“Boards cannot afford to have directors around the table who aren’t delivering value,” says a new report based on the 2016 Global Board of Directors Survey, released from Professor Boris Groysberg and Yo-Jud Cheng of Harvard Business School, Spencer Stuart, the WomenCorporateDirectors (WCD) Foundation, and researcher Deborah Bell. With greater institutional and activist shareholder activity and stronger concerns about risk and global competitive threats, boards are taking on “a more strategic, dynamic, and responsive role” in their companies, the report states – pushing “issues around board composition and diversity to the fore.”  

Capturing responses from more than 4,000 male and female directors from 60 countries around the world, the survey – from WCD, led by CEO Susan Stautberg; Spencer Stuart, spearheaded by Julie Hembrock Daum, head of the firm’s North American Board Practice; and their research colleagues – is one of the largest board surveys ever.

Image: http://www.womencorporatedirectors.com/

I’ve spoken before about our desire at Upfront Ventures to fund really big ideas that solve hard problems, are science led and if successful will both have a positive effect on people’s lives as well as make great financial returns. We’re not Pollyannaish about this. We believe that it is incrementally harder to differentiate on simple Internet products or mobile apps and while great companies are built doing this, our goal as a fund is to try and fund things that can be 100x returns if they work. In short, we’re after venture returns.

Image: https://bothsidesofthetable.com

When we talk about managing across cultures, we tend to think of the words “culture” and “country” interchangeably. For example, it is a widely accepted notion that in Eastern countries like China and Japan, cultural norms dictate that group harmony takes precedence over individual recognition and achievement in the workplace, while in Western countries like the U.S. and Germany, stronger emphasis is placed on individual accomplishment and performance at work. So, managers refer to “Japanese culture” or the “American way” of doing things when referencing work-related beliefs, norms, values, behaviors, and practices. The assumption that “country equals culture” results in expat managers trying to do things the Japanese way in Japan, the Brazilian way in Brazil, and so on.

Much of the failure of long-term strategizing arises not from its difficulty but from confusion about how to do it. When hard strategic choices loom, executives ask their experts what the future will look like. The experts — middle management, analysts, engineers, consultants — aren’t asked to provide a comprehensive view of possible futures and their probability of occurring. They’re asked for a description of a single future or several possible futures for consideration.

Image: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pi%C3%B1ata#/media/File:PI%C3%91ATA.jpg

BOSTON — The $39.497 billion budget released by the Massachusetts Senate Ways and Means Committee on Tuesday emphasizes funding related to children and education. There is money to fight drug addiction and elder abuse. There is less of a focus on business and economic development, where the Senate committee cuts several line items.

So who are some of the winners and losers in the Senate Ways and Means budget?

Image: The Senate Ways and Means Committee votes on its FY17 budget proposal on May 17, 2016. (SHIRA SCHOENBERG / THE REPUBLICAN)

The military has long recognized that machine guns are force multipliers for rifles, but businesses have been slow to capitalize on this concept. Sometimes all the planning in the world isn’t enough for business survival, when things change as fast as they do today. Every business, especially startups, needs all guns blazing quickly on every opportunity or insight into the market.

Many of the new entrepreneurs I meet ask the same question — what if I don't have a cofounder? 

I almost always encourage them to find one. Having a cofounder isn't just a nice way to share the burden of late nights searching for product market fit or the sting of your 34th rejection from VCs — studies have shown that having two founders versus a single founder significantly increases chances of success.

You may not have known that as taxpayer you were a venture capitalist – the bad news is you didn't make a buck, but the good news is you didn't lose your shirt either.

And now the taxpaxer's adventure with venture capital appears to be drawing to end.

Government investment vehicle NZVIF was set up with government money in 2002 to invest alongside venture capital funds in young technology firms and other high-growth businesses.

Image: Former investment banker and NZ Rugby director Richard Dellabarca has been appointed to take Crown company NZVIF into a new era. - http://www.stuff.co.nz

Millennials really are the job-hoppers people say they are. In fact, millennials -- those born between 1980 and 1996 -- are the generation in the workplace most likely to look for and change jobs, according to Gallup.

Gallup's latest report, How Millennials Want to Work and Live, provides an in-depth look at what defines the millennial generation as employees, people and consumers. We found that 21% of millennial workers had switched jobs in the last year, a number that is more than three times higher than non-millennials who report doing the same. Six in 10 millennials say they are open to different job opportunities, which is also the highest percentage among all generations in the workplace.

It will be obvious when the Department of Health and Human Services’ IDEA Lab is a success, because it will no longer be needed, according to Damon Davis, the director of the department's Health Data Initiative.

Davis spoke about the lab as a way the department is driving innovation through data, which in turn can change the internal culture around innovation and help spur health-focused products and services outside the agency.

They may be disliked but “exploding” offers remain common corporate practice as an offer strategically delayed is, almost always, a negotiator's best bet.

The length of a negotiation usually depends on how the parties balance their eagerness to close the deal against their desire to play the field. So-called “exploding offers” are designed to curtail courtship and secure a hasty marriage. Nevertheless experts agree they aren’t always the best way to make friends. Few people enjoy having to make an important decision - such as whether to accept a job or business partnership - under duress. Further, researchers caution that exploding offers produce sub-optimal alliances, reduce firms’ financial performance, and often provoke retaliation. Despite these risks, they remain a favoured tactic with corporate negotiators of all stripes.

A new study explores the cognitive traits that can spur the recognition of market opportunities in entrepreneurship. In particular, this research introduces a new cognitive mechanism called “user perspective taking”, which means assuming the user’s perspective when approaching a market, and finds that by adopting such a perspective entrepreneurs are able to enhance their ability to identify market opportunities.

How do you know if you’re a true entrepreneurial success?

A lot of entrepreneurs strive for the kind of success that can be measured in cars, beach houses and Rolex watches. But according to my wildly successful mentor Jim Bunch, true success can only be measured in terms of happiness, health and wealth.

Mobile apps, video games, spreadsheets, and accurate weather forecasts: that’s just a sampling of the life-changing things made possible by the reliable, exponential growth in the power of computer chips over the past five decades.

But in a few years technology companies may have to work harder to bring us advanced new use cases for computers. The continual cramming of more silicon transistors onto chips, known as Moore’s Law, has been the feedstock of exuberant innovation in computing. But it looks to be slowing to a halt.

Computing

Largest Study of Online Tracking Proves Google Really Is Watching Us All

Google’s Web trackers are present on the majority of the Web’s top million sites.

by Tom Simonite May 18, 2016 If you read or clicked anything online today, some part of Google probably knows about it.

That’s one lesson from the largest study yet of the technology that tracks people’s movements around the Web. When Princeton researchers logged the use of tracking code on the Internet’s million most popular websites, Google code was found on a majority of them.

In the gleaming but quiet headquarters of a startup called Starry—above the din of Boston’s Downtown Crossing—40 engineers are toiling to achieve a disruptive vision: delivering Internet access to apartments and businesses, cheaply and wirelessly, nearly 100 times faster than the average home connection today.

The idea of gigabit-per-second wireless service to homes has been around for at least 15 years, but technology advancements make the idea far more plausible today. The high-capacity wireless technology involved—known by a chunky piece of jargon, “millimeter wave active phased array”—is now much less expensive and bulky thanks to advances in microelectronics and software.

Image: Beta testers in Boston who seek gigabit wireless service from Starry this summer would need to attach this piece of antenna hardware, a little larger than a soda can, outside of a window. - https://www.technologyreview.com

An increasing number of blue-chip firms are using so-called innovation labs to generate new ideas. Such creative workshops are seen as a great way to encourage new thinking, without putting the core operations of the business at risk.

Retailer John Lewis recently launched the third iteration of its successful JLAB programme, which aims to produce services that change the way consumers shop. Standard Chartered, meanwhile, has announced the opening of a lab in Singapore to explore the use of emerging finance technologies.

BEIJING, May 16 (Xinhua) -- A visit to China's capital and innovation hub in Beijing has spooked Silicon Valley insider Cyriac Roeding. He says that in 10 years Beijing may become the next center of global innovation.

Roeding said in an article that he sat down with billionaire startup executives as well as seed level entrepreneurs while in Beijing on a recent trip and was astounded by the pragmatism, motivation and innovative thinking in the Chinese tech industry.

Image: http://news.xinhuanet.com 

What happens after companies jettison traditional year-end evaluations?

The worst-kept secret in companies has long been the fact that the yearly ritual of evaluating (and sometimes rating and ranking) the performance of employees epitomizes the absurdities of corporate life. Managers and staff alike too often view performance management as time consuming, excessively subjective, demotivating, and ultimately unhelpful. In these cases, it does little to improve the performance of employees. It may even undermine their performance as they struggle with ratings, worry about compensation, and try to make sense of performance feedback.

Image: http://www.mckinsey.com

People who are slightly overweight but not obese—as defined by their body mass index (BMI)— tend to live longer than their normal-weight counterparts, according to a new Danish study. But that has not always been the case. In the 1970s, the Danish data show, study subjects with the best chance of living longer tended to have a BMI in the normal range, defined as being between 18.5 and 25. Someone who is 1.65 meters (five feet, four inches) tall and weighs 68 kilograms (150 pounds) would have a BMI of 25.

Image: http://www.scientificamerican.com