“I’m like the fire patrol,” says Jacob, a thirty-five-year-old production manager for a mid-sized European food manufacturer. “I run from one corner to the other to fix things, just to keep producing.” Following a buyout of his company by a private investor, Jacob’s responsibilities had changed – although his job title had not.  He was now being asked to manage two plants.  With a new location, a distant boss and few peers with whom he could exchange ideas about modernising the plants, he was not best placed to step up to the leadership challenge.

Europe’s labour market is undergoing dramatic changes. A wave of technological innovations and a rise in global competition is transforming whole sectors of our economy. Also Europe suffers under a faltering economy. Encouraging and fostering individual entrepreneurship is one answer to creating new employment opportunities in Europe and have positive influence on the economic development. Therefore it is necessary to provide an inspiring and encouraging setting for ambitious people with innovative ideas. The European Forum Alpbach is always at the forefront of empowering young people to take on new challenges and is thus launching the Alpbach Summer School on Entrepreneurship.

No one should have been surprised when The Washington Post ran Here’s why patents are innovation’s worst enemy by Vivek Wadhwa. It was only a matter of time before universities standing up to the patent reform behemoth drew retribution. Last year they were attacked as patent trolls. Now we hear that patents and licensing are irrelevant or even harmful to innovation. While the attack hits a larger target, a prime focus is discrediting university technology transfer before the patent reform debate kicks into high gear.

Lately everyone seems to be talking about why you need to be disruptive. There are zillions of books on how to be disruptive and conquer the world…or at least your niche in it. As with many things, the books have spawned a universe of programs, videos, and, of course, consultants that will show you how to become a disruptive organization. (as you know, part of my life is being a consultant so I’m a bit sensitive about my brethren raking in big bucks with often little for clients to show for it)

When you’re starting a business, one of the biggest challenges you can face is time management. Sometimes, it can feel like you have to choose among developing that next software feature, devoting more time to marketing efforts, reviewing weekly metrics and sleeping. In a more general sense, you’ll often have to decide between emphasizing long-term innovation and focusing on the urgency of immediate issues.

The secret to Silicon Valley’s triumph as the global capital of innovation may lie in a quirk of California’s employment policy, a new study suggests. Unlike most states, California prohibits the legal enforcement of non-compete clauses, which force people who leave jobs to wait for a predetermined period before taking positions at rival companies. That puts it in the ideal position to rob other regions of their most prized inventors, according to the paper, published this month in the journal Research Policy.

Gov. Paul LePage’s plan to cut personal and corporate income taxes and eliminate estate taxes as a way to attract corporate investors and stimulate economic development is a short-sighted gamble that would deprive government of the revenues and administrative capacities needed to respond to residents’ needs and future market developments.

Image: Daryn Slover | Sun Journal Gov. Paul LePage talks during a "town hall" meeting at Edward Little High School in Auburn on Wednesday.

Carrying around too much weight and not exercising are two surefire ways to shorten your life. Which one's worse? A new study reveals that lack of physical activity causes twice as many early deaths as having too much flab.

Researchers at the University of Cambridge in the UK compared the body-mass indexes, waist circumferences, physical activity levels, and other heath data of more than 330,000 men and women over 12 years. They observed the greatest reduction in mortality risk between inactive people and those who were moderately active.

March 19, 2015

DRAFT Agenda

Lecture Room

National Academy of Sciences

2100 C Street, NW

Washington, DC

Peter Thiel is the co-founder of PayPal, the investor who discovered Facebook, and the author of Zero to One, a short account of the counterintuitive thinking that’s made him a godfather figure in Silicon Valley (see “The Contrarian’s Guide to Changing the World.”)+

But what’s less well known about Thiel is his affinity for biotechnology. By now he has invested in more than 25 startups, one of which has already turned into a $1 billion success story.

Smartphone camera apps could soon do more than just capture images. Software integrated with a new line of smartphone chips will be capable of recognizing, say, a cat or city skyline in a photo, and tagging pictures of your friends with their names.+

The chip maker Qualcomm announced last week that it will bundle the software with its next major chip for mobile devices. The technology, which Qualcomm calls Zeroth, could make sophisticated machine learning more common on mobile devices. As well as processing images, the Zeroth software is designed to allow phones to recognize speech or other sounds, and to learn to spot patterns of activity from a device’s sensors.

SAN FRANCISCO — A few days before he testified in a sex discrimination lawsuit that has captivated Silicon Valley, John Doerr, arguably the most famous venture capitalist in the world, was sitting at a conference room table laying out his ideas on good management.

The subject was not the trial, in which a former junior partner of Mr. Doerr’s firm, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, has claimed gender discrimination. Instead, it was BetterWorks, a company in Palo Alto, Calif., that has raised about $15.5 million in venture capital from investors, including Mr. Doerr.

Image: Kris Duggan, the chief executive of BetterWorks, said the company aimed to make employee performance evaluation more data-driven. Credit Jason Henry for The New York Times

The United States’ GDP of $16.3 trillion in 2014 was the highest in the world, due in large part to the strength of U.S. industries. However, all industries are not equal in terms of their contribution to economic output.

While the U.S. economy is among the world’s strongest, however, other countries continue to invest in education, technology, innovation, and other industries that invigorate economies, and the U.S. is falling behind. The percentage of U.S. workers employed in what the Brookings Institution calls “advanced industries” has fallen from 11.6% in 1980, to 8.7% in 2013. While this was a slight improvement from 8.4% in 2010, the need for a resurgence in the nation’s most important industries is more pressing than ever. Read more: 15 Cities With the Most High-Tech Jobs - 24/7 Wall St. http://247wallst.com/special-report/2015/03/13/15-cities-with-the-most-high-tech-jobs/#ixzz3UZYD2wgi Follow us: @247wallst on Twitter | 247wallst on Facebook

A century ago this year, a young Swiss physicist, who had already revolutionized physics with discoveries about the relationship between space and time, developed a radical new understanding of gravity.

In 1915, Albert Einstein published his general theory of relativity, which described gravity as a fundamental property of space-time. He came up with a set of equations that relate the curvature of space-time to the energy and momentum of the matter and radiation that are present in a particular region.

Image: NASA

AUSTIN, Texas — Imagine a world in which you call up a plane on your smartphone as easily as you can summon cars from Uber and Lyft. Then take it to the next level: The plane has no pilot, completely controlled by automatic algorithms.

That's the dream of Juraj Vaculik, CEO of AeroMobil, which unveiled its prototype flying car last year. The company has an aggressive launch date of 2017 for that vehicle, which Vaculik describes as a "Ferrari with wings." But during a keynote at South by Southwest Interactive, Vaculik announced AeroMobil's plan for the next generation of these vehicles: self-flying cars.

Image: AeroMobil plans to have its first flying car on the market by 2017, and for its next generation vehicle it's planning a self-flying car. - Airmobil

March Madness is kicking off, and from your office to the Oval Office, Americans are poised to bet more than ever before on the NCAA men's basketball championship tournament. 

The American Gaming Association, assisted by GfK Custom Research North America, estimates Americans will drop $9 billion betting on the games.

There’s one reference book every small business owner must have. It’s J.K. Lasser’s Small Business Taxes 2015: Your Complete Guide to a Better Bottom Line. The book is updated each new tax year by Barbara Weltman, the doyenne of small business taxes. There are lots of tax books out there, and tax resources galore. What’s different about this tax book is that the information is specifically tailored to what small business owners want to know.

A handful of payments companies including Square and PayPal are moving beyond their core market in payments to take advantage of an opportunity to help small businesses grow.

Following the 2008 financial crisis, banks severely restricted access to capital, disproportionately affecting fledgling and medium-sized businesses. Annual loan originations to businesses with $1 million or less in revenue fell dramatically between 2007 and 2013. 

Image: http://www.businessinsider.com

It's time once again to fill out those March Madness brackets, and what better way to predict the winner of this year's National Collegiate Athletic Association men's basketball tournament than to compare how the teams succeed in the classroom? Here's how Inside Higher Ed's bracket works: to determine the winners, we first look to the Academic Progress Rate, the N.C.A.A.'s multiyear measure of a team's classroom performance. When two teams tie, we turn to the N.C.A.A.'s Graduation Success Rate, which measures the proportion of athletes on track to graduate within six years. In the event of a G.S.R. tie, we then turn to the Federal Graduation Rate, a slightly different formula that the government uses to track graduation rates.

Image: https://www.insidehighered.com

Austin’s Innovation Zone and high-density technology hubs were among discussion of panelists at a SXSW Interactive session March 15. Panelists discussed the positive and negative effects of having high-density innovation clusters, as well Austin's advantage of having a high quality of life in the city in the session titled "Designing Austin's Economy—An Innovation Uproar?" Michelle Skelding, senior vice president of global technology and innovation with the Greater Austin Chamber of Commerce, moderated the discussion. She said there are 4,700 high-technology companies in the area. Jim Butler, manager of creative industries development for the city of Austin, said although job creation is a large part of his job, he is equally invested in ensuring the quality of life for residents remains high as the city continues to grow.