Raising venture funding is never easy, but it would seem that the industry as a whole is trending in a positive if more measured direction.

While there has been a slight increase in the amount of money that was invested in the first three months of 2017 compared to the last quarter of 2016, the number of companies that received funds hasn’t been this low since quarter four of 2011, according to PitchBook-Venture Monitor, a quarterly report.

Ever wish you could call “time out” during your presentation to ask the audience how you’re doing? Since that usually isn’t doable, your next best option is to scan people’s faces for emotional clues, but recent research suggests that can lead you astray, too.

In her new book How Emotions Are Made, psychologist Lisa Feldman Barrett claims that our beliefs about facial expressions need an overhaul. “When facial movements do convey a psychological message—say, raising an eyebrow—we don’t know if the message is always emotional,” she writes, “or even if its meaning is the same each time.

For Intel, it was an important announcement: Moore’s law is not dead.

Before a gaggle of tech writers and analysts, company officials last week displayed charts and illustrations showing how transistor density on an integrated circuit continues to double every two years—consistent with a prediction made more than five decades ago by Intel cofounder Gordon Moore.

The intended message: Intel hasn’t lost its zeal for big leaps in computing, even as it changes the way it introduces new chips, and branches beyond the PC processor into other areas like computer vision and the internet of things.

When it comes to tech, San Francisco on the west coast of the US has a well established reputation as being the world's number one city.

But San Francisco's crazy living costs led real estate firm Savills to choose another US city as its number one tech hub in its Tech Cities 2017 report, which ranks 22 cities across the world "at the forefront of the global tech industry."

This year, MM&M is honoring 10 Innovation Catalysts, a group of agency executives working to assist emerging start-ups in order to bring disruptive innovation back to their clients. These executives are part of the broader innovation ecosystem under in healthcare. Read more about MM&M's Top 40 Healthcare Transformers, the upstarts and veteran innovation gurus who are leading the biopharma industry's transformation, and don't forget to sign up to attend MM&M's Transforming Healthcare conference, to be held May 1 in New York City.

The gender pay gap exists in every state and nearly all of the country's congressional districts. But women in New York state and Delaware are the closest to reaching pay equity with their male counterparts, while those Wyoming appear to be the farthest: Female workers there make a mere 64 cents for every dollar earned by a man, according to the National Women's Law Center.

Image: http://fortune.com - From Video

In an increasingly digital world, an individual’s personal data can be as valuable – and as vulnerable – to potential wrongdoers as any other possession. Despite the risk-reducing impact of good cybersecurity habits and the prevalence of cyberattacks on institutions and individuals alike, a Pew Research Center survey finds that many Americans are unclear about some key cybersecurity topics, terms and concepts. A majority of online adults can identify a strong password when they see one and recognize the dangers of using public Wi-Fi. However, many struggle with more technical cybersecurity concepts, such as how to identify true two-factor authentication or determine if a webpage they are using is encrypted.

As the recent budget announcement shows, Canada is setting itself up to embrace become a world leader in innovation by opening up specialized institutes and doubling down on supporting specific industries like cleantech.

Image: http://betakit.com 

I was sitting in a hotel conference room, listening to talks about productivity and building businesses. Between sessions, the attendees exchanged suggestions about workflow tools, scaling strategies, and coworking spaces. It felt like a scene out of a Silicon Valley tech conference, except it wasn’t. It was the annual Nomad Summit in Chiang Mai, Thailand. The city’s affordability, warm weather, availability of coworking spaces, and reliable internet connection has in recent years earned the city a place as a digital nomad hotspot. 

In the honeymoon period of a new job, any and everything feels possible. You’re meeting new people, settling into your office, and the luster surrounding the work that you’ll be doing is as radiant as ever. Colleagues invite you to lunch, onboarding meetings abound, and your boss still cannot believe that they managed to land a talent quite like you.

While it may seem like the work world is your oyster in the first month of a new gig, there are some limits. Sure, you’re the new kid on the block and the team is lucky to have you, but this introductory period doesn’t give you carte blanche to act or do as you wish, says life and career coach Jenn DeWall.

The idea of creating better cities is as old as human settlement. Smart cities is our latest iteration, amidst the Fourth Industrial Revolution, now that we have exponentially more data and computing power available affordably. This article will focus on illuminating three counterintuitive trends I have observed with smart cities.

Are you giving your employees the things they want most? If not, they may not stick around for long. Over one-third of U.S. employees have switched jobs in the past three years — and more than 90 percent of them left their companies to do so, reports Gallup’s latest State of the American Workplace report.

What are your employees considering when debating whether to stay with your business or seek greener pastures? Gallup identified five key factors that employees look for when assessing a new job and/or a new employer. Here’s the skinny on what they want — and what you can do about it.

The Sprint Accelerator announced Monday the seven startups from around the country that it welcomed into its fourth annual program, which also launched Monday.

For the 2017 cohort, the Sprint Accelerator is focused on solidifying corporate partnerships. Fueled by Dairy Farmers of America and Virgin Mobile, the 90-day program will welcome startups from two tracks — agtech and digital.

Image: http://www.startlandnews.com 

Differentiation should be a prime motivator of any strategy; firms should always look to find an edge. But too often CEOs find themselves stuck in what I call an innovation plateau. They fall into chronic sameness, an inertia driven by a feeling that they must focus on cost, even cheapness, to remain competitive.

A main indicator of how widespread this plateau has become is the decline in corporate investment in R&D, the invisible infrastructure that supports true innovation. Investment in fundamental science, the R, has dropped from more than 2% of U.S. GDP in the 1970s to 0.78% today. The less science, the fewer ideas for new businesses.

No two stem cells are identical, even if they are genetic clones. This stunning diversity is revealed today in an enormous publicly available online catalogue of 3D stem cell images. The visuals were produced using deep learning analyses and cell lines altered with the gene-editing tool CRISPR. And soon the portal will allow researchers to predict variations in cell layouts that may foreshadow cancer and other diseases.

Image: Three-dimensional views of human stem cells derived from skin showing DNA (blue), the cell membrane (purple) and other structures in yellow. Allen Inst. for Cell Science 

On Wednesday, the National Venture Capital Association and industry database PitchBook jointly released their Q1 2017 issue of Venture Monitor, which reports and analyzes the data on American venture capital activity. All in all, the absolute numbers sound big: 1,800 companies raised $16.5 billion. However, NVCA and PitchBook found that while the amount of capital invested in 2017's first quarter was slightly higher than 2016's fourth quarter, the number of companies swung to its lowest since Q4 2011.

Image: http://www.inc.com 

Differentiation should be a prime motivator of any strategy; firms should always look to find an edge. But too often CEOs find themselves stuck in what I call an innovation plateau. They fall into chronic sameness, an inertia driven by a feeling that they must focus on cost, even cheapness, to remain competitive.

When it comes to commas in a list of three or more things…say “pay attention, add value, and have fun”…some of you use what is referred to as the Oxford Comma, the one before “and” (or “or”), and others don’t. Believe it or not, there are people who are passionate in their views about that comma or the lack thereof. I imagine many of you are thinking, “A comma? Who cares?” Oakhurst Dairy probably wishes that the state of Maine cared…

While campaigning for president last year, Donald J. Trump promised changes to the H-1B visa program that brings skilled foreign workers to the United States. A critique of the program is that it can be used to replace American workers with cheaper foreign labor. Critics say that Indian outsourcing firms, in particular, use it as a shortcut to make low bids on contracts.

Image: Shipments of H-1B visa petitions arrived Monday at a government processing center in Laguna Niguel, Calif. The visas are commonly used to bring technology workers to the United States. Credit Eros Hoagland for The New York Times 

As a long-time mentor and advisor to new business owners, I can attest to both the need for mentoring, and the satisfaction that comes from watching an aspiring but tentative entrepreneur grow into someone capable of changing the world. Business is not rocket science, and one-on-one guidance face-to-face, with a real project, trumps the classroom and mistakes every time.

Image: http://blog.startupprofessionals.com