One of the more striking trends across the developed world in recent decades is the demographic transition.  As economies develop, and women in particular enter the workforce, people have fewer children.  It's resulted in a situation in many western nations where the birth rate is insufficient to sustain the population.

Monitoring changes in demographics can provide some interesting insights into the overall health of a society.  A recent study by the University of Notre Dame, for instance, suggests that there is a clear link between fertility rates and economic health.  It found that people seemed to stop conceiving babies months before economies officially tipped into recession.

 en·tre·pre·neur

ˌäntrəprəˈnər/

 noun: entrepreneur; plural noun: entrepreneurs

• A person who organizes and operates a business or businesses, taking on greater than normal financial risks in order to do so.

I consider myself an “accidental” entrepreneur. Early in my career, a risky job move ended badly and it had a profound effect on me. The powerlessness I felt in that situation forever changed me. My heart told me I could never be an “employee” again. And I listened.

Gov. Charlie Baker on Friday filed a $610 million economic development bill.

The bill includes a potpourri of initiatives meant to encourage local economic development projects, help coastal communities, and incentiveize business hiring. The bill would also create a permanent sales tax holiday in Massachusetts.

Image: http://www.masslive.com

Career advice is easy to find. Good career advice, less so. But the most impactful takeaways might come from successful professionals who have waded through the trenches.

We’ve asked eight women executive and entrepreneurs across several industries to share the most meaningful book that’s shaped their lives—professionally and personally. From little-known finds to best sellers, they explain why these page-turners are worth a read.

Of all the places you might expect to find Boston Public Schools students during February vacation, a tech company in Fort Point probably would not make the list. But that is exactly where students from the Dearborn, Burke, Excel, and O’Bryant High Schools spent their break.

Through an innovative collaboration between Mayor Walsh’s Office, Boston Public Schools, and Red Hat, 20 students trained in open source methodologies through Red Hat’s CO.LAB program.

Image: John Barros is chief of economic development for the city of Boston. - https://www.bizjournals.com

Hi, pals. I’m Kevin. I’m a columnist here at The Times, and I’ll be filling in for Farhad and Mike on this newsletter while they’re both “out on book leave.” (Read: tweeting and playing Fortnite in their PJs.) Mostly, I write about Silicon Valley and how technology interacts with the larger worlds of business and culture. Today, though, I want to talk about the Midwest.

Image: Many of the venture capitalists on a recent bus tour of the Midwest became enamored of the area. Andrew Spear for The New York Times

I remember when my college installed some “temporary” portable classrooms while they finished a new building. They looked like beige containers with tiny windows, which felt like fridges in winter and saunas in summer. And they kept them for years after the building was finished. That’s why, when I look at the beautiful Bard University’s Media Lab, my heart gently weeps.

Designed by MB Architecture–an architectural firm based in New York–the 960-square-foot media lab is made up of four recycled shipping containers. It follows the overall design as the company’s Container Studio and Insta House. 

Image: Photo: Matthew Carbone/courtesy MB Architecture - https://www.fastcodesign.com

The TV series Planet Earth and Planet Earth II have provided us with some of the most jaw-dropping nature footage ever captured.

For BBC America's Planet Earth: Blue Planet II series, which is now available on DVD and will soon be streaming on Netflix, the folks at Alucia Productions powered by OceanX, working with cutting edge submersible technology, were able to survey ocean waters that have never been explored before. 

They took submersibles down to an area about 1,000 meters, or 3,280 feet, below Antarctica's sea ice, in the Southern Ocean. 

What they found was an ocean floor teeming with life, rivaling the biological diversity of tropical coral reefs. 

The first programmers weren't men, and the first computers weren't machines. What they were, in both cases, were women.

Women's many contributions to technology are frequently left out of the history books. But lately, that's been changing — at least a little.

Ada Lovelace, considered the first computer programmer and a visionary for what programming and computers could eventually become, has a technology award named after her, and a holiday devoted to celebrating her legacy.

Image: MASHABLE/BOB AL-GREENE

China today is no longer just copying Western technology, but piecing together its own innovation system. With its expanding economy and a stronger role by government, the new technology strategy is raising competitive issues for Silicon Valley companies — and policy issues for the nation.

Innovation can be transformative, which is often science-based and creates new industries or disrupts old ones, or incremental, which improves existing products or services. Both create value.

Image: Sean Randolph is senior director of the Bay Area Council’s Economic Institute. - https://www.bizjournals.com

Back in the 1980s, Kristan J. Wheaton, a professor at Mercyhurst University, ran his own company designing games and later created simulations for the military. Once he got to Mercyhurst, he wanted to start designing and publishing his own games, including games that teach various intelligence concepts.

To fund his projects, he turned to Kickstarter, but he noticed not all crowdfunding creators knew what they were doing.

We all know the stats. Only 2% of venture funding went to female founders in 2017, and just 8% of partners at the top venture capital firms are women. In honor of International Women’s Day, venture firm Alpha Edison wrote a Medium post about “doing something about these statistics through action.”

The post urges male and female investors to take meetings with eight women outside of their networks in the month of March. So far, 29 firms, including Canaan Partners, 8VC, and Flybridge Capital Partners, have signed the pledge to do so. People have also started using the hashtag #StartWithEight to highlight female founders and investors in the industry.

Image: http://fortune.com

An analysis by GlobalData, a leading data and analytics company of the investment activity of the top 10 global venture capital (VC) companies in 2017, reveals that collectively they are investing more money on fewer deals when compared to the average numbers for 2013-2016.

Image: https://www.globaldata.com

There are two types of people in this world. Those who live at inbox zero, who frantically read, remove, and reply to emails the very instant they arrive. 

And, then there's the rest of us: Those who live with thousands of unopened emails without a care in the world. I am one such individual—a millennial who checks my personal email once or twice a week, and my work email as few times as I can get away with. 

I'm standing on a beach in Australia, toes digging into the sand, zipping up my wet suit before I dive down to the Great Barrier Reef. As I stare out at the ocean, I'm excited by memories of my previous dive at this site a decade earlier. Growing up in Ohio, I had spent my childhood reading A Day in the Life of a Marine Biologist when I wasn't glued to the Discovery Channel. I got certified for scuba diving in one of Ohio's murky limestone quarries and made it to the Great Barrier Reef a year later. I'm remembering the anticipation squeezing my chest the day of that dive. My friend Emily, now an expert in marine algae, and I took bets on how long we could make our air last, which turned out to be about two magical hours. We were mesmerized by a forest of vibrant corals teaming with cuttlefish, giant purple clams and graceful sea turtles.

No matter what size startup you’re running or working for now, this type of scenario is right around the corner: You want to set up a booth at a trade show with a prototype of your product. You’ve put it all together when you receive a ping from your finance person: “You’ve exceeded your allotted marketing budget for the quarter.” Next, you hear from legal: “Are you planning to have everyone who interacts with the demo sign an NDA?” Before you know it, every move you want to make feels like this — bogged down.

Image: http://firstround.com

When it comes to networks, the bigger the better, right? Not necessarily. Carefully curate your most trusted, inner circle and you’ll be surprised at how much more valuable you’ll become to the larger community of people in the world who care about the same things you do.

We live in a time when “bigger is better” is the prevailing assumption when it comes to, well, just about anything. So it’s only natural for us to want to supersize our network of connections — both online and off — because the more people we know, the greater our chances of being exposed to opportunities that may lead to professional advancement, potential mentors, material success, and so on.

From flexible hours to being able to work from anywhere, it's no wonder people are opting to join the gig economy. There are more than 57 million freelancers in the U.S., contributing nearly $1.4 trillion to the economy every year. While the U.S. workforce continues to see growth, with an average of 2.6 percent each year, the country's freelancing growth rate is rapidly exceeding it, averaging 8.1 percent growth every year.

Upfront Ventures has a deep-seated commitment to equality in funding & building diverse teams across all ethnicities, nationalities and genders. We do this not just because it’s the right thing to do but also we believe it will help drive large and differentiated returns.

Image: https://bothsidesofthetable.com

What we know—and what everyone needs to know—about the quest for equality.

In 2007, when women held 11 percent of seats on the executive committees of Europe’s leading companies, McKinsey published its first Women Matter report. It not only argued for greater gender diversity in corporate management but also suggested how to achieve that goal.