Want to better understand what digital is doing to your business? Look to the underlying economics.

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The New Jersey Tech Council has brought together and represented the state’s regional technology communities for over 20 years, and we’ve always prioritized strengthening the local ecosystem that supports our innovators and entrepreneurs. So, we listened with great anticipation as Gov. Phil Murphy presented his new economic development plan. We’re pleased to say it’s remarkably visionary and thorough.

The governor first noted that New Jersey has a tremendous legacy of innovation and entrepreneurship that has driven economic growth for the entire country, but, in the past 10 years, we’ve lagged most states in supporting and benefiting from the innovation economy. That’s a point we’ve made often. We’re pleased that Murphy has placed the objective of nurturing innovation-driven economic growth front and center, and his team seems equally committed to fully leveraging the state’s extraordinary resources.

Image: New Jersey Tech Council - James Barrood is CEO and president of the New Jersey Tech Council.

I have four kids, ages 5 to 14, and I and know they’re very unlikely to follow the same educational path I did. I’m certain they’ll be preparing themselves for a very different job market. As my youngest is in kindergarten and my oldest just started high school, here are my thoughts for them.

Like his ancestors, 65-year-old Clayton Long spent his childhood immersed in Navajo culture, greeting fellow clan members with old, breathful Navajo words like “Yá’át’ééh.” Then he was sent to an English-only boarding school where his native language, also known as Diné, was banned. “I went into a silent resistance,” Long says from his home in Blanding, Utah. He vowed that he would help to preserve it after he left, work he has done for about three decades as a teacher. This week, he’s entering new territory on that mission: the app store.

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In early January 2017, Varun Srinivasan and the rest of the engineering team at Coinbase returned from the holiday break to skyrocketing Bitcoin prices. User traffic was setting new records every day and customer support struggled to keep up as a barrage of requests bogged down response time. Srinivasan’s team was pulled into rooms to put out fires left and right, in one instance working almost two days straight just to keep the site up.

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Every February for the last 35 years, the National Football League has run a scouting camp, called a combine, to assess the skills of college players before its annual draft. With scientific precision, the players are evaluated on a number of tests, including the 40-yard dash, bench presses, and vertical leaps. Performance at the combine can affect how early a player is selected in the draft, which is assumed to be a leading indicator of career trajectory. However, many studies (pdf) have shown that although the combine measures the table stakes of athletic skills, it misses the intangibles that make a player stand out come game time.

Image: Illustration by Lars Leetaru

You’d think the end of the world would be enough to get us scared. Humans have always been an exceedingly risk-averse species—which is how we came to survive as a species at all. If there are lions on one part of the savannah, we go to another. If crocodiles keep coming out of the river, we fish somewhere else. So when it comes to the loss of the entire planet, well, we ought to take action. And yet we don’t; we never do.

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You may have received training on giving a good presentation or writing a successful business proposal, but few of us spend as much time learning how to craft a good email. It’s quick and easy, but few of us give much thought to shooting off an email, so that makes it ripe for misuse.

“Email is simultaneously messy, imperfect, overwhelming, and impoverished,” says Nick Morgan, author of Can You Hear Me? How to Connect with People in a Virtual World. “Email is so easy to send that it’s become a deluge.”

Long a hotbed of new technologies, California insists on seeing its transit future in the rear mirror. Rather than use innovative approaches to getting people around and to work, our state insists on spending billions on early 20th century technology such as streetcars and light rail that have diminishing relevance to our actual lives.

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Today PR Solutions LLC announced the winners of the third annual i.Invest National Youth Business Competition. Four teams consisting of youth entrepreneurs, 13 to 19 years-old from across the U.S. have been selected to receive cash and in-kind prizes after successfully completing a six-month web-based mentoring program and competition that included three rounds of scoring led by business and academic leaders from organizations, including: Coca-Cola Bottling Company United, University of Maryland Baltimore County (UMBC), Alerion Ventures, and Urban League of New Orleans.

Image: i.Invest 2018 Youth Business of the Year – Pulse Wearables Co-Founders: Anna Pertl – Munich, Germany; Richa Krishna – Los Altos, CA; and William Barkoff – New York, NY.

I’m not Goldie Blumenstyk. I’m Scott Carlson, also a senior writer at The Chronicle of Higher Education. While Goldie frequently has her sights on innovation in education, I am often thinking about the value and return on investment in higher education. Goldie asked me to pick up her Re:Learning column for another week, and so I’ll further explore the connections — and disconnections — between college and career. Please subscribe to Goldie’s newsletter here. And here’s what’s on my mind this week:

The hype around Agile organisations needs some debunking, so that Agile’s actual value can be salvaged.

Every few years or so, the management consulting community latches onto a new cure for everything that ails large (i.e. potential customer) organisations. The hype cycle unfolds in predictable phases: the new practice seems to work in a number of organisations and gets highly publicised, companies of all sizes and kinds are encouraged to adopt it, a few prominent failures occur, and infatuation gives way to disillusionment as the magic medicine doesn’t seem so magic anymore.

Most young people who are completing their educational degree today think they will have learned all they need for their career ahead. Unfortunately, based on my own extensive experience in business, I have to tell them in my talks that most of what they know now will be obsolete in a few years. The most important thing you can learn in college today is how to learn.

The rules of business and technology are changing rapidly, and the pace of change is only accelerating. The facts, as well as what motivates your peers, customers, and business leaders are changing daily. For example, no one learned a couple of decades ago that the biggest opportunities ahead would include social media, ecommerce, and computers on our wrists.

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In this episode of BioTalk, Rich Bendis and guest Brian Darmody discuss growth across the region, the battle for talent and the upcoming AURP International Conference hosted in College Park.

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.

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Few things are as disruptive and costly as managers who kill morale. Demotivated employees perform poorly and then walk out the door at the first opportunity. When employees quit, the top reason for their resignation is their relationship with their manager. People don't quit companies. They quit their bosses. Businesses know how important it is to have motivated and engaged employees, but many fail to hold managers accountable for making this happen. When they don’t, the bottom line suffers.

The American Planning Association has named fifteen “Great Places in America” for 2018. Among them are a bustling main street that spans two states, an amphitheater and park created from a brownfield, and a walkable Berkshires town famous for its flower bridge.

Image: The State Street corridor, spanning two states, one of 2018's Great Places in America according to the American Planning Association. (Photo courtesy of Bristol VA/TN Chamber of Commerce)

As a long-time advisor to entrepreneurs and business owners, I rarely find someone who doesn’t proclaim that the business world is changing rapidly, with new technology, new customer expectations, and new cultures. Yet, I’m still frustrated by the number of business owners that haven’t updated their business-as-usual practices. In my mind, these are killing their businesses.

With huge amounts of venture capital sloshing around, it seems kind of counterintuitive to say “no” to this type of financing. But it could actually be critical for the success of your company.

This is definitely the sentiment of Kon Leong, who created ZL Technologies in 1999. The company was his third startup. Oh, and he also had a 10-year stint on Wall Street as an investment banker!

Image: Marapost websiteMARAPOST

This is going to be a bold statement: It’s time for your business to start embracing blockchain, the biggest game-changer in technology since the internet.

Blockchain, to those unfamiliar with the concept, is a hyperledger. This technology makes it possible for users to enjoy a transparent and distributed digital record of transactions while doing away with the need for a central database.