The 1939 "World of Tomorrow" fair in NYC presented an optimistic vision of the future which included robots, flights to outer space and automated freeway systems. A significant part of the fair was devoted to the "City of Tomorrow" which isn't essentially different from the concept which we all talk about now as the "Smart City."  While in 1939 we could only dream of actual smart cities, they’re now starting to materialize. On the banks of Lake Ontario, a little south of downtown Toronto, an old industrial zone is earmarked to soon become one of the most advanced neighborhoods in the world, with the help of Google sister-company Sidewalk Labs.

Google has hired Geisinger Health CEO David Feinberg to oversee its many health care initiatives, reporting to AI chief Jeff Dean and working closely with CEO Sundar Pichai to organize Google’s various health-related ventures.

Image: https://www.theverge.com

These highly successful folks may be rolling in dough now, but their careers had humble beginnings with a first job full of nostalgia—the iconic newspaper route. Find out who got started by flinging papers and what they learned from this early employment experience.

At Wayne State University, a commuter campus in Detroit where faculty members and students struggle to turn people out for events, the opening of the Innovation Hub last fall was a big deal. I have rarely seen so many people in one room on campus. Speakers gushed about the university’s "innovation ecosystem" and the "disruptive" start-ups sure to blossom in its "incubators."

Image: Dave Plunkert for The Chronicle 

Leaders within the biopharma industry have long enjoyed the pride of knowing that their work improves millions of lives and offers great benefits to humanity.  They share a collective sense of accomplishment around the eradication of diseases and improvement of daily living. They also hold the highest promise of eradicating cancer – the second largest cause of death in the world today – and significantly altering the course of diseases that remain a major burden to society.

Put down the rake, and back away from the leaves.

Dry, dead leaves may be unsightly to your neighbors, but they are great wildlife habitat for a slew of creatures, according to David Mizejewski, a Naturalist at the National Wildlife Federation.

Each year the NWF, reminds people that there are benefits to letting leaves decompose naturally.

EJF Capital lives in the space between investing and regulation. It calls itself a “regulatory event-driven” firm, its $10 billion split between equity and debt in rule-heavy industries like banking. Which is why, when the Internal Revenue Service clarified some of the provisions of Qualified Opportunity Zones, designated low-income areas where tax incentives are supposed to encourage private capital investment, EJF was among the first to jump. The Arlington, Virginia-based firm is looking to raise $500 million for such a strategy, according to a person familiar with the matter.

Image: Neal Wilson, EJF Capital’s co-founder - https://www.barrons.com

A truism of American politics is that California has its own values. That goes for real estate too, it turns out. Across the US, fewer than four out of every 100 homes are worth more than $1 million—compared with four out of every five in San Francisco. That’s according to analysis by Trulia, an online residential property platform.

Image: https://qz.com

FAYETTEVILLE -- A $23.7 million gift from the Walton Family Charitable Support Foundation to boost research and commercialization efforts at the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville includes money "to attract five 'star' scientists," according to a gift agreement between the foundation and the university.

University leaders described the five-year grant -- announced Friday to include $5 million in support of faculty hiring, with the rest going to various support initiatives for researchers -- as providing a lift to state economic-development efforts.

Image: FILE — Old Main is framed by students and trees Tuesday, March 3, 2012 on the University of Arkansas campus in Fayetteville. - Photo by William Moore

1776 plans to leave its current D.C. location at 1133 15th St. NW after the prominent incubator network couldn’t reach an agreement over lease renewal terms with the building’s owner, DivcoWest. The lease will expire on December 31.

For now, 1776 DC members will have the option to migrate to its Crystal City, Va., campus, offering three free months of membership. It comes amid talks of Amazon HQ2 potentially landing in the Arlington community, Technical.ly DC previously reported. Leaders of the incubator plan to keep a presence in D.C., and will look to secure a new location in 2019.

Image: Photo by Michelai Graham

I live in an enchanted and magical land of rainbows and unicorns called "Silicon Valley." In addition to unicorns, Silicon Valley is also inhabited by trolls, who emerge from under their bridges to threaten the denizens of the valley with lawsuits based on dubious patents.

I was shocked to read that Andrei Iancu, director of the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) gave a recent speech where he complained that people who call non-practicing entities (NPE) patent trolls are “storytellers" who are "scaring our inventors and our entrepreneurs ...”. Given how far this is from reality, I could not imagine what kind of fantasyland Director Iancu lives in.

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Many Americans see entrepreneurs as the saviors of our day–the engines of economic growth and innovation in our communities, workplaces, and daily lives. We love reading stories about self-made founders, college dropouts who began their ventures out of garages, and rags-to-riches success stories. We’ve glorified entrepreneurship, and our policymakers often tout business owners as the heroes of our country.

I am not here to argue that entrepreneurship is inherently bad. New businesses do contribute to economic growth, and in turn, job creation. But today’s capital-raising culture has made starting a business look easy, even for those without a safety net to fall back on. This is a problem, especially for entrepreneurs who choose to jump into the game when they are 50 years old or older.

“Everything begins with an idea.” Right?

Uhhmmm… not really.

Instead, everything begins with a problem. Something happens (or doesn’t happen) that highlights a problem that either already exists or could exist. And more importantly, the need for a solution is born.

The bigger or more widespread the problem, the more pressing an answer to that problem is, as well as the scope  f potential recognition for being the one to solve that problem—and solve it better than anyone else.

Image: https://www.innovationexcellence.com

What is the single greatest source of innovation? I’ll give you a hint, it’s not a product. You can innovate it faster than any product, it creates the most enduring value for your company, and it’s what your customers will remember most. Read on and I’ll give you the answer from a company that has become the poster child for innovation.

Image: https://www.innovationexcellence.com

Every technical entrepreneur is an early adopter of technology, so naturally they build things with people like themselves in mind. Unfortunately, for most solution markets, early adopters represent only 10 to 15 percent of the total opportunity, so it’s easy to get mislead on the real requirements of mainstream customers. Psychologists call this the confirmation bias. I call it failing by early adopters.

Image: https://blog.startupprofessionals.com

Since I am a techie at heart, I always get excited when founders pitch their new innovation as “disruptive,” meaning that it is so unique that it will create a new market and disrupt the existing value network, displacing established products and markets. Unfortunately, I have learned that investors and customers are wary that big changes will take a long time, and cost more money.

Image: https://blog.startupprofessionals.com

The Cambridge Innovation Center, which manages office space at 3675 Market, was the "most compatible" space for the accelerator, which is focused on supporting underrepresented founders.

Image: https://www.bizjournals.com

RALEIGH – Veteran entrepreneur and investor Chris Heivly is not someone who is known as never expressing his opinions, and in talking about the state of the entrepreneurial ecosystem, across the Triangle he’s candid in his assessment of the region’s strengths as well as weaknesses. A recent survey ranked the Triangle as one of the nation’s “Tech Towns.” What’s Chris say?

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I’ve just got a minute—might as well scroll through Instagram.

No time to get anything real done—what’s in my e-mail inbox?

The default setting for most individual’s brains when they have 20 minutes or less is to waste it on activities that give them no greater sense of accomplishment at the end of the day than if they had skipped them.

Innovations in technology and management practice are creating new opportunities for the finance function to add value to the business. Here’s how finance teams will need to evolve to make the most of them.

CFOs and their teams are increasingly expected to counsel business units on innovative approaches for creating value. They are also being asked to use sophisticated analytics to measure and manage organizational performance, so they can better support complex decisions and create more accountability across the company.