The latest data and analytics buzz comes from the field of advanced HR analytics, where the application of new techniques and new thinking to talent management is becoming more mainstream. The implications are dramatic because talent management in many businesses has traditionally revolved around personal relationships or decision making based on experience—not to mention risk avoidance and legal compliance—rather than deep analysis. Advanced analytics provides a unique opportunity for human-capital and human-resources professionals to position themselves as fact-based strategic partners of the executive board, using state-of-the-art techniques to recruit and retain the great managers and great innovators who so often drive superior value in companies.

Lots of people inside and outside China have heard Premier Li Keqiang promote mass entrepreneurship and innovation in speeches. Far fewer know where he got the idea. It comes at least in part from the Upper West Side of Manhattan—specifically from the mind of Edmund Phelps, a Nobel prize-winning economist and Columbia University professor who wrote a 2013 book called Mass Flourishing: How Grassroots Innovation Created Jobs, Challenge, and Change. The book has sold 100,000 copies in China, about 10 times as many as in the U.S., Phelps says.

Image: Nobel prize-winning economist Edmund Phelps Photographer: Kerem Uzel/Bloomberg

Are they finally afraid of us?

You might think so, judging from the latest frenetic and increasingly silly barrage of anti-Baby Boomer rhetoric from  Usual Suspects in the "Boomers Are to Blame" cadre. Among blaring headlines the past couple of weeks:

A Better Name for Baby Boomers: "The Laziest Generation" (The New Republic) - Baby Boomers are castigated for not using E-mail enough - I kid you not - while the young author somehow believes John McCain, who is 78, and Orrin Hatch, who is 80, are Boomers.

If you don't think the direction of the Internet's future is implicated by the choice between two very different paths — free-market innovation on the one hand or government control on the other — I invite you to read the Federal Communications Commission's (FCC) just-released "Open Internet" order. All 300-plus pages and 1,777 footnotes worth of it!

Image: http://thehill.com

"If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses."

While there is no hard evidence to attribute the above quote to Henry Ford, there is no argument that he was a visionary of his time. He created something that consumers didn't realize they needed, by making the automobile affordable. He disrupted the current model, and for a time monopolized market share.

Business leaders often find themselves focused on short-term goals that distract them from creating a longer-term strategy. According to Paul Schoemaker, research director for Wharton’s Mack Institute for Innovation Management, that is only one of the barriers to being more strategic. Knowledge@Wharton recently discussed strategy with Schoemaker, whose new book with Steven Krupp, Winning the Long Game: How Strategic Leaders Shape the Future, addresses this challenge.

Let’s face it: acquisitions are stressful. From audits and fine print to non-competes and company culture, there are many details to navigate before either making an acquisition or being acquired. Add your competitor into the mix, and things can get complicated.

Entrepreneur in residence (EIR) programs are among the new breed of government initiatives seeking to emulate the fast-paced success of new business models and strategies found in the private sector. San Francisco, Los Angeles, Oregon and federal Health and Human Services are among the offices pioneering EIR in the public sector. On March 16, Business Oregon, the state’s economic development arm, announced it will launch its own EIR program, while elevating another technology position to further innovation and entrepreneurship in the state.

Creative professionals — graphic designers, artists, photographers and others — are extremely sensitive to the changing winds of the economy. While creative work is critical to business success, clients often have an imperfect view about the process and value of creative labor.

Thus, designers have to figure out how to navigate their own survival mechanisms in this new social media-dominated, mobile-oriented economy and learn to use the many existing tools and opportunities to their best advantage.

Floating on the stockmarket could fall out of vogue for start-ups backed by venture capital in favour of trade sales to incumbents, because of lower demand for massive exits.

Jeremy Colless, the managing partner of Artesian Capital Management, told a roundtable on innovation hosted by KPMG on Monday that the trade sale option was becoming more viable because “the mathematics for venture capital firms” had changed.

Image: Artesian’s Jeremy Colless says venture capital is itself being disrupted. Photo: Nic Walker

The warnings have been starting to get dire for a while.  Last September Marc Andreessen, one of the most influential investors in tech, predicted that unless young companies start to get their spending under control, they risk being “vaporized” by a market turn. 

And while he’s certainly not alone in his concerns, this March ecommerce darling Etsy announced it was going to file for a $300 million IPO, despite posting a $15 million loss last year. And is definitely not an anomaly, when talking about over valuing companies and raising too much capital.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has released the Federal Laboratory Technology Transfer, Fiscal Year 2012, Summary Report to the President and Congress. The report provides government-wide results of federal technology transfer activities in 2012. It includes both quantitative (e.g., number of licenses, earned royalty income, etc.) and qualitative (e.g., anecdotal evidence of downstream outcomes and benefits) measures of effectiveness, organized by agency and summarized at the national level.

March typically marks the beginning of the spring-cleaning season, when we start to shake off the winter doldrums, open up the windows and roll up our sleeves to scrub away the dirt and cobwebs.

But cleaning house right now may not only be good for your abode—it could also prove beneficial to your career.

Startup accelerators have become a prominent feature of the tech landscape in recent years, with more and more programs popping up every month.

In many ways, they have become a rite of passage for thousands of entrepreneurs who apply to and join programs annually.

Yet, with so many programs to choose from, and little publicly available data on each program, it can be hard for entrepreneurs to figure out which programs are most effective and which specific program would be the best fit to help launch their startup. We founded the Seed Accelerator Rankings Project with this challenge for entrepreneurs in mind.

Veteran of the venture capital sector, Israeli Jon Medved, will address the Creative Innovation conference in Melbourne this month, spruiking opportunities for Australian investors and start-ups in the fledgling equity crowdfunding market.

Instead of taking pledges from individuals in return for a reward or service, such as the campaigns offered by Kickstarter and Pozible, equity crowdfunding allows individuals to invest for financial return in the business.

Image: Leader: Jon Medved's site OurCrowd has described itself as "Kickstarter for rich people". Photo: Bloomberg

Technological and industry shifts are important drivers of innovation. Look no further than the advent of the mobile broadband Internet and the shift to the era of intelligent, connected devices. Even though shifts are difficult to anticipate, they often lead to fundamental business changes. Staying up to date with these changes is vital.

Let’s explore the three steps companies can take – with real-life examples – to be successful when industry shifts are taking place:

• Understand the market and your customers’ aspirations 
• Build external partnerships and bridges 
• Establish a strategic model to innovation

Everyone plans tasks in different ways, but the largest, most complicated projects have tried-and-tested methodologies that help break processes down and ensure that stakeholders and different departments are clear about which tasks need to be completed by whom and by what time. This article breaks project planning down into seven key tasks that have to be completed before work begins to give the project the best possible chance of coming in on time and on budget.

Venture capitalists poured a record $2.3 billion into cybersecurity companies in 2014, a year marked by frequent reports of hacks on high-profile companies. Yearly investment in cybersecurity startups been on the rise for several years now, and is up 156 percent since 2011, according to CB Insights. The trend will likely continue, as 75 percent of CIOs surveyed by Piper Jaffray said they would increase spending on security in 2015.+

Image: http://www.technologyreview.com

A new additive manufacturing technology is 25 to 100 times faster than conventional 3-D printing, and produces stronger parts at a lower cost.+

The technology was developed by a startup called Carbon3D, which was founded in 2013. The process is described today in a paper published in the journal Science.

Image: http://www.technologyreview.com

As SXSW Interactive wraps up in Austin, the tradition of startup launches was carried on in 2015 with the seventh annual SXSW Accelerator startup competition, which presented the world’s most innovative technology solutions. Presented by Oracle, the program held an awards ceremony tyesterday that recognized this year’s winners.