After a long and successful run, the theory of disruptive innovation has come under attack of late. Last year, The New Yorker published a piece by Jill Lepore, a history professor at Harvard, attacking the whole idea as overblown and based on shoddy scholarship. In a recent Sloan Management Review article, Dartmouth professor Andrew King asked “How Useful Is the Theory of Disruptive Innovation?” and concluded it’s not nearly as valuable as its proponents argue.

The economic impact of the Brooklyn Tech Triangle’s innovation economy is projected to more than triple in the next ten years, according to a report released by the Downtown Brooklyn Partnership, Brooklyn Navy Yard Development Corporation, and DUMBO Improvement District today. That projected boom, along with strong growth since 2012, highlights the dire need for new commercial development in the area that would provide an opportunity for nearly 18,000 additional jobs and $4.8 billion in further economic impact.  The report is available at http://brooklyntechtriangle.com

The Global Monitoring Report 2015/2016 was published today (6 November). It is titled “Development Goals and Era of Demographic Change” and you are its lead author. Can you perhaps explain how such a massive report of almost 300 pages has been written, what are the sources, do you follow any sort of instructions on the policy side, is someone telling you which angle to take?

Image: Philip Schellekens (Georgi Gotev)

Financial technology, also known as fintech, is booming around the world right now, with billions of dollars flowing into companies trying to reinvent the way we move money and make markets smarter.

The USA is at the forefront of this, with $31.6 billion invested in fintech over the last 5 years. But there are still some innovative ideas and companies that have yet to make it big in America.

Image: http://www.businessinsider.com

Seven long-term trends underscore both the hope and the threat that globalisation has brought to our world.

From the collapse of Communism until mid-2008 when the financial crisis came to a head, it seemed that the U.S., to quote the words of Harvard University’s Joseph Nye, was “bound to lead”. In this unipolar period, the United States appeared to have become, as noted by French Foreign Minister Hubert Vedrine, not so much a superpower but a “hyperpower”, driving towards a One World of shared prosperity, democracy and better living conditions for all.

 

There’s a new development on the technology-transfer front. Last week, Sandia National Laboratories announced a new program that gives researchers the opportunity to consult with companies that use their inventions.

As credit availability rises to a near seven-year high while the cost of credit falls towards an eight-year low, the UK banking market is “buoyant”, according to the company's latest analysis.

Window of opportunity Citing the current UK economic situation as a "window of opportunity” for small business, the firm says that there are plenty of opportunities for companies to seek out and find competitive funding packages to back up growth plans.

Deloitte director of commercial refinancing, Ravi Sharma, said: “The market has been spurred on by the European Central Bank injecting unprecedented levels of liquidity in the form of quantitative easing.

You get what you measure, or so the management gurus tell us. Unfortunately, you also get things you didn't count on. When it comes to biomedical and health innovation, there seems to be some confusion and disagreement that makes it hard if not impossible to measure results. Consider:

London’s technology community is overwhelmingly in favour of staying in the European Union, according to research published today by a powerful technology lobbying group that includes people from Google and Facebook.

The Conservative party pledged to hold an EU referendum by the end of 2017 when it was elected into power, which could result in the UK exiting the EU. It now looks like it will be held in June 2016.

Image: Russ Shaw is the founder of the Tech London Advocates group.

We all have bad work habits, and most of us are content to get away with them for the foreseeable future. Sure, they may make us a little less productive, and they might not look great in a performance review, but they’re relatively innocuous when they creep into our daily lives.

Lots of people will have brilliant ideas for businesses, but it takes a lot of time, effort and commitment to launch a successful business and only some people will be up to the challenge. Take a look at this list to see if entrepreneurship is for you…

We are now entering a new entrepreneurial economy, as we have shifted away from an industrial economy. This sharing economy has created a new paradigm of aggregation of individuals. It is around these communities organized into categories (workers, employees, executives, entrepreneurs, professionals) that the legislation takes shape. If public policy intends to give voice to the sharing communities, then it needs to enact pro-entrepreneurship policies, and move away from policies that cater to the old industrial economy. This can be done by facilitating experiments and studies of entrepreneurial ventures and start-ups. There is no work at the crossroads of economics and entrepreneurship such as this.Formica explains why public policy now needs to shift towards the entrepreneurial economy, and how this can be done. Employing illustrative examples, this book focuses on the crucial role of policies to support entrepreneurs and establish the right environment for new business development and rapid conversion of ideas into enterprises that contribute to booming economic growth and prosperity.

In late 2011, residents in the Franklin Avenue section of Crown Heights, Brooklyn, a predominantly black and Caribbean neighborhood, received notice that their community garden was being torn down. The property owner, after decades of abandonment, was selling the land. Long-standing residents who turned the blight into a community space for organizing, sharing culture, and growing produce in a neighborhood lacking healthy foods, now had one week to remove their belongings.  Years after hard work and beautification, the land was stripped away as it reached what realtors claimed was its full “market value” worthy of attraction and investment. (Four years later, the lot remains empty and fenced off).

Startups will soon be able to solicit investments from anyone, thanks to new SEC rules.

The crowdfunding regulations, known as Reg CF (or Title III), open startup equity to all investors, where before companies could only solicit capital from accredited investors.

This is a big change, but it doesn’t mean that hoards of crowdfunding investors will flood the private equity market yet. The shift needs time to take effect, and even so, crowdfunding may not make the best sense for a lot of startups.

AMERICAN INNOVATORS ARE known the world over for their design capabilities. If you mention the Apple iPhone, the Ford Mustang, or the Microsoft Xbox practically anywhere on the planet, images of those iconic products instantly leap to mind. All are distinguished by their technical excellence, but also by their brilliant designs.

The nation’s economic development is taking a heavy toll on the environment. Rivers are polluted and the air is filled with carcinogens. The ecosystem is fast becoming an environment that can hardly sustain life. Over the past 30 years, cancer has become the leading cause of death in the nation, with lung cancer causing the most of deaths. Clearly, Taiwan’s environment is filthy. Two weeks ago, the WHO released a report that said smoked sausage, bacon and burger patties that carried a variety of chemical preservatives are all carcinogenic, no different from cigarettes, alcohol, asbestos and arsenic.

At the last round of City Council, County Council, and County Commissioner meetings, a few of our courageous elected officials questioned why taxpayers are being forced to spend so much money on “economic development.”  That’s a very good question, indeed.  In the last 20 years Crawfordsville and Montgomery County have spent $4.5 million on a Commerce Park, $5 million on a building in the Commerce Park, $16 million on a fiber-optic network, almost $1 million on the Courthouse parking lot, $2.4 million on the airport runway extension, over $1 million on Montgomery County Economic Development corporation, and $120,000 on Amtrak subsidies.  In each instance we were promised economic prosperity is right around the corner.  When it didn’t work, millions more were spent.  And now there are plans to spend another $18 million on Downtown Revitalization.

Surely leaders should do the reverse, providing a steady hand on the tiller and guiding their teams to consistent and predictable victories—right? That's been the formula for organizational success for decades, at any rate.

Not any more. For all the buzzworthiness of the term "disruption," the fact is that the competitive pressure to innovate and shake up established markets is too powerful for companies—and the people who lead them—to disregard. And that's having ramifications in the day-to-day experiences of most workplaces.

One day earlier this year, Tom Gumpel left work feeling terrible. The head baker of Panera Bread—the Downton Abbey of fast food with a nice classy-to-trashy ratio—Gumpel had been tasked with coming up with a gluten-free product for the company to offer. But he'd failed. What's more, he didn't even know if success was possible. He didn't know what to do next. He wasn’t even particularly interested in doing anything gluten free. He was a baker, after all, not a trend follower!

The former dean of the Bakery and Pastry College at the Culinary Institute of America, Gumpel is rapturous about bread, and excitedly says things like: "Long cool-fermentation bread made from ancient sprouted grains are not just good for you, they’re like the best foods on earth!"

Image: http://www.fastcompany.com

An international drug giant and a La Jolla venture capital firm are expanding their partnership to create local biotech companies, a sign that the partnership -- and the promise of new disease therapies -- is progressing.

GSK will increase potential milestone payments to Avalon Ventures from $40 million to $50 million for each biotech formed. In return, the venture capital firm is assuming more risk by increasing its proportion of funding by an undisclosed amount.

Image: Biotech investor Jay Lichter, a partner at Avalon Ventures and president and CEO of COI Pharmaceuticals. — Eduardo Contreras