It is the duty of management to ensure that the human capital they are responsible for are working productively. Appropriate recognition of excellent work by employees is a huge part of having a happy and productive workforce with less turnover. If employees are starting to work less efficiently, it may be time to reinvent management practices to rejuvenate your company culture.

The ideal execution of a strong employee recognition program takes some work. It is vital for management to have a solid understanding of why and how to recognize employees and then to have a consistent and effective plan to follow. This solid understanding will lead to meaningful appreciation that will boost morale for the whole company.

Doctor, engineer, and businessman. These were the top three career choices for the children of middle-class families in India when I was young. Doctors earned the most respect; engineers were second-best; business was something you got into if you didn’t have the chops to complete a degree.

I chose the engineering route or the closest thing to it that I liked: computer science. My family had moved to the United States, and I started my career working for big companies such as Xerox and Credit Suisse First Boston.

On Wednesday, State Treasurer Janet Cowell announced a new $250 million North Carolina Innovation Fund. Two-thirds of the sum will be earmarked for co-investments in diverse industries, including growth sectors in the state. The remaining third will have a multi-stage focus, according to Cowell’s office: venture, growth, buyout and mezzanine.

Much has been written about how difficult it is for a mature company to innovate – to be open to finding new business models, or to allow alternative goals and operational metrics. Even when this kind of flexibility is created however, it’s still not clear what leaders should do to really foster innovation success.

To answer this question, we conducted an 18-month research effort to examine pairs of successful and unsuccessful innovation teams in six different companies, in both Europe and the U.S. What we discovered was that leaders have the ability to create four particular conditions that are favorable to innovation – irrespective of the type of project, or the nature of the team.

Johns Hopkins engineers have invented a lab device to give cancer researchers an unprecedented microscopic look at metastasis, the complex way that tumor cells spread through the body, causing more than 90 percent of cancer-related deaths. By shedding light on precisely how tumor cells travel, the device could uncover new ways to keep cancer in check.

Image: http://scienceblog.com 

Have you ever wondered what innovation, communication, collaboration, connecting and company efficiencies have in common? My creative brain was thinking about a few of these and then came up with this wacky thought. You know... I think I am on to something.

As a marketer, I see correlations in producing creative work, being innovative and how workflow efficiencies can be impacted. Here are five things I see could emerge as a potential positive outcome and a not-so positive outcome in your business.

Image: Free Digital Photos

In the classic movie "Home Alone," Kevin McCallister — played by Macaulay Culkin — tries to outsmart two bumbling criminals by taking home security in his own hands. Cambridge-based BeON Home is looking to bottle a little of Culkin's character inside a smart light bulb that learns your light preferences and then imitates it when you're not home. The idea is to to create the impression of a lived-in home when you're not home to prevent a burglary, according to BeON Home CEO and co-founder Alexei Erchak, who is an MIT alum. Erchak previously founded a Cambridge company called Luminus Devices, which made LED lighting for projection TVs and was later sold to a Chinese company for $22 million.

Image: Courtesy photo/BeON Home Cambridge's BeON Home's first product, a light bulb, learns your lighting patterns and then uses it to simulate to burglars that you're home. Users can switch the light on via a smartphone app.

We’ve all been there. We’re sitting in back-to-back hour-long informational meetings. We try to sit attentively as waves of information are poured over us in report after report. Eventually, we realize the meeting is coming to a close and no decisions are being made. We’re bored, we’re tired, and we think: “This whole meeting could have been an email.”

Winning and losing are about your frame of mind more than anything else. You can be a successful go-getter working in a mail room just as easily as you can be a loser CEO. By cultivating a winner’s mindset, you’ll set yourself up for greatest success.

Check out the list of phrases below and note any that pop up in your daily lexicon. Eliminating them from your speech will go a long way to eliminating the negative thoughts that go along with them and help you believe that you can succeed.

Those able to harness the power of information and communication technology are reaping ever more benefits. But in poor countries, digital poverty is holding back growth and development, leaving them further behind.

Singapore is this year’s leader of the global ICT revolution. Its government has a clear digital strategy and is an exemplar of online services and e-participation tools, which filters down to its industries and population. The country has the highest penetration of mobile broadband subscriptions per capita in the world and more than half of the population is employed in knowledge-intensive jobs. 

Image: http://knowledge.insead.edu

Scholar AnnaLee Saxenian famously explained how Silicon Valley bested Boston in the battle to be the world's center for the innovation economy. But economic eras rise and fall, as agriculture and manufacturing have done. As manufacturing descended into geographic convergence, innovation ascended into geographic divergence. Industry would cluster in handful of places, which economist Enrico Moretti noted in his book, The New Geography of Jobs. Moretti doesn't allow for a flattening world of tech. Instead, he frets about entrenched winners and losers. The inequality gap will only get wider. Instead, tech is already diffusing to other metros across the country and around the world. The race is on to be the next Silicon Valley concerning the same economic era. More and more places will get a slice of a shrinking employment pie. As innovation descends into geographic convergence, the intangible economy will ascend into geographic divergence. This time, Boston holds the regional advantage.

Image: Urban Rochester, New York, as seen from the air. (Photo: Tomkinsc/Wikimedia Commons)

Be All There, or Be All Here, depending on your view of language. However you say it, notice what’s going on around you, the moment to moment changes as well as the variety of more long lasting things. Hold an open mind and take it all in and avoid the arrogance and complacency that comes from the illusion of certainty.

Moore's Law is dead at the age of 50. Everyone says so. 

And yet, if we look at improvements in mobile performance over the past few years, if anything, we see Moore's Law in overdrive. What gives?

Moore's Law Is Too Expensive

Moore's argument, which has stayed strong for 50 years, is essentially that by shrinking transistors on a chip every 18 months or so, engineers could roughly double performance in that time period. More recently, however, the economics of shrinking transistors has become cost-prohibitive. 

Not everyone is cut out to be a successful business owner.

It requires a ton of time and effort, and many times -- investing your own capital. Sure, the idea of being your own boss is appealing, but how do you know whether entrepreneurship is for you? How do you get there? What if you fail?

I've got a confession to make. And I'm sure it's a confession many other entrepreneurs share with me (go on, admit it...).

I'm a complete control freak.

There, I said it.

Oh, and I like to think that I can do everything by myself from start to finish.

Before dedicating myself to building my own freelance writing business, my corporate career was plagued by my own obsession to have to control and do everything myself.

And while I was very successful, I was also incredibly stressed and not exactly the happiest person alive.

Every entrepreneur starts out with big dreams and excitement. As an entrepreneur, you control your own destiny, and with the right ideas, the right skillset and unflinching dedication, you can build wealth or establish an enterprise to serve as your legacy.

Over the past three years I have been teaching Entrepreneurship at the Academy of Art in San Francisco. I see 100 new students come through my class each year, and almost all of them ask me if getting a degree is worth it.

The answer is that it really depends on you. Today, you can get both an undergraduate and graduate degree in entrepreneurship from an accredited university. In fact, these types of specialized business programs are becoming more and more common, and there are even more specializations available within traditional MBA programs.

Several observers have claimed that crowdfunding — the use of an Internet-based platform to raise small amounts of money from many people for a project or business — will “democratize” startup investing, giving any entrepreneur anywhere in the world equal access to potential investors.

While that’s probably an exaggeration, the new fundraising tool will make it easier for entrepreneurs to access capital from investors that aren’t in their local community.

K-State Olathe recognized 22 corporate partners and the research of 10 K-State innovators at the inaugural launch of Ingenuity Central on April 9.

Ingenuity Central attracted business executives, educators, entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, and local and state leaders. President Schulz formally opened the event. Also present were Provost April Mason, Foundation President Greg Willems and other K-State leaders.

Image: http://www.k-state.edu

We’re at a moment in time where top-down planning is increasingly ineffective. Change is the only constant. Rather than set a plan with rigid parts to have others deliver on, as a leader it’s more efficient to set strategic direction and priorities, then hand over incremental decisions to smart specialists. A good leader can locate the calm in any situation, and then relay that sense of control to the team.