The question you need to be asking yourself in the beginning is: “Are you a startup or a small business?”. Is your business there to support your lifestyle as a business owner? Or do you have grand plans to become number one in your sector, or even transform a whole industry, with an international customer base?

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Most entrepreneurs spend far too much time thinking negatively about competitors, and can’t resist making derogatory statements to their own team, to investors, and even to customers. This approach only makes these important constituents question your integrity, intelligence, and your understanding of business basics. Pointing out flaws in others does not give you strength.

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Since 2013, Chinese machines have occupied the number one slot in rankings of the world’s most powerful supercomputers. Now America is back on top again. Engineers at the US Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Lab in Tennessee have just unveiled Summit, a supercomputer with enough processing power to surpass the current record holder, China’s Sunway TaihuLight.

The new machine is capable, at peak performance, of 200 petaflops—200 million billion calculations a second. To put that in context, everyone on earth would have to do a calculation every second of every day for 305 days to crunch what the new machine can do in the blink of an eye. Summit is 60 percent faster than the TaihuLight and almost eight times as fast as a machine called Titan, which is also housed at Oak Ridge and held the US supercomputing speed record until Summit’s arrival.

Image: Server racks in the Summit supercomputer. OAK RIDGE NATIONAL LABORATORY

There are many problems with the way most meetings are run. One of the most political is the invite list. Deciding who to include can be tough but too many managers default to including everyone. In an effort to not make anyone feel left out, they unknowingly decrease the quality of the meeting. Robert Sutton, a professor of organizational behavior at Stanford University, looked at the research on group size and concluded that the most productive meetings contain only five to eight people. Why? There is a tipping point beyond which the quality of the conversation begins to erode.

I’ll be the first to admit that I’m a goal junkie. I love setting goals. I love achieving goals. I love crossing things off my to-do list and feeling like I’m getting somewhere. And I am a total sucker for anything that feels like a clean slate to start all over again, whether that be a new year, a new season, a new month, a new week or even a new day.

Luxembourg appears to be emerging as a top research and innovation centre in Europe, scoring among the top six leaders and boasting the most attractive research system.

According to the European Innovation Scoreboard (EIS), published on 22 June Luxembourg rose from being classed as a “strong innovator” in 2017 to an “innovation leader”, performing 20% or more above the EU average. Also in the leader group was Denmark, Finland, the Netherlands, Sweden and UK. Germany did the opposite, sliding from an “innovatin leader” to a “strong innovator” where it joined Austria, Belgium, France, Ireland and Slovenia, a group which performed above or close to the EU average.

Image: Luxembourg rose from being classed as a “strong innovator” in 2017 to an “innovation leader” in the European Innovation Scoreboard Photo: Pexels

In a lab in Philadelphia, scientists are studying what it takes to kill “super coral” to understand the impact of human activities on the mysterious reefs of the deep ocean.

By JoAnna Klein June 25, 2018 In a cold room at Temple University, in landlocked Philadelphia, finger-sized fragments of coral bathe in four small tanks of seawater. The white skeletons look dead or bleached — but they’re not. Healthy animals reside within these hard bodies. Some wave their tentacles from holes in the gnarled stems, like flowers at a mermaid’s wedding.

Image: https://www.nytimes.com - From Video

Through the Internet today, it’s easy to find and compare the technical specifications for every solution in the world that claims to solve your problem, and there will be many. Most often the differentiators go beyond the product, into the ease of ordering, delivery, customer reviews, and finding your options. Your overall customer experience will trump product features every time.

For example, Zappos has been winning customers for years with their ease of product selection, shipping speeds, and personalized customer service. People post reviews talking about their delightful experiences, more than the perfect product. Zappos is recognized as a winner in the design of the whole customer experience, more so than the design of their shoes and clothing.

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How often are management concepts subjected to recalls by the people who invented them? It is hard to think of a single case.

If an industrial product like a car fails the manufacturer pulls it back, tests it and, if necessary, re-equips it. In case manufacturers grow careless, governments run periodic road safety tests. Management concepts, by contrast, operate in poorly regulated environments where failures are often brushed under boardroom or faculty carpets. Yet poor management systems can jeopardize lives in the air, at sea, on roads or in hospitals. They can also put entire businesses and sectors at risk.

If you care about female leadership in business, recent research from a review set up by the UK government may leave you stunned. Researchers probing the relative dearth of women in high echelons of the UK’s largest companies shared some of the reasons FTSE 350 board chairs and CEOs offered for not putting more women on their boards. “Most women don’t want the hassle or pressure of sitting on a board,” was one rationale. Or how about, “We have one woman already on the board”?

Chances are your job description has changed over the past five years. Or maybe your role didn’t even exist a short time ago. The workplace of today and the future looks quite different due to technology, the economy, the environment, and politics, according to the Institute for the Future (IFTF), a not-for-profit think tank that helps organizations plan for the future.

John Donahoe of ServiceNow and Jeff Weiner of LinkedIn speak about how businesses can play a role in improving work for people in the age of automation and artificial intelligence.

How can CEOs stay ahead of the curve in training and developing their workforces for using automation and artificial intelligence (AI)? Since companies are doing the hiring and creating the jobs, what role do they play in talent and development? How should companies think about hiring as work changes?

Achieving success as a business owner takes a competitive spirit and an open mind. You need to be nimble in your attempts to attract customers, and flexible enough to change with the demands of the market.

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The Commission's 2018 European Innovation Scoreboard published today shows that the EU's innovation performance continues to improve, but further efforts are needed to ensure Europe's global competitiveness.

Every year, the Commission publishes a comparative assessment of the innovation performance of Member States and benchmarks it with international competitors. The data helps Member States, and the EU as a whole, assess in which areas efforts need to be focused.

Silicon Valley’s tech workers can go to great lengths to appear youthful—from having plastic surgery and hair transplants, to lurking in the parking lots of hip tech companies to see how the young and promising dress, as chronicled a few years ago by the New Republic.

While this may seem extreme, there is clearly a bias among many in the tech sector toward the young. Take Mark Zuckerberg’s statement that “young people are just smarter,” or the $100,000 fellowships that Paypal cofounder Peter Thiel hands out each year to bright entrepreneurs—provided that they are under 23.

First, congratulations. You’ve received an offer! Now, the more difficult news: The job search process isn’t quite over yet. It’s time to think over the offer, compare it with your other options, and most importantly: negotiate.

If you’ve just received a job offer, especially if it was over email, crafting a quick message is a way to strike while the iron is hot for a salary negotiation. To get the inside scoop on getting top dollar through an email negotiation, we reached out to Lewis C. Lin, CEO of Impact Interview, an executive coaching practice that provides interview coaching for job seekers.

SALT LAKE CITY — Back in 2005, then-Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. said a new program to leverage Utah's homegrown scientific innovation into a powerful economic catalyst would make the state a "haven" for forward-thinking researchers and create a system of returns that would expand with each year.

With annual budgets of $20 million to $30 million, the new agency would recruit "rock star" academics and place them at the state's top two research institutions, Utah State University and University of Utah, and provide funding to fast-track research with commercial potential. It would also create a system of grants to help accelerate entrepreneurial pursuits with science innovation at their core — an area, because of its long development arcs, routinely shunned by private capital markets.

Technical entrepreneurs love their technology, and often are driven to launch a startup on the assumption that everyone will buy any solution which highlights this technology. Instead, they need to validate a customer problem and real market need first. Don’t create solutions looking for a problem, since investors ignore these, and customers other than early adopters will be hard to find.

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Venture capital-backed companies based out of California are usually recognizable. But what can get lost in the mix are the companies based throughout the rest of the country.

VC research firm Pitchbook compiled every state's most valuable VC-backed startup into an interactive graphic.

We assembled all 50 startups, including that of Washington D.C. and Puerto Rico.

Image: https://www.ctpost.com

In many homes, mornings are chaotic. There is hustle and bustle as members of the household arise, gather their tools and equipment, and steel their minds for the day ahead.

Many entrepreneurs are like other adults in the hours before their day officially begins. They rise, get dressed, maybe read the paper, glance at their emails, look at their schedule, eat some breakfast or enjoy a cup of coffee, and then they head out to start their day.