The computer-controlled driverless car is barreling down the road of the future towards us. We've known this for a long time, but the speed and the matter-of-factness with which it is moving from prototype to actual product still has the power to give you whiplash.

That became clear on Thursday, when Elon Musk offered a classic example of what journalists call "burying the lede." He had called a press conference on the subject of a Tesla software update designed to eliminate "range anxiety," or the fear that your electric car will run out of power before it reaches the next charging station on a long road trip.

It’s just plain hard to get people working together the way you’d like. That’s because, left to our own devices, we are often too greedy and self-centered to collaborate, preferring instead to compete as individuals. Sigmund Freud made this point, comparing humans to hedgehogs in the winter: When hedgehogs get cold, they huddle together to warm up, but then things become unbearably prickly as they sting each other with their spines.

Too many people succumb to the mistaken belief that being likable comes from natural, unteachable traits that belong only to a lucky few—the good looking, the fiercely social, and the incredibly talented. It’s easy to fall prey to this misconception. In reality, being likable is under your control, and it’s a matter of emotional intelligence (EQ).

We're living longer and thriving farther beyond retirement age—and it's not all beaches and golf courses for those with an entrepreneurial spirit.

A new study from Merrill Lynch addresses the myths and motivations around retirement. Nearly three out of five retirees launch into a new line of work after retirement, according to the study, and working retirees are three times more likely to be entrepreneurs than pre-retirees.

From a maker space to novel, streamlined intellectual property licensing terms to a forthcoming Web app for connecting students with mentors in the innovation community, several new initiatives are making good on plans to broaden the scope of University of Washington’s erstwhile technology commercialization arm.

These efforts, in various stages of development, reflect a mission that is “more about innovation transfer than tech transfer,” says Vikram Jandhyala, appointed the UW’s first vice provost of innovation last summer with a mandate to imbue nearly every corner of the university with “entrepreneurial thinking.”

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For the past few years, the most visible friction between startups and regulatory agencies has been on the local level. Venture capital “unicorns” like Uber, Lyft and Airbnb have been battling municipal regulators and officials as they transform travel, transportation and other industries largely in the purview of local government. But this regulatory “fault line” is about to move. The most visible conflicts between startups and the government in the next two years will be in the nation’s capital, not in city halls or state houses.

Language is basically made to make humanity a less difficult through making billions of people around the world understand each other. Declared by law, English (rather than German) was made the universal language for the world. Thus, it also means that each people at least know basic English words so they could communicate properly.

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Snubbing one federal law is costing growing Arizona companies a fair shot at venture capital.

As this is one of only five states that don’t put the Dodd-Frank small fund exemptions into effect, Arizona-based venture capitalists are taking their money to California.

This sponsored post is produced by Lighter Capital. 

At Lighter Capital, we spend lots of time talking to growing technology companies about what funding options make the most sense for them — Venture Capital? Revenue-based financing? Bank loans?

The kind of capital you raise, and when you raise it, will fundamentally impact and shape the future trajectory of your business and it will determine how much value you can expect to extract in the long term. So it’s important to have a thorough understanding of the trade-offs, risks, and pay-offs that come with different funding options.

Even if you have an amazing and brilliant business idea, and even if you have solid financial backing, a small legal mistake can sink your entrepreneurial ambitions and dreams quickly and permanently. As all entrepreneurs learn, many times the hard way, the devil is in the details, and launching and building a business is filled with small but complex legal details.

GSN Games, which designs mobile games like poker and bingo, collects billions of signals every day from the phones and tablets its players are using—revealing everything from the time of day they play to the types of game they prefer to how they deal with failure. If two people were to download a game onto the same type of phone simultaneously, in as little as five minutes their games would begin to diverge—each one automatically tailored to its user’s style of play.

Image: http://www.technologyreview.com

Recently the University of Massachusetts Amherst courted controversy when it announced that it would not admit Iranian students into some programs in the College of Engineering and in the College of Natural Sciences. The rule sought to comply with sanctions on Iran but facing strong criticism from faculty and students the university reversed itself and replaced the ban with a more flexible policy that would craft a special curriculum for Iranian students in the fields relevant to the ban. It is not yet clear how that policy will be implemented, but what has become patently clear is that a blanket ban on students by national origin is a transgression of the principles of an open society including academic freedom. Very rarely will the knowledge created and taught at universities present a security risk that justifies the outright exclusion of an entire nationality from participating in the research and learning enterprise.

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A conflict several years in the making between Republican leaders in Congress and US science agencies has reached boiling point. Science advocates and researchers that depend on government grants are particularly worried now that Republicans control both chambers of Congress. They fear that science budgets will be cut and the independence of research agencies curtailed.

Image: http://www.scientificamerican.com

In the space of less than four decades Chinese companies have moved from outright imitation to pure business innovation , in parallel with and contributing to the country’s extraordinary growth. The ‘three phases’ of this shift, while not strictly sequential, provide a narrative of relentless refinement of China’s innovative capacity.

We all like to learn from the best. So when it comes to growth it’s tempting to take global high-performers like GE, IBM, Shell, or BMW as role models and look for opportunities outside the home markets.

The trouble is that these global role models are much easier to admire than to imitate. In an analysis of 20,000 companies in 30 countries, we found that companies selling abroad had an average Return on Assets (ROA) of minus 1% as long as five years after their move. It takes 10 years to reach a modest +1% and only 40% of companies turn in more than 3%.

Since people began telecommuting decades ago, companies have been excited about the prospects to increase productivity, reduce costs, and gain access to a much larger talent pool.

But has remote work lived up to the hype? In some organizations, yes. Automattic (the creator of WordPress) and the U.S. government are two good — and very different — examples.

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“Let’s schedule a meeting” has become the universal default response to most business issues. Not sure what to do on a project? Let’s schedule a meeting. Have a few ideas to share? Let’s schedule a meeting. Struggling with taking action? Let’s schedule a meeting.

Although scheduling a meeting can be the right solution in many instances, it’s not always the best answer. I’ve come up with a decision tree to help you quickly determine if a meeting makes the most sense.

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We all have to communicate and collaborate with other people at work, but most of us start out instinctively trying to maintain an emotional distance from others in the work environment. In fact, most employee training courses recommend the distance if the work relationship crosses management levels, and most management policies strictly forbid fraternizing with the team.

Corporate offices have come a long way from the days of strict dress codes, awkward parties with bad cake and cubicles as far as the eye can see. We’ve shed these relics along with our fax machines and CD-ROMs, trading cookie-cutter professionalism for corporate cultures that foster individuality, freedom and creativity.

We may all have plenty of preconceived notions about how much those around us make, but it's just not something that's talked about much.

International moving company, Movehub, recently put together a fantastic infographic that shows us the personal disposable income of folks all over the planet. According to Movehub, in this context, "personal disposable income refers to the income per person after all taxes have been paid."

Image: http://www.businessinsider.com