On October 5, 2015, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development ("OECD") released its final report on the 15 key elements of international tax rules set out in its Base Erosion and Profit Shifting ("BEPS") Action Plan.

The OECD launched the BEPS Action Plan in 2013 at the request of the G20 to address the growing problem of multinational companies ("MNCs") moving profits to low- or no-tax jurisdictions to avoid taxation. Over the past 12 months tax authorities around the world, including China, have been focusing their attention on the implementation of BEPS-related measures. One major challenge faced by China is the current direct and indirect tax planning practices of MNCs, which involve the use of various types of fee structures, including royalties and franchise fees, to transfer profits out of China.

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The U.S. Agency for International Development’s (USAID) U.S. Global Development Lab today announced $14.1M in new grants to 32 organizations from around the world. The awards are funded through the Development Innovation Ventures (DIV) program, a year-round open competition that seeks breakthrough development solutions with the potential to change millions of lives at a fraction of the usual cost.

DIV works to source, test, and scale innovative development ideas that are evidence-based, cost-effective, and have the capability to deliver greater results. DIV’s tiered-funding model, inspired by the venture capital experience, invests comparatively small amounts in relatively unproven concepts, and continues to support only those that prove they work.

Everywhere you look nowadays there seems to be an accelerator.  Cities, universities, investors and even countries are aggressively embracing the concept of startup accelerators as a means of positioning themselves as friendly to innovation and entrepreneurship.   They are viewed as a quick and easy way to attract young people, support local economic development, and connect people to the global economy.  And because there are no barriers to entry, almost anyone with a Wi-Fi connection and an open work space can call themselves an accelerator.  The results have been uneven, and until recently, unmeasured.

Every entrepreneur knows that good demand generation marketing is the key to growth these days, but very few have the discipline or know-how to measure return in a world of a thousand tools and techniques. Even those things that worked yesterday may not work tomorrow, as the market matures, the culture changes, and competitors appear with new solutions.

As a student in a 1970s high school computer lab, I used a teletypewriter to punch holes in a paper tape, dialed a phone number and jammed the handset into two rubber cups. Somehow, an unseen computer on the other end was told to do something. I didn’t see the point.  

In the 1980s, as a newly minted account executive at a consulting firm, I assured a colleague I’d be dead long before any work I might do would require learning to use a computer. (I also was sure that I wouldn’t ever need to type — that’s what the secretaries outside my office did on electric typewriters, which corrected typos at the touch of key!)

As an entrepreneur, you will never be challenged to a greater degree than at the funding stage of your first startup. With no track record, no proof of success and no infrastructure, you have to find a way to prove yourself.

Getting from zero to success requires resolve, but it also requires a bit of savvy, particularly in terms of understanding how the funding process works. It helps if you're prepared for the questions and challenges you'll face. You should also know that even if you don't know a soul in the investment or banking communities, you and your company can still make a go of it. I know because I did just that, more than once.

The “uberisation” of the economy is making companies rush into digital integration, but they need to build some critical capabilities before investing.

In the face of emerging digital disruptions across fields as varied as healthcare, transportation or even banking, companies have massively increased their digital investments. For instance, a survey by eConsultancy revealed that 77% of companies plan to increase their digital marketing budget in 2015, a sharp 71% increase compared to the preceding year.

Despite these impressive numbers, strategic digital initiatives often lack clarity or focus. Indeed, digital investments typically drive a wide range of projects ranging from leveraging social media networks internally or externally to digitising processes or even to creating new digital services for customers.

“Password must include upper and lowercase letters, and at least one numeric character.” A common scold dished out by websites or software when you open an account or change a password—and one that new research suggests is misleading.

A study that tested state-of-the-art password-guessing techniques found that requiring numbers and uppercase characters in passwords doesn’t do much to make them stronger. Making a password longer or including symbols was much more effective.

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It’s been almost a year since I took the entrepreneurial leap and launched my executive coaching practice. I’m not going to lie, working for myself has been completely spoiling. Setting my own agenda, choosing the place and times to work, and determining the clients with whom I work (no social hand grenades) has been completely fulfilling.

I’m a big believer that in uncertainty lies opportunity. If the rules aren’t already written then write your own rule book, and if there is a book, make edits.

It’s an extension of the open innovation model NASA’s been building–a growing trend witnessed by others like Tesla and Ford. NASA is looking to crowdsource resources from the private sector, paving the way to a wide array of new inventions such as cleaner home energy and taking a tour of Matt Damon’s coordinates on Mars.

HANGZHOU, China, October 21, 2015 /PRNewswire/ --

The eighth edition of the World Entrepreneurship Forum, from October 19 to 22 in Hangzhou (China), will reward five exceptional entrepreneurs for their impact on society and their ability to change the world.

In the "business" category, Timothy Draper: Founder of Draper Fisher Jurvetson and Draper University.  USA

Tim Draper is founding partner of leading venture capital firms Draper Associates and DFJ. Venture successes include Skype, Overture, Baidu, Tesla, Theranos, Parametric Technology, Hotmail, Digidesign, Twitch.tv ... Tim also started BizWorld.org, a non-profit for children to learn entrepreneurship and Draper University of Heroes.

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If your business is like most enterprises, it probably only has one or a small number of relatively static business models that are internally created and controlled. With the emergence of new business models that are destroying and re-creating entire industries, however, your business will most likely struggle to maintain market leadership for long if you continue operating this way.

New business models are a foundation of digital business transformation. It’s not digital business without business model innovation. The ability to maximize relationships with things and smart machines will be a foundation for algorithmic business in the future. Algorithmic business will require the widespread creation and availability of goal-seeking and self-optimizing algorithms.

The National Institutes of Health has partnered with London-based Wellcome Trust to launch a global science competition for new products or services to advance “open science,” a movement to make scientific research data broadly accessible to the public. Up to six teams of technology experts and researchers stand to win $80,000 each to develop their ideas into a prototype or to advance an existing early stage prototype. The prototype judged to have the greatest potential to further open science will receive $230,000.

Whether we’re conscious of it or not, every management decision is motivated by a desire to find universal answers to very specific questions. People who succeed in organizations tend to be pragmatic problem solvers. They have to be, because of the myriad challenges they face. How to grow the enterprise. How to get work done. How to find customers. How to be themselves in the workplace. And so on. Because there are no easy answers to these complex problems, they test the answers by starting a company, launching a project, or making a move. As they succeed and fail, the most attentive of them learn from the results. The history of business is thus the story of entrepreneurs, executives, leaders, and employees, lurching from one experimental answer to another. They gain expertise and acumen, and profits and revenues, and, along the way, add to the theory of management.

How do you create environments that allow innovative ideas to flourish?

University of California President Janet Napolitano tackled this question in her keynote address to the Association for Women in Science on Tuesday (Sept. 22) at the group’s 2015 National Summit on Innovation and Entrepreneurship, asserting that public research institutions are critical to driving innovation in our society.

It's the 28th anniversary of Black Monday, when in 1987, the Dow had its worst day ever and plunged 22.6%. Surprisingly, for at least another four years from Black Monday, there was no recession or bear market. One thing that could have signaled impending doom was an inverted yield curve. This rarity occurs when short-term interest rates (like the yield on the three-month treasury bill) become higher than long-term interest rates (like the yield on the 10-year treasury note).

There is a lot of uncertainty about the state of the private, high-growth technology markets and the venture capital markets that underpin them. On the one hand innovation is clearly at an all time high unleashed by smart phones, fast telecom networks, social networks that spread commerce and the fact that we are all one click away from buying things on Amazon, Apple, Google or PayPal.

In 2012 I penned an article called “It’s Morning in VC” that highlighted many of these trends and in 2014 I published a series of data in this VC SlideShare presentation of “Why VC is Much More Compelling” now, which updated many of our earlier analysis.

HONG KONG — The venture capital (VC) business in Asia is beginning to rival that in North America, home to Silicon Valley and birthplace of the modern VC model.

Investments in China and India, where most of the big deals are taking place, more than tripled to US$16.9 billion (S$23.5 billion) in the third quarter, slightly below the US$17.5 billion invested in North America, according to London-based consultancy Preqin.

The European Union hopes public money will sweeten its efforts to expand the use of venture capital to fund growing companies, according to plans from EU Financial Services Commissioner Jonathan Hill. Venture capital funds should face less red tape across the 28-nation EU so there can be more of them, participating in more investments and in more regions, Hill said at a Tuesday conference in Brussels. He said the EU needs to do more to help the sector grow, noting that the average European fund is half the size of its U.S. counterpart.

UC San Francisco (UCSF) has launched a collaboration with international pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline plc (GSK) to promote early-stage research with the potential to translate into new therapies for cancer, obesity and antibiotic resistant bacteria.

Through the collaboration, researchers from UCSF will work alongside GSK scientists to identify and jointly expedite promising basic research. In a shift from traditional sponsored-research agreements, the program will provide early-stage funding for validating academic discoveries that are not otherwise supported by traditional grant mechanisms.