In 2016, ITIF presented an answer to the question “who are the innovators?” by sharing the demographics of innovation. This infographic shares some of those results in hopes of educating those who are crowdsourcing innovative ideas so that they can better target their outreach efforts to both source new innovative thinkers and connect with the existing crowd.

Image: https://ideascale.com

Over the weekend, Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz dived into the pool of controversy surrounding the recent executive order regarding the way refugees, green card holders, and other noncitizens are treated at the U.S. border. Schultz announced plans to hire 10,000 refugees at Starbucks over the next five years, starting in the U.S., by focusing on people who had served with American troops as interpreters and support personnel in the countries where the military has asked for such support.

Members of “Generation Y” or the “millennial generation” as they’re commonly known, have forced a great deal of change in the workplace. A sizable body of research has tried to understand this incredibly visible and demanding generation, born between the early 1980s and mid-1990s. With unprecedented access to technology, millennials have changed the game for leaders, redefining how they expect them to behave and to give them the opportunities they feel they deserve.

The UK’s Department for International Trade, through its Global Entrepreneur Programme, is looking for the best and brightest Australian and New Zealand early-stage companies to participate in the Startup Games – a full-day event on 28 February 2017 in Sydney where participants will pitch to top investors, receive valuable mentoring and advice and be in the running for a trip to the UK.

Using the bespoke Startup Games app, participants will pitch for virtual seed capital and the company with the most virtual investment at the end of the event will be declared the winner.

Image: Nick McInnes, Director General, UK Department for International Trade Australia and New Zealand - http://anthillonline.com

Fatigue may be setting in for some Western investors’ interest in African innovation, particularly those that have yet to reap rewards to brag about. Even a star company like Nigeria’s online retailer Jumia (known by some as the potential “African Amazon”) is struggling to return profits to early investor Rocket Internet, of Germany.

President Trump’s action to deliver on his campaign promises has been swift. On the campaign trail he talked about the importance of creating jobs, reforming the corporate tax code, and improving national security. All of these issues are legitimate concerns of the American people and deserve to be the topic of serious policy debate. And now that he’s in office, Trump has every right to deliver on those promises. But another of his promises was to bolster the American economy. The executive orders he has signed in his first two weeks in office (and the manner in which those orders have been issued) already undermine that goal.

Some sleep problems are obvious: When you’re tossing and turning all night, or waking up every hour, it’s clear that something's wrong. But sometimes, sleep quality can be more ambiguous. And until now, there weren’t any real guidelines to define what, exactly, good sleep really is. That changed last month when the National Sleep Foundation published a first-of-its-kind set of sleep-quality recommendations in the journal Sleep Health. These guidelines, established by a panel of medical experts and based on a review of 277 previous studies, include several measures people can use to determine how well they’re really sleeping at night.

It's too expensive. We've never heard of you guys. We're already set with our current system. No.

Objections are unavoidable in an entrepreneur's life. Someone somewhere will not like what you’re selling. They will not like what you’re doing. Or they won’t care to give you the time to figure out how they feel either way. This type of rejection is inevitable.

Still, there is a way to handle it gracefully and strategically that could lead to a maintained relationship, credibility and maybe even an overturned objection.

Some of the most trade dependent metros voted for Trump. But the shock of a sudden pullback or trade war will also have a big effect in blue Seattle.

Columbus, Ind.; Beaumont, Texas; Lake Charles, La.; Elkhart and Kokomo, Ind. These are metro areas in Trump Country. They are also the ones most exposed to the risk of a major pullback in trade under Donald Trump based on their export share of GDP, according to a new report from the Brookings Institution.

Work in government was something Jacquelyn Gill, an assistant professor of paleoecology and plant biology at the University of Maine at Orono, thought would happen later in her career — after she got tenure and built a large body of research.

But after President Trump’s administration signaled that it would restrict federal agencies’ communication with the public, sending scientists across the country into a frenzy, Ms. Gill said a campaign for public office may be in the cards for her sooner than she had imagined.

Image: Courtesy of Jacquelyn Gill For Jacquelyn Gill, an ecologist at the U. of Maine at Orono, the Trump administration’s recent moves have set off "a kind of identity crisis," she says, "in terms of what’s the path that could allow me to do the most good."

My mother used to tell me to remember that I had two ears and only one mouth.

My father always reminded me that it’s hard to learn anything when your mouth is moving.

The recent presidential campaign in the United States was an example of this inability to listen that went on 24/7 for months and months. The debates were exercises in ignoring the questions and talking past each other. The media showed an amazing ability to talk ad infinitum about a short tweet or to overanalyze a single sentence out of an interview seemingly without hearing the rest of what was said and how it modified or explained the few words they chose to focus on. Early signs since the winner was inaugurated seem to show that this destructive inability to listen on a national level will continue.

My mother used to tell me to remember that I had two ears and only one mouth.

My father always reminded me that it’s hard to learn anything when your mouth is moving.

The recent presidential campaign in the United States was an example of this inability to listen that went on 24/7 for months and months. The debates were exercises in ignoring the questions and talking past each other. The media showed an amazing ability to talk ad infinitum about a short tweet or to overanalyze a single sentence out of an interview seemingly without hearing the rest of what was said and how it modified or explained the few words they chose to focus on. Early signs since the winner was inaugurated seem to show that this destructive inability to listen on a national level will continue.

With over 75 scientific ventures to its name, Flagship’s startup network has now generated 16 IPOs and $19 billion in aggregate value over 17 years.

Things were going well, but Flagship Pioneering (formerly Flagship Ventures) still felt the need for a name change in December of last year.

“The word pioneering for us is not an adjective, it’s not a compliment, it’s basically a verb,” said Noubar Afeyan, Flagship’s CEO and senior managing partner. “It is a process, it is kind of consciously looking for value in unexplored places, without regard to the adjacencies, to what is already known to work, which is where everybody else is innovating.”

Top management must lead an enterprise-wide effort to find and protect critically important data, software, and systems as part of an integrated strategy to achieve digital resilience.

The idea that some assets are extraordinary—of critical importance to a company—must be at the heart of an effective strategy to protect against cyber threats. Because in an increasingly digitized world, protecting everything equally is not an option. The digital business model is, however, entirely dependent on trust. If the customer interface is not secure, the risk can become existential. Systems breaches great and small have more than doubled in the past five years, and the attacks have grown in sophistication and complexity.

TORONTO — Some of Canada's largest corporations and top executives launched two separate initiatives this week, investing millions of dollars into startup programs they hope will help stem a brain drain in fields like artificial intelligence and financial technology.

NextAI, which was unveiled on Wednesday, and Diagram, announced on Tuesday, both aim to halt the loss of the country's best technology talent by helping to launch new Canadian-based companies through seed funding and mentorship.

Companies approved for funding:  

Jenrin Discovery – Delaware County Jenrin Discovery is developing potential therapeutics for chronic diseases including NAFLD/NASH, diabetes and obesity. Its focus is proprietary small molecule drugs designed to selectively target peripheral receptors. It has completed pre-clinical testing and GLP safety studies for its lead compound, JD5037, and is planning on filing the IND application by the second quarter in 2017. This agent provides a mechanism of action to treat NASH and related pathologies.

Greg Deason, the Purdue Foundry’s senior vice president and director of innovation and entrepreneurship, has been in the technology transfer business a long time.

Before coming to the Foundry, which is the entity tasked with ushering startups spun out of the university’s research and inventions to market, Deason spent 20 years building Purdue’s  five research parks across Indiana—transforming them, he says, from a network of technology incubators to engines for the state’s economic growth initiatives.

We often think that a great new idea will speak for itself -- that people will automatically see that it is awesome. But that's often untrue. There are two other crucial components needed before an idea can truly change the world. Tim Kastelle explains more on the TEDx stage.

Image: http://www.innovationmanagement.se/

Ever since the beginning of mankind, there has always been someone who pushes the human race forward, such as the cavemen who learn how to make fire or the Native American Indians who sharpened stones to create weapons. With the advancement of technology in the 21st century these innovators: Elon Musk, Steve Jobs, Sheryl Sandberg, Mark Zuckerberg and Sheila Lirio Marcelo are creating new ways to travel, interact with others and access professionals for help.

Image: http://www.innovationmanagement.se

We are standing at the precipice of another massive overhaul of the healthcare industry. Which features will stay and which will go? It’s time for the American people to express their opinions to Washington. Build Your Own Bill (BYOB), share it with the President and your politicians, and make your voice heard today!

Build Your Own Bill

Image: http://www.ourcarebill.org/