NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON, the astrophysicist and host of the TV series “Cosmos,” regularly speaks to audiences on topics ranging from cosmology to climate change to the appalling state of science literacy in America. One of his staple stories hinges on a line from President George W. Bush’s speech to Congress after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. In a 2008 talk, for example, Dr. Tyson said that in order “to distinguish we from they” — meaning to divide Judeo-Christian Americans from fundamentalist Muslims — Mr. Bush uttered the words “Our God is the God who named the stars.”

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Traditional business intelligence (and data mining) software does a very good job of showing you where you’ve been. By contrast, predictive analytics uses data patterns to make forward-looking predictions that guide you to where you should go next. This is a whole new world for startups seeking enterprise application opportunities, as well social media trend challenges.

According to Eric Siegel in his recent book “Predictive Analytics,” it’s the power to predict who will click, buy, lie, or die. He calls his book a primer, but his real-life examples illustrate well how predictive analytics unleashes the power of data, and how “big data” embodies an extraordinary wealth of experience from which to learn.

The latest data shows that internet use continues to grow steadily, at 6.6% globally in 2014 (3.3% in developed countries, 8.7% in the developing world). The number of internet users in developing countries has doubled in five years (2009-2014), with two thirds of all people online now living in the developing world.

The undisputed success of capitalism doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be looking at alternatives to the current model, especially in light of widening inequality.

In a recent review of Thomas Piketty's book, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Deirdre McCloskey, I was reminded of the conversations I have in my class when I bring up the issue of income inequality. While most people express initial concerns about recent trends of increasing inequality, there tends to be a negative reaction about accepting that this is indeed a failure of our current economic model and most become very defensive when that argument is made.

Since the financial crisis, the merits of shareholder value maximisation have been called into question. Is it the most effective path for sustainable business growth or should we consider alternatives?

The idea that the objective of the firm is to maximise shareholder value has become the centre of fierce debate. It has been blamed for creating short-term incentives that force companies to take unneccesary risks and for contributing to a widening wealth gap.

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Each year, the Cleantech Group, the World Wildlife Foundation, and the The Swedish Agency for Economic and Regional Growth (or Tillväxtverket) release their Global Cleantech Innovation Index, in which 40 countries are examined for their potential for entrepreneurial clean tech startups. The report takes a 10-year look down the line and ranks each country on a basis of 15 different indicators. While the top 10 haven’t changed since last year, the outlook certainly has. 

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Two scientific teams this year patched together some well-known technologies to directly exchange information between human brains.

The projects, in the U.S. and Europe, appear to represent the first occasions in history that any two people have transmitted information without either of them speaking or moving any muscle. For now, however, the “telepathy” technology remains so crude that it’s unlikely to have any practical impact.

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You take the same route to get to work, you order "the usual" from your neighborhood coffee shop, you arrive to the office at the same time every day, sit in the same desk, take a lunch break at the same time every day and chat with the same coworkers. While these routines may be comforting, Benedict Carey, author of the new book How We Learn says our routines limit our brain’s ability to build skills and knowledge.

One day this past summer, Leandro J. Finol stood on a street corner in downtown Miami, handing out Idea Center T-shirts to students at Miami Dade College.

The founding executive director of the college’s new Idea Center, which helps students become entrepreneurs, says he knew he had to make a quick impression. "How much can you say in three seconds?" He described to one passer-by after another how the Idea Center would help them start their own small businesses.

Image: Siulan Chin, Miami Dade College Leandro J. Finol

Perhaps nothing better illustrates the notion of urban revival in America than the comeback of many downtown districts. Yet if these areas have recovered some of their vigor, they are doing so in a manner that hardly suggests a return to their glory days in the first half of the 20th Century.

I have for many years believed that in order for economic development efforts to be successful, it requires clearly defined goals that can be articulated and measured.

If an organization or a community does not have a plan or strategy or more importantly a method to measure success, it is difficult to see the road ahead.

Metrics are not however, just important for economic development, they are important for all business activities.

Southern California has long been a nurturer of dreams that, while widely anticipated, often are never quite achieved. One particularly strong fantasy involves Los Angeles abandoning what one enthusiast calls its “car habit” and converting into an ever-denser, transit-oriented region.

An analysis of transit ridership, however, shows that the region is essentially no better off than when the the modern period of transit funding began in 1980, with the passage of Proposition A, which authorized a half-cent sales tax for transit. In 1980, approximately 5.9 percent of workers in the metropolitan area (Los Angeles and Orange counties) used transit for their commute. The latest data, for 2013, indicates the ridership figure has fallen to 5.8 percent.

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David Chalker, 50, has excruciating pain in his hip. He’s an Army veteran and because of the pain, he had to leave his job as a machinist, which left him in a great deal of debt and unable to pay for health insurance. He, his wife, and his three daughters needed to move in with his in-laws as a result.

But in the coming days, he will get a hip replacement – for free.

Image: http://medcitynews.com

Many industries have their favorite buzzwords, but the word "disrupt" for the tech sector is in a league of its own. It’s become so overused that, basically, everything is disruptive today and, therefore, nothing is.

Even the person credited with popularizing the word, Harvard Business School professor Clayton Christensen, says the word has been abused in ways he didn’t intend. "Disruption is, at its core, a really powerful idea," Christensen told a TechCrunch Disrupt crowd in September. "But everyone hijacks the idea to do whatever they want now." Christensen said the word today is synonymous with short-term goals aimed at bringing companies an "immediate sense of success."

Once upon a time, staying in a job for less than a year carried a huge stigma. Job hopping raised a red flag to future employers that you weren’t serious. Some professionals still believe this. A new survey out from PayScale and Millennial Branding finds that 41% of baby boomers believe that people should stay in their jobs for at least five years before looking for a new role. Another 21% say between four and five years.

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In a little over a decade, millennials are projected to make up roughly 75% of the global workforce. But for Nancy Lublin, who runs Do Something, a nonprofit organization that inspires young people to take social action, the future is already here. Eighty-four percent of her paid staff members are under the age of 30. While this means Do Something is blessed with its share of self-directed multitaskers, it creates challenges too. The cliché that millennials are uninterested in paying their dues is at least partially true.

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Ontario needs major shift to get economy on track, Opinion Nov. 25 I agree with the general thrust of the latest report by the Institute for Competitiveness and Prosperity, referred to by Jamison Steeve — namely that our economic future is all about innovation. The best analysis I have found of how a jurisdiction can achieve the elusive status of being an “innovation economy” is by Mariana Mazzucato in her recent book, The Entrepreneurial State. She points out that governments need to do more than create the right conditions for innovation, such as better education and policies that favour business growth. It needs to take the lead in spurring large-scale innovation initiatives that are society transforming.

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Technology start-ups are being warned to tread carefully when signing away equity in their fledgling businesses to so-called accelerator and incubator firms, which promise to help them strike the big leagues. The emergence of a glut of new companies, which position themselves as experts in building new businesses, providing office space and other services, has been identified by leading figures as an example showing that the local tech scene is reminiscent of the dotcom bust at the start of the decade.

Image: Ramin Marzbani: some of the start-up fees charged by accelerators ‘just don’t make sense’.  Photo: Brett Hemmings

No matter what level you are at in the pecking order or what function you work in, every successful person has one thing in common — an energizing and self-affirming start to their work day. This great start is especially critical for marketing professionals. Marketers are the face of the company to the outside world. When we are refreshed and energized, we channel that positivity into our brand. This positivity radiates outwards and draws in consumers — the end goal that we all work towards every single day.

In the past few years it’s not been unusual for Don Bacon to walk into his classroom on day one and find that half his students are from China. “I realized I’m going to have to change how I do some things,” said Bacon, a professor of marketing at the University of Denver. “If you do some things that don’t work great for 10 percent of your students but work for the other 90 percent you can probably keep doing that and be successful as a teacher,” he said (though he noted that wouldn’t be optimal either). “When it gets to be half the class and you’re realizing you’re not meeting the needs of half the class, that’s a problem.”