I am skeptical — at least initially — of any study suggesting the US is not the most innovative advanced economy, particularly among large economies. A new report from the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation is a bit different.

Instead of just looking at how national policies affect innovation within countries, the ITIF analysis assesses national policies that contribute to and detract from innovation globally. Here are the top ten: 1) Finland, 2) Sweden, 3) UK, 4) Singapore, 5) Netherlands, 6) Denmark, 7) Belgium, 8) Ireland, 9) Austria, 10) United States.

MyFitnessPal is an app and service that lets its users track their exercise and their diet. According to the app’s owner, Under Armour, 160 million people are doing just that, which makes for a lot of data. And what better way to figure out how diet relates to weight loss than to look at this data?

"We wanted to ask the question: What are successful users doing that the rest of us aren’t?" Under Armour’s Rebecca Silliman told Co.Exist. "What can we learn from people who have set and hit a weight goal?"

The numbers are in, and they are unforgiving: 2015 was the hottest year on record, and it wasn’t even close. The announcement was expected—scientists monitoring global temperatures predicted before the end of the year that 2015 would set a record for warmth, in part because of the massive El Niño event currently under way in the Pacific Ocean. But the data released today confirm that human-induced global warming is pushing temperatures higher at an alarming rate: 2014 was the previous record holder for global average surface temperature, clocking in at 0.57 °C above the 1960 to 1990 average, but last year was 0.75 °C above that average.

Image: http://www.technologyreview.com 

(WASHINGTON) Feb. 17, 2016 – Despite long-term declines in business creation and slow growth that have led to a “startup deficit,” the Kauffman Foundation is optimistic about the future of entrepreneurship. At its seventh annual State of Entrepreneurship Address at the National Press Club in Washington today, Kauffman President and CEO Wendy Guillies explained to a capacity crowd why the United States is primed for a renewed era of growth.

Crowdfunding has been around for over 100 years, says expert Sally Outlaw, and it's here to stay.

What do the best surgeons, skiers, and speakers have in common? They all know how to be present in the moment. Their success depends on it.

As anyone who's performed surgery, skied the black diamond slope, or delivered a masterful talk knows, maintaining that focus isn't easy. It takes a more heightened presence of mind than what we're used to moment by moment. What's more, you need to think hard and continuously about everything you do: Surgery is much more than thinking about your hands; skiing is much more than thinking about your edges; and speaking is much more than thinking about your words.

No. Not happening. Not on your life. Not now. Not ever.

If only saying no was always this easy. Sometimes it’s downright uncomfortable and difficult, so we say yes when we really want to say, "NO!"

"Declining a request is a balancing act," says Leslie Shore, author of Listen to Succeed: How to Identify and Overcome Barriers to Effective Listening. "The decliner must take a moment and compose their reason for declining in a way that lets the asker know that the decline is final."

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo has made it a priority to revamp the archaic NYC subway infrastructure. Part of his plan for "embracing the digital future" includes adding Wi-Fi service to all 277 underground stations by the end of 2016 and cellular service in 2017. This is excellent news for the straphangers of the future, but what about today's riders? Turns out that with the right timing, you could make that emergency "I'm running late" call—but only if you know which of the underground stations have reception.

Image: http://www.fastcodesign.com

Four university researchers just received a nice financial boost from the University City Science Center. The researchers will receive a share of the $600,000 award to develop technologies that could lead to new gene and cell therapies, as well as help nurses and physical therapists do their jobs more effectively. Half of the $600,000 will come from the Science Center, while the researchers' universities will contribute the other half.

What is authentic leadership? It is a question we are hearing more frequently from participants in our Disney Institute training courses. As today’s organizations and customers place more and more emphasis on transparency, being truly authentic is a real must for all leaders.

There's nothing like firing off a carefully crafted e-mail and then waiting for what seems like an eternity for a reply. When you finally do get an answer, you might still be frustrated. What do you make of the fact that it is only 10 words long? We now have some clues about typical e-mail response patterns, thanks to a recent study drawing on 16 billion e-mails sent by more than two million people.

For the second straight year, state legislators from Baltimore are backing an effort to create a tax credit for angel investors in Maryland.

The bills, filed by State Sen. Catherine Pugh and Del. Brooke Lierman, would create a tax credit of 50 percent of an investment made in a startup. The bills create a reserve fund to distribute the tax credit, which could be up to $5 million per year, an analysis states.

Every year, approximately 5,300 colleges and universities in the U.S. busily churn out thousands of graduates. And American higher education remains a sought-after commodity worldwide, as evidenced by the million-plus (according to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement) international students flocking to the U.S. to study.

Given the apparent abundance of available talent, why do many industry leaders and other employers continue to complain about a “skills gap,” asserting that they can’t find qualified candidates to fill positions? And why, according to the Economic Policy Institute, are more than 7% of U.S. college graduates unemployed and nearly 15% under-employed?

Monday – start diet. Tuesday – break diet! Wednesday – plan to start again next Monday.

If this is you, it’s probably time to get off the diet roller coaster and make some bigger changes to the way you eat, drink, and think about food.

Here are six tips to help you get started.

The bill would extend an existing tax credit for “angel” investments in startups by individual investors, while expanding the applicability of that and other tax credit programs to support startups in newly established “innovation districts.” On a de facto basis, Gov. Dannel P. Malloy created innovation districts across Connecticut in 2011 by freeing up $5 million in funding to support a chain of startup accelerators, including the Stamford Innovation Center, B:Hive in Bridgeport and the Danbury Hackerspace among others, with the Stamford-based Business Council of Fairfield County also winning funding for its own efforts.

Image: Matthew Brown / Hearst Connecticut Media

SAN FRANCISCO — Google Ideas, the Internet giant's think tank, is changing its name to Jigsaw and will become a technology incubator under the Alphabet umbrella.

Jigsaw will invest in and build technology to address humanity's most intractable problems, from countering violent extremism to online censorship,  to "expand access to information for the world’s most vulnerable populations and to defend against the world’s most challenging security threats," Alphabet executive chairman Eric Schmidt said Tuesday

Finding the formula to create motivation is the age-old question that every fitness professional and boutique-fitness hub has been trying to master. As a group-fitness pioneer, my finger has been on the pulse of motivation for two decades. The key is to discover how your mind best transforms the information it’s given into the “movement” of your body. In today’s social media-driven society, we have so many ways to ingest inspiration that it can become overwhelming. So I’m going to break down the two most important components to getting motivated: Your team and your playlist.

Seattle is growing faster than most other cities in the U.S., in large part due to the region’s booming technology ecosystem. But as we’ve seen in the Bay Area, innovation hubs can face new problems with such growth — namely rising housing costs, increased congestion, and overall inequality.

Image: Mayor Ed Murray at GeekWire Startup Day 2015. - http://www.geekwire.com

MONTREAL, Feb. 17, 2016 /CNW Telbec/ - BDC Capital is launching its IT Venture Fund II, a new $150 million venture capital fund for the Canadian information technology (IT) sector. This second fund brings the amount under management by the BDC Capital IT Venture Fund group to $300 million, all of which is helping to build and support a new generation of global Canadian IT market leaders.

"The fund focuses on direct mid-stage investments (also known as Series A and B financing) in more mature startups that have a product in market and are already generating revenues from customers," said Robert Simon, Managing Partner of the BDC Capital IT Venture Fund. "We wanted to address the mid-stage funding gap, or 'capital crunch', now facing growing software companies in Canada." The fund targets Canadian companies in the mobile, Internet, enterprise, cloud solutions and financial tech sectors who are disrupting existing industries or creating entirely new markets.

The core mission of San Francisco’s Startup in Residence program (STIR) is “To bring together government and startups to explore ways to use technology to make government more accountable, efficient and responsive.”

It’s the usual excruciatingly boring description of a government program that we have all come to expect.

Image: http://readwrite.com