Housing affordability has been a tenacious and intractable urban problem for as long as stats have been kept. Several cities recently declared it a crisis. But what kind of problem is it? Opinions vary widely. An economic problem, or a social one? A land resource issue? Or, as traded wisdom would have it, the result of reliance on the wrong urban form? Proposed solutions vary accordingly. Now, new evidence rules out one potential source of unaffordable housing: clearly, it is not an urban form problem. The widely-believed theory that a city's lack of affordable housing can be fixed with increased compactness — when combined with public transit — is apparently wrong.

Image: http://www.newgeography.com

One of the best ways to keep your brain sharp as you get older may be to stay busy, according to new research. While scientists have previously recommended engaging in mentally challenging activities, a new study suggests that keeping a packed schedule may offer similar benefits.

In a survey of over 300 people participating in the Dallas Lifespan Brain Study, study authors found that among adults over the age of 50, having a busy schedule was associated with better brain processing, improved memory, sharper reasoning and better vocabulary.

If your desk gets tidier as your looming deadline gets closer, you’re probably familiar with the effects of procrastination. Putting off ‘til tomorrow what you can do today isn’t just a harmless act—a February 2016 study in the journal PL0S One found it was associated with higher levels of stress, anxiety, depression, fatigue, and even unemployment.

And while there may be benefits to using procrastination wisely, the main motivation is to avoid something painful—and that can be detrimental, says psychologist Neil Fiore, founder of Albany, California-based Fiore Productivity, Inc. and author of Awaken Your Strongest Self.

Americans in small towns and rural communities are dramatically less likely to start new businesses than they have been in the past, an unprecedented trend that jeopardizes the economic future of vast swaths of the country.

The recovery from the Great Recession has seen a nationwide slowdown in the creation of new businesses, or start-ups. What growth has occurred has been largely confined to a handful of large and innovative areas, including Silicon Valley in California, New York City and parts of Texas, according to a new analysis of Census Bureau data by the Economic Innovation Group, a bipartisan research and advocacy organization that was founded by the Silicon Valley entrepreneur Sean Parker and small group of investors.

MY general thesis on innovation is that you can start many good things by improving the basic model so that you can come out with something new out of the old. There’s no such thing as instant success. You have to go, test, and improvise on something out of something.

No, it’s not about putting new wine into an old wineskin. Our six-million dollar question remains the same—is there a better way? It’s a companion question to Mark Twain’s catchphrase: “Continuous improvement is better than delayed perfection.” Take Ford Motor’s Model T. When Henry Ford started the company in 1903, he built several car models intended for the middle class. Ford started with Model A, then B, C, D until he reached Model S—totaling 19 prototypes, until Model T was launched and became a hit to consumers for its mass appeal and affordability.

Jon Medved, founder and CEO of OurCrowd – an accredited crowdfunding platform, spoke to CNBC last week and addressed the launch of Title III or Reg CF crowdfunding. Medved, never one to mince words, stated there are certain problems with Reg CF, as it stands now.

Medved believes that most of the Reg CF platforms will not be applying curation and will “let the wisdom of the crowd decide.”  He also says the whole economic model is to raise the money and move on. “There is no one there to watch the shop after you have handed money over to a little startup.”  The solution to much of his concern? The Fix Crowdfunding Act that is moving around the House of Representatives now. The proposal in the House will raise the funding cap to $5 million and allow SPVs – both beneficial to issuing companies and investors.

Image: http://www.crowdfundinsider.com

For most companies, the top marketer, usually called the chief marketing officer, is part of the senior leadership team and sits on the executive committee or management board. In other words, marketing has a “seat at the table.”

But here’s the challenge. If you let things slip in terms of your team’s skills and effectiveness, you’re going to lose that seat. If marketing is seen as weak or ineffective, over time, other departments will slowly start stealing away your responsibilities. If left unchecked, your department will dwindle, leaving your team little more than a sales support function.

To successfully run any business, shareholders, managers and directors of SMEs and privately-held companies can create enduring value through challenging the business model.

To run any company, however big or small, it is essential to implement the right model for the way the business operates.

It is critical to implement a sustainable, financially viable business model that positively impacts as many of the business’s stakeholders as possible.

American industry has a rich heritage of top-notch corporate labs. Bell Labs created not only the transistor, but also other fundamental breakthroughs, such as the laser and information theory. PARC, developed much of the technology we associate with modern computers, such as the mouse and the graphical user interface.

Both labs have attained mythical status and rightly so. Yet IBM Research has been no less consequential, developing early breakthroughs such as the first computer language and the relational database, garnering 5 Nobel Prizes along the way. And unlike Bell Labs and PARC, it’s still going strong.

 Image: A scanning tunneling microscope, invented at IBM, was used to create this IBM logo out of 35 xenon atoms. (image courtesy of IBM)

How did an ex-firefighter working at a mine in the Australian outback end up helping foreigners navigate Sweden's startup scene?

Stephen Batley, 27, laughs.

"My whole family are firefighters. I did it for three years, there's good camaraderie, but nothing ever changes – you put the wet stuff on the hot stuff. I really feel like the entrepreneurship is challenging on a larger level," he tells The Local.

"But I'm not one of those extreme entrepreneurs who would never get a job!"

Image: Stephen Batley. Photo: Private 

New entrepreneurs routinely jump into a startup with a full charge of passion and energy, but often find themselves drained of both after a few months by the workload and challenges. As a result, burnout and loss of passion are consistently listed among the top causes of startup failure, according to many studies. The challenge is find ways to continually recharge along the way.

Shanghai Tower twists one degree of rotation per floor all the way up to the 121st. The tallest building in Asia, and a symbol of China’s powerful economy, it has a façade constructed of more than 21,000 individual panels. The complex curved design has one very important feature beyond aesthetics. It lowers the pressure that wind places on the building’s exterior, an attribute important for any skyscraper but especially in Shanghai.

Image: https://www.technologyreview.com

In a highly critical report last month, the British government came under fire for what the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies said was a failure to tackle the problem of food poisoning, which results in 20,000 people being hospitalised and 500 deaths every year.

The thinktank blamed the worsening situation on a substantial fall in the number of food standards and environmental inspections between 2004 and 2013. The lack of inspections resulted in a cut in prosecutions, the thinktank said, and allowed sloppy procedures in the food industry to go unchecked.

Image: Prof Paul Park said the device could be used as part of a ‘smart’ fridge. Photograph: Handout

A long list of have-to-do’s both personally and professionally, day in and day out, tends to dampen motivation. The second factor involved is your comfort level. Being comfortable prevents many from taking a leap forward. The question then becomes whether you are truly content and happy with where you are, or deep down, do you desire to move forward?

Image: http://smallbiztrends.com

From time to time, I run into people in the community who stop me specifically to say thank you to me and the Victoria Economic Development Corporation for bringing new businesses and jobs to our region.

My standard response is that, "We have a great team, and Victoria leadership is very supportive of growing our economy."

This comment may sound a little cliche, but it's true.

NEW YORK – It has become impossible to deny the so-called secular stagnation gripping the world’s most developed economies: Wealth is piling up, but real wages are barely rising and labor force participation has been on a downward trend. Worse yet, policymakers have no plausible idea about what can be done about it.

Behind this stagnation is the slowdown in productivity growth since 1970. The wellspring of such productivity gains – indigenous innovation – has been badly clogged since the late 1960s (mostly in established industries) and was even more so by 2005.

Image: Edmund S. Phelps, the 2006 Nobel laureate in economics, is Director of the Center on Capitalism and Society at Columbia University and author of Mass Flourishing.

Last fall, while reporting on a company called Peak Design, which makes camera accessories and launches them, very successfully, on Kickstarter, I called up a bunch of venture capitalists to find out whether a proof-of-concept test like a crowdfunding campaign played into their decision to finance a company.

“One of the major traps that a V.C. can fall into is a focus group of one,” Dan Ciporin, of Caanan Partners, told me. Ciporin once found himself intrigued by a company seeking a second round of funding for “an internet-of-things sort of product.”

Image: Peter Dering, founder of Peak Design. (Credit: Eric Millette For Forbes)

Over the past decade, Southern California has lagged well behind its chief rivals – New York and the Bay Area, as well as the fast-growing cities of the Sun Belt – in everything from job creation to tech growth. Yet, in what the late economist Jack Kyser dubbed “the creative industries,” this region remains an impressive superpower.

By creative industries, we mean not just Hollywood’s film and television complex, which remains foundational, but those serving a host of other lifestyle-oriented activities, from fashion and product design to engineering theme parks, games and food.

One of the biggest misconceptions regarding starting your own business is that you are doomed to failure unless you have a natural aptitude or a natural talent for business. Needless to say, this is an untrue notion.

While there are a number of skills that you absolutely have to be a successful businessperson, there are ways for you to develop those skills along the way.

Instead of those skills, what you need to be thinking about are the qualities inherent to all good entrepreneurs. Here are 5 critical skills or characteristics you will need to succeed as an entrepreneur.

There are a few entrepreneurs who seem to always be ahead of the rest, and are able to sense where the market is going tomorrow. Investors reverently call this the ability to “see around the next technology corner,” and fight for a place in line to put their money down. Everyone wants to support the entrepreneur with the courage to make bold decisions, and can make it happen.