Kristie Rogers, an assistant professor of management at Marquette University, has identified a free and abundant resource most leaders aren’t giving employees enough of: respect. She explains the two types of workplace respect, how to communicate them, and what happens when you don’t foster both. Rogers is the author of the article “Do Your Employees Feel Respected?” in the July–August 2018 issue of Harvard Business Review.

The most important factor in a successful funding round and a prosperous investor relationship is knowing who to present your pitch deck to and when. In this regard, I recently covered the pitch deck template that was created by Silicon Valley legend and VC, Peter Thiel (see it here), where the most critical slides are highlighted. Moreover, I also provided a commentary on a pitch deck from an Uber competitor that has raised over $400M (see it here)

The practice of “no-poach” agreements in the fast food industry is under scrutiny with a group of 11 Democratic state attorneys-general announcing last week that they are seeking information on them from eight fast food chains including Arby’s, Burger King, Dunkin’ Donuts, Wendy’s and Panera Bread. Franchisors have these agreements with their franchisees in order to prevent employees from leaving one franchise to join another within the same chain.

China is rising, the US is falling, and some developing nations in Africa are outperforming according to the 2018 edition of the Global Innovation Index (GII), a joint publication by Cornell University, INSEAD and the World Intellectual Property Organization. The index quantifies factors that promote innovation and uses detailed metrics for 126 countries encompassing 90.8% of the world’s population and 96.3% of world GDP. Global Finance uses similar metrics for The Innovators.

Architects of a new plan to accelerate Ohio’s economic growth point to work being done in the Youngstown area as an example of something that should be scaled up statewide.

The Ohio Chamber of Commerce Research Foundation today unveiled Ohio BOLD, what it calls “a blueprint for accelerating the innovation economy.”

The report, the nonprofit organization’s first large-scale research project, identifies innovation as the key to catching up Ohio’s economic growth to the national average.

One thing that comes with being a venture capitalist is you see hundreds and hundreds of businesses. You get to have interesting conversations with founders and review business plans and then see how these businesses evolve over the years. A firm like ours has almost 100 different investments across all the various partners so we get to see some businesses very intimately.

The annual Great Colleges to Work For survey, based on responses from more than 53,000 people at 253 institutions, was administered and compiled by ModernThink LLC for The Chronicle. All survey-related content in this issue, including college presidents’ statements about what makes their institution a great place to work, was provided by ModernThink, which drew institutional data from the colleges and the U.S. Department of Education. For more details on the winners, including average salaries and turnover rates, get copies of the full report here.

Over three decades, John Hitt spurred enormous growth at the University of Central Florida. Was he a visionary or lucky?

The case of China’s Longfor Properties proves that “When in Rome, do as the Romans do” is not a recipe for innovation.

Innovation is the number-one priority of today’s CEOs. They correctly perceive that the fast-turning treadmill of disruption topple organisations that stand still. The only sure-fire way to stay on top is to consistently introduce products and services that provide unique superior value and defy expectations.

Image: https://knowledge.insead.edu

No matter your level of experience, early-stage investments are considered high-risk gambles. Why not treat them as such?

The private equity (PE) model is well established. PE investors analyse hundreds of companies and opportunities in detail before buying a minority or majority stake in a good company, which they manage over a few years with the goal of achieving a profitable exit. Rarely do PE funds deal with write-offs, and PE-owned companies in distress are known to do better than their publicly listed peers.

Image: https://knowledge.insead.edu

Ask any businessman which is more important, their product or how it’s sold, and you’re likely to get a long explanation on why product takes the cake any day of the week. They are not wrong. You don’t have a business if there was nothing to sell.

But, as we enter an era of hypercompetition, how we sell has become at least as important, if not more important. than the product itself. There is barely any industry that isn’t exploding with products and/or services. From healthcare to IT to eateries, we are swamped with endless options. A simple search for SaaS companies in Crunchbase alone returns over 9,600 hits!

Good mentoring relationships can yield a variety of benefits for both mentor and protégé. But the art of mentoring can be difficult to master—and missteps can undermine the process for each participant.

Most of the advice about how to be a good mentor is common sense, but some of the mistakes mentors make aren’t as easy to know intuitively, says Jenn Labin, founder of T.E.R.P. Associates and author of Mentoring Programs That Work.

Venture capital funding continues to pour into healthcare startups, and the pace this year is already expected to top 2017's total figure of $15 billion, according to data from the MoneyTree report from PwC and CB insights.

During the second quarter of 2018, healthcare companies raised $5.3 billion in venture capital (VC) funding across 216 deals, on par with the $5.3 billion raised during the first quarter.

I remember the first time I felt old as a manager — more than 10 years ago now. It was at a lunch with my new team when I mentioned the first “45” I bought with my own money as a kid. One of my direct reports, who was 10 years younger than me, looked at me blank-faced and asked, “What is a 45?” She had never seen the single-song vinyl record format. We came from different worlds. On the same team, I had another direct report who was 30 years older than me. She was quick to answer my question about her first 45, but I had never heard of the song or the artist. Over the next couple of years I had what I perceived as serious “generational issues” on my team. I learned a few lessons about managing across the generational divide.

PHILADELPHIA--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Comcast NBCUniversal today announced the 10 startups selected for the inaugural Comcast NBCUniversal LIFT Labs Accelerator, powered by Techstars. These startups were chosen through a global application process targeting startups who are developing the next generation of media, entertainment, and connectivity companies. They will call Comcast NBCUniversal’s global headquarters in Philadelphia home for the duration of the 13-week program, which kicked off today and will culminate in a Demo Day on October 11.

You’ve heard the numbers: More than half of the world’s people now live in cities, and in just a few decades more than two thirds of the globe’s rapidly growing population will be urban. Because cities already suck up much of the planet’s resources and generate much of its waste, these trends threaten to make Earth miserable unless cities become more sustainable.

Oklahoma's innovation economy is a complex system with many moving parts. Our state's innovation engine is driven by motivated and coachable entrepreneurs with ideas and technologies that disrupt.

To be successful, Oklahoma's entrepreneurs need investment capital from angels, venture capitalists and banks. They need world-class research institutions to spin out and license intellectual property for them to turn into successful businesses.

In Seattle, there are around 1.6 million parking spaces–more than five for every household in the city. Des Moines, a much smaller city, also has roughly 1.6 million parking spaces, or 19.4 per household. The small town of Jackson, Wyoming, has 27.1 parking spots per household.

Image: https://www.fastcompany.com - Eric Scharnhorst/Parkingmill

A new study provides more good news for coffee lovers. Drinking coffee is associated with a lower risk of early death — virtually regardless of how much you drink and whether or not it’s caffeinated, concludes a paper published Monday in JAMA Internal Medicine.

Every new business dreams of becoming the premier brand in their space, like Starbucks is to coffee, and Apple is to consumer electronics, but they have no idea how difficult that is to achieve. In fact, only 100 of the 10,000 multimillion-dollar consumer companies around the world can claim to be an “apostle brand” – one that inspires enduring trust, loyalty, and endorsement.

Image: https://blog.startupprofessionals.com