You might have read a multitude of articles and books on productivity in the workplace, but how much thought have you put into the amount of quality sleep you get each night? There are plenty of different ways to increase your productivity, for sure, but one of the best you might not have considered seriously is your nightly rest.

It’s truly fascinating how successful people approach problems. Where others see impenetrable barriers, they see challenges to embrace and obstacles to overcome.

Their confidence in the face of hardship is driven by the ability to let go of the negativity that holds so many otherwise sensible people back.

Martin Seligman at the University of Pennsylvania has studied this phenomenon more than anyone else has, and he’s found that success in life is driven by one critical distinction—whether you believe that your failures are produced by personal deficits beyond your control or that they are mistakes you can fix with effort.

As of September, one of the largest companies in the world will do all of its employees and managers an enormous favor: It will get rid of the annual performance review.

Accenture CEO Pierre Nanterme told The Washington Post that the professional services firm, which employs hundreds of thousands of workers in cities around the globe, has been quietly preparing for this “massive revolution” in its internal operations.

Image: An employee walks through Accenture's office space in Arlington, Va, on Aug. 28, 2013 ( Photograph by Jeffrey MacMillan )

Accelerators, often referred to as bootcamps for startups, can help startups move their idea into a business at warp speed. Accelerators provide mentorship, networks and invaluable introductions during a typical three-month cohort.

But, the accelerator does come at a price. Many startups don’t get accepted into accelerators and the ones that do often have to give up some equity.

I would like you to do a small quiz built by a person I admire a lot: Dan Ariely, the behavioural scientist. The quiz was designed to assess one’s ability to make government policy and take corporate decisions. But I believe it is at least as appropriate to assess your ability to be an entrepreneur.

The contemporary internet is filled to absolutely bursting with words. In fact, there are some who believe there are too many words on the internet, that people should censor themselves just a tad more often. But this wasn’t always the case.

Image: Computer Science Museum/Wikimedia Commons

The federal government is attempting to ensure that doctors don't inadvertently compromise patient data when they use smartphones to access electronic health records. 

The National Institutes of Standards in Technology this week released a step-by-step guide for hospitals and IT professionals, listing ways to secure the connection between devices and electronic health records.

As the world of work continues to evolve at a rapid pace innovation continues to become both a top priority and a top challenge. For most companies, innovation is handled behind closed doors in a secluded part of the company that only a few have access to. This type of innovation is no longer practical, scalable or effective when thinking about the future of work. In order to succeed and thrive in this rapidly changing world, organizations must adapt by implementing five innovation models, all five of these are crucial. The five innovation models are:

Shortly after the April 2015 publication of Guiding Bayer’s Global Innovation Engines To New Heights, an article I wrote featuring Bayer board of management member, Kemal Malik, I received a phone call from Valerie Bowling. The executive director for the Conference Forum and producer of one of my favorite events, Disruptive Innovations to Advance Clinical Trials (DPharm), Bowling said the article sparked an idea. She said the conference, which has consistently been growing in popularity, has typically focused on how to be more innovative in executing clinical trials, but had never focused on the importance of leadership’s role in creating a culture where innovation is able to thrive. 

What is a high-potential employee? Most companies have a clear picture of the characteristics that indicate a top performer: intelligence, charisma, verbal skill, and the ability to be both part of a team and lead one. These skills definitely fit the criteria, but too many leaders stop there. They tend to see and promote only one kind of high-potential talent, when in fact they need two.

Early adopters focus on the rewards of integrating advanced technologies into their manufacturing processes. They see the opportunity to jump ahead of the competition by improving quality, reducing costs, increasing flexibility, adding features, and speeding up production. Ultimately, they plan to—and generally will—grab market share.

The risks with these pursuits, however, can be equally significant, by diverting time and money that could be used for more modest, conservative advances. What do these early adopters do to swing the odds in their favor? Most will engage in proof-of-concept testing, which tests key technical challenges that could hamper the project’s success. This step precedes any work on the project and can usually be done quickly and cost effectively.

Image: http://www.automationworld.com

Where are you working right now? On your sofa? In a coffee shop with your earbuds in? From your tablet on an outdoor patio? If you work virtually—that is, "telecommute"—you're part of a fast-growing trend in the modern workforce. But like any new working practice, making telecommuting part of your usual routine takes some discipline and diligence.

According to research by the financial software company Intuit, nearly a quarter of U.S. workers telecommute for at least a few hours every week. Today, 67% of companies allow at least some employees to work at home occasionally, up from 50% in 2008, and 38% allowed some workers to do so on a regular basis, up from 23%, according to the Wall Street Journal.

From post-Medieval English to McMansions, domestic architecture in the United States is as diverse as its denizens. A new poster from Pop Chart Lab makes identifying them easier and offers a glimpse of over 300 years of design history in a single, beautifully illustrated graphic.

The Brooklyn-based poster company, founded by Ben Gibson and Patrick Mulligan, has earned its cred by sleuthing often overlooked information and presenting it in a beautiful way. (Co.Design detailed Pop Chart Labs's formula for success here.) The company has tackled compendiums of basketball jerseys, Apple's history, and beer, among others. There's an insatiable thirst for infographics—someone should do a poster about that!—and Pop Chart Lab has carved itself a nice little niche.

Image: http://www.fastcodesign.com

A few decades ago, U.S. companies were making progress on the operations front, but now they seem to have lost their way—and business schools are in a position to help set them right again. Let me explain.

In the 1980s, our organizations learned a great deal about how to improve productivity, quality, and costs from Japanese practices. Lean production, which includes a vastly expanded role for front-line workers in addressing problems, was brought to the United States by Toyota in its auto plants but has now spread to health care, professional services, and virtually every other industry.

Image: https://hbr.org

About a month ago, I started my internship at Barring Eyewear, a Philadelphia-based startup that produces high-end affordable sunglasses from innovative materials. I first learned about Barring Eyewear when I pitched alongside its co-founder, Joseph Hwang LPS’15, for the Wharton Venture Initiation Program last fall. Dozens of startups pitched that day, but Barring Eyewear’s stood out to me because while most of the startups were still in the early development stage with little more than an idea and business plan, Barring Eyewear brought in its already manufactured product. A few weeks later at a Weiss Tech House networking event, I recognized Joe from his pitch and reached out to him for advice on my startup, Livedrop. Since then, Joe has acted as a mentor, guiding me through my first year of college as well as providing direction for Livedrop.

Image: http://beacon.wharton.upenn.edu

A group of concerned scientists, researchers and academics, including Elon Musk and Stephen Hawking, have warned that a military artificial intelligence arms race could soon develop if preventative measures are not taken. A global arms race is "virtually inevitable" if any major military power pushes ahead with AI weapons development, the group cautioned in an open letter presented at the International Joint Conferences on Artificial Intelligence in Buenos Aires.

At First Round, we often see companies at their moment of inception — when they’re no more than a dream and a team. As seed-stage investors, we’ve seen how the biggest ideas start small and change over time. Now, we want to see more entrepreneurs take that first step.

Our First Pitch Series features the original seed-stage pitch decks produced by tech startups, including big winners and failures. It helps to remember that everyone starts somewhere.

U.S. and Canadian researchers have found they can get a good idea of a grizzly bear’s diet over several months by looking at a single hair. The technique, which measures residues of trace metals, can be a major tool in determining if the threatened animals are getting enough of the right foods to eat.

The technique can also help determine how much mercury bears are ingesting. A study published last year by many of the same researchers found that two out of three grizzlies sampled in coastal British Columbia had mercury levels exceeding a neurochemical effect threshold proposed for polar bears.

The mobile web versus the native app has been a long story of victory — for the app. In the U.S., 80 percent or more of mobile users’ time is spent in our favorite natives apps: Facebook, Game of War, Tumblr, and the list goes on.

But what about the rest of the planet?

According to Opera Mediaworks’ Q2 state of mobile advertising, not so much. In fact, there’s only one other region besides the U.S. where the app is winning, and that’s a thinly populated dusting of tiny Pacific Ocean island-states such as Melanesia, Micronesia, and Polynesia.

Image: Opera Mediaworks

In the late 1970s the computer industry was dominated by huge, vertically integrated companies such as IBM, Burroughs, and Digital Equipment. With their vast advantages of scale and huge installed base of users, these companies seemed to be unassailable. Yet just ten years later, power in the industry had shifted: the behemoths were struggling to survive while an army of smaller, highly specialized companies was thriving. What happened?