When Chris LoPresti decided that he wanted to launch a startup, the first thing he did was reach out to a bunch of other Yale alumni entrepreneurs for advice.

To his surprise, he recieved a veritable flood of tips, tricks, and words of wisdom. 

By 2020, more than 34 billion internet-connected devices will be installed globally — that's more than four devices for every human on earth. These devices will undoubtedly revolutionize our homes, businesses, and municipalities.

BI Intelligence has created a slideshow highlighting the most important ways the Internet of Things market will develop in 2016. The topics in the deck include:

Image: http://www.businessinsider.com

U.S. colleges raised $40.3 billion in 2015, an increase of 7.6 percent over the previous year, a new study has found. Giving to higher education has increased every year since 2010.

The Voluntary Support of Education survey, conducted by the Council for Aid to Education, collected fund-raising information from nearly 1,000 colleges and universities. The $40.3 billion figure is an estimate that extrapolates from the survey results to include amounts for institutions that did not respond.

Image: https://philanthropy.com

Milan and Turin are among the nine cities that have made it to the final stage of the competition to be named European Capital of Innovation. EurActiv Italy reports.

The European Commission first launched the initiative back in 2014, with the aim of recognising urban centres that promote innovation, growth and development.

Eligible cities are those that belong to a member state or a country that participates in the EU’s innovation programme, Horizon 2020, and have over 100,000 inhabitants.

Image: Turin earned a place on the shortlist for its work in promoting start-ups. (Maëlick/Flickr)

To carve out a competitive advantage for the future, Europe must anticipate the potential of advanced manufacturing for clean, efficient and high quality production, write Karl Aiginger and David Bailey.

Karl Aiginger is Director of Economics at Vienna University and Coordinator of the pan- European Research Project “Welfare, Wealth and Work – a new growth path for Europe.”  

Image: HUBO, a multifunctional walking humanoid robot. World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, 19 January. (World Economic Forum/swiss-image.ch)

Former President Jimmy Carter recently learned that a new therapy brought the brief disappearance of cancer on his brain.  This miracle wouldn’t be possible were it not for strong intellectual property.

It should be noncontroversial to state that U.S. patents are property, they help advance science, and American innovation provides tremendous value for each dollar spent, as plainly seen in medical innovation.

The Government has launched a new Health Innovation Hub aimed at securing more links between the health service and businesses. The venture will get €5m in funding over the next 5 years. It has already supported 23 projects, including an online tool for GPs that lets them monitor the physical activity of patients.

Image: http://www.breakingnews.ie

Nine cities with outstanding success in boosting innovation have reached the final stage of the European Capital of Innovation Award 2016. The shortlist was announced by the European Commission last week.

Carlos Moedas, Commissioner for Research, Science and Innovation, said: "The applications for this year's European Capital of Innovation Award are really inspiring. The achievements of each of the nine shortlisted cities are all outstanding in their own right and will encourage many others to invest in their innovation ecosystems. These pioneer cities show how bright the future can be."

Image: https://era.gv.at

Many senior managers today are aggressively trying to transform their companies, seeking radically to improve performance by changing behavior and capabilities throughout the organization. Unfortunately, most leadership groups lack a proven way of thinking about the challenge.

The Value of the Customer

Peter Fader: This paper brings together two topics — one very old and well established, and one that is new and emerging. The old topic is corporate valuation. Everybody is talking about how you look at a corporation and value it. The new topic is customer valuation. Can we look at individual customers or group of customers and say what they are going to be worth in the future? This paper is all about bringing the two together, in a really rigorous and practical, real-world way. Can we do corporate valuation from the bottom up by looking at the value of current and future customers, adding all that up and saying, “That’s the value of the corporation”?

Image: http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu

Venture capitalist Tomasz Tunguz has pinpointed four major startup sectors that will see a “disproportionate share of investment dollars” in 2016.   Using Crunchbase data from the last five years of seed and Series A rounds across 16 different startup sectors, the VC at RedPoint finds that although sectors like advertising and social media are drastically in decline, there are many others that are set to enjoy significant funding this year.  

PRINCETON, N.J. -- Minnesota led the 50 states on Gallup's Job Creation Index with an average score in 2015 of +38, based on workers' reports of hiring activity at their place of employment. Georgia and Utah were next at +36. North Dakota, which had been the top overall state each of the last six years, remains in the top 10.

Think back 20 years. Buying a mortgage or filing an insurance claim was difficult and time consuming for almost everyone: days of phone calls and appointments, mistakes to correct, and duplicates to send in the mail.

Then a few leading companies started giving consumers what they wanted within days or even minutes rather than weeks. Faster processes also had to be more reliable and easier to understand. And now consumers can file a medical claim or apply for a basic loan with just a few taps on a mobile phone, and check the status at any time with a couple of more taps.

Image: http://www.mckinsey.com

Since the 1990s, computers have continually gotten better at beating us at our own games, like chess, checkers, poker, and Jeopardy. But expert human players continue to dominate machines at one game: Go. The more than 2,500 years old board game,  in which two players use black and white stones to try to capture more territory than their opponent, is extremely complex, which has made it difficult for computers to master. But it seems as though our supremacy in Go may have finally ended—researchers at Google DeepMind announced today that they’ve created a sophisticated AI computer program—a combination of deep neural networks and a search techniques—that has beaten a Go champion for the first time in history.

Most of us know that success in today’s work world requires continuous growth and learning. You can’t just rely on your current knowledge and expertise if you expect to keep up, let alone advance. But how do you identify the areas in which development efforts will yield the best return on your investment?

I went kayaking on the Snake River in Idaho a few years ago, accompanying a group on a raft, and the put‑in was immediately upstream of a large and long Class IV rapids, which was a bit off-putting right up front. I was given the option of riding that first set of rapids in the raft, my kayak strapped to the back.

But when I asked one of the guides for her recommendation, she said this: "Most people talk themselves out of kayaking this first rapid, but once we’re through it, most of them also say, ‘I could have done that.’" (Translation: I should have done that.)

Most of work doesn't have to be done in an office anymore. And in many situations that's a good thing. Technology enables remote work when regular routes are shut down (like during a snowstorm). Between a smartphone and home-based WiFi, most workers can at least answer email and get basic stuff done. Add a little Slack chat or Basecamp project management, and many of the daily tasks can be tackled.

While exciting, expanding your company internationally comes with a host of risks and challenges. From factoring time zones into meeting calendars to navigating differences in culture, there’s a lot more than the upfront cost to think about when you’re expanding abroad.

Here’s the scenario: Management starts to lose control over a company’s work. Teams are operating without full context or feedback loops. Product becomes highly reactive. HR’s busy and top performers are looking to jump ship. Those who stay start to complain about the lack of direction.  Nearly all technology companies — from small startups to big successes — have experienced at least one of these symptoms.

It’s well known that the boards of the best private-equity (PE) firms create value by using financial leverage to increase their returns on equity, by improving the strategy and operations of their target companies, and by exiting at higher multiples. Proponents of PE further argue that management incentives, strong board governance, and a concentrated shareholder base are critical for long-term success.