The number of micro venture capital firms — funds that raise money from limited partners to invest small amounts of money in many very early stage companies — have grown dramatically, from fewer than 50 in 2011 to about 250 today. This rapid growth has occurred because micro VCs fill an important gap in the market for financing early stage companies.

What’s Behind the Growth of Micro VC?

Increasingly, startups need less money initially than traditional venture capitalists can provide economically. The amount of money it takes the typical startup company to achieve product market fit has fallen dramatically, from about $3 million in 2004 to about $500,000 in 2014. Traditional venture capitalists cannot make $250,000 to $500,000 investments in large numbers of companies, given the size of their funds and their labor-intensive due diligence processes.

Behind every partnership lurks an “incomplete contract” — a concept for which Harvard’s Oliver Hart just earned a Nobel prize in economics with MIT’s Bengt Holmstrom, who worked on related topics. This Nobel is the third to go to scholars working on what economists today call contract theory. The late Ronald Coase, the grandfather of the field, and UC Berkeley’s Oliver Williamson have already received Nobel prizes in economics for this line of thinking.

The school of thought has tremendous implications for how businesses are organized. I’ll focus here on the implications for business partnerships: joint ventures, alliances, supplier relationships, and channel partnerships.

Abraham Lincoln is perhaps the last leader I was expecting to be invoked during last night’s humiliating U.S. presidential debate — a conversation that, like so much of this campaign, demeaned not only the candidates and commentators, but also every other American. Still, when Hillary Clinton was asked by moderator Martha Raddatz to explain comments she allegedly made in a speech to Goldman Sachs – remarks leaked recently and in partial form by Wikileaks – in which she purportedly said that leaders sometimes need a public and private position on certain issues, Clinton replied:

Lies are hard to detect, and you're probably worse at catching them than you think. Psychologically speaking, lies are like needles in haystacks. Human communication relies on cooperation, so most of the things people tell you have to be true most of the time—probably more than you realize.

YOUR BRAIN ERRS ON THE SIDE OF INGENUOUSNESS We're verbally inundated with more information than we pause to notice and instead take much of it at face value, which we're right to do more often than not. If that weren't the case, it would be hard even to get a simple conversation started, let alone accomplish any goals you want to achieve.

In fiscal year 2016, Johns Hopkins Technology Ventures forged ahead in its mission to bring forward technologies that will better society and shape our local economy. The following data demonstrate more than our progress. They are guides informing our move-forward strategies, enabling us to accelerate our impact.

I have just downloaded the app Uberstand to my phone — the "revolutionary" app that seamlessly converts academics into a standing reserve of mobile, on-demand, adjunct knowledge providers. The app is designed to meet the real-time needs of institutes of higher learning and their customers, who often find themselves operating with a knowledge deficit, or what the industry terms a "need-to-know."

Now, whether I am walking by the New School or the Sorbonne, I can be hailed by means of a notification on my phone’s home screen if anyone happens to require a lecture on a variety of topics in media theory, film history, social analysis, and the like.

A new firm aiming to invest in, advise, and/or consult with aquaculture startups, in a bid to fill grow them into tempting investment targets for larger firms, has launched.

Alimentos Ventures is a seed investor, M&A office and consultancy, focused specifically on early-stage companies active in aquaculture nutrition, health, genetics and technology.

Fulfilling the role of an accelerator, the company aims to take on operational roles to complement the startup teams, and help grow the companies to a stage where they become interesting to larger, institutional investors, the firm said in a press release.

Silicon Valley technology accelerator and venture funding group Plug and Play IoT has selected 24 startups to join its fifth batch of candidates. The program is running until December 31.

The 12-week program connects startups to some of world's largest corporations that are working and innovating in the IoT space. The anchor partners in this batch include Philips, Panasonic, SC Johnson, Honeywell, Fujitsu, Henkel and Caterpillar.

Sometimes stepping back and looking from another angle produces a keener appreciation of what’s in your own backyard.

That’s akin to what the staff of Columbus 2020 has done to better define and describe what they have come to call the Retail Innovation Ecosystem of the Columbus Region.

“From a very earlier stage we recognized, as many in the Region would, that retail was strong. There were mature companies here. There were emerging companies. It was a really broad group of companies that served as a very strong foundation for the retail sector in the market,” says Matt McCollister, senior vice president, economic development.

Team Northeast Ohio, the regional business development nonprofit, has won a $150,000 grant from the Burton D. Morgan Foundation of Hudson to develop its fledgling open innovation networks.

Open innovation networks allow businesses developing related or complementary technologies to collaborate to save research and development costs or share related or complementary technologies.

DALTON HIGHWAY, Alaska — “To bees, time is honey.” — Bernd Heinrich, “Bumblebee Economics”

One hundred miles north of the Arctic Circle, by the side of a dusty road, two women in anti-mosquito head nets peer at a queen bumblebee buzzing furiously in a plastic tube.

“I think it’s the biggest bumblebee I’ve caught in my life!” Kristal Watrous says. S. Hollis Woodard looks at the prize and says, “It’s the biggest frigging bumblebee I’ve ever seen in my life!”

Another reason not to spend more time at work than you need to.

A new study from the University of Melbourne finds that working the standard 40 hours per week could lead to a decline in cognition for people over the age of 40.

The study notes that while work can stimulate older workers’ brains, long hours can “cause fatigue and physical and/or psychological stress, which potentially damage cognitive functioning.”

Let’s face it: life is challenging these days. In the past, you got a job, bought a house, made money and retired, with no issues down the line. But society’s current model to success is outdated.

Success has never been this temporary: any smart entrepreneur knows this. There are more options than ever, and it’s up to you to take advantage of them as much as you can. Below are a few things I have learned through business about making your dreams come true as an entrepreneur.

To improve Tennessee’s rural communities, the Governor’s Rural Task Force is recommending new resources for entrepreneurs, incentives for rural teachers, healthy eating initiatives and employment resources for former inmates.

The task force, created by Gov. Bill Haslam last year, seeks to address challenges in rural areas that have held those communities back as Tennessee's overall economy thrives. While household income is at a record high statewide, seventeen rural counties in Tennessee fall in the bottom 10 percent of the nation, according to a report released Monday by the task force.

Image: Randy Boyd (PHOTO: AMY SMOTHERMAN BURGESS/NEWS SENTINEL)

After venture capital flowed freely during much of 2015, with more money invested in companies between Q1 and Q3 2015 than had been invested in all of 2014, it was surely a surprise to many startups to find the gush of venture capital subside at the end of the year. But for those companies that still need capital today, what does it take to capture the hearts (and wallets) of the best VC investors? And besides money, what do investors need to attract the best founders?

Since when the inequalities of wealth and income are back into the heart of the economic debate, economists confront each other on the two major themes of egoism and altruism. Is it the unbridled individualism that characterizes individuals, all centred on their personal interests, whereas attributes such as philanthropy, generosity, and selflessness belong to the joint actions of the humanity in a spirit of solidarity? Or, on the contrary, individuals are selfless, while solipsists are organized groups bearers of special interests in which is fragmented and torn apart what we call "community"? This dilemma does not have an unequivocal answer. In the course of events the pendulum swings, and not in a uniform manner, between the one and the other of the two hypotheses. To move the pendulum in the direction of altruism, individuals and their collective representatives should learn how to start and operate at its full potential the multiplier of regard, engine of social progress and economic development.

Joseph E. Aoun, president of Northeastern University, discusses how his institution has used a combination of global focus and experiential learning to raise its profile, and how colleges should be preparing students for the job market of tomorrow. 

Transcript coming soon.

Image: http://www.chronicle.com

DO immigrants take American jobs, or do they help our economy grow? Do immigrants drain our welfare funds, or can they help refill public coffers as our baby boomers retire?

Our recent research aims to address these questions. We have built a platform that uses restricted-access data from the US Census Bureau to explore differences in the types of businesses formed by immigrants and their medium-term survival and growth patterns.

Many Australian small businesses have reached an advanced level of digital engagement and are much more likely to be creating jobs and growing revenue than their counterparts who are less digitally engaged. A new Deloitte Access Economics report on the small and medium business sector for Google reveals that SMBs well advanced digitally are 1.5 times more likely to be growing revenue, easily outstripping small businesses that have just “basic” digital engagement.

And, according to Deloitte, in the highly competitive small and medium business (SMB) sector, digital engagement can be the difference between “success and treading water”.

There are countless ways to search for a new job or advance in your current role. Networking remains one of the most effective approaches, and headhunters can be extremely helpful. Career coaches are on the rise, as places like the University of Minnesota and Indiana’s Kelley School of Business are providing more career consultants for students.

But before making a big investment, career websites are a great starting point. Based on my professional experience as a corporate recruiter and my personal experience searching for jobs, I’ve compiled a list of 10 websites that can help jumpstart your career in 2017.