Additive manufacturing — or 3D printing — is 30 years old this year. Today, it’s found not just in industry but in households, as the price of 3D printers has fallen below US$1,000. Knowing you can print almost anything, not just marks on paper, opens up unlimited opportunities for us to manufacture toys, household appliances and tools in our living rooms.

But there’s more that can be done with 3D printed materials to make them more flexible and more useful: structures that can transform in a pre-programmed way in response to a stimulus. Recently given the popular science name of “4D printing,” perhaps a better way to think about it is that the object transforms over time.

Image: Shapeshifting: 3D printed materials that change shape over time (credit: Dan Raviv/Scientific Reports) 

No entrepreneur is an island. None of us finds success without a little help from those around us. Effective collaboration is paramount for business success, whether starting your first business or your fifth.

A recent ebook featuring industry experts and analysts commissioned by my company, PGi, explored the 2015 trends in technology and collaboration that it believes will have the most impact on businesses around the world.

Technology continues to change colleges, and our coverage of digitally driven change won the most attention from readers over the past year.

We crunched the numbers to find the most popular coverage of 2014. The list—which includes predictions of big changes in classroom teaching, in academic publishing, in communicating with parents, and in the mission of libraries—highlights the range of aspects of campus life affected by technology. And it reminds us how mainstream technology coverage is these days.

Being a founder or CEO requires a lot of time, and you often can’t chat with your employees as much as you’d like to. So how do you know if they’re happy and doing the best work they can?

To find out some direct, easy ways to learn this important information, we asked 11 founders the following question:

“I don’t check in with my employees often but would like to. What is one straight-to-the-point question to ask them when I do?”

Zipz, a single serve wine company, made Shark Tank history last week by closing the biggest deal in the show’s history. The company makes a wine-by-the-glass product that is covered in a protective wrapping to increase its shelf life. Zips came to Shark Tank seeking $2.5 million for 10 percent of the company, which it received from Kevin O’Leary along with some other contingencies. To date, the company has raised $8.5 million from 25 backers, including six former Goldman Sachs partners.

Every quarter since early 2004, McKinsey has asked executives from around the world about their expectations for the global economy, national economies, and their own organizations. Since September 2008, as these topics have grown in urgency, we have added additional questions, including some on customer demand and company profits.

Image: http://www.mckinsey.com/ 

You lie in bed in the morning, reluctant to swing your legs out from under the warm embrace of your blanket. After several bleary minutes, you finally rouse yourself, throw on some clothes and head to the office. Having arrived at your desk, you stare blankly as e-mail loads on your screen. When you first started this job, you derived deep satisfaction from addressing the day's challenges efficiently and artfully. Yet the optimism that used to buoy you is long gone. Now your morning coffee gives you the only jolt of energy you'll feel all day.

Image: http://www.scientificamerican.com/ 

‘Tis the season to be jolly careful when it comes to online shopping…

South Africa sits in third place as one of the leading cybercrime hotspots in the world according to the Norton Cybercrime Report 2013. Then a Columinate Survey that examined trends in online banking from 2012 to 2014 found that one in five online bankers have been a victim of fraud and that 62% have been targeted at some point over the past two years. Add to this a pile of statistics from notable security institutions such as Norton, Trustwave and Kaspersky which point to poorly educated and prepared consumers — some of whom still use the password 1234 — and the result is rich pickings for the cybercriminal.

Image: http://ventureburn.com/ 

D.C. startup incubator 1776 announced a new joint effort with the AARP on Wednesday to stimulate innovation in the tech sector that will benefit people age 50 and over. The holiday season tends to bring disparate parties together. The two organizations will identify startups that serve people 50 and over, make introductions to key AARP affiliates, help companies scale to market and fuel innovation explicitly designed for people over 50 in tech, financial tech, lifestyle, health and health security, according to a release.

The age of experimentation with digital is over. In an often bleak landscape of slow economic recovery, digital continues to show healthy growth. E-commerce is growing at double-digit rates in the United States and most European countries, and it is booming across Asia. To take advantage of this momentum, companies need to move beyond experiments with digital and transform themselves into digital businesses. Yet many companies are stumbling as they try to turn their digital agendas into new business and operating models. The reason, we believe, is that digital transformation is uniquely challenging, touching every function and business unit while also demanding the rapid development of new skills and investments that are very different from business as usual. To succeed, management teams need to move beyond vague statements of intent and focus on “hard wiring” digital into their organization’s structures, processes, systems, and incentives.

Image: http://www.mckinsey.com/ 

Why drive to work when you can arrive in your own pedal-powered pod car, far above traffic? That's the vision of a Canadian company called Shweeb, which hopes to soon begin installing what it calls the "most sustainable form of public transit" in cities around the world.

Hanging from rails up to 80 feet above the street, the Skysmart system uses a series of personal pods that run on either solar power or pedaling from the passengers inside. Unlike a train or bus, users can hop on immediately without waiting on a platform.

Image: http://www.fastcoexist.com/ 

While it is no secret that patent trolling is a significant problem in the United States, many wonder why efforts at reform have stalled in recent years, especially with associated costs continuing to rise. In 2011 alone, nonpracticing entities, referred to as "NPEs" or "patent trolls," cost an estimated $29 billion in legal and licensing fees in the United States. A recent study by PricewaterhouseCoopers found that patent trolls now account for 67 percent of all patent infringement lawsuits filed, a 28 percent increase from five years ago.

Image: Robert A. King is a partner in the Atlanta office of Hunton & Williams, specializing in intellectual property and patent law. King advises clients in patent prosecution and litigation, avoidance of patent rights of others and brand protection in technology areas including computer hardware and software, mechanical devices and medical devices. This article presents the views of the author and does not necessarily reflect those of Hunton & Williams or its clients.

Small businesses are driving the U.S. job recovery, according to a recent blog post by Maria Contreras-Sweet, the administrator of the Small Business Administration. In her post she points out that about 7 million of the 10.9 million jobs added since the Great Recession were created by startups and small enterprises.

“Small businesses have led our comeback from the downturn,” she writes. “For 15 straight quarters, small firms have contributed to employment growth – accounting for as much as 80 percent of job gains in any given quarter.”

“Innovation – identified by MIT economist and Nobel laureate Robert Solow as the driver of long-term, sustainable economic growth and prosperity - has been a hallmark of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology since its inception.” Thus starts The MIT Innovation Initiative: Sustaining and Extending a Legacy of Innovation, the preliminary report of a yearlong effort to define the innovation needed to address some of the world’s most challenging problems. Released earlier this month, the report was developed by the MIT Innovation Initiative, launched a year ago by MIT President Rafael Reif.

Many of the last century’s most important scientific and technological breakthroughs — from the development of the Internet to life-saving cancer treatments — were the result of cooperation between government and the private sector. Government leaders, economists, and policymakers will convene in Washington to discuss the most successful models and approaches for collaborations in defense, aerospace, and more.

image: http://www.freedigitalphotos.net 

I’m a fan of Harvard Business School professor and best-selling author Clayton Christensen. Christensen’s research focuses on what he terms “disruptive innovation,” or those innovations that target non-consumption with products that are inferior but “good enough” for consumers who previously had nothing at all. Christensen’s model shows how these inferior products are improved to take market share away from competitors whose products are much more expensive (and profitable), until a line is crossed where suddenly the product that was merely good enough for those who were previously non-consumers is good enough for everyone. The larger competitor goes out of business, after having made what appeared to be all the right decisions based on the information available.

In late October, Alaska Airlines pledged a $1 million donation to a science and engineering program to educate up to 650 Alaska native middle schoolers. “Our goal is to make sure that as many students as possible who want to attend this program have the opportunity,” said Marilyn Romano, an Alaska Airlines executive. When asked what benefit the airline receives by making this donation, spokesman Tim Thompson said that stronger communities make for a better “potential employee base” for all of Alaska—and, presumably, Alaska Airlines—further down the line.

Image: Opensource/Flick 

Boards aren’t working. It’s been more than a decade since the first wave of post-Enron regulatory reforms and, despite a host of guidelines from independent watchdogs such as the International Corporate Governance Network, most boards aren’t delivering on their core mission: providing strong oversight and strategic support for management’s efforts to create long-term value.

image: http://www.freedigitalphotos.net 

Kitchens get hectic during the holidays, what with all the figgy puddings and latkes being cooked. And good design can help make a kitchen run more smoothly, whether it's a space-saving Russian nesting doll of cooking gadgets or a drain strainer that helps the squeamish avoid touching gross leftovers in the sink.

That next blockbuster drug? It all begins with a hypothesis: GlaxoSmithKline just announced the winners of its second Discovery Fast Track Challenge – a competition that teams up American and European academia with GSK researchers to speed up their search for new therapeutics.

GSK picked the 14 best hypotheses from a total 428 proposals to help usher from the brain to the bench, so that ultimately new medications could make it to the bedside. The payoff for academics? They will be able to work with GSK’s huge compound library to test their hypotheses. The payoff for GSK? Early stage IP for the picking, since the winning academics could be offered a formal collaboration agreement with GSK.