With the appointment of Arthur Sinodinos as minister for industry, innovation and science in the cabinet reshuffle, Australia can look forward to more government promotion of innovation and entrepreneurialism.

Sinodinos released a statement about his appointment, reaffirming his “keen appreciation of the importance of science and innovation policies”, and his view that innovation emerges when government steps back and allows “workers, entrepreneurs and risk takers (to be) at the centre of the economy”.

We live in a world where new technology is constantly and consistently advancing and new companies are born every day. In 2014, the recession maintained its grasp on American ingenuity as entrepreneurship hit a 20-year low. However, according to the Kauffman Index for 2016, startup activity rebounded last year, going up for the second year in a row. The report cites a .33% increase, which translates into approximately 550,000 new business owners each month throughout the year.

Image: http://www.sep.benfranklin.org 

Innovation is worthy of support, but European leaders need to focus more on life-saving vaccines rather than the development of more delivery apps, writes Cecile Vernant.

Cecile Vernant is the head of the German Foundation for World Population’s (DSW) EU office. 

Was EurActiv right to say in the 13 January edition of The Brief that we fetishise innovation? And that this was a bad thing?

Our answer would be: yes, but.

Image: CDC Global/ Flickr

“John knows exactly what he’s doing and needs little management. He works rapidly but without any mistakes so he delivers an amazing amount of high quality work. No one can do what he does.”

This was the response I received when I asked a manager how John was doing. Sounds good, doesn’t it? Read on.

“But he has a terrible personality. John finds fault with everyone but himself. He complains incessantly about everything. He thinks he knows more than anyone, especially me and the other senior managers. No one likes him.”

WASHINGTON — Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong, an audacious biotech billionaire who has pledged to “solve health care,” has been in talks with the Trump administration about the possibility of serving in a senior role overseeing the US health care system, according to individuals familiar with the discussions.

Soon-Shiong, a trained surgeon, has met with President Trump and his advisers at least twice in recent weeks.

Is your company an easy target for hackers? Even those making progress must keep moving to protect their digital assets.

As digitization accelerates, it’s critical for organizations to shore up their defenses to ensure information systems are well protected. But with threats on all sides, where should companies begin, and how do they keep pace with constant shifts in the landscape? In this episode of the McKinsey Podcast, leaders of McKinsey’s Cyber Solutions, VP Dayne Myers and consultant Marc Sorel, speak with McKinsey Publishing’s Simon London about ways to manage cyber security risk, build digital resilience, prioritize critical assets, and embrace a broad, business-wide perspective—even if your plan isn’t perfect.

In the 1960s, Mercury astronauts Alan Shepard, Gus Grissom, John Glenn and others absorbed the accolades of being the first men in space. Behind the scenes, they were supported by hundreds of unheralded NASA workers, including "human computers" who did the calculations for their orbital trajectories. "Hidden Figures," a 2016 book by Margot Lee Shetterly and a movie based on the book, celebrates the contributions of some of those workers.

Image: Mary Jackson was one of the "human computers" portrayed in the film "Hidden Figures." Credit: NASA

We all want more well-being in our lives. But which traits are most likely to be associated with well-being? This is an important question because it can help inform our decision to cultivate some aspects of our being over others, and can even inform culture-wide interventions to increase societal levels of well-being.

But in answering this question there are some important considerations. For one, what aspect of well-being are we talking about? In recent years, multiple aspects of well-being have been studied that go beyond the stereotypical smiling and positive vibes associated with happiness (see here for a review).

The fintech sector is being shaped by shifting market conditions, new regulations, and changes in consumer demands and behaviors.

For the past decade, fintech companies—technology firms that focus on financial products and services—have moved quickly, forcing incumbents to rethink their core business models and embrace digital innovations. But now, the fintech industry is itself maturing and entering a period of rapid change. Companies wondering how they will fit into this new era must first understand the forces that are pushing the changes.

Technology Council of Maryland and Chesapeake Regional Tech Council Merge to Propel Maryland as a Top U.S. Technology Hub

ROCKVILLE AND ANNAPOLIS, MARYLAND, January 25, 2017 – Last evening, during the 29th Annual Maryland Policy and Leadership Dinner, the Technology Council of Maryland, Inc. (TCM) and the Chesapeake Regional Tech Council (CRTC) announced a merger of the two organizations, effective immediately. The merger is designed to expand and regionalize Maryland’s technology and life science hubs, while also creating a consistent, unified voice for the industries statewide and a platform to attract more companies and leverage synergies.

“This is an exciting and obvious next step for our region—bringing together two powerhouse councils under one roof to benefit the tech and life science industries in our region,” said Tech Council of Maryland Chairman Rene B. LaVigne, President & Chief Executive Officer, Iron Bow Technologies. “We believe this will propel Maryland to become one of the elite hubs in the country for the life science and technology industries. We also believe that together, we will create a larger technology footprint in the region.”

When it comes to entrepreneurship-driven regional growth, a few big population centers garner the glamor, whether Boston, Northern California’s Bay Area, Bangalore, or Beijing. This is not mere optics: the large portion of the $50 billion global venture capital pie fueling entrepreneurial growth is concentrated in or near a few big urban regions. Furthermore, mega-cities seem to be natural hotbeds for growth: as just one example, London, with around 10 million people, currently has a 50% greater incidence of high growth firms compared to other UK regions, and a quarter of the high growth firms in the nation overall.

Knowledge@Wharton: Laura Huang (is here) to tell us about her new research, which has to do with investors using their “gut feel” to make important investment decisions. It’s a little bit counter intuitive — not quite what you might think investors are relying on. So we’re anxious to hear about that.

Laura Huang: The origin of this paper is that we were really interested in how investors make decisions. And this one thing kept coming up. They would talk about the size of the market; they would talk about the product. But investors kept coming back to: “Well, then I rely on my gut feel, or then I invest based on my gut feel.” I’ve even heard stories of investors just saying, “You know, I invest because I rub my tummy, and that’s how I make my investment.”

Tech has stolen the market cap crown from the oil tycoons. This change is perfectly natural according to a panel of regional experts last month at Innovation Weekend in Tokyo, but the Silicon Valley kingdom is also teetering on being overthrown.

“The day of America as the single IT leader is over,” writes founding partner Takeshi Ebihara of Rebright Partners on his blog. Citing PricewaterhouseCoopers’ MoneyTree report, Takeshi emphasises that the amount of funding for startups in China grew eightfold in just two years to US$37 billion in 2015.

Crowdsourced innovation is a tactic used more and more often by government organizations as well as enterprise corporations. This means that innovation teams need to add a new skill set to their resumé: communications.

Any crowdsourcing initiative includes the marketing task of building and maintaining the interest of the crowd. And although there are numerous tips and tricks that go along with innovation communications strategies, one of the key questions that these specialists have when their launching a communication initiative is: who is our target audience? Who are the innovators?

The Greater Washington Partnership, a group of chief executives and business leaders from the Baltimore-Washington area, has tapped a former White House staffer as its CEO.

Jason Miller, who previously worked as deputy assistant to the President and Deputy Director of the National Economic Council, begins his tenure as CEO of the newly formed business group April 1.

Rutland, Vermont, is actively recruiting refugees from the Middle East to come live there, the New York Times reported earlier this week. The motivations aren’t purely humanitarian. Like many towns and cities in rural areas, Rutland has seen its population age and decline. Unlike many of them, though, Rutland enjoys a pretty robust employment scene. Vermont’s unemployment rate is 3.6 percent. As Rutland mayor Christopher Louras put it, “We need people.”

Most of us assume that if we want to change people’s behavior, we need to change their incentives.

For example, after I published research and advice on collaboration in professional service firms, I heard from a surprising number of people who wrote to ask questions like, “Maybe it’ll work in a partnership, like a law or consulting firm, but what about in my company, where employees aren’t owners and can’t change the rules?” People in industries as different as commercial real estate, pharma, biotech startups, hedge funds, and public school districts worried about how to transform a competitive, star-driven culture into a collaborative one when they had no power to juggle financial rewards and no influence over promotion decisions.

Every year we wait to see which startups—and which schools—will find their way onto Poets & Quants’ list of Top MBA Startups, ranked by venture capital-backed funding. Only ventures launched within the past five years (2012-2016), by founders who graduated within those five years, qualify. This year’s big winner is Deliveroo, founded by Will Shu WG’12, with $474.59 million.

Stuart Rock In the wake of the financial crisis, the start-up agenda had a galvanising effect on the UK economy. Since then, new business creation has been at historic highs. But, if the country is to keep its eyes on the long-term economic prize, then it’s time to move beyond start-ups.

“Competitive advantage doesn’t go to the nations that focus on creating companies; it goes to nations that focus on scaling companies,” says Sherry Coutu, the entrepreneur and investor who was author of the influential Scaleup Report, published in late 2014.

A few weeks before I began my freshman year at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, I received an official- looking envelope from a student group. Expecting information about a club or event, I was surprised to find such sentences as "MIT certainly lowers standards for women and ‘underrepresented’ minorities" and "The average woman at MIT is less intelligent and ambitious than the average man at MIT. The average ‘underrepresented’ minority at MIT is less intelligent and ambitious than the average non-‘underrepresented’ minority." (MIT’s Association of Student Activities later stripped the student group of its official recognition as a result of the unapproved mailing.)