A new study concludes Oklahoma City's cluster of research, medical and educational institutions and companies east of downtown provides a significant opportunity for economic growth, but significant changes must begin to avoid loss of momentum.

The 18-month study by the Brookings Institute and the Project for Public Spaces is based on a series of task force meetings and interviews with dozens of civic, corporate and research leaders focused on how to transform an area that extends from Lottie to Robinson Avenues and from N 4 to N 13 streets.

Venture capital (VC) is seldom provided at startup. Nearly all VC is provided after Aha – after the venture shows signs of potential. Entrepreneurs who get VC usually start with their own savings with help from family and friends, from crowd capital (CC) or from angel capital (AC). But most families struggle to invest. Over half of crowdfunding fails and those who succeed, do so “by a little”. And only about 10 percent of entrepreneurs are said to get angel capital.

Leaders tend to coach and mentor their “own,” and here’s the human impulse that drives it: Even those who believe that diversity improves creativity, problem solving, and decision making naturally invest in and advocate for the development of the subordinates who are most like them. They see less experienced versions of themselves in these folks, and so they’re inclined to believe in their potential — they want to nurture it.

Like many major philanthropic funders, the Ford Foundation for social justice spends roughly 5% of its annual endowment on charitable causes, reinvesting the rest to ensure it will be able to recoup those costs and operate in perpetuity.

With a total endowment of about $12 billion, that means there’s about $600 million granted toward charitable programs each year. (That 5% figure is the minimum requirement to maintain nonprofit status under federal tax code.)

A question that I still hear debated often is whether a new startup growth strategy should focus on user count or profits. First of all, the glory days of “dot.coms” are gone, when investors “didn’t care” about profitability, and all the big money was focused on user count growth.

The U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Bioenergy Technologies Office (BETO) announces the launch of its Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Projects Map, an interactive map depicting all of BETO’s recent projects throughout the United States that are competitively awarded through the SBIR program. SBIR grants are awarded for the development of new ideas and innovative research, focusing on areas where small businesses can have an impact, including the biomass industry. The SBIR program is part of a larger effort overseen by the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE).

Many new business owners I know have learned the hard way that you can never be everything for everyone. As a startup, you need to use your limited resources to excel at a few core things for your best customers, in order to stand out and get the momentum going. Focus on a few key principles is the key to success, and it takes discipline and determination to make this happen.

Image: http://blog.startupprofessionals.com 

It's easy to look at something already formed and assume that it was easy to get there. But whether it's a product, a company or a supportive ecosystem, it all had to start somewhere.

Cities like San Jose, Austin and San Francisco consistently grab top spots on the Milken Institute's List of Best Performing Cities. These are places that crank out companies by the thousands, creating jobs and building a self-sustaining platform for businesses large and small.

A successful business model is like a shark that has to keep moving to stay alive. But how do you make sure you’re not stuck in a crowded swim lane with declining margins, swimming upstream against disruptive currents, or even worse, find your organization dead in the water? A growing number of institutional leaders tell us that their current approach to innovation isn’t working. Inertia and culture are getting in the way of what’s next. The job-to-be-done for institutional leaders is to explore, test, and commercialize next practices and new business models. R&D for new business models is the new strategic imperative.

Be skeptical of ads declaring you can rev up your brain’s performance by challenging it with products from the growing brain-training industry.

Science does not support many of the claims.

That’s according to a new study published in the science journal Frontiers in Aging Neuroscience from a team of Florida State University researchers.

Neil Charness, professor of psychology and a leading authority on aging and cognition, teamed up with Wally Boot, associate professor of psychology, and graduate student Dustin Souders to test the theory that brain games help preserve cognitive function.

Many people think that Charles Darwin came up with the idea of evolution. He didn't. In fact, by the time he hit the world stage, many people already believed in evolution and there were already a number of theories, such as those of Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, that sought to explain it. Darwin was merely the first to come up with a workable hypothesis.

Today, Darwin's theory pops up in places you wouldn't expect. Besides medicine, where it has great influence, algorithms based on Darwin's work are used in everything from logistics to engineering. As Pedro Domingos explains in The Master Algorithm, it has also made major contributions to artificial intelligence.

For millions of Americans, retirement doesn't just involve more time to fix up the house. It involves swapping out the house itself for one in a warmer climate.

A TIME analysis of four years of Census records found that, among the 3.3 million people age 50 and over who were no longer in the work force and choose to move between states, their destinations were overwhelmingly clustered in just a few places: Florida, Arizona and the coast of South Carolina.

Image: http://time.com 

We are living in the age of the superstar firm. Companies like Samsung, Google, or BMW—the top players in their respective industries—are prospering. Yet economic growth remains sluggish in many parts of the world. The reason for that paradox, as the OECD has warned, is that the productivity gap between firms at the global frontier and those lagging behind has widened. Frontier firms are able to employ the most advanced technologies, which in turn allow them to win market share at the expense of their less productive competitors. And the globalized markets that frontier firms operate in disproportionately reward their knowledge advantage, setting them even further apart from the rest.

When Martin J. Walsh was sworn in as the mayor of Boston on January 6, 2014, he ushered in the city’s first new administration in 20 years. Boston is an establishment city. It’s home to some of the oldest institutions in the country, and traditions and culture run deep—and not always toward the future.

Walsh ran his campaign on the promise of progress. Central to the longtime labor leader’s ambitions was reforming the Boston Redevelopment Authority (BRA), founded in 1957 as Boston’s urban renewal engine and economic development corporation, and infamous for its abuse of eminent domain to bulldoze neighborhoods and displace people from their homes.

Instead of increasing cross-border cooperation, the enlargement of the European Union has resulted in an exodus of human capital from the eastern member states to the west of the continent, according to a new study. EURACTIV Spain reports.

An article published in Science Advances focused on the 2004 enlargement of the EU, when the club increased from 15 to 25 countries.

“In principle, this enlargement increased the number of researchers that could, through various European programmes, collaborate with EU partners,” explained the University of California’s Alexander Petersen, during the presentation of the study on Wednesday (12 April).

Image: http://www.euractiv.com/ 

Agriculture, manufacturing and tourism are the "Holy Trinity" of the Wisconsin economy and may always be so, given the state’s tradition of excellence in all three sectors.

Technology increasingly drives each of those sectors, however, and is slowly building an impressive standing of its own in terms of the jobs and value it adds to the Wisconsin economy. Several recent reports make the case:

On April 5, the Division of Corporate Finance of the Securities and Exchange Commission released two new compliance and disclosure interpretations (“C&DIs”) regarding Regulation Crowdfunding.  Regulation Crowdfunding was adopted in 2015 in order to implement the provisions of Title III of the Jumpstart Our Business Startups (JOBS) Act of 2012 that exempt certain crowdfunding transactions from registration under the Securities Act of 1933.

Identifying, understanding, and prioritizing the right incentives for your organization can be a time-consuming and challenging undertaking—but it’s also one that can generate significant benefits. Businesses need a global survey of innovation and investment incentives outlining the dynamic landscape of government incentives, particularly if they are contemplating new or expanded investments in R&D, capital, employment, training, or energy sustainability. This survey is intended to help companies understand the global dynamics that impact the funding of innovation and investment strategy.

Entrepreneurship is romanticized in our culture, and it’s easy to see why: We live in a capitalistic society that values the creation of ideas, the unlimited potential of business and of course the prestige of attaining wealth and power.

Related: 12 Signs You Have an Entrepreneurial Mindset

On top of that, we have entrepreneurial celebrities like Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg inspiring countless waves of new entrepreneurs striving to achieve the same level of success they did.

Is it possible to be successful in business and not fulfilled? The answer is a resounding yes today, and I’m convinced that it will be even more true tomorrow, as young idealistic entrepreneurs try to adapt to the long-standing business culture if success is only measured in the money you make for yourself and your business.