It’s not easy starting one of the world’s largest ecommerce stores, especially if you don’t know how to. Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos didn’t just become an overnight success, he had to work towards his goal.

In an infographic on Funders and Founders created by Anna Vital, Bezos’s story is detailed from early life, to his Princeton education, and even his co-founding of a newsletter startup.

The page also includes some additional paragraphs on the Amazon man himself, such as him being a “person of method,” and his creation of the Regret Minimization Framework. You can read the full article here.

Image: http://ventureburn.com

The answer to this question might depend on who you ask. I recently sat in on a webinar by BuzzSumo Director Steve Rayson that discussed blog post length and the role it plays in SEO and user engagement, and there seems to be agreement about a few key truths. First and foremost, blog post length won’t matter if the quality is rubbish. Furthermore, whether or not long-form or short-form content performs well will depend on the intent behind the writing (i.e., B2B or B2C).

Today, the Biotechnology Innovation Organization (BIO) applauds the US House of Representatives for passing H.R. 4139, the Fostering Innovation Act. The bipartisan legislation was introduced by Reps. Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ) and Michael Fitzpatrick (R-PA).

The JOBS Act provides emerging growth companies (EGCs) with a five-year exemption from Section 404(b) of Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX), which requires a costly external attestation of a company’s internal financial controls. The Fostering Innovation Act would extend the JOBS Act’s SOX 404(b) exemption for an additional five years for former EGCs that maintain a public float below $700 million and average annual revenues below $50 million. The additional five years of cost-savings would allow growing companies to focus their capital on groundbreaking R&D rather than one-size-fits-all regulatory burdens.

Argonne, IL. -Developing transformative energy technologies and cleaner manufacturing processes and new materials requires more than a great idea and some committed people. It takes an innovation ecosystem.

To meet this challenge, the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE) and Argonne National Laboratory announced today a new innovation accelerator program for science and energy entrepreneurs called Chain Reaction Innovations (CRI).

Google Has a Plan to Kill Off Passwords

Passwords are annoying to remember and can be insecure, so Google is turning to a new form of authentication to protect our personal information.

by Michael Reilly May 24, 2016 Is it finally the beginning of the end for passwords? From our laptops to our bank accounts to e-mail, social media accounts, and myriad other online services, passwords ostensibly protect almost every aspect of the lives we lead online. And yet they are annoying to remember and can be dangerously insecure. So why are they still with us?

On Friday, Google announced what may mark the beginning of the end of passwords as we know them. During his talk at Google I/O, Daniel Kaufman, the head of the company’s ATAP (Advanced Technology and Projects) arm, casually mentioned the rollout of a new way of securing Android apps called Trust API. Rather than using standard passwords, Trust API will use biometrics like facial recognition, your typing pattern, even how you walk to help determine that you are who you say you are.

As an entrepreneur, you already know how easy it is to drive yourself crazy. You have to juggle multiple roles and tend to millions of tasks. You live in ambiguity, unable to predict when and where your ideas will pick up and turn into sustainable businesses. You keep questioning the value of what you offer. You have to embrace negative feedback and pretend it doesn’t bring you down. You are constantly faced with small failures. Funding doesn’t come through, prospective clients don’t call back, focus groups aren’t receptive to concepts and family vacations have to be canceled.

For most companies, having a CEO who's forced to constantly divide his or her attention is a surefire way to kill the business. Companies need to focus on successful growth, not developing new projects.

Related: Big Companies That Embrace Intrapreneurship Will Thrive

This is why so many big companies, likeGoogle Ventures, Target and Dell, and venture capital funds like Accel Partners and Battery Ventures, are investing in entrepreneurs-in-residence. Harvard Business School and MIT have EIRs in place, as well, and colleges and universities have even started offering educational programming in entrepreneurship.

The possibilities opening up to businesses at this time of incredible change are exciting, though it will be challenging for some to release old beliefs. In order to see the possibilities and seize the opportunities, our eyes must be wide open.

A variety of terms have been used to describe innovation over the last few years. We have sustainable, incremental, disruptive and destructive innovation. One that was repeatedly used at last week’s Front End of Innovation Conference that resonates well was transformational. After all, isn’t that what innovation truly does? It transforms? 

Cities – big and small – have found the value that lies in a bustling main street where local businesses are an economic force. But, because building vibrant ecosystems is a nascent practice, city leaders are only beginning to pinpoint the components that generate and sustain powerful entrepreneurial communities.

The Kauffman Foundation’s first-ever Metro Summit for Entrepreneurship Leaders, recently held in Kansas City, Missouri, convened 75 attendees from 31 cities to explore ways to support and strengthen their entrepreneurial ecosystems. The Summit comprised a variety of community leadership roles and represented cities of varying sizes, locations, assets and opportunities. Together, attendees explored how they could create and strengthen their communities’ entrepreneurial ecosystems.

How can a company with no revenues still make money? It’s not a trick question. The answer is at the very foundation of the digital economy: advertising.

No matter how dire things get for musicians, writers, movies, websites, smart phone apps, video games, or whole social media platforms, no matter how hard it might be for companies to charge for content, services, or convenience, almost everything we are doing in the digital marketplace can serve as the advertisement for something else. The video game promotes a movie, the movie promotes an app, and the app promotes a video game. Heck, this article indirectly promotes a book.

Image: http://www.fastcoexist.com

David Fitzgerald, a long time reader and occasional commenter of this blog, sent me a story.

He was sitting in Tampa Airport waiting to board his flight. He observed a fellow traveler, a 2-3-year-old girl, playing nearby in the way restless children tend to play: energetically, loudly, and oblivious to her impact on others.

The grandmother who was minding her was not so sanguine about her granddaughter’s behavior. It led her to continuously admonish, “Don’t do that.” To no avail.

Most Utahns will instantly recognize company names like eBay, Goldman Sachs, Boeing, Hershey, Oracle, Proctor & Gamble, and Adobe. One name Utahns may not recognize immediately is EDCUtah, but what they need to know is this organization is responsible for bringing these private sector powerhouses to our state.

The University of Chicago plans to create a $50 million entrepreneurship and innovation center.  The school announced late Monday that the center will be funded with a commitment of $50 million from University Trustee Michael Polsky, including a new $35 million gift. Polsky is the founder and CEO of Invenergy, which operates power generation and energy storage facilities in North American and Europe.

“Let’s go invent tomorrow instead of worrying about what happened yesterday.” – Steven Jobs

A manufacturer can be innovative in various ways beyond the use of technology. Innovation can include the utilization of new business models, the development of new processes and services, and the enhancement of existing products too.

Technology does support and drive innovation. Technological advancements can allow manufacturers to create higher quality goods faster than before, with less expense and help them realize more efficient operations to become more competitive.

Innovators and engineers are constantly improving upon existing technologies to fulfill unmet needs, provide goods for untapped markets, and most importantly, looking forward to stay ahead of the competition!

Image: http://nistmep.blogs.govdelivery.com

With an open economy and a strong commitment to economic diversification and building a knowledge-based society, it is a good choice to do business and research in Saudi Arabia, particularly in the healthcare and biotechnology sector.

Saudi Arabia is a G20 member—one of the world’s 20 major economies. Its economy accounts for approximately 38 percent of the Middle East’s entire gross domestic product.  Over the past half-century, Saudi Arabia has had the third fastest growing economy in the world, just behind China and South Korea.

Image: http://innovation.kaust.edu.sa

When Natasia Malaihollo and her cofounder raised $1.5 million for their startup Wyzerr, she became part of a very small group. As an African-American woman, Malaihollo was one of only a dozen who’ve raised over $100,000 in outside investments for their businesses, according to early data from Digital Undivided’s Project Diane.

We all have the tendency to look at other cultures through the lens of our own. While this is natural, it can lead to misunderstandings when communicating with and managing colleagues from around the world. In my experience working and teaching across cultures, I’ve noticed one important area where this frequently causes conflicts: deadlines.

Most people recognize that execution is a critical skill and strive to perform it well, but they may a) underestimate how important it is to their career advancement or b) not realize that you can improve on execution without working longer hours.

On the first point, bosses place a premium on execution, which we define as the ability to achieve individual goals and objectives. In fact, when we asked senior managers to indicate the importance of this ability, they ranked it first on a list of 16 skills.

OrbiMed has launched a $307 million venture capital fund five years after its inagural $202 million fund investing in biotech, diagnostic and medical device and digital health companies.

OrbiMed Israel Partners I invested in 28 companies. Merck acquired portfolio company cCam Biotherapeutics in August, marking its first big exit from the fund.

In a phone interview with OrbiMed Advisors, General Partner Carter Neild said OrbiMed Israel Partners II would also make around 20 investments, 50 percent of them in biotech companies with the rest split between diagnostics, digital health, and medical devices.

Image: http://medcitynews.com