There are roughly 28 million small businesses in America— 22 million of which are entirely owned and operated by one person.

With so many entrepreneurs out there, we can be sure that there are millions of amazing ideas and countless individuals who are risking it all to see them brought to life. However, it also leaves little doubt about how hard these individuals are working – often doing the work of ten or more people – to keep the trains running on time and their bank balances in the black.

Image: http://www.forbes.com

AT&T next month will open a center focused on digital health innovations within the Texas Medical Center's state-of-the-art Innovation Institute, the communications giant announced on Tuesday. Called the AT&T Foundry for Connected Health, the Houston center will become the sixth such facility in the world, with two in Plano, and one each in Palo Alto, Calif., Atlanta and Israel.

Image: Steve Gonzales, Staff

In a year when America will pick a new president and decide control of the House and Senate, policymakers are unlikely to fight for bold policy changes in areas such as immigration. The Wall Street Journal sees lawmakers ready to focus on traditional policy areas, with national security at the forefront, which pits the two leading parties against each other.

However, despite low expectations for Congress, 2016 promises to push the frontier of entrepreneurship policy forward through regulatory bodies. Here are three predictions for regulatory experimentation likely to become highlights of the year – and that might even slip into the speeches we will hear during the presidential election.

In the mid-2000s, Brad Morehead had a window of opportunity.

He wanted to apply his direct marketing knowledge to build a national consumer brand. He also wanted a business with recurring revenue. And he saw potential in the burgeoning home-security-alarm industry, which was in a state of flux due to advances in wireless technology. Costs to develop and deploy those systems were dropping. The economic crisis offered smaller companies an opportunity to advertise more cost effectively while established companies were retrenching.

Image: Thomas Hawk via Creative Commons license. Image has been altered.

NEW YORK CITY – January 6, 2016 – Accelerator Corporation, a leading life science investment and management firm, today announced the Series A financing of Petra Pharma Corporation to develop small molecule inhibitors for the treatment of cancer and metabolic diseases in alliance with Weill Cornell Medicine. The investors participating in the $48 million Series A investment in Petra Pharma include Accelerator New York's investment syndicate partners: AbbVie, Alexandria Venture Investments, ARCH Venture Partners, Eli Lilly and Company, Harris & Harris Group, Inc., Innovate NY Fund, Johnson & Johnson Innovation – JJDC, Inc., The Partnership Fund for New York City, Pfizer Venture Investments, Watson Fund and WuXi PharmaTech.

The question "What do you do?" has basically become synonymous with "Who are you?" There's a reason it almost always follows "What's your name?" in polite conversation: It's helpful. It's get-to-know-you shorthand. The one-word answer to "what do you do?" lets people categorize us and gives them a snapshot of what we do or who we are.

But there's also a dark underbelly to introducing ourselves with this kind of shorthand: When labels go wrong, they can lead to stereotypes. Perception becomes more about the experiences accumulated by the people you're talking to than anything that they may or may not know about you, personally.

High levels of employment and job creation are crucial factors in ensuring that countries have strong economic development, and that people are happy and prosperous.

On the world stage, Europe is a pretty good place to be if you want a job, but within Europe, rates of employment vary massively from country to country.

Image: (AP Photo/Peter Morrison) Europe fans dressed in the colors of the European flag pose for the camera as they attend the second day of the Ryder Cup golf tournament at Gleneagles, Scotland, Saturday, Sept. 27, 2014.

An enterprising artist has taken on one of the biggest concepts known to man: the universe.

Pablo Carlos Budassi is drawing eyes across the Internet this week for a dazzling logarithmic visualization of the observable universe that he created and uploaded to Wikimedia Commons in 2013.

Image: Pablo Carlos Budassi created a dazzling logarithmic visualization of the observable universe in 2013. Credit: Pablo Carlos Budassi/Wikimedia Commons

Braving a funding ban put in place by America’s top health agency, some U.S. research centers are moving ahead with attempts to grow human tissue inside pigs and sheep with the goal of creating hearts, livers, or other organs needed for transplants.

The effort to incubate organs in farm animals is ethically charged because it involves adding human cells to animal embryos in ways that could blur the line between species.

Image: http://www.technologyreview.com/

Digital capabilities, adoption, and usage are evolving at a supercharged pace. While most users scramble just to keep up with the relentless rate of innovation, the sectors, companies, and individuals on the digital frontier continue to push the boundaries of technology use—and to capture disproportionate gains as a result.

Image: http://www.mckinsey.com

In the Industrial Revolution of the late 18th and early 19th centuries, one new force changed everything. Today our world is undergoing an even more dramatic transition due to the confluence of four fundamental disruptive forces—any of which would rank among the greatest changes the global economy has ever seen. Compared with the Industrial Revolution, we estimate that this change is happening ten times faster and at 300 times the scale, or roughly 3,000 times the impact. Although we all know that these disruptions are happening, most of us fail to comprehend their full magnitude and the second- and third-order effects that will result. Much as waves can amplify one another, these trends are gaining strength, magnitude, and influence as they interact with, coincide with, and feed upon one another. Together, these four fundamental disruptive trends are producing monumental change.

Before the booths get finished and 150,000 people invade the halls of the Consumer Electronics Show, the folks who organize the CES pick out the products they deem as the most innovative,

The Washington Business Alliance is proud to launch PLAN Washington 2016, our policy playbook for the New Year and beyond. PLAN challenges us to make Washington State a national leader in economic performance and quality of life by offering a round up of the best thinking on how to unlock our state's potential.

As we move into 2016, one of the things that still keeps many IT leaders up at night is innovation. How can I get my organisation to rise to the challenges of a fast-paced, customer-centric world with competition coming from unexpected places?

Just how much impact can one university have on the global economy. Apparently, quite a bit. A new December 2015 study from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology reports that MIT's alumni entrepreneurs generate annual revenues of roughly $1.9 trillion.

It’s no longer a secret that most companies struggle with strategy execution. McKinsey research tells us, for example, that 70 percent of change efforts fall short of desired results. The financial losses implied by statistics like these are massive, and corporate leaders have taken notice. Today’s senior leaders realise that implementation is at least half of the leadership challenge when it comes to improving performance via strategic change. Too frequently, however, they seek solutions in the wrong place.

We collected the most mesmerizing short clips about emerging technology from MIT Technology Review stories during 2015.

On January 1, the Illinois Intrastate Equity Crowdfunding Bill (HB 3429) went into effect, opening the door for small and mid-sized businesses to raise funds from the general public.

As 2015 rounds to a close, many of us are considering our goals for next year. For many, new business ideas, potential partners, and visions for funding will be top of the list. But before planning too far out, take a moment to reflect on what type of entrepreneur you are to get a better sense of who may be best to team up with, or bring on board in a support role

2015 was a year filled with incredible activity and tremendous traction throughout Tennessee's business community. More and more people are looking at Tennessee as a leader on innovative ways to grow businesses and as a state with the right ingredients to build a sustainable ecosystem. We at Launch Tennessee help tell the story and initiate some of the programming in our mission to make Tennessee the No. 1 place for entrepreneurs to start and grow a company. Judging from the 2015 program updates below, the past year has been filled with great success and has set the stage for what will be a very exciting 2016.