“The first principle is that you must not fool yourself and you are the easiest person to fool”—Richard Feynman.

Like many people, I spend part of my morning perusing select articles from a variety of online sources: the Financial Times, the New York Times, The Economist, a variety of blogs. One of the things I appreciate the most about our technologically advanced world is this ability to easily access information about what people around the world are thinking and saying on the various topics that interest me.

I recently attended an Angel investors group in Vancouver. It’s fascinating to hang out with a bunch of zillionaires for the day and listen to startup pitchers trying to wrestle money from them. The Keuretsu Forum is based in Seattle and with over 2500 accredited investors is the largest investor network in the world. The great thing about Keuretsu investors is that they regularly come to Vancouver to meet with startup entrepreneurs at the Vancouver chapter. They are well known for sharing opportunities with three or more chapters in different cities in order to close a deal.

Image: https://www.equities.com

Faced with the claim that AI and robots are poised to replace most of today’s workforce, most mainstream professionals — doctors, lawyers, accountants, and so on — believe they will emerge largely unscathed. During our consulting work and at conferences, we regularly hear practitioners concede that routine work can be taken on by machines, but they maintain that human experts will always be needed for the tricky stuff that calls for judgment, creativity, and empathy.

Companies spend a lot of time and money building strong brands to win over customers—but they often fall short when it comes to strengthening their employer reputation to win talent.

“Employer branding” is no longer simply a concern for recruitment marketing; it is also a key component of effective organizational leadership. If companies can’t attract, engage, and retain the right talent, they’re unlikely to achieve their business objectives. With this in mind, my firm Universum recently conducted a survey to determine what the best global employers are doing to convince workers to join and stay with them.

These are heady days for venture capitalists.

The $1 Billion Club

Six venture capital firms thus far this year have raised $1 billion or more each, a startling sign of how eager investors are to pour money into ventures that can turn into huge losses as much as they generate rich profits. The latest firm to join the $1 billion club is the Silicon Valley firm Greylock Partners, famous as an early investor in Facebook Inc. and LinkedIn Corp., which raised this amount in less than three months, according to The New York Times.

The business landscape is rapidly evolving — and there's a set of professionals, all 35 and under, urging on this transformation using a combination of skill, guts and perseverance. These are the inventors, strategists and entrepreneurs that make up the LinkedIn Next Wave 2016, a group of 120 individuals across a dozen different industries that are doing extraordinary work and transforming their fields.

Image: Source: Eero - Nick Weaver, co-founder and CEO of eero

Look at your iPhone and imagine your apps are gone. Facebook, Uber, the Weather Channel, the Huffington Post, Scrabble, Google Maps, Kindle, Instagram, LinkedIn, White Noise, Bitmoji…. Apps you use all the time with barely a thought. If Steve Jobs had his way, they wouldn’t have existed.

This is according to Walter Isaacson, author of the biography Steve Jobs, speaking at the recent launch of the Anne and John McNulty Leadership Program at Wharton. He said that Jobs had a powerful need to maintain end-to-end control, and when the iPhone came out, he wouldn’t allow any third-party apps. He viewed them as “polluting his product.”

Image: http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/

Remember the adage, 'if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is'? After being drawn by the exciting possibility of high returns, investors are now finding this saying increasingly applicable to the equity crowdfunding industry.

Seedrs, an equity crowdfunding platform, recently published its first portfolio update, which revealed an annualised return rate of 14.3 per cent.

Higher education has a business model problem. The business model for U.S. colleges and universities — how they create, deliver, and capture value — hasn’t changed since Harvard, our country’s first college, was founded in 1636. Our higher education system is a national treasure that creates enormous societal value, but its 380-year-old business model fails to deliver affordable access and post-secondary credentials to an increasing percentage of our population. The American social contract was clear throughout the Industrial Era. While many jobs moved out of reach for those without a college degree, there were still ample opportunities for everyone to earn a good living in order to support a family. The U.S. became an economic powerhouse with a robust and thriving middle class.

As an international speaker, strategic consultant, and an Amazon #1 bestselling author, I have spoken to thousands of entrepreneurs from 30 countries. The single biggest challenge I see with entrepreneurs is that they struggle to find a robust pipeline of prospects, clients, and referrals. According to an Inc. magazine article 96% of businesses fail within 10 years. If you have no clients you have no business.

Image: http://www.huffingtonpost.com

When I scroll through my newsfeed on Facebook or Instagram, there are lots of glamorous photos of wellness entrepreneurs lounging on their laptops in their perfect apartments or doing inversions at sunset on a rocky beach. Yes, there is plenty of travel and major time spent on my computer as a digital nomad, but there is also a shadow side to the self-employed life that you don’t see on social media. Let’s talk about four challenges that no one likes to admit.

Innovation can mean a lot of different things. It depends on your goals, processes, methodologies and what kind of organization that you work for. IdeaScale scoured the internet to find the leading definitions of innovation from notable luminaries, institutions, and specialists. We’ve condensed them into this list of ten innovation definitions displayed in infographic form. Hear from InformationWeek, Henry Chesbrough, and others.

Image: https://ideascale.com

Last month, the Delaware Economic and Financial Advisory Council projected that the state will have about $167 million less in tax revenues to spend next year — even as costs continue to rise.

That’s the bad news.

The good news is that the next governor and the incoming legislature will have the opportunity to take advantage of challenging times to make the critically important decision to fundamentally change Delaware’s approach to economic development.

For decades, charter schools have been billed as “laboratories of innovation,” conjuring up images of teachers and administrators brainstorming and testing cutting-edge instruction that — if proven successful — could deliver salvation to urban education.

But the track record of Massachusetts charter schools on innovation is mixed. While some charters are innovative, others simply strive to build high-quality schools using existing methods and do not necessarily invent new practices.

Image: DAVID L. RYAN/GLOBE STAFF — Khamara Cleaves taught a dance class for 6th grade students at the Brooke Charter School in Mattapan.

Historically prizes have been surprisingly effective at kickstarting innovation, will Deloitte's XPRIZE do the same?

Curing cancer is the holy grail of the medical and scientific communities, but a simple prize could make a whole lot of difference.

Academics and pharmaceutical companies have poured millions of pounds and thousands of man hours into the research and development of cancer treatments and cures.

Can you teach entrepreneurship? INCubatoredu, an entrepreneurship program out of Illinois nonprofit Uncharted Learning, believes so.

And schools seem to agree: Since launching in 2013, the nonprofit has scaled their entrepreneurship education programs from one Illinois high school to teaching 2,000 students across eight states.

Their year-long entrepreneurship curriculum covers every step of the startup process from creating an MVP to customer discovery, and culminates in a pitch competition where students can receive real seed funding from donors (they also host a nationwide pitch competition).

The independent workforce — including the gig economy — is larger than anyone has previously estimated, according to a new report. 

Up to 162 million people are working independently throughout the United States and European Union, the McKinsey Global Institute determined in its report Independent Work: Choice, Necessity and the Gig Economy. 

The crucial components to decision-making dilemmas may exist outside of your conscious awareness.

Making decisions about mergers, change processes or even hiring can be nerve-racking. Leaders or managers need to consider whether they’ve covered every angle and every option.  This includes exploring feelings or biases about a problem, possible obstacles to decision making. If something doesn’t feel quite right, or the problem seems intractable, there is usually an answer to overcome it, but that answer commonly exists outside of our awareness.

Eight suburbs are considering creating a collaborative program that would help existing Northwest suburban businesses accelerate to the next level.

The private-public partnership, which would be run as a regional nonprofit called Next Level Northwest, is being discussed by Arlington Heights, Buffalo Grove, Elk Grove Village, Hanover Park, Hoffman Estates, Mount Prospect, Rolling Meadows and Schaumburg.

As Co-Founder and a General Partner at Susa Ventures, Chad Byers knows a great deal about the world of venture capital. He's even personally a private angel investor in Tradesy, True&Co., Momentum Machines, Locality, LearnUp, and Womply, and was named to the 2015 Forbes 30 Under 30 Class for his work in Venture Capital.

Here, Byers answers many questions posed by entrepreneurs, including one of the most common and important questions entrepreneurs ask themselves: Are they ready for venture capital?