Female Founders 100: The Visionaries There are entrepreneurs who set out to build a better version of something, and then there are those who have the foresight to dream up an entirely new reality. These women are reinventing industries, connecting dots we didn't imagine could be, and pushing us out of our comfort zone. 

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As the United States closes up its borders and becomes more hostile to even legal immigration, countries across Latin America are opening theirs. Countries such as Chile, Colombia and Mexico, are not doing it to be nice; they know immigration is good for business.

Immigrants created 30 percent of new inventions in the U.S. over the past 100 years and started over 50 percent of the U.S.'s tech unicorns. Therefore, it comes as no surprise that programs like Start-Up Chile are emerging to bring foreigners to Latin America to spur entrepreneurial ambitions and foster local innovation.

As Amazon revs up its private label business with new household goods and clothing brands, the company is quietly rolling out another way to get more exclusive products onto the site.

Amazon is inviting outside companies to "join the Amazon family of brands," according to a web page for "Our Brands." At the bottom of the page is a link where manufacturers can sign up to make products that become part of Amazon's own collection of private brands.

DURHAM – In a popular post on Medium, Ryan Holmes, the founder and CEO of Hootsuite, raised a question about whether the entrepreneurial economy may inadvertently be ageist. A new group known as Elder Innovators is tackling that issue in the Triangle.

“I see a void in our entrepreneurial talent pipeline and seek to include people 50 years of age and older into the start-up spaces,” reads the LinkedIn profile of Lee Anne McClymont, the southeast USA fellow for the Global Institute for Experienced Entrepreneurship (GIEE).  McClymont is among the leaders of a growing community of experienced professionals interested in learning more about and getting involved in the innovation economy in the Triangle.

Image: Elder Innovators

Katmai National Park's Fat Bear Week contest is now underway, with 13 very large omnivores pitted against each other in a playoff-like bracket. 

Each day, you can place your votes, but have you ever wondered which fat bear you would be if you lived in Katmai? 

Explore.org — which runs the live streaming webcams that made these bears globally known — has created created a quiz to match your personality to one of the 13 bears participating in this wild week's contest. 

Established in 1979 as a way to help broaden the distribution of federal funds for research and development (R&D), specifically at the National Science Foundation (NSF), one of the most important initiatives funneling research and development funds to states with smaller populations is the Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR). As more attention is paid to the growing inequality between states, programs like EPSCoR are worthy of additional consideration. Although the majority of states have seen their share of federal science and engineering R&D increase as part of the EPSCoR program, the distribution of federal funds for R&D remains very uneven.

There is no shortage of challenges facing smaller cities and counties that want to be “smart” -- or “intelligent” -- said Xavier Hughes, ICMA’s chief technology and innovation officer, at the first full day of the 104th ICMA Annual Conference in Baltimore, Md. Hughes is a veteran of the Obama administration, as chief innovation office at the Department of Labor, and also a successful entrepreneur.

Image: https://www.smartbrief.com

If you want to get out of the rat race and start your own business, you’ve gotta be optimistic, because it’s tough out there. In fact, a good old fashioned glass half full outlook might not even be enough. An entrepreneur needs “delusional optimism,” according to one Inc. interview, or “irrational optimism” according to another in Entrepreneur. Well, as we probably should have expected from self-promotional bromides, these assertions might actually lead talented founders astray.

I was at my wife's company's holiday party last year and I walked around thinking to myself how much I wanted my own company holiday party. I was fraught with jealousy. Why? For the simple fact that it wasn't my company holiday party. I barely enjoyed anything.

I always listen to my jealousy because it shows me what I want. And I want to be an entrepreneur more than I want to breathe. The longer I am in the entrepreneurship game, the more I see the price of inaction.

Big cities have big responsibilities. Coming with that are big scale, scope, complexities, priorities, and challenges. Texas has growth and all the other `bigs. We are not shying away from the `bigs’ and building great communities. To get there requires numbers with lots of zeros behind them. A recent Strong Towns website entry challenged Colin County with road projections. Challenge is good and not something to shy away.

Image: http://www.newgeography.com

Catherine Berman, co-founder and CEO of CNote, discusses how fintech startups like hers are in a perfect position to compete against the large banks by taking advantage of demographic shifts in the United States. Berman explains that women, minorities and young adults have been historically underserved by financial institutions, and that their incomes and percentages of the U.S. population overall are both on the rise.

Image: https://ecorner.stanford.edu

Gov. Phil Murphy released a detailed vision and five key goals of his economic growth plan in a major policy announcement attended by more than 600 business leaders and elected officials Monday at ON3 in Nutley/Clifton.

The 64-page document outlines statistics for New Jersey, including where the state leads and where it trails other states and its Northeast peers.

Image: Tom Bergeron/ROI-NJ Gov. Phil Murphy says he intends to grow the economy with five key metrics in the coming years.

Will cryptocurrencies ever become much more than speculative assets? If they do, the key will be a new kind of digital coin that is engineered to maintain a steady price. At least, that’s what a growing number of developers in the crypto world seem to believe.

We’re in the midst of a “Cambrian explosion” of such projects, says Garrick Hileman, head of research at Blockchain, a cryptocurrency services firm. According to a survey Hileman published this week, the number of what are called stablecoins has grown from a just a handful to nearly 60 in the past 18 months, and more than a dozen more are expected to launch in the near future.

When the Danaher Corporation announced in May 2015 that it would split into two separate enterprises in 2016, it seemed at first like a reversal of the company’s history. Danaher had built itself into a remarkably successful business over four decades by acquiring and integrating new companies into a unified whole, improving them through a group of distinctive management practices known as the Danaher Business System (DBS), then holding onto them. Although it’s sometimes compared to a private equity firm, Danaher is different — it buys and builds companies for the long term, not for rapid fix-up and sale. Divesting is not the Danaher modus operandi.

Image: Illustration by John Hersey

Chess has been loaded with a variety of ascribed “meanings” over time -- war training, intellectual self-improvement, moral righteousness -- but at its core chess is an enduring game of strategy. My family has played this game for generations, and in this inheritance are lessons I apply to business leadership to this day. There are analogs to many of the most critical concerns of a CEO -- including people, strategy and adaptation -- in the ancient game of chess.

Traditional venture capitalist (VC) investments are leveraging the decline in initial coin offerings (ICO) as the cryptocurrency industry tries to find bearing amid regulatory shifts and losses across the crypto markets. The negative toll on ICOs has seen them drop overall to 70 percent less than their initial values, according to a new report.

Image: New Study Reveals an Increase in Venture Capital Investment in Blockchain Projects

Ellen Harpel and The Stephen S. Fuller Institute at George Mason University have released a new research report describing the role of Gig and Independent Work in the Washington Region’s Economy.

The gig economy and independent work arrangements receive much national attention, but their role in regional economies is not well understood. This report describes national research on the evolving ways work is performed and presents several measures of gig and independent work in the Washington region.

Image: https://smartincentives.org

The part of every entrepreneur’s DNA that allows her to dream big and envision a world where her creation impacts countless lives and generates incredible wealth is the very thing that can lead to failure. Especially in the early days of working on something, every new opportunity can feel like the one that will change everything. Many founders get caught in the cycle of chasing shiny objects, but when resources are limited and it’s a race against time this can be detrimental. Here’s how you can avoid this classic entrepreneur’s dilemma.

Millennials have been rapidly transforming work culture. Experts predict that by 2025, three-fourths of workers are going to be millennials. This means that in the near future, millennials will overtake baby boomers in the workplace. By now, businesses and managers should have rolled out their best game plan on how to manage millennials at work.

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The Georgia Research Alliance’s Michael Cassidy is joining Emory University, according to Emory President Claire E. Sterk.

Cassidy will take a new position that is designed to provide vision and leadership to promote biomedical innovation and enhance the university’s economic engagement in the Atlanta region and beyond.  

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