Canada is at a turning point. Plummeting oil prices, lacklustre economic performance, a petrodollar, pernicious climate change, and structural youth unemployment illustrate the need for a shift from a resource economy appropriate for the industrial age to an innovation economy appropriate for the digital age.

Toronto, specifically, can lead the way and become a global centre for innovation, entrepreneurship, breakthrough science, rich culture, open government and prosperity as a whole.

Image: Don Tapscott is the author of 16 books, including his latest, with his son Alex, Blockchain Revolution: How the Technology Behind Bitcoin is Changing Business, Money and the World. (Lucas Oleniuk / Toronto Star)

They say venture capital is a business of connections, of knowing the entrepreneurs with good ideas, the executives who can help those ideas along, and surrounding those people with whatever support they need.

At least, that’s the idea. The downside of all those personal connections is that when things go wrong, they go very wrong.

New York-based venture firm ff Venture Capital, has raised $53.8 million for its fourth seed-stage venture fund, according to an SEC filing that shows fundraising began in the fall of 2014.

The firm had closed its third seed-stage fund fund in January 2014 with $52 million. Since then, ff Venture Capital has hired two new partners, including Adam Plotkin, who was formerly one of its entrepreneurs-in-residence, and Michael Faber, who’d spent nearly two decades as a general partner with NextPoint VC.

Image: http://techcrunch.com

Which is entrepreneurial, and which is innovative: Venture A or Venture B (real but disguised)?

Venture A, an eight-year old startup with patents, a vision to disrupt a large growing market (think big data in a basic industry), $3 million of revenues, a $20 million operating deficit funded by investors, and an implied valuation of $200 million? The founders have 40% of the equity. Venture B, the eight-year-old acquisition of a 35-year-old copycat business (think generic drugs), no patents, that has grown in eight years from $37 million of legacy revenues to $1 billion, $200 million of operating surplus, and an implied valuation of $2 billion? The team also has 40% of the equity.

Image: https://www.linkedin.com

At the 2016 Brand Strategy Conference, Antonia Dean, Director – Marketing, Brand Development, & Strategy at The Estée Lauder Companies covered the strategic thinking ideas behind creating an entrepreneurial environment in a large company. In her role, Antonia Dean focuses on incubating acquisitions and top-secret new product concepts.

Image: http://brainzooming.com

Aggravated and depressed by the decline of their core memory business in the 1980s, Intel’s top management struggled for strategic clarity. After yet another painful discussion about what to do, the late Andy Grove, then Intel’s president, turned to CEO Gordon Moore and asked, “If we got kicked out and the board brought in a new CEO, what do you think he would do?”

Moore answered without hesitation: “He would get us out of memories.” Grove stared at him, numb, and then said, “Why shouldn’t you and I walk out the door, come back, and do it ourselves?”

When it comes to social networking, is bigger always better?

Many internet users have taken Tim O’Reilly’s definition of a Web 2.0 application — “one that gets better the more people use it” — as a personal axiom. A big network, goes the argument, gives you reach and, potentially, that holy grail of “influence.”

With Mother’s Day just around the corner, it’s a popular time to give thanks for all that moms have done. There are plenty of moms who have made a huge mark on the business world as well. Here are some successful mom entrepreneurs who might provide some inspiration for others this Mother’s Day. Successful Mom Entrepreneurs Jakki Liberman The founder of Bumkins Finer Baby Products is a single mom of four kids. She originally started the business, which sells a variety of baby items and accessories like bibs and bags, because she wanted fun items that her kids would love that would also promote a healthy lifestyle. Now, Bumkins has even partnered with companies like Disney and DC Comics to include popular characters in the company’s products.

Recently, Indeed data showed where small businesses are most actively hiring new employees.

That data showed the hottest small business job markets weren’t in big cities, but in the smaller areas just outside metropolitan areas and cities where industries are thriving — like Silicon Valley.

Now, Indeed is digging a little deeper into that data and presenting what jobs are hottest in those thriving small business markets. And based on the information, the jobs that small businesses are hiring for are in line with their surrounding metropolitan areas, especially the technology hubs.

Image: http://smallbiztrends.com

Today we learn that 13 tech industry groups representing companies like Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Uber are urging the presidential candidates to back trade agreements that would ease the import of badly needed coders and engineers from other countries. Meanwhile, only a quarter of U.S. schools offer meaningful computer science courses, while U.S. 15-year-olds rank 35th in math and 27th in science in the last OECD study of 64 developed and developing countries. Maybe the richest and most tech-savvy country in the world should invest in growing its engineers at home. MS

Bioquark Inc., in collaboration with Revita Life Sciences, has been given ethical permission by US health authorities to recruit 20 patients who have been declared clinically dead from a traumatic brain injury to test whether parts of their central nervous system (CNS) can be brought back to life.

Scientists working on the http://reanima.tech/portfolio-view/project-2/(ReAnima Project) will use a combination of therapies, which include injecting the brain with stem cells and a cocktail of amino acids, as well as deploying lasers and nerve stimulation techniques which have been shown to bring patients out of comas. The first trial will be a non-randomised, single group ‘proof of concept’ trial and will take place at Anupam Hospital in Rudrapur, Uttarakhand, India.

Nations have long striven to advance to the next technology frontier and raise their economic well-being. In today’s highly dynamic environment, advanced technologies have become even more essential in improving economic competitiveness and national prosperity. As a result, many nations, including the United States, have invested heavily in establishing national innovation ecosystems that connect people, resources, policies, and organizations to collectively translate new ideas via advanced technologies into commercialized products and services. Tapping into these ecosystems enables companies to operate at the forefront of cutting-edge science and technology in order to translate superior products and services more rapidly into the market.

Image: http://www.areadevelopment.com

Mashable's latest #BizChats Twitter chat dove into the good, bad and down-right unknown of entrepreneurship and what it takes to stay afloat in a sea of competitors.

Several successful entrepreneurs weighed in on the topic, including: Gerard Adams, co-founder of Elite Daily, serial entrepreneur, & angel investor; Kelly Lovell, CEO of the Lovell Corporation, social entrepreneur, & motivational speaker; Ramon Ray, editor for Smart Hustle Magazine; and Shama Hyder, founder and CEO of Marketing Zen, author & speaker.

If the brain could brag that’s pretty much all it would do. It’s easily the most complicated organ in your body, and, more than that, the nimblest computer that has ever existed. But the brain has a bug and everyone knows is: memory. No matter how powerful its operating system becomes, its storage system stinks.

Even in childhood, when the brain is as clear and uncluttered as it will ever be, memory is still imperfect, given to random failures, depending on how rested we are, how attentive we’re being and a range of other things. Now, a new paper published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology suggests an unusual strategy for improving it: drawing.

Workplace culture is constantly evolving to meet the needs of new generations of workers as well as new economic demands. In today’s fast-paced, competitive, and mobile world, leaders have more opportunities and greater necessity than ever to engage their workforce.

Guy Parsons and Allan Milham, authors of the new book Out of the Question: How Curious Leaders Win, argue that leaders have to adapt their leadership style in order to keep up with these changing demands. Gone is the draconian leader who sits behind his mahogany desk in the corner office and delegates task after task, and in is the leader who isn’t afraid to show vulnerability and actively solicit input.

After thorough examination, the results are in: Philadelphia’s health and life sciences scene is doing better than ever.

This was the consensus of a group of key industry leaders during a Philly Tech Week 2016 presented by Comcast panel discussion in the Center City offices of the Public Health Management Corporation.

Conveners, startups and major stakeholders sat on the panel, which included Claire Marrazzo Greenwood of the Greater Philadelphia Chamber of Commerce; Patrick FitzGerald, VP of Entrepreneurship and Innovation at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia; Laurie Actman, Chief Operating Officer of Penn’s Pennovation arm; Neil Gomes of the Jefferson health network; Max Perelman, cofounder of diagnostics startup Biomeme; and Anthony Green, VP of commercialization at the state-backed Ben Franklin Technology Partners.

Image: Moderated by Technical.ly Editor-in-Chief Zack Seward, a panel of stakeholders discussed the present and future of health and life sciences in the Philly region. (Photo by Roberto Torres)

"It happens way too often: You’re sitting there in the audience, listening to someone talk, and you know that there is a better and great talk in that person, it’s just not the talk he’s giving." That’s TED’s Bruno Giussani, a man who cannot stand seeing potentially great speakers blow their opportunity.

The point of a talk is to say something meaningful. But it’s amazing how many talks never quite do that. There are lots of spoken sentences, to be sure. But somehow they leave the audience with nothing they can hold on to. Beautiful slides and a charismatic stage presence are all very well, but if there’s no real takeaway, all the speaker has done—at best—is to entertain.

Image: Flickr user Gisela Giardino

The Mexican economy faces numerous challenges, including a large informal sector, the global decline of oil prices and other socioeconomic factors. Amid these challenges, Mexico's economy has close ties to the international and U.S. economies.

What's more, in 2015, only 27% of Mexico's adult population reported having a good job, which Gallup defines as 30 or more hours of work per week for an employer who provides a regular paycheck.

It’s safe to say that all eyes globally are on the United States right now with an election that feels more like a script of House of Cards than the sad reality we’re living.

There are reasons to be despondent on both sides of the aisle. We are in the midst of global economic changes and challenges and both extremes seem to have formulas more pointed at the past than the future.

Three potentially habitable Earth-size planets have been discovered orbiting a dim, cold nearby star that is barely larger than Jupiter, researchers say.

"These kinds of tiny, cold stars may be the places we should first look for life elsewhere in the universe, because they may be the only places where we can detect life on distant Earth-sized planets with our current technology," study lead author Michaël Gillon, an astronomer at the University of Liège in Belgium, told Space.com.

Image: This artist's illustration depicts an imagined view from the surface of one of the three newfound TRAPPIST-1 alien planets. The planets have sizes and temperatures similar to those of Venus and Earth, making them the best targets yet for life beyond our solar system, scientists say. Credit: ESO/M. Kornmesser