It happens all the time — for one reason or another, a company gives up on a beloved product and gives it the "End of Life" kiss of death.

The company stops producing it. It stops supporting it. It diverts its resources to other pursuits in hopes of creating something bigger and better than before.

And then, that gadget we once loved is gone.

Image: Remember the Sidekick phone? Teens and celebrities scurried to get their hands on one when they debuted in the 2000s. Richard Drew/AP

Tesla founder Elon Musk confessed how he struggles to get a good night’s sleep, in a recent interview with The New York Times.

“It is often a choice of no sleep or Ambien,” he said, in the interview published on August 16.

The interview garnered widespread reaction, especially after he admitted working for 120-hours at a stretch. In response, author, founder and chief executive officer of news publication The Huffington Post and Thrive Global, Arianna Huffington wrote an open letter to him, saying, “You’ve come up against incredible challenges, and you’ve met them by being ever more rigorous and determined about applying the latest science.” 

Every business executive and entrepreneur I know believes they are good or even great leaders, but as an advisor I often hear a different story from their team. You probably have a few stories of your own about a least favorite boss who was always too busy to listen, gave nothing but critical feedback, was prone to emotional outbursts, or simply was not really present in body and spirit.

Influence can’t be achieved through intimidation or coercion. It comes from within -- from a person’s ability to inspire and motivate those around them.

Becoming an influential leader has nothing to do with titles and everything to do with gaining the admiration, confidence and trust of those around you. It’s about how you engage with others and how your vision rallies people to you. It may seem hard to nail down what exactly allows a person to hold sway over others, but there are certain traits that are unique to these natural leaders.

CEOs often talk about the strategic imperative for their organizations to boost innovation, myself included. They imagine the internal meetings in front of their general employee populations where they talk about becoming more innovative. What happens? How is that message received?

Well, they lose the majority of the audience — first, most people think that innovation is the job of R&D, so they don’t have to worry about it. Second, even if they think the CEO is talking to them, most people are not confident they are innovative enough to contribute to this priority.

Image: Tom Kinisky, President and CEO of Saint-Gobain North America, writes about innovation

Faculty leaders are sounding the alarm about what they call a highly restrictive employee agreement at Purdue University Global -- one that requires academics to potentially waive their rights to course materials they create.

It also prohibits ex-employees from hiring former Purdue colleagues for a year -- or from bad-mouthing Purdue once they’re gone.

The written agreement, critics say, allows the university to be the arbiter of who owns the rights to instructional materials. Such limitations are highly unusual for nonprofit higher education, but Purdue Global is unusual, the result of Purdue University's purchase last year of the for-profit Kaplan University. Many faculty members at Purdue and elsewhere have questioned the deal.

Market opportunities for your new venture are now immediately worldwide, thanks to the pervasive access to the Internet and social media communication. But this doesn’t mean that you can treat the world as one big homogeneous market, ignoring the vastly different geographic cultures, economic, and political realities. Scaling worldwide is like hyperlocal on steroids.

Image: https://blog.startupprofessionals.com

Sometimes it happens that a candidate who had the right credentials, seemed to fly through the interview process, and had lovely references turns out to be an unexpected problem after hiring. If it hasn’t happened to you yet, consider yourself lucky, because only 19% of new hires are considered fully successful, according to a frequently cited study, and by the 18-month point 46% are deemed failures.

American public life has become increasingly ideologically segregated as newspapers have given way to screens. But societies have experienced extremism and fragmentation without the assistance of Silicon Valley for centuries. And the polarization in the US began long ago, with the rise of 24-hour cable news. So just how responsible is the internet for today’s divisions? And are they really as bad as they seem?

Image: GRAPHIKA

In January, Sequoia’s Michael Moritz, wrote in the Financial Times that the venture community in Silicon Valley needed to wake up to the competition from Chinese technology companies. His warning may have come too late. But it should not have come as a surprise – for those paying close attention, as far back as 2013, President Xi Jinping was on record saying “Our technology still generally lags that of developed countries, and we must adopt an asymmetrical strategy of catching up and overtaking.” It appears as though he is now delivering on that promise.

Image: https://knowledge.insead.edu/

You have to give Rep. Lloyd Doggett (D-TX) credit for being consistent. He’s one of the most determined advocates for misapplying the Bayh-Dole Act so the government can license competitors when he feels that drugs arising from federally-supported R&D aren’t “reasonably priced.” Luckily, both Republican and Democratic Administrations rejected that wrongheaded idea. But rather than being discouraged, he’s taken that philosophy to a new level.

As a woman who runs a second-generation manufacturing and engineering company, I am a bit of an anomaly — a disruption to the normal pattern we tend to classify as “manufacturing.” One of my professional and personal goals is to change that notable distinction and, to that end, I talk with students, parents, educators, government officials, and colleagues to learn, brainstorm, and engage in efforts that will make a difference.

Image: Pamela Kan is president of Bishop-Wisecarver, Pittsburg, Calif., a developer of innovative motion solutions. 

Jason Nagy began investing in Enthusiast Gaming Inc. in 2016 after hearing its pitch to an angel-investor group. But he didn’t expect an opportunity for a return so soon. The Toronto-based digital media company, which is devoted to video-gaming and runs Canada’s largest gaming expo, plans to go public this year.

“That’s the golden egg – I got lucky on my first investment,” says the 49-year-old president of Wise Crescent Inc., a Guelph, Ont.-based builder of websites for small businesses. “I invested $10,000 … and have since put more money in it. My other three angel investments are coming along slowly.”

Image: Jason Nagy is president of Wise Crescent Inc., a Guelph, Ont.-based builder of websites for small businesses.

After leaving his hometown of Cincinnati for 15 years to work in the budding tech scene in Los Angeles, the growing startup community in Cincinnati coaxed Ryan Budke to leave West Coast tech behind.

“I was really really excited about the tech and entrepreneurial scene that was happening here in Cincinnati,” Budke said. “When I first came back the plan was to stick around for just a few months to see friends and family I hadn’t seen in a long time, but I stuck around longer and longer and started going to tech meetups.”

Every year, Americans flush 2.6 to 2.9 billion contact lenses down the drain, according to new research from Arizona State University. By tallying this detritus and studying how it persists in this environment, the study provides the first estimate of the potential burden of these tiny plastics, or microplastics.

The R&D 100 Awards Committee and R&D Magazine today announced the 2018 R&D 100 Award Finalists, marking the 56th annual R&D 100 Awards program which honors the 100 most innovative technologies of the past year. This year’s R&D 100 Awards will be presented at a black-tie ceremony on Nov. 16, 2018, at the Waldorf Astoria Orlando, in conjunction with the fourth annual R&D 100 Conference, Nov. 15-16, 2018. The R&D 100 Awards Finalists were selected by an independent panel of more than 50 judges representing R&D leaders in a variety of fields.  

Home is a sanctuary from work stress, right? Not always. Even if you are able to leave your projects and worries at the office, your spouse may have difficulty doing so — and that stress can rub off on you. How can you help your partner cope? What’s the best thing to say when your partner starts complaining — and what should you not say? Is there a way to help them see things differently? And how can you set boundaries so that home can be a haven again?

Generation Z will account for 32% of the earth's population in 2019, compared to millennials, at 31.5%, according to a Bloomberg analysis. Members of Gen Z, born after 2001, differ from their millennial predecessors: They've only ever known a digital world, and they grew up amid the “war on terror” and the global recession. Research also shows that Gen Z members anticipate being happier and more optimistic than millennials, who were born between 1980 and 2000. These differences are expected to make themselves felt as Gen Z starts to vote and make financial decisions.

If you have 30 minutes, click here to listen to an interview of me waxing on about how you can better brand yourself and your company. Includes some useful tips about how to use storytelling towards that end. No brand strategists died in the taping of this interview.

Image: http://www.ideachampions.com

In America’s heated debate over immigration, there’s plenty of divisive rhetoric punctuated by strong emotions and precious few facts. Immigrants have been characterized as criminals who take well-paying jobs from Americans and damage the economy. President Donald Trump was elected, in part, on his promises to build a border wall with Mexico, to ban Muslims from entering the country, and to narrow the path to citizenship. Since taking office, his administration has implemented policy changes that increase scrutiny of immigrants, including not extending work permits or protections for certain nationalities and tightening visas for high-skilled workers. While the measures have led to numerous lawsuits and more shouting matches among TV pundits, effective reform remains elusive. That’s because the debate often fails to focus more broadly on the whole economic picture, according to Wharton management professor Exequiel Hernandez.