CompTIA, the Computing Technology Industry Association, the world’s leading technology association, has named Arizona Tech Council President and CEO Steven Zylstra a recipient of the 2018 CompTIA Tech Champion award. Zylstra joins Colorado Senator Cory Gardner and Massachusetts Representative Seth Moulton in receiving this year’s honor. The CompTIA Tech Champion award is given out each year recognizing individuals who exemplify leadership in the technology sector, and who have championed policies that advance the country’s IT industry.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration last week gave its first green light to a company that wants to start selling a blood test to evaluate for mild traumatic brain injury, or concussion. The agency lauded the blood test as an innovative tool for speeding diagnosis and avoiding radiation exposure from brain scans. But some head trauma experts worry the authorization was pushed through too hastily.

Imagine St. Peter standing at the Gates of Heaven, assessing whether or not to admit those seeking entry. To some supplicants, he offers a look at hell, indicating that this is their final home. Imagine their delight when they see a place where everyone is partying. They happily tell St Peter that they’re just fine spending eternity there.

Instantly, St. Peter dispatches them to hell. To their dismay, they land in the midst of pitchforks and fire.

When I was told this story, the punchline was: “This is the difference between how a prospect and a customer are treated.” Hopefully it’s not the way any of you treat your customers…

College prepares you for your career, but the curriculum may not be enough to prepare you to work in the gig economy. While education is important, you’ll need more than your degree to succeed, says Laurie Pickard, author of Don’t Pay for Your MBA: The Faster, Cheaper, Better Way to Get the Business Education You Need.

“(It’s not) just having a degree or certification, but rather having skills that are relevant to the needs of the market,” she says. “People participating in the gig economy need to continually build, expand, and refresh their skills in order to stay competitive.”

The 2018 edition of the World's Most Innovative Companies spans more than 350 enterprises across 36 categories, from the world's most valuable firm and its continuing transformation of consumer electronics to a small outfit selling natural gum to preserve rainforests. We hope you're as inspired learning from these businesses as we were in selecting them.

The tech oligarchs who already dominate our culture and commerce, manipulate our moods, and shape the behaviors of our children while accumulating capital at a rate unprecedented in at least a century want to fashion our urban future in a way that dramatically extends the reach of the surveillance state already evident in airports and on our phones.

Redesigning cities has become all the rage in the tech world, with Google parent company Alphabet leading the race to build a new city of its own and companies like Y Combinator, Lyft, Cisco, and Panasonic all vying to design the so-called smart city.

Some of the most popular advice we've ever given on First Round Review concerns feedback. There's a reason why Kim Scott's piece on how to give 'Radical Candor' has been shared 150K+ times — and has since been turned into a bestselling business book. It's because people want to do exactly what its subtite describes: Be a Kick-Ass Boss Without Losing Your Humanity. For managers both new and experienced, this can feel like threading a needle — giving people the constructive feedback they need to grow in their careers without making them feel badly about where they've failed or come up short.

WASHINGTON, Feb. 20, 2018 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The U.S. Small Business Administration announced today it will launch an 18-state road tour connecting entrepreneurs with next generation Research & Development ideas to the largest source of early stage funding led by the SBA's Small Business Innovation Research and Small Business Technology Transfer programs.

"We are dedicated to supporting America's entrepreneurs wherever they are. American innovation is not restricted by geographic or cultural boundaries," SBA Administrator Linda McMahon said.  "This tour reflects our commitment to ensuring that these innovators are aware of the resources that can help them turn a big idea into another great American innovation story."

Johns Hopkins students have access to a new funding source designed to ignite innovative ideas that may one day develop into the next great company founded by a university student.

In March, FastForward U will disburse its first Spark Grants, awards of between $500 and $1,000 given to full-time undergraduate and graduate students intent on building a nonprofit organization, for-profit business or novel technology.

“Student feedback indicated that even small monetary awards can have a big impact in the creation of a new venture,” says Johns Hopkins Technology Ventures Director of Student Ventures Darius Graham. “These Spark Grants will enable our student innovators to test or validate an idea, build a prototype or launch a pilot project.”

Image: https://ventures.jhu.edu

Entrepreneurship is an impressive word, a word filled with optimism and the prospect of joy and riches. Millennials and veteran careerists view the world of entrepreneurship with strong enthusiasm, hope and energy. It’s their path to freedom and success.

You know how it works. Just dream up an idea, package your product, sell it to your target customers and then wait beside the ATM for the torrent of cash to land in your corporate account.

It’s great to start with a big dream as you contemplate a new business, but finding the money you need takes more than dreaming. As an advisor to young entrepreneurs, I find that many are a bit naïve about how the investment process really works. For example, I just read an otherwise impressive business plan last week from a first-timer who asked for $10 million to get started.

Kenneth Frazier, the CEO of the pharmaceutical company known as MSD outside of North America, discusses his upbringing and how it influences his leadership as chief executive. He is one of the few African-American CEOs in the Fortune 500, and shot to prominence after resigning from a council advising the Trump White House. Frazier discusses the importance of values in leadership and how Merck thinks about R&D and drug prices.

When I tell people that I study workaholism for a living, I’m usually bombarded by suggestions of subjects I could do a case study on. It seems that everyone can think of at least one person in their lives that they’d label a workaholic–or, perhaps, they identify as a workaholic themselves.

The definition of workaholism has expanded over the years to include motivational, cognitive, emotional, and behavioral components–but understanding why you’re overworking can help you unlock ways to deal with it.

The term ‘innovation’ gets thrown around constantly in modern day business; meaning different things to different people. However, in recent years, the term ‘Open Innovation’ has become more apparent; especially in the world of product development.

Developed by Henry Chesbrough in the early 2000s, the concept highlights the worth of using outside sources of innovation to improve one’s own product or service; a theory that many 21st century businesses are now exploring.

Image: https://businessnewswales.com

Rachel K. King, Co-Founder and CEO, GlycoMimetics, Inc. (GMI), joins Rich Bendis for the latest episode of BioTalk. They cover topics from her background in the industry to running a publicly traded company in the BioHealth Capital Region. Before founding GMI, she was an Executive in Residence at New Enterprise Associates (NEA), one of the nation’s leading venture capital firms.  Mrs. King came to NEA after serving as a Senior Vice President of Novartis Corporation. She also served as Chairman of International BIO.

Image: http://www.biohealthinnovation.org

A lot of great things happened this Valentine's Day - countless couples celebrated their love with chocolate, roses, and dates. However, there was one thing that stood out to me: Under Amour CEO Kevin Plank posted his first LinkedIn article. 

He told the story of how his company began three decades ago thanks to a service selling roses on Valentine's Day. While that business went under, he gained invaluable lessons and used those profits to start Under Armor. Want to know how his resolve stayed strong even during the toughest of times?

Congress recently enacted the most significant overhaul to the U.S. Internal Revenue Code (the Code) in decades. The legislation, commonly known as the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (the Act), includes a number of changes to the Code that apply to corporate and pass-through businesses. This Q&A summarizes the key tax and employee benefits changes in the Act that impact domestic emerging growth enterprises and start-ups. For additional information on the Act, see our prior alerts: Congress Passes Tax Cuts and Jobs Act and U.S. House and Senate Pass Reconciled Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.

The big headline out of the health care M&A world today is Swiss pharmaceutical giant Roche’s $1.9 billion acquisition of Flatiron Health, the Alphabet-backed, cancer-focused digital health analytics upstart that’s attempting to use real world patient information and big data to spur better oncology R&D.

Flatiron’s cancer-centric electronic health records platform is linked to some 250 community oncology practices; it has a partnership with the National Cancer Institute (NCI), a part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), to improve clinical trials by gathering data at the point of care.

Image: http://fortune.com

ATP Private Equity Partners (ATP PEP), the private equity unit of Denmark’s giant statutory pension fund ATP, is to close its New York office and stop investing in venture capital as part of an investment strategy overhaul.

The shift is mainly a result of the DKK767bn (€103bn) pension fund’s changing priorities under chief executive Christian Hyldahl, who took the helm a year ago.

Hyldahl has increased ATP’s focus on transparency, with responsible ownership and tax issues being brought to the fore in the last few months.

There is an old saying that good lawyers run away from risk, while good businessmen run towards risk. Entrepreneurs see “no risk” as meaning “no reward.” In reality, all risks are not the same. Many risks can be managed or calculated to improve growth or provide a competitive edge, while others, like skipping quality checks to save money, are recipes for failure.