“Innovate or stagnate”, that’s how Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Ruler of Dubai and Vice President and Prime Minister of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) motivated his government to launch the year 2015. This challenge is typical for today’s cities. Innovation is fundamental to solving today’s complex business and social problems. But such innovation can only happen where start-ups and entrepreneurs have the infrastructure and resources to be disruptive, which is why urban environments have to be innovative too.

In Europe, there has been a lot of debate about Britain possibly leaving the European Union as a result of the referendum being called by British government – coined by the media as ‘Brexit’. The question this raises is how will a potential exit impact innovation in the UK, and its tech clusters which have benefited significantly from being part of the EU?

It has certainly raised a heated debate. It’s reported that the UK’s the science minister Jo Johnson has said that science and technology firms could suffer in a ‘decade of uncertainty’ if Britain left the EU.  He said that, “To leave would be a leap in the dark, and one that would put the Cambridge phenomenon and our status as a science superpower at risk. While many factors explain Cambridge’s success, it’s clear that our close ties with the European Union are a crucial part of this great national success story.”

Singapore Stanford Biodesign Thought leaders series (TLS) is a biennial event which brings in key opinion leaders from around the world to educate the Singapore community on the latest industry insights and experiences on medical technology development. In Dec 2015, Prof. Paul Yock, Founder and Director of Stanford Biodesign spoke on the radically changing environment in MedTech Innovation. Apart from his keynote lecture, thought leaders from different countries deliberated on the topic- “MedTech Innovation Ecosystem: What can Asia learn and adapt from Silicon Valley?”

Image: Dr. Paul Yock Credit: A*STAR

Entrepreneurship has many paths. My entrepreneurial path may differ from yours. However, there are some factors that apply to all forms of entrepreneurship.

In most places around the world, a standard has been set for entrepreneurs. Most of us know the obvious things like having a website, social media presence and an email list. Any entrepreneur who tries to run a business without these things will not be taken seriously and will face problems building and maintaining a customer base.

Image: http://www.huffingtonpost.com

Finding a great job that comes with a significant salary boost is one of the top reasons to move to a new city.

In its recently released ranking of the best places to live in America, U.S. News & World Report gathered data on the 100 most populous US cities. Among the factors it considered were affordable housing, a low cost of living, good schools, quality healthcare, and access to well-paying jobs. You can read U.S. News' full methodology here.

Billionaire investor Warren Buffett’s annual letter to shareholders recently gained a lot of attention when he pointed out one very important point about the future of America: don’t bet against U.S. innovation.

“For 240 years it’s been a terrible mistake to bet against America, and now is no time to start. America’s golden goose of commerce and innovation will continue to lay more and larger eggs,” Buffet commented.

The year ahead will see the continued rise of tech hubs and incubators in Africa, expected to number close to 300 by year-end, with the new community of hubs to be characterised by increased verticalisation for a more effective, value-laden incubation and co-working model.

In December, Disrupt Africa featured five tech hubs which have sprung up in the far corners of Africa, in places even we didn’t expect.  Of note, 2015 saw a new hub and entrepreneurship development centre, Africa House, open in Somalia – the first such project to launch in the Somali regions; while the Gambia also saw its first tech hub open, when Jokkolabs expanded to the country launching a space in the capital Banjul.

 Image: http://disrupt-africa.com

Ten years ago, bored by the repetitive nature of his work as a private-equity analyst, Ryan Caldbeck began to think that the job could be done as well by software. Today, he’s the co-founder and chief executive of CircleUp, an online crowdfunding platform specializing in consumer-goods companies—think food, cosmetics and chain restaurants. Mr. Caldbeck’s firm has built software that he says does more or less what he once found so stultifying.

Eating more protein led to greater feelings of fullness

Protein is often touted as the key to healthy weight loss. But a talking point repeated by protein promoters—that the nutrient fills you up—has remained up for scientific debate.

Now, a new study published in the Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics finds that eating food with a higher protein count really does make people feel fuller.

Even when startups have great products and customer interest, they struggle with long-term growth. Often, our research shows, the biggest obstacles are the entrepreneurs themselves. To borrow an analogy from our Harvard Business School colleague Shikhar Ghosh, their firms aren’t murdered by the market; they commit suicide because the founders can’t or won’t adapt to the organizations’ changing needs.

“Make America Great Again!” Donald Trump’s campaign slogan has clearly hit a public nerve.

But what, exactly, is “greatness”? This is a question very much worth asking. After all, if we’re going to aspire to greatness together, we should have a common understanding of what we’re talking about.

When we first started The Next Silicon Valley several years ago, it was based on places trying to create their own Silicon Valley like innovation ecosystem. We’ve spent plenty of time at conferences like the Global Innovation Summit debating the ingredients of a successful innovation ecosystem, given talks on economic development 2.0 at IEDC conferences, and on the importance of collaboration and of technology enabling that collaboration.

Now, it’s no longer about the label or the question that we are often asked, ‘where is the next Silicon Valley’. Instead, the debate has moved on, since everyone is now living in a ‘Silicon somewhere’ as this article points out.

Image: http://www.thenextsiliconvalley.com

A new gene-editing method is providing a precise way to modify crops in hopes of making them yield more food and resist drought and disease more effectively. Research in the past year has shown that the resulting plants have no traces of foreign DNA, making it possible that they will not fall under existing regulations governing genetically modified organisms and will sidestep many of the consumer concerns over these GMOs.

Estonia is launching a new government fund for Tallinn startups, the country’s Economy Ministry announced over the weekend. The new Fund of Funds will put cash into three venture capital pools across the country for Angels, other VCs and expansion.

The European Investment Fund (EIF) and Estonian venture hub KredEx are adding more than their two cents to the pot. EIF will manage the Estonian government’s share, €48 million, while adding its own €12 million thanks to infusions from the European Fund for Strategic Investments (EFSI). This is the first “fund of funds” in the Baltics where the EIF co-invested, something previous rules did not allow for when it helped manage funds in Latvia and Lithuania.

Renowned venture capitalist Saul Klein believes technology investors should focus on spotting the "right surfers" instead of just trying to ride the wave.

Speaking to Business Insider ahead of his latest investment, an Estonian startup called Jobbatical that was founded by a pair of siblings and their friend, Klein said it's important to spot talented entrepreneurs building companies in areas where there is market potential.

The entrepreneurial renaissance springs up from learner-centred education. The Renaissance was a time of learning, marked by humanists gathered at the court of Lorenzo de 'Medici (1449-1492). There were Renaissance educators and then others in their wake who conceived innovative ways of understanding education, tracing revolutionary paths as compared with the teaching orthodoxy carried out in the school.

In a report from Tokyo in February 1990, the Italian journalist Tiziano Terzani wrote about the Japanese school: "At school the child is not used to think for themselves, but trained to say the right thing at the right time. For each question there is an answer and that must be learned by heart. 'What happens when the snow melts?' – asks the teacher– and the entire class, in chorus, has to answer, 'It becomes water'. If one is to say, 'Spring is coming!, is reproached”.

The rise of Donald Trump as the presumptive nominee of the Republican Party is yielding strong reactions among college graduates: fear, befuddlement, calls seeking refuge after November with Canadian friends and relatives, and some amount of self-satisfaction that college graduates aren’t buying what Trump is selling.

In poll after poll, support for Trump from those without a bachelor’s degree is up to 20 points higher than from Americans with them, leading to Trump’s memorable line following his win in the Nevada caucuses: “I love the poorly educated.”

Not getting enough sleep is detrimental to both your health and productivity. Yawn. We've heard it all before. But results from one study impress just how bad a cumulative lack of sleep can be on performance. Subjects in a lab-based sleep study who were allowed to get only six hours of sleep a night for two weeks straight functioned as poorly as those who were forced to stay awake for two days straight. The kicker is the people who slept six hours per night thought they were doing just fine.

Image: Flickr user Mark Sebastian

"I wish I could touch you," Theodore says, laying in bed. He’s met with silence. Rejection. Until she speaks up, tentatively. "How would you touch me?"

It’s a famously poignant scene from the movie Her, as the character Theodore is about to make vocal love to an artificial intelligence living in his ear. But according to half a dozen experts I interviewed, ranging from industrial designer Gadi Amit to the usability guru Don Norman, in-ear assistants aren't science fiction. They're an imminent reality.

In 2006 I started using Facebook and most of my friends & colleagues thought I was strange. They thought it was like MySpace and why did I need a MySpace page? In 2007 I started using Twitter and most of my friends & colleagues wondered why people would care what I ate for lunch. In 2008 I started VC blogging. I had blogged when I was an entrepreneur. I went to an industry event where people actually called me self-centered for writing publicly. Ironic to be self-centered while you’re trying to offer advice to others.