Press and marketing might accelerate businesses, but product builds the foundation.

Nearly every entrepreneur gets tempted by the media’s spotlight, but when startups go to press too soon, they find themselves pivoting and iterating a not-quite-there-yet product in that same sought-after spotlight.

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Anyone who’s celebrated a significant work anniversary knows just how a company can change over the years—who has a seat at the table, what customers expect, the most coveted skills. But there’s just as much that stays the same: what your brand stands for, the shared lexicon, your unique culture. We use the term organizational DNA as a metaphor for the underlying organizational and cultural design factors that define an organization’s personality and determine whether it is strong or weak in executing strategy. (See Exhibit 1.)

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In order to meet EU energy efficiency targets, the German government has tabled a national action plan, including a tendering model for improving energy efficiency and tax rebates for the purchase of electric cars and building renovations. EurActiv Germany reports.

The preliminary details for Germany’s new National Action Plan on Energy Efficiency (NAPE) have been revealed.

As various media have reported, German Economic Affairs Minister Sigmar Gabriel and Environment Minister Barbara Hendricks hope to gather outside funding for projects increasing energy efficiency.

Image: Under Germany's new plan to promote energy efficiency, commercial e-car owners will be able to write off 50% of the car's value from their taxes in the year of purchase. (Cornelia Kopp/Flickr)

The healthcare industry emphasizes innovation far more than do medical schools, creating an "innovation gap" that healthcare leaders must narrow, according to a Harvard Business Review blog post.

The post's authors, Regina Herzlinger of Harvard Business School, Kevin A. Schulman of Duke University School of Medicine and Fuqua School of Business, and Vasant Kumar Ramaswamy, CEO of Scriplogix, surveyed 58 healthcare CEOs about future needs for their organizations. The words used most frequently by the respondents were "change" and "innovation." However, an analysis of healthcare-related curricula at 26 schools offering graduate degrees in healthcare administration found the most common words were "organization" and "policy."

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A changing world demands a new leadership style emphasising societal impact and commitment to the common good.

Since the 2008 financial crisis, the global chorus of voices questioning capitalism has grown steadily louder. It is difficult indeed to reconcile neoliberal optimism about homo economicus with the precipitous slide of the global economy, and the folly of the subprime lending bubble. And the problems that have deepened in the last six years – income inequality, unemployment, the threat of environmental crises brought on by human activity — do not track with the neoclassical notion of the benign, self-correcting global market.  An article in the September 2014 edition of McKinsey Quarterly, of all publications, crystallised this crisis of conscience, calling into question “our long-held assumptions about how and why the system (i.e., capitalism) works.”

 

Erwin Schrödinger, the Nobel-prize-winning Austrian physicist, was able to make major contributions to the fields of quantum mechanics, general relativity, and color theory during his lifetime. There was only one caveat: He was not able to make those contributions ... in the mornings.

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Starting a company is like a dream come true: no one telling you when to go into the office, you can pick and choose meetings and there's unlimited vacation. Sigh -- the life of an entrepreneur. So flexible, so fabulous. If only it was that easy.

Those perks were likely on the “perk” side of the pro and con list you made before going into business for yourself. But the real truth is that now you’re busier than ever. You’re likely wearing the hat of HR, IT, marketing and business development teams, just to name a few.

You often hear entrepreneurs say that owning their own business is the most rewarding thing they've ever done - that it somehow fulfills their independent spirit. After four years of running my first startup company, I completely agree. There’s absolutely nothing more satisfying than seeing an idea come to life under your leadership – after dedicating everything you have towards the mission.

A new survey released today by Bentley University suggests that millennials sense that career success will require them to be more nimble, independent and entrepreneurial than past generations.

If past generations dreamed of the prestige and perks that come with a corner office in the executive suite, the dream of the millennial generation (also known as Generation Y) appears somewhat different.

Like many other successful people in business and in life, I can confidently say that I wouldn’t be where I am today were it not for my mentors.

As I’ve written before, I didn’t always recognize the value of having (and being) a mentor like I do today. As a young entrepreneur, it’s easy to fall into the whole “I’m on-top-of-the-world and know everything there is to know” trap that often comes with getting your first few tastes of success. It’s even easier to feel too afraid or proud to ask for help.

iHealth is one of the leading developers of connected health devices, with devices on the market ranging from the BP5 connected blood pressure cuff to the Align wireless glucometer. As we recently highlighted, they have also been at the forefront of integrating the data captured by these devices with the electronic health records used by clinicians.

Image: http://www.imedicalapps.com 

During a recent fireside chat with the Metro Atlanta Chamber (hosted by my friend John Yates), I was asked whether there was some magic pill that I take that helps me get up and keep fighting the entrepreneurial good fight every day.

San Francisco digital health incubator Rock Health is looking for a new class of startups to confront the myriad challenges within healthcare, and in doing so it has established some basic framework while being more selective in who it funds.

In a blog post Rock Health’s Managing Director, Malay Gandhi, outlines what the incubator is now seeking to address, noting that its looking for “relentless problem solvers, not underlying technologies.”

Suddenly major brands are looking to get into the startup funding game, whether we’re talking GE, Yammer or even non-tech brands like McDonald’s. Coca-Cola is another consumer brand looking for an edge by funding new startups. Coke isn’t doing it for pure investment purposes necessarily, but because they believe lean startups can give them the creativity, agility and speed to market they lack. Startups also put a fresh set of eyes on a problem. And even a company like Coke with more than 700K employees spread across nearly 200 countries needs that once in a while.

The aircraft industry is expecting a seven-fold increase in air traffic by 2050, and a four-fold increase in greenhouse gas emissions unless fundamental changes are made. But just how “fundamental” will those changes need to be and what will be their effect on the aircraft we use?

The crucial next step towards ensuring the aircraft industry becomes greener is the full electrification of commercial aircraft. That’s zero CO2 and NOx emissions, with energy sourced from power stations that are themselves sustainably fuelled. The main technological barrier that must be overcome is the energy density of batteries, a measure of how much power can be generated from a battery of a certain weight.

Image: There’s a lot of technical re-invention in store for the airliner. Credit: Boeing & NASA 

If you visit Manuela Veloso, a professor at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, you can expect to be met at reception, and led to her office, by an unfailingly polite and helpful assistant.

You might notice something a little odd about your chaperone, though, as it stops at the elevator and asks, in an electronic tone: “Can you press 7, and then press my ‘done’ button when we get to that floor?”

Image: http://www.technologyreview.com 

French post-Impressionist artist Paul Gauguin famously once said, “I shut my eyes in order to see,” meaning he shut out the rest of the world to come up with great ideas.

More than a century later, scientists are able to prove Gauguin was onto something.

In the 1990s, cognitive scientists John Kounios and Mark Beeman started studying the insightful moment when you’re suddenly able to see things differently, also known as the “aha!” or eureka moment.

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We see online tools and apps as a key part of our philosophy of working smarter, not harder. It’s also a lot of fun to find a great new tool!

So when the tool-finding team at Product Hunt asked us at Buffer to curate a list of our top tools for remote workers and mobile teams, we jumped at the chance.

Boards of directors have always, in all cultures, represented the shareholders in publicly traded companies—validating financial results, protecting their assets, and counseling the CEO on strategy and on finding, then nurturing, the next generation of leaders. It’s a tough and demanding responsibility, requiring individual directors to learn as much as they can about a company and its operations so that their insights and advice can stand up alongside those of executives. That, at least, is the ideal.

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Little can be gleaned from the news, which broke Monday night, that regional economic development organizations NorTech and Team NEO will merge. The restructuring has been painted, by the civic and philanthropic leaders manning the “Regional Competitiveness Council,” as the first step in a strategy to bring more jobs to the region. The merger had been in the works for awhile now, though few knew exactly how the final details would shape up, which is kind of how this thing goes.