Earlier in my academic career, I used to advise students to focus on science and engineering, believing that they were a prerequisite for success in business. I had largely agreed with Bill Gates’s assertions that America needed to spend its limited education budgets on these disciplines, because they produced the most jobs, rather than the liberal arts and humanities.

Every major brand carefully builds and protects its reputation. The most recognised brands are worth billions of dollars and companies spare no effort creating and maintaining desirable brands and stellar reputations. While brand and reputation are often confused, Richard Ettenson and Jonathan Knowles argue that they’re distinct concepts: “Brand is about relevancy and differentiation (with respect to the customer), and reputation is about legitimacy (of the organisation with respect to a wide range of stakeholder groups).” That being said, it is hard to dispute conventional wisdom that a great brand helps create a positive reputation and vice versa.

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

You know already about the promise for CRISPR-Cas9 — it might revolutionize fields from medicine to agriculture.

It might also eventually cause tumors.

That’s the takeaway from two new studies, published Monday in Nature Medicine. Both studies, one by Novartis and the other by the Karolinska Institute, focus on the gene p53, known to play a major role in tumor prevention by killing cells with damaged DNA. According to past research, most human tumors simply can’t form if p53 is working properly — some researchers refer to it as the “guardian of the genome.”

Net neutrality laws — or the set of regulations that required internet providers to treat all websites equally — were officially repealed today.  

The rules were originally enacted by the FCC under the Obama administration in 2015, but in December, the FCC voted to repeal the measures. That vote officially goes into effect today.

So what does it all mean, and how will it affect consumers? Here's a breakdown of everything you need to know about the rules, and how they could change the internet as you know it.

Whether it’s looking back at the tremendous advances that have been made in combatting disease, or examining the breakthrough ideas and solutions in development today, conversations about technology’s role in health care tend to be optimistic — and rightly so. We’ve seen a surplus of encouraging examples, from gene therapy tools that could transform our ability to treat and prevent a range of lethal conditions, to predictive models with the potential to improve palliative care.

Is it innovation or continuous improvement or is it innovation? Is it regular innovation or disruptive innovation? Is it new enough or too new? These questions are worse than meaningless as they suck emotional energy from the organization and divert emotional energy from the business objective.

With every initiative, there are risks, rewards, and resources. Risk generally tracks with newness, reward usually tracks with incremental customer goodness and resources are governed by the work. Risk is about the probability of tackling the newness, reward is about the size of the prize and resources are about how the work is done.

Image: http://innovationexcellence.com

On a sunny afternoon in early June, I ask a few Silicon Valley tech workers in downtown Palo Alto what they picture when they think of Nebraska.

“Corn,” says a 26 year-old Python coder in an a16z t-shirt. “Just corn everywhere.”

“Tractors… farms… cows,” offers his friend. “And yeah, um, corn.”

In the San Francisco Bay Area — the global mecca for technology, innovation, and venture capital money — the Midwest doesn’t seem to get much love on the streets. After all, this is where the computer chip was born.

Image: https://thehustle.co

I’m sitting in the passenger seat of a white Tesla Model S, cruising around downtown Detroit at rush hour. We need to find a parking spot, but rather than look out the window for one, we’re letting the car conduct its own search.

As we drive along, a screen in the car scrolls through a real-time map of all the available curbside parking near us, revealing the length and width of each vacant parking spot. We sidle up to an opening on the street that measures a couple dozen feet wide and nearly six feet deep, more than adequate for the Tesla.

"LIAA in cooperation with MITA will be participating in various activities to promote innovations and technology transfer by providing the information and competence support to businesses and scientists in both countries. In the future, this may help to popularize Latvian and Lithuanian innovations internationally and result in international technology transfer projects," said LIAA Director Andris Ozols.

Image: http://www.baltic-course.com

Aspiring entrepreneurs who rely only on traditional learning vehicles (teachers, classrooms, and risk-free practice) are doomed to failure in anticipating change today. Either they are never really ready to commit, study an opportunity until it has passed, or fail with tools and techniques from a bygone business era. The Internet and the current information wave have changed everything.

Last month, we celebrated the two-year anniversary of Regulation Crowdfunding. In its first year, 335 companies raised more than $40 million in capital, averaging $282,000 from 312 investors per campaign. This year the regulation has continued to gain momentum. As of May 31, 2018, there have been 927 offerings across 66 industries and 45 states that have raised a combined total of $114.7M.

Is artificial intelligence (AI) the panacea to cure healthcare’s biggest challenges? Will new AI applications and advanced analytics tools provide clinicians with the point-of-care information they need to optimize patient outcomes?

If you are a clinician or a healthcare CEO, you might very well believe that AI technologies are on track to transform healthcare. After all, who hasn’t read the headlines about ground-breaking solutions that are automatically analyzing volumes of clinical data and offering precise diagnoses and personalized therapies that drive more effective and efficient patient care?

Entrepreneurs make an astounding number of decisions daily. They are faced with choosing which opportunities to move on and must solve problems big and small.

By setting up a framework of questions to ask yourself daily, you’ll give yourself some markers to help guide you through these difficult situations. Knowing where you stand on these questions will empower you to make good choices that ultimately lead you to your desired outcome. It will give you a deeper understanding of your motivations and your feelings about your business, and can help you clarify future plans.

To all women who have raised kids, if you are new to entrepreneurship, switching career gears or possibly jumping back into the work force after having kids you are in the right place. As a mother myself of three older step-children and a 5-year-old, I'm here to say, you couldn't be any better prepared for being an entrepreneur than being a mom and raising children.

I run into aspiring entrepreneurs all the time, and when we start discussing the hurdles they face, the same barriers consistently come up. They say that they’re afraid they’re too young, too old, don’t have enough time, don’t have enough money, don’t know where to start, etc. The list goes on and on, mostly because you can always find just about any reason not to do something.

With a growing number of Earth-like exoplanets discovered in recent years, it is becoming increasingly frustrating that we can't visit them. After all, our knowledge of the planets in our own solar system would be pretty limited if it weren't for the space probes we'd sent to explore them.

The problem is that even the nearest stars are a very long way away, and enormous engineering efforts will be required to reach them on timescales that are relevant to us. But with research in areas such as nuclear fusion and nanotechnology advancing rapidly, we may not be as far away from constructing small, fast interstellar space probes as we think.

Image: n the 1960's U.S. Government laboratories, under Project Orion, investigated a pulsed nuclear fission propulsion system. - NASA

You can see the gig economy everywhere but in the statistics.

For years, economists, pundits and policymakers have grappled with the rise of Uber, the growth of temporary work and the fissuring of the relationship between companies and their workers. Optimists cheered the flexibility offered by the freelance life. Pessimists fretted about the disappearance of traditional jobs, with the benefits and legal protections they provided.

Image: Danelle Freitas, right, started a photography business in Las Vegas last year, finding customers in part through an online hiring service. Roughly 10 percent of American workers in 2017 were employed in what the government calls “alternative work arrangements,” outside a traditional employment relationship. - Credit - Roger Kisby for The New York Times

Lockheed Martin (LMT) on Wednesday said it has added another $100 million to its venture capital fund, doubling the firepower of Lockheed Martin Ventures for investments in early-stage companies that are developing advanced technologies. Lockheed Martin said its…

A new study, Investment, Innovation and Job Creation in a Growing US Bioscience Industry 2018, released on June 5, 2018 at the Biotechnology Innovation Organization (BIO) International Convention shows that the United States bioscience industry has reached $2 trillion in annual economic impact while maintaining accelerated venture capital investment and job growth numbers. The report, by BIO and TEConomy Partners, a research and analysis firm, shows that the bioscience industry has held a leading position among US technology sectors as an economic driver and job generator.

Venture capitalist Zaw Thet admits it himself -- pitching is no fun! But, it’s a make-or-break necessity for most startups. What does Thet, partner at Signia Venture Partners, look for in a pitch? He wants to see a founding team that can tell a compelling story of why they deserve an investment and why now.  On the flip side, a quick way to no is to come into a pitch full of hubris and shadiness – a lack of transparency is a big turnoff. Thet also talks about his motivation behind the transition from entrepreneur to investor and how he hopes to change the world through both capitalism and philanthropy.