In 1998, one of the most powerful El Niño events on record sent Pacific Ocean temperatures soaring to such heights that almost 20% of the world’s coral reefs experienced significant bleaching. Some of the reefs have never fully recovered from that episode. Now, more than 16 years later, global warming appears to be doing what it used to require a super El Niño to do — push ocean temperatures so high across the Pacific Ocean that it sets off a major coral bleaching event, scientists warned Monday.

It was a bummer of a year in world news, but let's look beyond that for a moment. It was also, weirdly, a year in which entertainment news frequently bled over into front page headlines. Even our escapism couldn't escape from the general sludgy state of affairs in 2014. Bill Cosby is allegedly not the beloved icon most remember, #gamergate underscored the rampant, aggressive misogyny of many male video game enthusiasts, and The Interview brought about an actual international incident—and that's all just been the past few months! Perhaps all this negativity helped us appreciate the brights spots even more, though.

Technology advances are making amazing things possible: we finally have a chance to solve the problems that have long plagued humanity such as hunger, disease, energy, and education.

The same technologies that make this abundance possible are however setting the stage for the elimination of the majority of human jobs.

You could sift through piles of dense data sets in an attempt to understand the trends and discoveries that emerged in history, psychology, current events, and even fictional dragons in 2014. Or you could look at these infographics, which visualize otherwise overwhelming data as beautiful charts, graphs, and maps. Co.Design's Infographic of the Day series regularly showcases the best in data visualization, and this past year saw many stellar examples of the power of the well-designed visualization to illuminate information about nearly any subject, from the serious (the daily activities of Congress) to the frivolous (a visual compendium of the world's best dogs). We couldn't resist promoting Co.Design's own in-house data visualizations: the Great Wheel of Food Mashups and a map of each U.S. state's weirdest eating patterns (we're a bit food-fixated, apparently). Here, our favorite infographics from the past year.

Image: http://www.fastcodesign.com

One of the great pleasures of my job is thinking about, creating, and publishing charts in partnership with our amazing designers. And you all seem to quite like them, too. So as is required among most all digital editors at the end of each calendar year, I’ve gone through the entirety of 2014’s charts, tables, and other visuals we’ve published for HBR.org – hundreds in all – to highlight 20 that tell particularly interesting stories.

Image: https://hbr.org

Looking back, 2014 brought a whirlwind of business books with titles both ominous, like “Overwhelmed,” which gives an instructive look at time management around the world, and uplifting: “Creativity, Inc.” from the cofounder of Pixar. What follows are some of the most talked-about books of the year. If you haven’t read them yet, there’s still time to pick them up.

How do some companies raise millions of dollars in venture capital, whereas others can't raise a single round?

I asked the CEOs of four successful companies how they raised $50 million or more in venture capital and the challenges they faced to reaching their fundraising goals. Here are their top pieces of advice:

Start with the idea An innovative idea is more valuable than the money needed to bring that idea to life. Raising capital begins with building a quality company and offering a novel product and service.

Facebook had the blockbuster IPO of 2012. Twitter was the marquee tech public offering in 2013. And Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba raised $25 billion this year in the world's largest public offering ever.

Which tech company will be the big IPO of 2015? There's certainly no shortage of contenders.

On Friday, May 18, 2012 Facebook.com filed its initial public offering, allowing any one in the world to invest in their company via the NASDAQ. It launched with a price per share of $38 dollars and a $104 billion dollar valuation. At its peak, the stock rose to $80.77 per share, up from $38.00, the IPO price. At the time of this writing, it hovers in the upper $70s.

Image: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ 

“If you build it, they will come.” It's a line from an old movie "Field of Dreams" which is still leading to the demise of too many startups, led by entrepreneurs who really started their business to build an exciting new product or service. Most struggle with the idea and practice of marketing and sales, and see these as a necessary evil, if even required.

In the tech industry, we celebrate raising money as a victory second only to that of a successful exit.

And while I recognize that venture capital is often an unavoidable requirement for growing a business, most entrepreneurs, and the tech community at large — who often seem to push people into raising VC — would be better served viewing it as a necessary evil as opposed to an absolute win.

To a neuroscientist, the trouble with cocktail parties is not that we do not love cocktails or parties (many neuroscientists do). Instead what we call “the cocktail party problem” is the mystery of how anyone can have a conversation at a cocktail party at all.

Consider a typical scene: You have a dozen or more lubricated and temporarily uninhibited adults telling loud, improbable stories at increasing volumes. Interlocutors guffaw and slap backs. Given the decibel level, it is a minor neural miracle that any one of these revelers can hear and parse one word from any other.

Nearly every state added jobs in 2014, and 14 states experienced an employment increase of 2 percent or more, according to a Stateline analysis of Bureau of Labor Statistics data released Friday.

Boosted by an oil and gas boom, North Dakota’s jobs total grew by 4.8 percent between December 2013 and November of this year, the largest increase of any state. Texas’s employment growth ranked second at 3.7 percent, and Utah was third at 3.4 percent. Thirty-three states and the District of Columbia experienced employment growth of 1 percent or more.

Image: http://venturebeat.com/2014/12/21/sony-reportedly-plans-to-release-seth-rogen-comedy-the-interview-online-for-free/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Venturebeat+%28VentureBeat%29

The semiconductor industry has been able to weather the fallout from the global financial crisis and realize several years of healthy growth—in part because of the widespread adoption of smartphones and tablets, which created demand for mobile and wireless applications. The industry’s average annual growth rate between 2010 and 2013 was about 5 percent. Could the same sort of growth result from widespread adoption of the Internet of Things? Many semiconductor players have been asking themselves just this question.

If you’re hoping for a job at a business like the one I cofounded — Of a Kind, where a team of four sells the pieces and tells the stories of emerging designers — then here’s something you should know: The hiring process is very different from that of a company with a massive human resources division. So how do you get yourself noticed and employed? Below are 11 things that will make you stand out.

Shad Law is used to the questioning look he gets when he mentions his employer. Law is a Silicon Valley project manager for Renault, a French automaker with little visibility in the U.S.

For Renault, a Bay Area address offers new opportunities.

"There's this joke that we make connections with French companies in Silicon Valley that we hadn't made in France," Law says.

When entrepreneurs come to me with that “million dollar idea,” I have to tell them that an idea alone is really worth nothing. It’s all about the execution, and investors invest in the people who can execute, or even better, have a history of successful execution. Execution is making things happen, and for startups it usually means making change happen, which is even more difficult.

As Roland Berger’s CEO states in the new issue of Manager Magazin, which will be available on December 19th, the consultancy and Rocket Internet plan a so-called “super incubator” named Terra Numerata.

Both companies will each hold 50 percent of the incubator, Roland Berger’s CEO Charles-Edouard Bouée told German Manager Magazin.

Image: Inside Rocket’s HQ in Berlin. Image Credit: Rocket Internet 

“Sustaining an audience is hard,” Bruce Springsteen once said. “It demands a consistency of thought, of purpose, and of action over a long period of time.” He was talking about his route to music stardom, yet his words are just as applicable to the world of customer experience. Consistency may be one of the least inspirational topics for most managers. But it’s exceptionally powerful, especially at a time when retail channels are proliferating and consumer choice and empowerment are increasing.