The 2016 Rio Olympics pose both a unique challenge and opportunity to U.S. employers, with data suggesting that 37% of the working population will consider tuning in during working hours.

Unlike other recent Games, this year’s Olympics are taking place in a time zone only one hour ahead of the East Coast, meaning that many of the main events will overlap with the workday. Furthermore, advancements in mobile technology since the 2012 Games in London have enabled many to tune in on their personal mobile devices, whether or not they’ve been given permission to do so.

Image: U.S. Army photo by Tim Hipps

The giants of the tech industry have a lock on employer branding (think: quirky hiring practices, free food, and other perks that make work "fun"), but analysis of the personalities of their staffs presents a different picture of what it’s really like in the trenches.

A study published today by Good&Co analyzed the psychometric data gained from anonymous personality quizzes completed by 4,364 tech employees of what they believe are perceived as the five most innovative companies in Silicon Valley: Apple, Google, Facebook, Microsoft, and IBM.

Image: courtesy of Microsoft

OPENAI, THE ELON Musk-backed startup that wants to give away its artificial intelligence research, also wants to make sure AI isn’t used for nefarious purposes. That’s why it wants to create a new kind of police force: call them the AI cops.

As its team of top researchers help to hasten the spread AI technology, this rather unusual startup is worried that such tech could spread too far—that someone else will make a breakthrough in secret and use it “for potentially malicious ends.”

MOSCOW, Aug. 12 (Xinhua) -- A cross-sector industrial prototype center capable of designing and manufacturing a broadest range of sophisticated products will open this fall in Moscow, the center's Director Vladimir Pirozhkov told Xinhua on Friday.

"There are a lot of sophisticated and fascinating projects in this country that need to be carried out, from submarines to spacecraft, so the Russian government made the decision to establish a cross-sector industrial prototype center that will meet the needs of any sector," the director said.

Like companies in the private sector, governments from national to local can smooth the process of digital transformation—and improve services to their “customers,” the public—by adhering to certain core principles. Here’s a road map.

By virtue of their sheer size, visibility, and economic clout, national, state or provincial, and local governments are central to any societal transformation effort, in particular a digital transformation. Governments at all levels, which account for 30 to 50 percent of most countries’ GDP, exert profound influence not only by executing their own digital transformations but also by catalyzing digital transformations in other societal sectors (Exhibit 1).

In a bid to spark local innovation to strengthen the country’s growth, China has announced plans to invest more on research and development, increasing expenditure to 2.5 percent of its gross domestic product (GDP) by the year 2020.

The central government made the announcement this week in conjunction with the release of a blueprint outlining its 13th five-year plan for research and development (R&D).

Innovation is defined simply as a "new idea, device, or method". However, innovation is often also viewed as the application of better solutions that meet new requirements, unarticulated needs, or existing market needs. As defined in Wikipedia.

It’s always difficult to foretell the future, especially the future in the capability, place and role of technology. Technology in itself continues to evolve with periodic quantum shifts, but it's the application of that capability that is the raw material of innovation. Years ago the engineers at PARC removed the limitations on the capability of the available technology, which led to the creation of the bedrock of technologies that we see today.

Which regions are doing the best job attracting and developing talent? That’s the question we set out to answer with the Talent Attraction Scorecard. Our index uses five metrics to rank how every county has done drawing new residents, growing their skilled and overall workforces, and grabbing a greater share of skilled workers than other regions.

As a complement to this analysis, we separately ranked counties based on how they are attracting young talent by looking at the growth in college enrollment and millennial population per capita.

Image: http://www.economicmodeling.com

Speaking to entrepreneurs and ecosystem folks on a day-to-day basis can be a lot of fun, especially because they have so many stories to share. Every journey has its own trial and tribulations and every journey comes with its own learning. Following are some quotes from entrepreneurs that can truly motivate you to endeavour for something bigger in life.

Someone once told me that being an entrepreneur isn’t for everyone, and perhaps it wasn’t for me either.

In my younger years serving as the VP of a major bank, I was always fascinated by entrepreneurship and the idea of creating something from nothing.

As a matter of fact, I was very intrapreneurial as well within the boundaries of the company I worked at by always creating new processes, and coming up with innovative products to reach even more clients.

Image: http://www.business.com

Business founders share their experiences of the isolation that often comes with owning and running an enterprise, and offer advice on managing it.

Four years ago, Julie Deane OBE, the founder of the Cambridge Satchel Company, was chosen to star in a new Google TV advert – the kind of advertising that money can’t buy.

Image: Bag maker: Julie Deane, founder of the Cambridge Satchel Company CREDIT: JOHN NGUYEN/REX

(KANSAS CITY, Mo.) Aug. 11, 2016 – The Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation announced today the recipients of the Kauffman Junior Faculty Fellowship in Entrepreneurship Research (KJFF). The Fellows were recognized over the weekend at the Academy of Management annual meeting in Anaheim, Calif. The program recognizes junior faculty members in the United States whose research has the potential to make significant contributions to the body of literature in entrepreneurship. Each Fellow’s university will receive a grant of $35,000 over several years to support the research activities of the Fellow.  

From Latin America to sub-Saharan Africa, innovators are coming up with brilliant ideas and launching new ventures. I know this firsthand, as Founding Partner of Future\Perfect Ventures and former Director of Mobile Investments at the social impact fund Omidyar Network. Under my watch at Omidyar, I guided investment toward an East African mobile tech incubator, invested in one of the fastest-growing Indian mobile classified ad websites (now valued at over $1 billion), and channeled $5 million worth of for-profit investment into a Latin American wireless company that creates credit profiles from offline and online data.

Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker has signed a $1 billion economic development bill into law that is expected to have wide-ranging impacts on the Bay State's startup and innovation economy.

The provisions that apply to the startup and innovation ecosystem include an angel investor tax credit that could help encourage more investment in small businesses and a digital health initiative.

It can be painful to admit when we’ve made a bad decision. Maybe you hired the wrong person, or took a job that wasn’t a good fit, or launched a new product line that no one seems to want. It’s human nature to be optimistic and assume that success is just around the corner.

The democratization of capital is changing how startups raise money. You must pay attention or your competitors will pass you by. 2016 is the turning point! According to estimates from Massolution, crowdfunding will soon overtake venture capital.

This shift from VC money will only continue. VC funds hav9e been around since the early 1950s - for almost a 70-year run. It is an antiquated way of getting capital. In less than 15 years, crowdfunding platforms have become a much better solution.

In just under three months, investors have raised more than $5 million for businesses through equity crowdfunding, according to a group that tracks the funding method. On May 16, the rules for equity crowdfunding expanded, opening up the method to anyone. Previously, only accredited investors who met certain financial requirements were eligible to back businesses in this manner.

U.S. companies continue to emphasize innovation, as private performance of R&D increased for the fourth consecutive year, according to recently released data from the National Science Foundation. In total, U.S. businesses performed 6.7 percent more R&D in 2013 than in 2012, according to the data, and nearly 19 percent more R&D from 2010 to 2013.  Combined, the top 10 states performed approximately two-thirds (65.3 percent) of all private research and development in the United States, led by California, whose $89.4 billion in corporate R&D performance accounted for 27.7 percent of the national total.

An influx of private equity money has caused a slowdown in the number of companies going public. So far this year, only one Maryland company hit the market. Will there be more?

Image: David Berman is the co-founder and CEO of Berman McAleer. KAITLIN NEWMAN

Sometimes being an angel investor reminds me of dating. Initially, the entrepreneur is all chatty — emailing, calling and texting me. There’s all this communication to get me on board. Then we do the deed, my check clears, and, boom, radio silence. I hear nothing from the entrepreneur for months. And even then, it’s in response to my emails and my calls. The entrepreneur is busy chatting up his or her next conquest, whether that’s another investor or a customer.