Massachusetts' renowned biotech cluster has relinquished its top spot on the ranking of states with the highest research and development employment to its longtime West Coast rival.

With its hospitals, universities and workforce pool, Massachusetts had long maintained an edge on R&D employment. But according to a report published by the trade group MassBio on Wednesday, in 2017 the number of California residents employed in biotech R&D positions swelled to more than 39,000, beating Massachusetts by 3,300 workers.

Image: A scientist in the lab of Cambridge-based Sarepta Therapeutics. W. MARC BERNSAU | BOSTON BUSINESS JOURNAL

In many countries around the world, autumn means the start of a new school year. But that means something very different if you’re in the US or Chile, Russia or Iceland.

Where do students go to school for the fewest number of hours? Which families spend the most money on school supplies? And which country sees its students attend school for a whopping 23-year average?

As Shakespeare noted, “Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.” In contemporary language, the work of a leader is never done. Even if a leader has cleared her desk of all ongoing tasks for the day, the job is not over. Leaders must manage the present while preparing for the future. There is always something more a leader can be doing, and doing better.

William Janeway, this week’s guest on Masters in Business, is known as one of the founders of the modern technology venture capital industry. Among the businesses he helped start, while working at Warburg Pincus, was BEA Systems, which connected software applications to databases across much of the Internet. The initial cash investment of $54 million turned into a payout of $6.5 billion, when BEA was bought several years later by Oracle Corp.

The U.S. high technology industry looks like it may be too concentrated. One sign of this is the lack of geographic diversity in the venture capital industry, which is highly concentrated in a few technology hubs, mostly on the coasts:

Back in 2006, McDonald’s saw its growth stall. The fast-food chain decided that the problem was its limited menu, so it tried out a great many new items and ended up doubling the offerings. But sales hardly budged. Finally, in 2016, it took a new tack. It went back to basics, dropped most of those additional items, and instead extended its popular breakfast offerings. Sales finally jumped, with same-store revenue up 6% in 2017, and the stock rose by 40%.

The Economist just ran a nice article on “the flourishing Midwest.” Milwaukee in particular gets singled out for some favorable coverage, so congratulations to them.

Many Midwest cities have been doing well. Even the ones with poor headline numbers like Cleveland are seeing areas of strength when you look at a finer grained level. Some of the declines Midwest locations are experiencing are a result of the overhang of previous decline. Change and restructuring is happening in many places.

Image: http://www.newgeography.com

Progress in science is sometimes triggered by surprises. Data collection resembles gathering of new pieces in a jigsaw puzzle and placing them together. Sometimes one of the pieces does not quite fit. It is natural for scientists to instinctively argue that such a piece does not belong; perhaps it is an artifact driven by uncertainties in the data or a misinterpretation of the experiment. This might indeed be the case in most instances. But every now and then, an anomaly of this type signals a real discrepancy from expectations, either a violation of a highly respected but incomplete law of nature—namely an exception to the rule, or an unexpected surprise—signaling the possibility of “new physics.”

With an acceptance rate of just 5% and typical SAT scores between 1430 and 1600, Harvard University is America's hardest college to get into, according to a list from academic review site Niche.com.

The rankings are based on acceptance rates and SAT and ACT scores reported to the US Department of Education. College acceptance rates received a weighted average of 60% in the ranking computation, and SAT/ACT scores received a weighted average of 40%.

On Saturday, Ramona Smith was named the 2018 Toastmasters world champion of public speaking.

Smith, a 31-year-old high-school teacher from Houston, outlasted more than 30,000 other speakers from around the world over the six-month World Championship of Public Speaking competition, the largest of its kind. She and nine other finalists delivered speeches to a crowd of 2,000 in Chicago over the weekend during the annual Toastmasters International Convention.

Image: Ramona Smith won the Toastmasters World Championship of Public Speaking competition on Saturday. World Championship of Public Speaking - https://www.businessinsider.com

Wellness programs are increasing in popularity as companies grow more determined to curb the soaring costs of providing health insurance for employees. To encourage healthy behaviors, firms are offering everything from free yoga classes to weight-loss support groups. While there have been some positive results from these programs, smoking cessation remains a particular challenge. But a recent study by two University of Pennsylvania experts found that cash can be a powerful incentive to help smokers quit. Kevin Volpp is the director of the Center for Health Incentives and Behavioral Economics at Penn’s Leonard Davis institute as well a professor of health-care management at Wharton. Scott Halpern is a professor of medicine, epidemiology, medical ethics and health policy at the Perelman School of Medicine. He is also the founding director of the Palliative and Advanced Illness Research Center at Penn. Their paper is titled, “A Pragmatic Trial of E-Cigarettes, Incentives, and Drugs for Smoking Cessation.” Volpp and Halpern recently joined the Knowledge@Wharton radio show on SiriusXM to talk about what their research means for companies looking to up the ante on smoking and other detrimental health habits.

Obesity rates in the U.S. and abroad have soared: The world now has more overweight people than those who weigh too little. One reason relates to the way the body reacts to its own fat stores by setting in motion a set of molecular events that impede the metabolic process that normally puts a damper on hunger.

Actors want to direct. Directors want to produce. And consultants want to deliver keynote presentation. And why not? The pay is good. It doesn't take much time. And it's a lot less heavy lifting than most consulting gigs.

Easier said that done, however. Delivering an impactful keynote is not as easy as it looks. If you want to get into the game, begin by reviewing the following guidelines to see if you have what it takes.

Everyone has goals in life. But, how many of them are able to achieve success, big or small? And most importantly, how many of them show the grit to get past the tough times strategically and achieve their goals? Well, not many! Often, people throw in the proverbial towel rather than deciding to fight on anyway.

Screwing up a goal or a resolution is common, and entrepreneurs often blame financial dearth for it. But, is this the only reason to give up on your goals? If yes, then why do people often say ‘not another moment’ when they face even minor hiccups in parenthood, marriage or friendship. Throwing in the proverbial towel is so frequent that it has become a way of life.

“Like it or not, you are a negotiator…everyone negotiates something every day,” writes Roger Fisher, William Ury, and Bruce Patton in their book on negotiating, Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In.

It’s true. Whether we’re representing a multi-billion dollar company in a high-stakes deal, haggling over the price of a used car, or trying to convince a toddler to eat her lunch, most of us come to the bargaining table daily.

Since the Great Recession, cities across the U.S. have struggled not only to rebound but to grow — and entrepreneurs in those cities have felt the sting as well. In 2016, the National League of Cities released its report “City Fiscal Conditions,” which revealed that beyond recession-related concerns, cities were straining under the weight of aging infrastructures and employee-related costs.

Manufacturing leaders repeatedly identify the skills gap as the most urgent problem facing U.S. manufacturing today. According to Deloitte, by 2025 about two million manufacturing jobs will be unfilled because employers will not be able to find enough qualified workers with the STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) skills needed for operating increasingly sophisticated, high-tech equipment.

Image: http://www.areadevelopment.com

In this era of rapid market and technological change, I know I have to challenge my small business advisory clients to keep innovating and stay ahead of the game. As you can imagine, it is human nature to look for a stable and unchanging business process, after all the pivots and chaos of starting your business. Innovation driven only by crises is not leadership and growth.

Nearly 40% of Americans now have a “side hustle” or outside source of income beyond their day job, according to one recent survey, and many more are at least contemplating the possibility. Indeed, a Deloitte survey of millennial and Gen Z workers showed that nearly two-thirds of respondents would consider a side gig to supplement their full-time work.

But there’s often a gap between ideation and action. Many professionals who are interested in developing a side income stream find themselves procrastinating.

Elon Musk recently tweeted that he intends to take Tesla private, that is, to take Tesla off U.S. stock exchanges. In a parallel development, the number of companies listed on U.S. stock exchanges has declined by almost 50% from its peak in 1996, despite dramatic increase in aggregate market capitalization. Many conjectures have been offered to explain this controversial trend. We offer a new explanation: the rising role of digital firms in the U.S. economy.