Toronto has all the ingredients necessary to become a major fintech hub but is failing to compete with the likes of London and New York because it has not developed a proper ecosystem, according to the new report, “Current State of the Financial Technology Innovation Ecosystem in the Toronto Region” written by University of Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs.

The Partnership for New York City, the city’s leading business organization, today announced the launch of the Partnership Innovation Council, a panel of industry experts who will seek to ensure that New York’s legal and regulatory environment is keeping pace with the technological revolution that is transforming business and the economy.

Despite handwringing by political progressives about the PAP’s landslide victory in the 2015 general election, social change is inevitable – and it may even originate within Singapore’s proudest policy arena: the economy. If the knowledge economy of the past and present is about starched shirts, lab suits, and pocket protectors, the creative economy of the future is about tight jeans, helix piercings, and MacBook Airs. These fashion references may be dated, but the point remains: Singapore’s competitiveness will soon be in the hands of a new style of worker. The PAP has shown remarkable adaptability in restructuring Singapore’s economy to capture global opportunities. To stay ahead of its regional peers and retain talent, Singapore should continue its willingness to eschew ideology in favor of pragmatism. One opportunity is gay rights.

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Corporate R&D has become overwhelmingly global. According to the 2015 Global Innovation 1000 study, 94 percent of the world’s biggest innovators now conduct parts of their R&D programs abroad. But where they spend their R&D money has changed dramatically. Asia is now the top destination for corporate R&D spending, followed by North America and Europe. In 2007, the three regions were ranked in reverse order.

Image: http://www.strategy-business.com 

In discussing his new book, Machines of Loving Grace: The Quest for Common Ground Between Humans and Robots, the journalist John Markoff pointed out how polarizing the subject of automation and its effect on employment tends to be.

“You can go from the International Federation of Robotics on one side, which argues that we are on the cusp of the biggest job renaissance in history, to Moshe Vardi, a Rice computer scientist, who argues that all human jobs will be obsolete by 2045,” Markoff observed. “Which group is right?”

If your employees enjoy high levels of job satisfaction, you’ll have a competitive edge in the market. It’s easier to retain happier employees than disgruntled ones, which can help you drive down the costs of recruitment and training.

People who are satisfied in their jobs also tend to be more productive and motivated, which can help boost company performance and improve customer service.

If you find problem-solving to be energizing, you could be the next great entrepreneur. On the other hand, if facing unforeseen problems annoys you and causes ongoing stress, don’t quit your day job. Creating an innovative new business is guaranteed to test your skills, patience and determination, and you need to derive satisfaction from the journey, as well as the destination.

When you think about networking, the heavy exchange of business cards might come to mind, but there’s so much more to it than that. Being effective at networking is crucial to your business success. Regardless of what product or service you provide, you’ll need to sell yourself first.

In the past few years, many colleges have expanded the scale and scope of centers that support teaching and learning with technology, as part of an effort to build a new “innovation infrastructure” for instruction.

That’s according to the results of a new survey of directors of academic-technology centers at 163 colleges and universities, released last week at the annual conference of Educause, an organization that supports technology on campuses.

Just one high-calorie milkshake was enough to make metabolic syndrome worse for some people. And overindulgence in just a single meal or snack (especially junk food) is enough to trigger the beginnings of metabolic syndrome, which is associated with the risk of developing cardiovascular disease and diabetes (obesity around the waist and trunk is the main sign).

That finding by researchers at the Microbiology and Systems Biology Group of the Netherlands Organisation for Applied Scientific Research (TNO) was reported in the online edition of the Nov. 2015 issue of The FASEB Journal.

The good news is that European startups just clocked a 19-quarter high in venture capital investments, according to CB Insights. 19 quarters! If that was a score during a college drinking game, your opponent would have alcohol poisoning!

The UK looked particularly strong – for a third quarter in a row it was home to more than €1 billion in venture capital spread across more than 90 deals. So far this year, close to €10 billion euros have been invested in startups across Europe. Wow-ee!

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Becoming a millionaire isn’t an accident. It takes business owners decades to accomplish this rare feat. Many people look at these successful individuals and assume they must be lucky or born into wealth. But in reality, this is usually far from the truth. Becoming a millionaire takes work, focus and productive habits.

Studying and emulating the behaviors of millionaire entrepreneurs can help you develop discipline and the habits that catapult entrepreneurs to the next level.

Do you have a "love-hate" relationship with the morning? Yeah, yeah, you already know that getting up early can make you more productive, focused and motivated -- which is why successful entrepreneurs like Sir Richard Branson and CEOs of multi-billion dollar companies like Tory Burch and Indra Nooyi (CEO of PepsiCo) wake up before the sun rises.

The Partnership for New York City, the city’s leading business organization, today announced the launch of the Partnership Innovation Council, a panel of industry experts who will seek to ensure that New York’s legal and regulatory environment is keeping pace with the technological revolution that is transforming business and the economy.

A new business entity will invest $30 million in Israeli digital medicine ventures, sources inform "Globes." Collaborating with the venture will be US hospital Johns Hopkins, one of the world's largest medical institutions,and Luminox-Health, an Israeli group dealing in digital medicine.

Johns Hopkins's annual budget is more than $7 billion, and the new venture is expected to make its first investments already in the first quarter of 2016.

Image: http://www.globes.co.il

Confidence in digital progress is low and governments worldwide are being disrupted by the challenges of abandoning analog operating models in favour of their digital counterparts

That’s the conclusion of a new report, The Journey to Government’s Digital Transformation, from Deloitte Public Sector Research.

The consultancy surveyed over 1,200 officials within 70 governments and found 96 per cent of them describing the impact of digital technologies as “significant”, and three-quarters of all respondents describing the journey to digital government as “disruptive”.

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Ah, the Internet of Things. It’s the topic on everyone’s lips – the buzzword of the year. It promises to transform the way we live and work, to free us from mundane tasks, and create entirely new jobs in entirely new industries.

Ask anyone in technology to explain the IoT and they’ll probably use words like sensors, big data and networks, and tell you how, together, these produce real-time insights and business intelligence.

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Innovation has become a key factor in the successful economic development of Russia. When Dmitry Medvedev became the Russian President back in 2008, he chose innovation and high-tech development as key priorities for the country’s new economic development. “We have money but don’t have our Silicon Valley,” said Medvedev during his visit to Silicon Valley.

Image: http://www.russia-direct.org

Nobel-winning economist Robert Shiller is famous for spotting bubbles as they form in different markets. In 2000 he published Irrational Exuberance, a best seller that predicted the imminent bursting of the U.S. stock market bubble that had grown up around the dot-com boom. A few years later, he became one of the first to argue that U.S. real estate prices had similarly gotten out of hand, predicting the real estate and housing bust that began in 2007.

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Recent studies of European start-ups have found companies thriving in an increasingly favourable business environment, distinguishing themselves from their American competitors. Our partner La Tribune reports. 

The European innovation ecosystem is gradually emerging from the long shadow cast by Silicon Valley, the home of the GAFA companies (Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon) and the rising NATU companies (Netflix, Airbnb, Tesla, Uber), and carving out its own niche.

Image: Frederic Mazzella, the founder of Blablacar. (TechCrunch/Flickr)