The Massachusetts Institute of Technology announced on Monday that it would spend $1 billion on a new college within MIT to study artificial intelligence.

Artificial intelligence, or machine learning, involves the development of software that, just like the human brain, takes in data, weighs it, makes a decision, and, often, takes action, all without human intervention.

The biggest challenge for every entrepreneur and every startup today is to get noticed and remembered in today’s information overload. The number of entrepreneurs worldwide is huge, starting an estimated 50 million new businesses per year, or 137,000 per day. Every one of these probably has a unique story, but in my years as a startup advisor I only remember hearing a few who capitalized on their story.

This is the 18th edition of the FT global executive MBA ranking of the best 100 programmes worldwide, based on data collected from business schools and their alumni who graduated in 2015. Find the full ranking here.

Executive MBA graduates are much more likely to work in industry and manufacturing than younger alumni from full-time MBAs and masters in management courses — and less likely to be employed in finance or consulting.

Image: Kellogg/HKUST’s joint programme heads the FT EMBA ranking for the 9th time - https://amp.ft.com

Groundhog Day?

This month, Forbes reported that venture capital investments in healthcare startups hit record highs, despite the infamous dissolution of Theranos. While this implies it is still a buyer’s market, hundreds of quality early stage-health technology companies ready for funding are not securing investments. At Inova Personalized Health Accelerator (IPHA), we researched this trend in our Health Tech Early Stage Funding Report, which we published this month.

Image: https://www.linkedin.com

Montgomery County is proving to be a premium address for the growing biotechnology sector. 

The BioHealth Capital Region, which includes Maryland, Virginia and Washington D.C., is ranked No. 4 on the 2018 list of top biopharma centers by Genetic Engineering & Biotechnology News (GEN). The cluster moves up from a No. 5 ranking in 2017.

GEN ranks regions nationally based on several factors, including National Institutes of Health (NIH) funding, venture capital investment, patents, lab space and jobs in biotech. 

A majority of the BioHealth Capital Region’s assets are located within Montgomery County.

We are told AI is on an inevitable rise and humans simply can’t measure up. In no time, the headlines say, artificial intelligence will take our jobs, fight our wars, manage our health, and, perhaps eventually, call the shots for the flesh-and-blood masses. Big data, it seems, knows best.

Don’t buy it.

I take a sip of wine, and it floods across my mouth–a perfectly balanced cabernet that tastes of yeast, fruit, and stone. Then I take a sip from another glass. This wine strikes the tip of my tongue like a dart. It’s pure booze, and, seconds later, I’m left with a dank, bitter aftertaste. This wine has clearly gone bad; I should really pour the bottle out.

Image: Riedel

As an entrepreneur, one of the most important habits to cultivate is trust -- not trust in others (however, that’s important too), but trust in yourself. How many times have you missed an opportunity because you listened to the advice of others rather than trusting a gut feeling that you had? It happens to the best of us, but in order to truly be successful, you have to learn how to trust yourself and follow your heart.

“There isn’t enough time in the day” is a phrase people think and say all too often.

While the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics notes that productivity climbs each year—labor productivity increased 2.9% during the second quarter of 2018—we as humans can still be easily distracted, thanks in large part to our affinity for tech gadgets, social media and the fast-paced nature of our daily lives.

I’m a lazy person. This surprises some people, especially considering that I write productivity books for a living. Take a day off, for example. Forget adventures — my preference for that free time is to lie on the couch, watch Netflix documentaries and read. And a week off? I’m the kind of person who prefers to stay home and eat pizza rather than travel the world. Luckily for me, this laziness is precisely what makes me so productive. And that’s a fact backed up by science.

I was facilitating a group of senior leaders who were tasked with leading the innovation effort in their respective organization and started the facilitation with the simple yet profound question –

“How do you define innovation?”

The best answer I’ve so far received to this question is the following:

“Innovation is applied problem solving leading to generation of value.”

Image: https://www.innovationexcellence.com

In Eric Ries’s bestselling book, The Startup Way, the Silicon Valley entrepreneur explains how he helped lead General Electric’s transformation from a stodgy industrial era dinosaur into a lean, entrepreneurial enterprise. Yet strangely, as Steve Blank points out in Harvard Business Review, the effort ended up with the ousting of GE’s CEO for underperformance.

Why did such a seemingly promising initiative turn out to be such a tragic failure? To be honest, I have no idea. Maybe the cultural strain of “lean startup” thinking caused the company to take its eye off the ball. Or maybe it was simply a matter of short-term thinking by activist investors. Or maybe something else entirely.

Being an entrepreneur is a dream for tons of people. However, this dream can easily crash down around you. The reality is that being an entrepreneur is incredibly stressful: they’re twice as likely to develop depression, which is “the leading disability worldwide, and people die of it every day.”

Even if depression isn’t an issue for you as an entrepreneur, stress absolutely will be. If stress plagues your life and you have no way to wind down, you might suffer the effects of chronic stress.

La Petite Noiseuse Productions Co-Founder and Executive Scientific & Artistic Director Monica Lopez, Ph.D. joins BioTalk Host Rich Bendis to discuss her career path, their consulting services, science-art integration, multidisciplinary thinking and doing in healthcare, and STEM-STEAMM education for workplace challenges of the future.

Brian Darmody is responsible for developing projects, funding opportunities, and policies to support partnerships with the private sector. Previously he was the University's  Associate Vice President for Research and Development, Director of the University of Maryland Center for Applied Policy Studies, Director of State and Federal Relations in the UMD President's Office, and served in the  University's legal counsel's office. He serves on national and state boards, including Maryland Technology Council Executive Board, Fraunhofer USA, the Maryland Economic Development Association and is past President of the Association of University Research Parks.He has served on the staff for the U.S. House of Representatives, the U.S. Health Care Financing Administration Office of Attorney-Advisor, and the Maryland General Assembly. He holds an undergraduate degree from the University of Maryland and Juris Doctor from the University of Baltimore.

As the founding CEO of AOL, the first internet company to go public, Steve Case is an icon of the first wave of the internet. Case left AOL in 2005, and has since built a large portfolio of startups through his venture capital firm, Revolution.

He's spent the past five years traveling the United States, often in a bright red or blue bus, investing in cities outside of the centers of American venture capital— Silicon Valley, New York City, and Boston — as part of Revolution's "Rise of the Rest" initiative. Whether it's a place like Louisville, Kentucky or Salt Lake City, Utah, Case and his team don't simply pass through for a day and drop off some money, but build long-term relationships with founders and local power brokers to ensure the startup scenes thrive.

Image: Hollis Johnson/Business Insider

Four major forces are shaping cities of the future. How can they thrive in the face of challenges and change?

The world faces unprecedented rates of urban expansion. According to the United Nations, 55 percent of the global population currently lives in cities. By 2050, that number is expected to reach 68 percent, which means an additional 2.5 billion people will reside in urban areas. China’s cities alone will be home to a staggering 900 million people.

When Amber Petersen noticed her seven-year-old daughter was spending progressively more time playing games online, she reached back into the 1800s for a little instruction.

On a summer day this year, as Brooklyn explored a virtual playground on Roblox, the popular gaming platform designed for young kids, Petersen read out loud from Meet Kirsten, a kids’ chapter book based in the 1850s that’s part of doll-maker American Girl’s historical fiction series. 

Image: BOB AL-GREENE / MASHABLE

America is brimming with entrepreneurial spirit. Millions of people nationwide have taken the plunge to launch their own companies, some successfully and others less so. As famed billionaire entrepreneur Richard Branson once said, "Our ability to come up with ideas is a blessing and a curse. It's great that we're constantly inspired and optimistic, but it can sometimes be hard to focus on one idea for long enough to turn it into a successful business."

Researchers have analyzed DNA samples from 141,431 pregnant Chinese women—roughly one ten-thousandth of the country’s population—to garner insights on issues ranging from migration patterns to genetic diversity and susceptibility to disease. The team’s findings, newly published in Cell, represent the largest-scale genetic study of Chinese individuals to date.

One week this summer, the Nasdaq stock market listed five recent initial public offerings, including Sonos, the home-audio company, and Vaccinex, which makes a promising cancer drug. That same week, an investor looking at Nasdaq’s Listing Center would have seen the names of 16 stocks set to disappear. The reasons for the delistings varied. Synchronoss Technologies, a software company, had failed to file financial reports since February 2017. Abaxis, a veterinary-diagnostics firm, was being acquired by Zoetis. Capella Education was merging with Strayer Education (both operate for-profit schools).

Image: TYLER COMRIE  - https://www.theatlantic.com