, there have been more than 60 reports on Australia's national innovation system. They all broadly reach the same finding: Australia suffers from a failure to turn public research into commercial outcomes, to generate higher levels of business research and development, to adapt new technologies and skills, and to participate effectively in global value chains.