Failure—"the other F word"—is a fact and force of life in every organization. But in many firms, it’s also a taboo topic, one that is embarrassing and painful to talk about. Discussing embarrassing screwups and miscalculations is rarely easy. After all, wouldn’t we rather celebrate our successes and wins?

Image: http://www.fastcompany.com 

It took a whole team to build a 3-D portrait of Bre Pettis. Artist Sophie Kahn scanned his head. Then, MakerBot designers Nathan Worth, Lane Feuer, and Anne Miner cleaned up the scans and digitally modeled a mechanical brain. Finally, they printed the parts on a MakerBot Replicator Z18, painted them, and assembled Pettis’s plastic double. Why? Because they could.

Image: Photograph By Kareem Black 

In the face of growing criticism and impatience with the Meaningful Use EHR incentive program, National Health IT Coordinator Dr. Karen DeSalvo remains upbeat but aware of the tough work ahead to achieve the vision of a learning health system underpinned by a network of interoperable EHRs.

Image: Left to right, national health IT coordinator Dr. Karen DeSalvo, acting CMS Administrator Andy Slavitt and HIMSS Board Chair-elect Dana Alexander at HIMSS15.  - http://medcitynews.com

The United States holds the unenviable position of having a higher statutory corporate tax rate1 than any of our major trading partners—and all OECD countries. Among 135 nations, the U.S. rate is exceeded only by the United Arab Emirates. While skeptics point to the array of provisions that allow a reduction below the topline statutory rate, many ignore the additional burden created by state and local taxes. It is abundantly clear that, when compared to the rest of the developed world, the U.S. rate is out of step at best and uncompetitive at worst. The current global tax system in the United States puts manufacturing firms at a disadvantage inside and outside foreign countries. If the United States converted to a territorial system as part of comprehensive tax reform, it would remove the current barrier to corporate repatriations (transfers in foreign subsidiaries’ profits to U.S. parent companies), promoting a marked rise in domestic investment.

Today, the National Science Foundation (NSF) named 10 teams as winners in its Community College Innovation Challenge (CCIC). The CCIC challenged community-college students to propose innovative science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM)-based solutions to perplexing, real-world problems.

Community colleges from across the country participated in the challenge. They were invited to identify key problems and propose innovative solutions in areas with potential for solving some of America's most daunting challenges: big data; infrastructure security; sustainability (including water, food, energy, and environment); and broadening participation in STEM.

Image: http://www.nsf.gov 

Many of the provisions of H.R. 9 would unnecessarily undermine the enforceability of all U.S. patent rights, even when clearly valid patents are being enforced in good faith against clearly infringing actors. While a consensus on measures to target abusive behavior in patent litigation is achievable, the sweeping provisions of the Innovation Act cannot be supported.

That's thanks to strong investment returns and a tremendous fundraising advantage, according to credit rating agency Moodys.

Eighteen of the wealthiest schools have Aaa credit ratings -- that's a rare achievement for any businesses or government.

The top 40 include seven of eight Ivy League schools - all but Brown University - along with prestigious institutions such as Stanford, MIT and Duke. But half of the wealthiest schools were state schools, led by the universities of Texas, California and Michigan.

Mark was a survivor. Until he was fired in 2012, six months shy of his 50th birthday, he’d done everything right — rising through the ranks of the book publishing industry, from editorial assistant to associate editor to senior editor, then into management as an editor-in-chief. But as e-books and Amazon destabilized the industry, and waves of consolidation contracted available jobs, Mark (not his real name) admits today that he hadn’t “paid attention to the writing on the wall.” He confessed that he’d spent the 18 months prior to being fired living in denial as his team was reorganized. “Despite that,” he says, “I clung to my job rather than start thinking about how to leave. At that point, I couldn’t conceive of a life outside of the confines of corporate publishing, of not being at the center of the club I’d been a part of — and a star in — since the age of 21.”

image: http://www.freedigitalphotos.net 

Despite concerns around data security, businesses are optimistic about the cloud. In fact, software-as-a-service adoption has more than quintupled from 13 percent in 2011 to 72 percent in 2014, according to a cloud computing survey conducted by North Bridge Venture Partners and Gigaom Research.

For startups, the cloud has always been a great equalizer, enabling nascent businesses to compete on par with their larger, more established counterparts.

Image: http://www.xconomy.com 

There’s never been a better time in history for people who have new ideas.

Last month, Kickstarter surpassed $1 billion raised for creative projects. ABC’s Shark Tank has brought the world of venture capital into the mainstream, to the tune of $44 million invested. And New York startup Quirky is making waves by crowdsourcing product ideas and quickly creating them—taking in more than $100 million in revenue last year.

It’s been a very long time since the world’s geeks were this excited about a single thing. The new trailer for Star Wars: The Force Awakens and it looks incredible. There’s a dramatic monologue courtesy of Luke Skywalker, who also gets an intimate campfire scene with R2D2, Darth Vader’s helmet and, most importantly, Han Solo and Chewbukka reuniting with the Millennium Falcon.

Image: http://memeburn.com 

A natural consequence of a 5-day workweek is that people get restless by the end of it.

An Accountemps survey of HR professionals found that only 3% claimed Fridays were the most productive days in their offices. In a recent time-diary study I did of 1,001 days in the lives of high-earning women, I found that my subjects worked about two hours less on Fridays than they did on Wednesdays.

After years of McKinsey research on organizational transformations,1 the results from our latest McKinsey Global Survey on the topic confirm a long-standing trend: few executives say their companies’ transformations succeed.2 Today, just 26 percent of respondents say the transformations they’re most familiar with have been very or completely successful at both improving performance and equipping the organization to sustain improvements over time. In our 2012 survey, 20 percent of executives said the same.3

Image: http://www.mckinsey.com 

Washington companies raised more venture capital funding in the first quarter than they have during the first three months of any year in more than a decade, building on momentum the industry mustered up late last year.

During the first quarter, 38 Washington companies hauled in roughly $329.9 million from venture capitalists, a 55 percent increase over the $212.5 million raised by firms in the region during the same period last year, according to the latest round of data from PricewaterhouseCoopers and the National Venture Capital Association.

Image: http://www.washingtonpost.com 

Q: What three questions should I ask every job candidate?

A: Kevin Lust, director of the Small Business Development Center in Springfield, Ill., advises hiring managers across industries to ask these essential questions. 

After receiving our Established Entrepreneur of 2014 award, Gravity Payments founder Dan Price has just announced yet another game-changing proposition.

Over the next three years, the 30-year-old plans to raise the minimum salary for every employee at his credit card processing company to $70,000, he told The New York Times.

Entrepreneurs often ask how to successfully run a growth company. The response is simple: Do what you love, surround yourself with people you love and make an impact. While this may sound simple enough, putting it to work requires discipline and investment.

Image: FLICKR, SEBASTIAAN TER BURG 

Booming investments in real estate are leading the way among equity-crowdfunded projects, which rose to $662 million in the first quarter of 2015, a big jump from the $483 million recorded in the final quarter of 2014.

"Equity crowdfunding is going to double every year as more and more investors get to know about it," said Eric Smith, director of data analytics at Crowdnetic, an online platform that tracks equity investments in real-time and just published the equity-crowdfunding data in its new quarterly report.

image: http://www.freedigitalphotos.net 

What do you get when you combine the "Wayne Gretzky of knuckle cracking" with a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) machine? The answer to a very old question, it turns out.

By using MRI to video-record knuckle cracking in action, researchers have discovered that the unsettling "pop" made by cracking one's knuckles results from the rapid creation of a cavity in the fluid inside the joints.

Image: UNIVERSITY OF ALBERTA 

You’re likely already familiar with the benefits coworking spaces can offer to entrepreneurs and freelance workers. But a group of entrepreneurial teens are also trying to promote the benefits of coworking spaces for students. Jessica Kim, Isabel Wong, Tiffany Chang and Liezl Agustin opened a coworking space for teens in Honolulu, Hawai’i, called The Canvas. They came up with the idea during a leadership conference where they discussed issues with the education system. The hope is that the space will add a bit of a social setting where students can work on academic projects.

Image: http://smallbiztrends.com/