One of the biggest sources of anxiety for workers and job seekers–at least according to the latest reports–is that they’ll be rendered obsolete when their daily responsibilities are automated. Between algorithms, artificial intelligence, and actual robots, we can glimpse a future where human work will at least be transformed.

But a new study from Redwood Software and the Centre for Economic and Business Research (CEBR) offers a bit of an antidote.

In this video, Entrepreneur Network partners Jason Balin and Chris Haddon break down the five steps you need to take to start a company, from researching and constructing a business model to confirming a launch date. Just make sure you've done you're homework before you reach that final step.

To learn more, click play. 

Two former executives of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation have a plan to support young biotech companies, and they are armed with $200 million to do it.

Boris Nikolic and Julie Sunderland launched Seattle venture-capital firm Biomatics Capital last year, and originally sought to raise $150 million for its first fund. It ended up closing with $200 million, the company announced Wednesday.

Image: Julie Sunderland, previously director of program-related investments at The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, launched Biomatics Capital with Boris Nikolic to invest in young biotech companies. (Courtesy of Biomatics Capital)

Some years ago, I met an ERP implementation team that was able to deliver tangible business results in just six months, where eight other teams at the same company had stalled. The successful team’s secret? Early on, its members had given up on planning, and instead focused their time on putting live customer orders through a prototype of the software. Week after week, they met with the pilot customer team, listened to their feedback, and iterated on the design. “One day, we realized we had gone live,” said one ERP team member. “The actual cutover was a nonevent, because things were going so well.”

Image: Elizabeth Doty is a former lab fellow of Harvard University’s Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics and founder of Leadership Momentum, a consultancy that focuses on the practical challenges of keeping organizational commitments. - http://www.strategy-business.com

Our 2016 Annual Review is hot off the press and I'm happy to share it with you.  Below is a link to our digital version for download.  The pages of the Annual Review tell our story of who we are, what we provide and why we open our doors to the international business community in Southeastern Pennsylvania and Southern New Jersey every day.  Our bottom line number now totals $1.6 billion in total export sales for the companies we have assisted over the past 15 years.  With guidance from our trade specialists, our member and client companies continue to increase their yearly sales which to date, also translates to more than 21,200 jobs for our region.

Rome wasn't built in a day.

The hard truth is that there just aren't quick fixes for most things in life. It takes time to gain experience and build up an expertise in most fields.

That being said, other abilities are easy to pick up after just a few minutes, as this helpful Quora thread pointed out. These tricks can really save you a lot of time and hassle when it comes to life's little problems.

MADISON – The annual Wisconsin Governor’s Business Plan Contest has always been a canary in a high-tech coal mine, chirping out alerts about the kinds of businesses emerging in the state’s economic sectors.

This year’s contest, in which the pool of entries has been trimmed to under 50 contestants, is no exception to the rule. The list of semi-finalists reflects efforts to solve market and social problems, big and small, while also signaling the increasing diversity of Wisconsin’s economy.

The survivors are a microcosm of Wisconsin innovation, with finalists pushing the envelope in traditional sectors – manufacturing and agriculture – as well as information technology, health care, transportation, public safety and more. Here are some examples:

When Americans think about U.S. leadership in the world, they often think of military power, famous presidents, or economic achievement. But they might be less likely to name an area in which the United States has led the world for decades: science. From lifesaving vaccines for devastating diseases like smallpox and polio, to novel materials like semiconductors and superconductors, to robotic rovers that can explore Mars, science has made possible discoveries that revolutionized the world, and much of it started right here in the United States.

Recently Comcast announced the launch of LIFT labs for Entrepreneurs – a start-up accelerator for media, entertainment and connectivity start-ups. The first lab under this program will open in Philadelphia and the company is looking to expand the program to Atlanta next year. The media industry is in a transformative phase, as streaming media and live videos on social media take center stage, threatening the traditional cable TV industry.

Sixty years ago, on March 25, 1957, the heads of government of Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands met in Rome to sign the treaty establishing the European Economic Community, the forerunner of today’s European Union (EU). The document is explicit about its objectives: the preamble announces that the treaty will “lay the foundations of an ever closer union among the peoples of Europe” and improve living and working conditions through “common action to eliminate the barriers which divide Europe.”

My latest column in the March 2017 issue of Governing magazine is about how small liberal arts schools are partnering to try to help the small towns where they are located succeed. In this they are imitating big cities, where major institutions have often played a key role in driving revitalization efforts, often in part out of self-interest. Here’s an excerpt:

 Image: http://www.newgeography.com

In 2013, Foursquare co-founder Dennis Crowley walked into a bakery and bought a cake. Almond, with meringue on top. It was sweet — but the milestone was sweeter.

For more than a decade — since his grad school days — he’d been pursuing one big idea: a product that understands how users move through the world so well, it can deliver timely, personalized tips. That idea had evolved through several iterations, from a startup called Dodgeball to the founding of Foursquare. When he bought the cake, the company best known for “checking in” was several years into something bigger, developing mobile software that would recognize users’ locations and automatically push tailored recommendations.

Jumpstart, the organization that’s been supporting startups across the country for over a decade, has launched a $10 million seed fund that will solely invest in women and minority led tech startups. There are two catches, you have to be a woman or minority led startup and you have to relocate to Ohio.

“Part of our focus is to accelerate opportunity for women and minority entrepreneurs in Ohio,” said JumpStart CEO Ray Leach said in a statement.

Canada is a nation of wide open spaces, yet it has high urban area densities recently driven higher by a redefinition of urban area criteria (Note 1). Canada's largest urban area (population centre) is Toronto, with a population of 5.4 million continues to be the densest of the 59 with more than 50,000 residents. Toronto has a population of 3,028 per square kilometer (7,843 per square mile), approximately five percent above the European Union average. Montréal (population of 3.5 million) has a density of 2,720 per square kilometer (7,045 per square mile), followed by third ranked Vancouver (2,584/6,693), which has a population of 2.2 million.  The top ten is rounded out by Milton, a fast growing Toronto exurb with a density of 2,520 per square kilometer or 6.527 per square mile, Calgary (2,112/5,470), Regina, the capital of Saskatchewan (2,082/5,391) and Winnipeg, which has seen renewed recent growth (2,070/5,360).

Image: http://www.newgeography.com

Want to up your blogging income game in 2017? Going from casual hobby blogger to pro entrepreneur blogger takes time and effort, but once you take the plunge; you can start earning big bucks from your blog. Whether you decide to monetize the blog itself, or prefer to use it as a launchpad for your career;  your blog is an important digital (and business) asset.

The two main success metrics for bloggers are: a healthy amount of followers (your audience), and a ton of relevant and engaging content. To succeed at blogging, you will need to be committed to both; always be ready to talk to your audience and answer their burning questions with your content as much as you can. An engaging blog is a hugely valuable PR weapon.

Today’s customers are overloaded and overwhelmed by too much information, so making a decision is a challenge. You may think this is only important to your marketing and sales people, but in reality it doesn’t matter how great your product or technology might be, you won’t succeed if you don’t understand your target customer decision process. Every aspect of your business must be about sales.

Image: http://blog.startupprofessionals.com

Work today isn’t working for lots of people. Wages for most Americans haven’t increased above inflation in 40 years. Real unemployment–which includes people no longer looking for work–is above 10% (at least double the headline rate). Full-time jobs with benefits and protections are growing rarer. More than 15% of workers are now employed on-contract or temporarily, one recent study showed. And every indication, from holographic secretaries to Amazon drones, suggests that the workplace will continue to splinter. Robin Chase, cofounder of Zipcar, put it succinctly: “My father had one job in his lifetime. I will have six jobs in my lifetime, and my children will have six jobs at the same time.”

Image: ILLUSTRATION: OLIVER MUNDAY - https://www.fastcompany.com

You thought the Shark Tank was tough? The second annual BioHealth Capital Region Crab Trap is now accepting applications!

Submit your application for a chance to be named the company with the most commercial potential at the BioHealth Capital Region Forum.

Deadline for entries is March 31st - Finalists will be announced by April 7th

The internet has recently been taken over by a very tall and overly pregnant lady.

You may have heard of her. Her name is April. April the Giraffe. This chick has taken over the internet, with pregnant human women going viral for impersonating her.

Image: Image credit: Animal Adventure Park