Chinese President Xi Jinping is about to tell millions of government workers: “You’re fired.”

Reuters reported this week that China plans to lay off between five and six million state workers over the next two to three years, in an effort to curb overcapacity in what’s being described as “zombie companies”: those that are being kept alive on bank loans despite bleeding revenue. Close to two million of these layoffs will come from the coal industry alone.

Xconomy Raleigh-Durham —  It’s a familiar story: a biotechnology company develops a promising product but falls short of sales projections. The company then cuts staff, realigns resources, and turns to startups to fill its depleted pipeline.

While this scenario does play out in pharmaceuticals, it also describes what is happening in agriculture. Big ag companies face pressures to develop agricultural innovations and deliver financial returns. Agbio startups vie to fill big ag product pipelines. But even though motives driving agbio deals are similar to those in pharma, agbio startups can face steeper challenges.

Behind every technological innovation is an individual or a team of individuals responsible for the hard scientific or engineering work. And behind each of them is an education and a set of experiences that impart the requisite knowledge, expertise, and opportunity. These scientists and engineers drive technological progress by creating innovative new products and services that raise incomes and improve quality of life for everyone. 

But who are these individuals? How old are they? Were they born in the United States or abroad? Are they male or female? What are their races and ethnicities? What kind of education do they have? Identifying the characteristics of the individuals who create successful, meaningful innovation in America can shed important light on how to broaden and deepen the country’s pool of potential innovators through STEM education (science, technology, engineering and math), immigration, and overall innovation policies.

Innovation takes time – and money, and people and resources. That’s why it’s common for a company to focus on core business activities and not build an innovation lab – a specific building or department dedicated to working on prototypes and fleshing out ideas. 

Part of the issue is that it can be difficult to justify and quantify the budget involved. Is it a skunkworks project that will consume resources but not deliver any value? Is it a purely a showcase for engineering prowess, or will the concepts produce real products? For many IT leaders, it’s hard to overcome the stigma of an innovation lab as a financial drain. 

Image: A rendering of what a Marxent-powered Lowe's Holoroom kiosk looks like Credit: Marxent

Remarkable progress has been made over the last century in enhancing public health, driven largely by advances in science, medicine and our understanding of how disease manifests in the human body. As a result, the average life expectancy doubled during the 20th century.

While these achievements have been transformational, I believe we’ve only begun to see the benefits for public health that these advances can offer. As we look to the future, I see five ways that new innovations in healthcare could change the practice of medicine for people around the world for generations to come:

China Equity Group and Hanxin Capital recently announced a $713 million fund (Cocoon Networks) to invest in European start-ups.  In addition, they will be partnering with the University of London to establish an incubator to help start-ups expand into the Chinese market.  According to the CEO of Cocoon, Jack Zai, the Europe shift is due in part to disillusionment with some aspects of stateside investment, including competitive rounds and high valuations.

The Kansas Senate Ways and Means Committee heard testimony this week on a bill that would essentially sever financial ties between the state and the Kansas Bioscience Authority, according to the committee's vice chairman  Jim Denning, a Republican from Overland Park. 

“It’s unwinding it from any state influence and further state funding,” Denning says.

Engadget was an early proponent of crowdfunding and has helped many exciting gadgets become a reality. The only downside of this is that my inbox now overflows with Kickstarter and Indiegogo pitches looking for similar treatment. In 2015 alone, I received almost 1,400 emails relating to campaigns on those two websites. It may be a chore to get through them all, but it's also given me plenty of time to pinpoint what makes a successful campaign. So, before you quit your day job, save yourself some heartache.

EVERY FEBRUARY, THE American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA) asks hundreds of landscape architects around the U.S. to forecast the trends in outdoor design for the coming year. The point of the survey is to look beyond industry insider buzz and figure out what designers’ clients are actually asking for. This year’s results are in, and they show people are overwhelmingly concerned with water conservation.

Image: According to the American Society of Landscape Architects's annual survey, people are overwhelmingly concerned with water conservation. The property seen here, Cedar Creek, is a Trinidad, TX property done by Hocker Design Group. HOCKER DESIGN GROUP/ROBERT YU/JUSTIN CLEMONS/ASLA 

You're sick of hearing about "employee engagement." You already know why it's so important for your team members to be happy at their jobs, and you're fully aware that legions are not. To be sure, low engagement has real problems: productivity, work quality, and collaborative abilities are all on the line. When team morale sinks, work culture suffers, and a whole manner of consequences can follow.

But knowing all that isn't the same as solving it. And one reason so many companies manifestly fail to solve it is because the bar is set too low: Your employees shouldn’t just be content or "engaged."

Image: Flickr user Antoine Gady

Emotional intelligence involves self-awareness, self-regulation, motivation, empathy, and social skills. In other words, it's a complicated amalgam that hiring managers have a hard time testing for. As a result, many fall back on gut instincts and subjective impressions.

It isn't always a smart move to leave something so important to such faulty measures. When a candidate has these qualities, they can work well with others and lead change effectively, so it's no wonder why organizations are placing a higher priority on emotional intelligence. And fortunately, even the traditional interview format can be retooled to test for it.

Image: Flickr user Al Ibrahim

Cosmic biology may not just be possible, but inevitable

No one has ever discovered life in space, and given the enormity of the universe and our tiny, modest place in it, it’s entirely possible no one will—either in our lifetimes or for many lifetimes to come. But never mind, because life is out there—indeed, it’s everywhere, simply because chemically and mathematically it has to be there.

Image: NASA, ESA Anyone out there? Oh yeah, more than you think

VC firm has a message for its limited partners. And founders.

Last summer, venture capital firm First Round Capital took the highly unusual step of publishing its quarterly letter to limited partners. At issue was the tech bubble, and if it would soon burst. It didn’t take a formal position, but did argue that too few VC firms are considering how increased entry prices must be accompanied by similarly increased exit prices, or else returns will suffer.

The Italian soccer club AS Roma ASR.MI -0.21% has won six out of its last seven games, a result that has thrilled fans.

One reason for the winning streak, according to Chris Pallotta, an investment officer at Raptor Capital Management, is the club’s relationship with a San Francisco-based analytics startup called Tag.bio.

Spun out of the University of California San Francisco, which is the UC system’s health sciences school, and founded by two amateur soccer players, Tag.bio has created software that helps AS Roma scout players, group players and analyze before a game how the opposing team is expected to perform.

Image: Tag.bio co-founders Tom Covington and Jesse Paquette Tag.bio

UCLA is a breeding ground for innovation, and the campus has earned its place among the nation’s leaders in converting research discoveries to practical applications that benefit society.

When it comes to launching startup companies based on research by faculty members, UCLA is No. 3 in the nation according to data compiled by the Association of University Technology Managers for the year ending June 30, 2014.  

Image: UCLA professor Eric Hoek holds a vial of nanoparticles and a piece of the revolutionary desalination membrane he helped develop.

This year’s policy address outlined a series of measures regarding innovation and technology.

The HK$2 billion Innovation and Technology Venture Fund is worthy of further discussion.

Under the proposal, the Hong Kong government will partner with private venture capital funds to co-invest in the start-ups they pick, with an investment ratio of 1:2.

The authority will retain certain rights, including the right to refuse to invest in projects deemed problematic. 

In my last column I talked about the importance of public-private partnerships for spreading innovation.  In this column I will present a methodology for assembling such partnerships which may be used as a sort of check-list to ensure that the right players are at the table.  This is a two part article.  The first part discusses the framework for the partnerships and the next part will show examples of how various stakeholders in Mississippi have come together to impact technology-based economic development in the state.

Image: http://msbusiness.com

Crowdfunding continues to grow globally, with the year 2015 expected to have raised around $34.4 billion, up from $16.2 billion in 2014, according to a report by Massolution, a research firm specializing in the crowdsourcing and crowdfunding industries.

North America remains the largest crowdfunding market, having raised $9.46 billion in 2014. But Asia is quickly catching up, seeing a huge growth of 320%, raising $3.4 billion and overtaking Europe’s $3.26 billion as the second biggest region for crowdfunding. In 2015, Massolution expects crowdfunding in Asia to grow more than double the rate in North America.

WE ALL have hopes and dreams about our world, from creating a sustainable balance between human life and a healthy planet to supporting local charities, helping those in need, and for us Americans waking up from this nightmare of Trump being a leading Republican candidate.

One of my passions is the support and advancement of women investors and entrepreneurs. We are still a long way from gender equality, not just in equal pay for equal work, but also in the creation and growth of companies.

Image: We are still a long way from gender equality in the creation and growth of companies, but in the past ten years there has been a slow increase in the number of women entrepreneurs receiving funding. Picture: PA 

A prostate cancer drug developed at UCLA will provide hundreds of millions of dollars for research under a record-setting deal announced Friday by university officials.

Royalty Pharma, a New York-based pharmaceutical investment company, paid $1.14 billion for royalty rights to the drug known as Xtandi. It was the largest-ever technology transfer deal involving a University of California invention.

Image: http://microcapmagazine.com/