Welcome to the first annual compilation of 50+ Innovation Leaders! AARP and the MedCity News team asked readers to nominate digital health companies, entrepreneurs and initiatives they felt best reflect the wide range of technologies and applications that innovatively support the 50+ population. After reviewing more than 150 submissions and tallying more than 5,000+ votes from MedCity News’s audience, we weren’t disappointed with the results.

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“Thanks for your interest, but we’ve decided to go with another candidate.”

This is a crappy email to receive, particularly when you thought you had it in the bag. The exceptional opportunity that you believed was a perfect fit is no longer on the table.

It seemed like an offer was definitely in the works, too; after all, you’d sent them references upon request, and even briefly chatted about possible compensation. Plus, you bonded with the hiring manager—you can’t have made that up.

After years of sitting on piles of cash, Indian information technology (IT) services firms are suddenly dispensing some of it to their shareholders by way of buybacks. In mid-February, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), India’s largest IT services firm, which has a cash pile of around Rs.40,000 crore ($6 billion), announced that it would buy back equity shares worth up to Rs.16,000 crore ($2.4 billion). This is TCS’ first buyback scheme since it went public 13 years ago and also the biggest share repurchase program in the country.

Inside this dossier are classified interviews with six elite product development innovators. Following our probing interrogation, the following invaluable information was retrieved:

•    Tips to survive the specter of scrap and rework

•    How to overcome the danger of quality failure

•    Avoid Quality Management Failure

•    Secrets that will help you succeed

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One of the theoretical advantages of software, artificial intelligence, algorithms, and robots is that they don’t suffer many human foibles. They don’t get sick or tired. They are polite — or rude — to everyone in equal measure. They follow orders.

The reality, of course, is different. Technology is designed by humans in all their frailty. As a result, it is eminently capable of perfect human behavior.

No matter who you are and what you have achieved, there will be times when you doubt yourself. The co-founders of Shine understand that and want to help its users boost their well-being with free daily inspirational texts to encourage and motivate them to achieve their goals.

A little over a year after Shine’s official launch in March of 2016, Naomi Hirabayashi and Marah Lidey, also its co-CEOs, have significantly grown its user base. They started with a beta test of 70 people in 2015, and now send texts to half a million users, with no sign of slowing down.

1. "Start by doing what's necessary; then do what's possible; and suddenly you are doing the impossible." - St. Francis of Assisi

2. "Sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast." - Lewis Carroll

3. "The Wright brother flew right through the smoke screen of impossibility." - Charles Kettering

CAMBRIDGE, Mass., April 18, 2017 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- As any would-be entrepreneur knows, starting a business is a serious undertaking with plenty of risk and sacrifice to go around. So why not minimize the risk and make the outcome worth the sacrifice?

Enter MIT Sloan's Bill Aulet and his new manual Disciplined Entrepreneurship Workbook. The book, a comprehensive companion to Aulet's bestselling Disciplined Entrepreneurship: 24 Steps to a Successful Startup, helps aspiring entrepreneurs master the skills, tools, and mindset they need to move from the idea phase to execution.

On Mother’s Day 2016, Sheryl Sandberg, COO of Facebook and author of Lean In, wrote a notable Facebook post: “I did not really get how hard it is to succeed at work when you are overwhelmed at home.” Sandberg was specifically talking about single mothers (her husband died unexpectedly in 2015). But she could have been speaking for the millions of Americans who struggle to balance the responsibilities of work and family life.

An independent, nonprofit organization is now in place, with the sole mission of supporting research, discovery, innovation and commercialization at the University of Nevada, Reno. The Nevada Research and Innovation Corporation has the capability of holding equity and can expedite commercialization of research discoveries and intellectual property.

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Family-run businesses represent the future building blocks of China’s economy. According to research, over the next few years China can expect to see six million family businesses contribute to its economic growth. Since private enterprise is relatively new in China, many family businesses are still controlled by their original founders who may soon pass their firms on to the next generation. Successful handovers are therefore of huge importance to Chinese family-run firms, and by extension, to the continued growth of the Chinese economy. A badly handled succession can put a family firm in danger, wipe out an entire family’s savings and destroy family harmony.

While bitcoin and other virtual currencies are relatively new to most people, Brock Pierce became familiar with them in the late 1990s.

A fan of the video game Sanctum, which sold virtual packs of cards not unlike baseball cards, he says, “This intangible object had value. … Its utility was just as much as it had been if it were physical, and in some ways, arguably better because you could play with people all over the world.”

Upon its first appearance in 2005, debt crowdfunding and P2P were viewed as being a lender of last resort. With their initial success borne out of the depths of financial crisis , these types of funding were initially used by businesses that were turned down by banks and did not know where else to go. They served a crucial purpose and in many cases were the lender of only resort.

The number of incubators and accelerators in the UK has increased significantly to support the growing number of start-ups across the country, according to Nesta and the Department for Business Energy and Industrial Strategy’s Business Incubators and Accelerators: The National Picture report.

The report found that there are currently 205 incubators, 163 accelerators, 11 pre-accelerators, seven virtual accelerators and four virtual incubators currently active in the UK, offering a broad range of support including office space, funding and other support.

Depending on where you are in the lifecycle of your startup, you may be thinking about reaching out to accelerators to take your business to the next level. There’s no such thing as a free lunch, and the same idea applies to the world of accelerators. Before we take a deep dive into the pros, cons, and questions to ask yourself to determine whether accelerators are the right fit for you, let’s begin with a working definition.

Christopher Tung graduated with an English degree in 2011 and moved out to New York City, bringing little besides the $3,000 he had saved and his determination to make it. He didn't have a job, and the one interview he had planned fell through.

After more than two months of rejection, he was down to his last $1,000, and his luck turned. He was acquired by the small e-commerce company Quidsi, which was itself acquired by Amazon. Six years later, he has held five positions, including two at different start-ups absorbed into Amazon, and one at Imgur.

For authentic innovation to occur at an organization, you have to craft the culture of a place to accept and embrace new ways of working together and being in the market. More often than not, teams or outsourced agencies follow an innovation method, create many concepts that are new to the market and certain to create new value, but are crushed by the cultural antibodies of a place while still an embryonic idea.

When the now-famous neurological patient Henry Molaison had his brain’s hippocampus surgically sectioned to treat seizures in 1953, science’s understanding of memory inadvertently received perhaps its biggest boost ever. Molaison lost the ability to form new memories of events, and his recollection of anything that had happened during the preceding year was severely impaired. Other types of memory such as learning physical skills were unaffected, suggesting the hippocampus specifically handles the recall of events—known as “episodic” memories.

Voltaire advised, “judge a man by his questions, rather than his answers.” Great leaders know how to ask great questions. And they know how to encourage people to answer these questions openly and honestly without fear of shame or reprisal.

John Kay, in his book Obliquity, says there is “no reason to ask questions to which you do not wish to know the answers.” Therein lies the reason so many leaders don’t ask questions. They don’t care about, and don’t want to know what others think. They are confident in the belief that they already have all the answers.

 Nearly 66% of all pharmaceutical launches don’t meet pre-launch sales expectations, according to a study conducted by McKinsey & Company. For the ones that do, only 53% continue to exceed forecasts by the third year. In a marketplace where the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved 108 new drugs in the past three years, each launch should be optimized for success to take advantage of the current market opportunity.