A couple of folks had interesting counterpoints to the superstar effect. Neil Strickland gave me permission to post the following email he sent:

I wonder if you’ve read, or if I’ve referred to, the Santa Fe Institute’s highly cited 2007 paper in PNAS (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences) called “Growth, Innovation, Scaling, and the pace of life in cities.” Its work was in “deriving growth equations which quantify the dramatic difference between growth fueled by innovation versus that driven by economies of scale. This difference suggests that, as population grows, major innovation cycles must be generated at a continually accelerating rate to sustain growth and avoid stagnation or collapse.”

Image: http://www.newgeography.com

The cost of entry to the entrepreneur lifestyle is at an all-time low, but the challenge of winning and success is at an all-time high. Anyone can build a new web site, or publish a smartphone app for a few thousand dollars, but getting market penetration requires a lot more. Customers have come to expect disruptive change, so yet another social network is not the way to get traction.

Image: https://blog.startupprofessionals.com

The 1939 "World of Tomorrow" fair in NYC presented an optimistic vision of the future which included robots, flights to outer space and automated freeway systems. A significant part of the fair was devoted to the "City of Tomorrow" which isn't essentially different from the concept which we all talk about now as the "Smart City."  While in 1939 we could only dream of actual smart cities, they’re now starting to materialize. On the banks of Lake Ontario, a little south of downtown Toronto, an old industrial zone is earmarked to soon become one of the most advanced neighborhoods in the world, with the help of Google sister-company Sidewalk Labs.

Google has hired Geisinger Health CEO David Feinberg to oversee its many health care initiatives, reporting to AI chief Jeff Dean and working closely with CEO Sundar Pichai to organize Google’s various health-related ventures.

Image: https://www.theverge.com

At Wayne State University, a commuter campus in Detroit where faculty members and students struggle to turn people out for events, the opening of the Innovation Hub last fall was a big deal. I have rarely seen so many people in one room on campus. Speakers gushed about the university’s "innovation ecosystem" and the "disruptive" start-ups sure to blossom in its "incubators."

Image: Dave Plunkert for The Chronicle 

Leaders within the biopharma industry have long enjoyed the pride of knowing that their work improves millions of lives and offers great benefits to humanity.  They share a collective sense of accomplishment around the eradication of diseases and improvement of daily living. They also hold the highest promise of eradicating cancer – the second largest cause of death in the world today – and significantly altering the course of diseases that remain a major burden to society.

These highly successful folks may be rolling in dough now, but their careers had humble beginnings with a first job full of nostalgia—the iconic newspaper route. Find out who got started by flinging papers and what they learned from this early employment experience.

Kevin Ryan is one of those startup titans, that when anyone hears he is raising money for a new company, they want it. With over $700M in capital raised, across 40 plus fundraising rounds and one of his exits going to Google for a cool $3B, he knows a thing or two about the startup game. In fact, he is considered one of the godfathers of the NYC startup ecosystem.

Image: Kevin Ryan

There’s good evidence that fish oil supplements may lower the risk of second heart events — like a heart attack or stroke — in people with heart disease, but few rigorous studies have investigated whether the supplement can help people to lower their risk of having a heart event in the first place. And while some data suggests that people with lower levels of vitamin D tend to have higher rates of heart disease and cancer, the evidence isn’t solid.

New Enterprise Associates has closed a deal to sell $1.3 billion of interests in about 20 portfolio companies to a new fund managed by a new venture capital firm headed by two former NEA executives, multiple sources with knowledge of the transaction have said.

The transaction has been funded by secondary investors at a price of about 90% of net asset value. NEA is expected to retain an investment in the new vehicle. Ravi Viswanathan, one of the new firm's leaders and a former NEA general partner, last week filed a regulatory document for a fund to raise $1.35 billion.

Within Entrepreneur Network partner Phil Town's portfolio of Rule No. 1 investing rules, there are four principles that begin with "M" to follow. One of these rules is management. Warren Buffett calls the management behind your investments as equivalent to in-laws. Communication with the management that controls your money is crucial. One of the main forms which management uses to correspond with its investors is shareholder letters. In order to draw out the right tidbits from your management's communication, look for the following within shareholder letters:

RALEIGH – Veteran entrepreneur and investor Chris Heivly is not someone who is known as never expressing his opinions, and in talking about the state of the entrepreneurial ecosystem, across the Triangle he’s candid in his assessment of the region’s strengths as well as weaknesses. A recent survey ranked the Triangle as one of the nation’s “Tech Towns.” What’s Chris say?

Image: https://www.wraltechwire.com