Google parent company Alphabet is spinning off what used to be its "Ideas" think-tank division into a new subsidiary called Jigsaw.

"The team’s mission is to use technology to tackle the toughest geopolitical challenges, from countering violent extremism to thwarting online censorship to mitigating the threats associated with digital attacks," Alphabet chairman Eric Schmidt writes in a blog post.

For decades, workers in Germany, Europe and the United States have been the wealthiest in the world. That is about to change for the worse as America heads towards a “freelance society”, writes Steven Hill.

Steven Hill is a journalist and the Holtzbrinck Fellow at the American Academy in Berlin . His most recent book is Raw Deal: How the ‘ Uber Economy’ and Runaway Capitalism Are Screwing American Workers. 

What is the future of work, and the future of jobs? For the last several decades, the workers of Germany, the US and Europe have been the most productive and wealthiest in the world. But now that prosperity is in danger.

A convergence of factors in information technology and capital markets have helped propel a boom in venture capital-backed startups in recent years. While well-established regions such as San Francisco-Silicon Valley, Boston-Cambridge, and New York account for the lion’s share of startup activity and funding, significant evidence suggests that a non-trivial amount of early stage capital is dispersing geographically throughout the United States. 

As the May effective date for the Securities and Exchange Commission’s crowdfunding rules draws closer, the agency has released a primer for investors who wish to participate in such ventures.

On Tuesday, the SEC released an Investor Alert detailing the parameters – and potential risks — associated with crowdfunding.

As a college student, I started a website development company based on what I was learning in my classes and internships. Later, while working for a Fortune 200 company, I used part of my salary to fund a startup I was putting together on the side. When that later became my full-time job, I used some of the money it was generating to start yet another company. Now that that company has been acquired, I'm spending most of my time on growing it while tinkering with some side projects all over again.

Image: Flickr user Thomas Chung

Quiz question:

Did you call yourself a founder and try to raise money in the last eight years?

If the answer is yes, then you probably are NOT an entrepreneur.

Let me explain. Starting around 2010, any twenty- or thirty-something with a little stubble, TOMs shoes, and an app idea naively assumed they might be the next Instagram or later, the next Uber. You could overhear them all say, “Why are we waiting around, let’s get some shared space and raise our seed round! I heard an early guy at Facebook wants to advise!”

The National Science Foundation plans to expand its innovation ecosystem by funding new hubs of what it calls the Innovation Corps — a set of training programs and other initiatives to rapidly translate progress made in labs to the commercial world.

NSF is offering up to $8 million in cooperative agreement awards to researchers to form new I-Corps nodes, which are central hubs meant to "support regional needs for innovation education, infrastructure, and research" of I-Corps teams, according to a solicitation from the science and engineering research agency.

Maybe you watched the unveiling of IBM’s Watson live on Jeopardy! in 2009. Or perhaps you caught the tech firm’s latest ad campaign on TV, which features goofy dialogues between Watson and Serena Williams, Richard Thaler, or Bob Dylan.

Even if not, chances are you’ve interacted with a talking computer at some point. But creating a convincing talking computer is actually really hard. In an interesting story in the New York Times on Monday, tech writer John Markoff discussed the effort that went into creating the voice for IBM’s Watson and used that as a way into a discussion of the efforts under way to create more natural and acceptable computer voices.

Image: Joaquin Phoenix falls in love with a computer in the movie "Her.” - https://www.technologyreview.com

No workplace would be complete without the complementary personalities of innovators and keepers of order. You must have both or innovative efforts will be useless.

Rule-following, protocol-loving coworkers and managers may think that their innovative counterparts are mortal enemies, but that couldn’t be farther from the truth. You see, without their traditional thinking, innovators would not have the parameters, the guidelines, or the understanding to know where and how to push the limits to create. We, the innovators, want to be your allies.

Today’s entrepreneur has a wealth of information, connectivity and resources available instantly and immediately via the Internet. This level of access has helped spawn a new renaissance for entrepreneurship, as young and experienced entrepreneurs alike find it ever easier to get exactly what they need to create ideas, execute plans and perfect their approaches.

In October 2000, Jack Welch announced the biggest deal of his 20-year tenure as head of GE: a $45 billion merger with Honeywell. Shortly thereafter he was forced to retire, due to GE’s mandatory retirement policy for CEOs turning 65.

More than a third of S&P 500 firms have a mandatory retirement policy for their CEO. Their aim is to drive out executives who are past their prime. But are such policies a good idea?

Cities looking to spur economic growth should reconsider those tax breaks and subsidies intended to lure out-of-state corporations, and invest in local entrepreneurs instead, a new report suggests.

RELATED STORIES From the Scrap Pile to Your Produce Aisle Can Philadelphia Teach Silicon Valley a Thing or Two About Diversity? Boston Doubles Down on Providing Financial Empowerment to Residents Developing the Cure for Corporate Welfare “State Job Creation Strategies Often Off Base,” a report by Michael Mazerov and Michael Leachman with the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, indicates that only 1 to 4 percent of total job creation each year stems from relocated out-of-state firms. About 87 percent of private-sector jobs created between 1995 and 2013 stemmed from in-state businesses, created by startups, entrepreneurs or the expansion of employment at existing companies.

Image: https://nextcity.org

At Doctor on Demand, a popular online health site, patients can videoconference with physicians on a host of maladies, from skin rashes and flu diagnoses to getting a prescription for an eye infection. On Maven, a telemedicine app targeted to women, nurse practitioners chat with patients on issues such as birth control, breast feeding and postpartum depression. Opternative offers online eye exams that it says are just as accurate as in-person tests. It’s a boom time for telehealth. Just as smartphone apps have revolutionized ride-hailing and apartment-sharing, telemedicine technology is upending health care.

I recently got to work an hour early. I had one goal in mind: world-domination, early-morning productivity. I made coffee, opened my email inbox, and the next thing I knew . . . it was noon. Where did the day go? And, more importantly, why didn’t I get anything substantive done? Sure, I cleared out my inbox, but I didn’t tackle a thing on my to-do list.

Image: Tim Gouw via Unsplash

If you’re looking for a new job, don’t worry about writing a stellar cover letter. Nearly two-thirds of recruiters say it’s not an important factor when they review applications, according to a survey of 1,400 recruiters by Jobvite, a recruiting software provider.

In fact, the cover letter is quickly becoming a dinosaur when it comes to hiring, says Jobvite chief people officer Rachel Bitte, and its demise is due to three things: speed, technology, and volume.

Ann Arbor Spark is hosting a three-day marathon session on how to build a business for budding entrepreneurs, with registration free of charge to any college student or team interested in forming a business.

The event, called IgniteIt Weekend, will be at Spark’s headquarters on 525 S. State St. in downtown Ann Arbor, kicking off Friday with a free dinner and finishing at 5 p.m. on Sunday.

Image: http://www.crainsdetroit.com

While you probably know how long it takes you to get ready in the morning and how long it takes you to get to work, do you know how long it takes you to get into your best frame of mind to focus? Figuring out what time you should wake up is important, not only to optimize performance, but also to maintain good work-life balance, says sleep expert Teofilo Lee-Chiong, professor of medicine at National Jewish Health in Denver and the University of Colorado School of Medicine.

Most professors find the insight that leads to new books in pools of data, focus groups, or controlled studies. Adam Grant, the young Wharton professor who made waves with his 2013 book, Give and Take, got the idea for his latest volume in the real world. In a recent interview, Grant told me that several years ago, he passed on an opportunity to invest in Warby Parker, the wildly successful online glasses retailer. Why? He didn’t recognize the potential and originality of the company’s founders and their business model. “I study behavior for a living, and I was still wildly wrong,” Grant said. “What can we learn from that?”

With an intense battle for talent going on throughout the business world, most leaders will likely find this difficult to accept: The best bosses don’t sweat it when their best performers want to move on. They expect it, may encourage it, and in some cases, profit by it.

Sydney Finkelstein, a business professor at Dartmouth’s Tuck school, told Quartz that was his most surprising finding as he researched the traits of exceptional managers for his new book, “Superbosses.”

Tech giants like Google and Intel are known for their venture capital investing, funding startups that might be the next big thing. Now not-so-high-tech companies are opening VC arms in an attempt to cash in on advancing technology.

Think Walgreens, 7-Eleven and Vitamin Shoppe. Last week, JetBlue Airways announced the launch of its own VC arm based in Redwood City.

Image: http://www.mercurynews.com