As economists debate the prospects for the future pace of innovation, a study by innovation specialists Ashish Arora, Wes Cohen, and John Walsh–published by the prestigious National Bureau of Economic Research–indirectly helps buttress the optimists’ case.

Image: The navigation screen of the Tesla Model S 70-D electric car in Detroit this month. Carlos Osorio/Associated Press 

In Silicon Valley, the percentage of women starting technology companies is astronomically low, at a rate around 3 percent. Of privately held companies, only 6.5 percent have a female CEO, and 1.3 percent have a female founder. How is this the case, when women are earning more than half of all bachelor’s, master’s, and doctorate degrees for the first time in history?

Quick decisions save time and energy, but sometimes those knee-jerk reactions lead to bad choices. That’s because biases impact our thinking every day, but few of us even know they exist, says Norma Montague, assistant professor of accounting at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.

"The word bias has a negative connotation, but it’s most often unintentional and a result of heuristics—mental shortcuts that allow people to make quick, efficient decisions," she says. "Good decisions are often the result, but not always."

Image: http://www.fastcompany.com 

WASHINGTON (Legal Newsline) – Two coalitions of universities say they will not back a piece of House-introduced legislation aimed at targeting so-called “patent trolls.”  

The Association of Public and Land-grant Universities and the Association of American Universities sent their response to the president and CEO of the Consumer Electronics Association ahead of this week’s House committee hearing on the Innovation Act.

Image: http://legalnewsline.com 

Strategy without execution is as worthless as execution without strategy.

Getting both right is a challenging task, but one that Bill Gates, Andy Grove, and Steve Jobs all accomplished to an impressive degree. All three had weaknesses as leaders, and they all benefited greatly from the help and support of their executive teams and other employees. Nonetheless, we cannot deny the strength of their track records at Microsoft, Intel, and Apple. Their success leads us to ask: What did these three CEOs do to drive performance and organizational effectiveness? Why were they able to deliver more powerful results than their rivals and successors, despite their well-known flaws?

Image: http://www.fastcompany.com/ 

R&D for new business models is the new strategic imperative for all business leaders. Why? Business models don’t last as long as they used to. All businesses are vulnerable to being netflixed. A Netflix, Uber, or Airbnb can swoop in and disrupt or totally destroy existing industry business models. And make no mistake—this is not about new technologies or new products, it’s about new business models. These upstart companies didn’t invent anything; they all deployed new business models that networked available capabilities in different ways, to change how customer value is delivered.

The question of R&D’s productivity has long resembled a Gordian knot. Look nearly anyplace else in today’s corporations, and there’s far less difficulty measuring productivity and performance. In manufacturing and logistics, you can get a sense of things just by looking around the production floor, the inventory room, or the loading dock. Even the performance of the advertising budget—once famously opaque—is now, thanks to digital technology, much easier to see.

Image: http://www.mckinsey.com 

The summer of 2014 was a strange one in the Chukchi Sea. The Arctic waters, historically icebound much of the year, were oddly free of ice. There was so little ice that 35,000 walruses had beached themselves on a northwest Alaska shoreline after failing to find floes to feed from. One morning in September, oceanographer Jim Thomson was on a research trip onboard the vessel Norseman II, hundreds of miles from land, when he noticed something else that was strange: some of his shipmates were seasick.

Economic measures of success like gross domestic product (GDP) are a crude way to judge countries. They tell you about the level of economic activity, but not necessarily whether nations are bettering people’s lives.

U.S. GDP, for example, lumps together the sale of children’s books and the sale of handguns, even though one is generally good for society and the other often isn't. GDP also doesn’t account for impacts to public health or the environment. Neither does it tell you if a lot of people are doing well or just a few people.

Image: http://www.fastcoexist.com 

As many business owners know, social media is a powerful tool that helps them let the rest of the world know what they’re about and what they have to offer. It has also become a critical element in crowdfunding campaigns to help entrepreneurs raise capital for their businesses. Social media trends, however, are constantly changing. Here’s a look at some of those trends that will develop over the next year.

Image: https://www.equitynet.com 

Great managers strive to do right by their employees — treat them well, motivate them to succeed, and provide the support and coaching each person needs. This is often easier said than done, especially when it comes to coaching. That’s because coaching takes time, skill, and careful planning. And there are certain types of people who may be particularly challenging for managers to coach. Think about the Eeyore on your team who is pessimistic at every turn, or the person who refuses your advice with a smile on his face. It’s not fair to you or to the employee to give up, so what do you do?

Image: https://hbr.org 

LANSING, MI -- The Michigan House on Wednesday voted to phase out a venture capital fund within state government, ending what the House Appropriations Chairman called a "risky" investment program.

The fund, created in 2003, was designed to boost job creation in the state by providing startup funding for new businesses.

Image: The Michigan Capitol in Lansing as seen in the summer of 2013. (Jonathan Oosting | MLive.com) 

For Patrick Llewellyn, CEO and president of the world's largest online graphic design marketplace, 99designs, being an Australian in Silicon Valley has helped him get ahead.

99designs, launched in Melbourne in 2008 by Mark Harbottle and Matt Mickiewicz, has had a base in San Francisco since 2010. Outside the U.S. and Australia, the company maintains offices in Germany and Brazil and will soon make a foray into Japan with the support of Silicon Valley-based Japanese venture capital firm, Recruit Strategic Partners.

Image: 99DESIGNS 

Today's episode looks at the "Billion Dollar Startup Club" and how a subset of tech start-ups are attracting venture capital and valuations in the billions -- with a B -- even though some of them have yet to pin down the monetization question.

Sean O'Reilly and Dylan Lewis look at some examples, delve into what VC players see in these social media start-ups, and who's doubling down even as this isolated but high-stakes phenomenon begins to look more and more like a bubble.

After a lengthy holdup in Congress, it's official: Nation-wide policies allowing any interested person to invest in a business through equity crowdfunding will go into effect this summer.

On March 25, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission announced its final set of new rules that will make it easier for smaller companies to access investor capital through crowdfunding, and provide investors with more investment choices. These rules, known as "Regulation A+," update and expand the existing Regulation A, and are mandated by Title IV of the Jumpstart Our Business Startups (JOBS) Act passed in 2012.

Image: abdrahimmahfar 

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 

While U.S.-Iran relations are taking up all the oxygen in the room these days, and they’re vitally important for the future of the Middle East, U.S.-China relations are vitally important for the world — and there’s more going on there than meets the eye. The concept of “one country, two systems” was invented to describe the relationship between Hong Kong and mainland China. But here’s the truth: The American and Chinese economies and futures today are now totally intertwined, so much so that they are the real “one country-two systems” to watch. And after recently being in China to attend the big Boao Forum on Hainin Island, and hearing President Xi Jinping speak, what is striking is how much each side in this relationship currently seems to be asking the other, “What’s up with you?”

Yesterday morning, over scrambled eggs and smoked salmon with Jeff Bussgang of Flybridge Capital (he had yogurt), we talked about immigration reform and our broken immigration system. Both Jeff and I have been working hard on making it much easier for immigrant entrepreneurs to get visa’s to start their companies in the US. Both of us have been unsuccessful in our efforts at a national level. At the end of the discussion, we decided to start the Global EIR Coalition to open source our approach and try to help every state in the US implement a similar program.

NASA has selected 149 research and technology proposals from American small businesses and research institutions that will enable NASA's future missions into the solar system and beyond while benefiting America's technology-driven economy right here on Earth.

The selected proposals now will enter into negotiations for contract awards as part of Phase II of the agency's Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) and Small Technology Transfer (STTR) Programs. The selected aerospace technology and innovation projects have a total value of approximately $118.1 million, supporting 117 U.S. firms and research institutions in 26 states. 

Venture firm New Enterprise Associates made some massive waves today on news that it’s closed its fifteenth – and largest – fund, which holds $3.1 billion. And a huge swath of that – 30 to 40 percent, according to Fierce - could likely be allocated to the healthcare space.

MedCity News reported initially on NEA’s plans to raise funds – it filed a document with the SEC in January indicating a $2.5 billion fundraise: