"We wanted this to have the greatest impact on society."

With those words, Michael Fleming revealed the ultimate goal of his self-driving vehicle technology company: Deliver greater safety, efficiency and economy to the world of transportation by removing human error from behind the wheel.

For 30 minutes on a rainy Tuesday morning in September in Blacksburg, Virginia, Fleming didn't just talk about what he envisioned for his Torc Robotics firm; he demonstrated it.

Image: TORC Robotics CEO and co-founder Michael Fleming stands in front of two self-driving cars and the company HQ in Blacksburg, Virginia Photo courtesy of Torc

Getting to the phase of expanding internationally is perhaps not the first milestone that a startup who is just beginning would think about. But in one sense, it’s part of a business’ journey from the start. After all, websites are accessible from anywhere, said Colleen Fisher of the U.S. Commercial Service.

“From the moment you are born you are a global company,” said Signe Pringle, Managing Director of the Maryland Department of Commerce Office of International Investment and Trade.

Image: https://technical.ly

Most of the time, The New York Times asks you to read something. Today we are inviting you, simply, to look. On this page you will find maps showing almost every building in the United States.

Why did we make such a thing? We did it as an opportunity for you to connect with the country’s cities and explore them in detail. To find the familiar, and to discover the unfamiliar.

So … look. Every black speck on the map below is a building, reflecting the built legacy of the United States.

Many experts will tell you that you can’t succeed as a part-time entrepreneur, as any good startup will require a 100 percent commitment of your time and energy. But not many of us have enough savings to live for a year or more without a salary, fund the startup, and still feed the family. Thus I often recommend that entrepreneurs keep their day job until the startup is producing revenue.

THE start-up scene all over the world is still flourishing. In the Philippines, there are currently more than 300 start-ups in the country and over 200 of them are actively operating, according to the first study profiling the Philippine start-up ecosystem by PwC Philippines and the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI).

While globally we are seeing the strongest resurgence of the start-up craze since the dot-com era, we will not see them all succeed commercially. A Fortune survey among founders of failed business ventures indicate the stark reality that 9 out of 10 start-ups fail. In the Philippines, probably it’s higher to the tune of 19 out of 20.

Houston Exponential has received commitments for half of a $50 million fund it hopes will help attract venture capital money to Houston, the organization announced Thursday.

The nonprofit, tasked with marketing and connecting Houston's various innovation initiatives, is creating a "fund of funds." The idea is to collect money from Houston corporations, invest that money in the funds of venture capital firms across the U.S., and then build connections between those two entities to help a third group: Houston startups struggling to find growth money.

Image: Karen Warren, Staff / Houston Chronicle

Target is no stranger to running startup accelerators. The company today operates its Target + Techstars program, the beauty-focused Target Takeoff, and the India-based Target Accelerator Program. Now it’s adding a fourth business accelerator to the mix with the launch of Target Incubator. The new program is aimed at Gen Z entrepreneurs and its only real require is that the businesses involved are doing some sort of good.

Image: https://techcrunch.com

Being a business owner doesn’t necessarily mean being an entrepreneur. If that was the case we wouldn’t need a new and such a complicated word. If you Google “entrepreneur” it will tell you that an entrepreneur is a person who sets up a business or businesses, taking on financial risks in the hope of profit. However, economists and some of the most successful entrepreneurs would disagree. According to economist Joseph Alois Schumpeter (1883-1950), entrepreneurs are not necessarily motivated by profit but regard it as a standard for measuring achievement or success.

Author, journalist and professor Walter Isaacson has delved into the lives of influential figures ranging from Leonardo da Vinci to Ada Lovelace. He believes that those who thrive at the intersection of arts and sciences are the ones who will become a part of history. Isaacson shares his Brief but Spectacular take on what’s it’s like to write about people.

Image: https://www.pbs.org

In a move that might surprise a few people, Microsoft announced yesterday that it’s joining Open Innovation Network (OIN) – an open source patent consortium – and making its entire portfolio of patents open source. Microsoft will add nearly 60,000 patents to OIN, vastly enlarging its existing pool of 1,300 global patents.

Image: Wikipedia

With the rise of soft, cloth-coated gadgets, it’s become clear that fashion and interior design are impacting consumer electronics. But influence is a two-way street–and the design language of Silicon Valley is also influencing other design sectors. Take Pantone, which is introducing a new slew of colors, called Metallic Shimmers, for a world obsessed shine and shimmer–and where most of us drop $800 on a new phone every two years.

Image: Pantone

There are lessons for other industries in the way pharma companies use mergers to innovate, work more efficiently, and bolster product portfolios.

The passage of US tax reform in late 2017 led to speculation that merger-and-acquisition activity would soon surge among pharmaceutical companies, due in part to tax-cut benefits accruing to sellers. Indeed, that has come to pass: in the first half of 2018, there were 212 deals in the sector worth more than $200 billion, up from 151 such deals in the year-earlier period.

Image: https://www.mckinsey.com

According to the 2017 American Community Survey, about 7.6 million Americans, or 5.3 percent of commuters, take transit to work. However, the actual question on the survey asks, how do you “usually get to work last week.” If someone took transit three days and drove two, then transit gets checked. So how many really use transit on any given day?

Image: http://www.newgeography.com

WASHINGTON –To foster development, production and marketing of the next generation of medical devices designed to meet growing children’s unique needs, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) awarded $5 million to the National Capital Consortium for Pediatric Device Innovation (NCC-PDI), led by Children’s National Health System and University of Maryland, College Park.

We live in a world where it appears to be a matter of when, not if, an enterprise is breached. Billions of dollars have been spent on beefing up cybersecurity, but the bad guys keep winning. Securing even a small organization seems quite hard.

How did we get here? Is there hope?

The computer industry has had to fight against evolving sophistication in threats throughout its history. I have been working in cybersecurity since the early '90s, beginning in college when cybersecurity and the internet were still in their infancy, and in 2015 I started a third-generation cybersecurity company where I currently serve as CEO.

Tony Seba, author of Clean Disruption of Energy and Transportation said “we are on the cusp of one of the fastest, deepest, most consequential disruptions of transportation in history.” Why is that? Experts are predicting that by 2030, 95% of U.S. car miles will be traveled in self-driving, electric, shared vehicles and that savings on transportation costs will result in a boost in annual disposable income for U.S. households totaling $1 Trillion.

Many books offer advice to budding business leaders, but it would be safe to say that none are presented quite like the latest title from longtime Silicon Valley executive Maynard Webb. Inspired by a fictional story about a father who left a box of letters to his son, Webb has written a collection of letters titled Dear Founder: Letters of Advice for Anyone Who Leads, Manages, or Wants to Start a Business. Webb has served in senior leadership at eBay and Gateway and spent five years as CEO of call center solutions firm LiveOps. He is currently a member of the board of directors at Visa and Salesforce, and is a former board chairman at Yahoo. In the book, he draws on his own experiences as an investor, entrepreneur and board member to dispense advice for founders on facing common challenges — from missing goals in the first quarter to firing an employee to knowing when to grow the business. Webb recently joined the Knowledge@Wharton radio show on SiriusXM to discuss his new book.

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

There’s a good chance you haven’t heard of Farmers Business Network (FBN). It sounds like a generic professional organization for the agriculture industry, which it’s not, but what it’s really doing isn’t exactly mind-blowing, either: FBN is a social network that lets farmers pool and compare data and that offers seeds to its users at discounted rates.

MADISON, Wis.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Today BioForward Wisconsin, the member-driven association that serves as the voice of Wisconsin’s biohealth industry, unveiled a new third-party report highlighting the statewide economic impact of Wisconsin’s biohealth industry. Featuring strong job growth, multiplier effect, building expansion impact, and manufacturing supply chain data, the Wisconsin Biohealth Industry 2018 Economic Impact Report showcases the thriving industry including: