Employees in Belgium will soon have the right to choose a 4-day workweek! Employees who opt in will be required to work 38 hours per week, spread out over 4 days, instead of 5. Employees will also legally have the right to ignore any work-related messages while off the clock, without fear of reprisal from their employers. This kind of schedule flexibility is a huge step towards accommodating employees at different life stages. Bravo Belgium! 👏

Harshul Sanghi, head of the $1.3 billion venture capital division at American Express, likes to think that he has built something alongside the 89 companies he has backed, and that he has been able to nudge a 64,000-person financial services behemoth to move a bit faster than it typically would.

Not so long ago, training to meet the press and television reporters was a realm reserved for top business executives only. Now, even the earliest stage startup can rise to visibility or be forever lost by their first media spotlight, so it behooves us all to know the rules early. Most entrepreneurs I know admit to a poor first media interaction, and many are still waiting for the instant replay.

Image: https://blog.startupprofessionals.com

New Delhi, Feb 26 (IANS): The cyberwar between Russia and Ukraine has intensified, with Russia using a new destructive malware to permanently destroy data on systems belonging to Ukrainian organisations.

Russia's invasion of Ukraine has led to hacking groups increasing their activities globally. While Russia-backed hackers have already hit several Ukrainian government websites and banks, a leading hacking group, Anonymous, has declared itself aligned with "Western allies", targeting operations in Russia.

Bangalore, India’s third largest city, last year beat out Shanghai in venture capital funding for the first time.

The city has long been regarded as India’s Silicon Valley and the hub for many of the country’s big tech firms. But the surge in investment — a 162% year-on-year growth in new capital, according to Crunchbase — signaled a broader shift among investors, who are diverting attention from more typical innovation and talent hotspots.

It’s time for more entrepreneurs to reset their focus, and shift their thinking to completely different ways of doing things. Everyone talks about innovation, but the majority of business plans I see still reflect linear thinking – one more social network with improved usability, one more wind-farm energy generator with a few more blades, or one more dating site with a new dimension of compatibility. Serious changes and great successes don’t come from linear thinking.

Image: https://blog.startupprofessionals.com

During the past decade, ByteDance has proven itself time and again to be a spectacularly innovative and successful company. This has been true not only for TikTok but many of its other apps, which have vast numbers of users. The company’s secret? It uses a shared-service platform, or SSP, to power innovation. In this article, the authors explain the many ways in which ByteDance has used its SSP to fuel development and growth.

The Department of Defense, other U.S. government agencies and a bipartisan consensus in Congress realize that China is strategically leveraging diplomacy, information and intelligence, its military might and economic strength, and all other instruments of its national power to redefine the future world order.

Image: https://techcrunch.com

Cloud is a technology that has risen exponentially in recent years – and which has been buoyed by the switch to remote working and increased need for off-site storage and support during the pandemic. However, with increased adoption, executive leaders are wanting cloud computing adoption to proceed at a faster pace than their organisations can staff internally.

Lexus doesn’t want to be left out of the Battery Electric Vehicle race, so it has followed up its “Lexus Electrified” initiative with details of their BEV supercar simply known as the BEV Sport Concept. Looking like the lovechild of the Lexus LFA and the Toyota Supra, the BEV Sport Concept is both highly aerodynamic and stylishly aggressive. The low-slung car provides on-rails-like handling, crazy-fast acceleration, and excellent efficiency. 0-60 comes in just above the 2-second mark, and it should get 430 miles of all-electric range on a single charge of its solid state battery packs. There’s no confirmation that the BEV Sport Concept will make production, but we should expect some form of this vehicle (and definitely its cutting-edge tech) by the year 2025.

Image: https://coolmaterial.com

Electrification is in full swing, and even diehard petrolheads begin to take notes. Cummins, one of the most important diesel engine makers, is already making strides in decarbonizing its engines. After experimenting with hydrogen, Cummins goes all-in into electric powertrains with the acquisition of Meritor, a leading producer of electric powertrain solutions for commercial vehicle and industrial markets.

Image: https://www.autoevolution.com

With the worst fears coming true after Russia attacked Ukraine, the ripples of the same are being felt across the financial markets the world over. The ensuing geopolitical tensions are taking a toll on the cryptocurrency market with Bitcoin entering a phase of free fall. The same applies to the equities market as well even though gold prices have seen a steady increase in its price. Besides, oil, base metals, and agriculture commodities too have seen an increase in their price. The US dollar and the Japanese Yen too have been going northwards and have seen their stature grow as currency market safe havens.

The internet was never meant to be static. Its inventors always envisioned various stages of evolution for this interconnected global network that has become integral to our daily lives. Web 3.0 promises to usher in another era that far exceeds anything we’ve seen to date. 

The internet became popular in the late 1990s, and what we call Web 1.0 pushed information and access we never had before. It essentially replaced encyclopedias, phonebooks and other references. Right from the beginning, people clamored for easier ways to create and share content. With Web 2.0 the internet became much more interactive with wikis, video, podcasting, personal publishing and social media, but it was still, in essence, two dimensional. Now, we’re at the forefront of Web 3.0.

The time for climate change debate is long over. After much discussion at the COP26 UN Climate Change Conference, the message is clear: It is time to get real about climate change and work collectively to transform the way we live.

Cities are a major contributor to climate change. More than 70% of the global population lives in cities and urban areas, and rising urban populations are intensifying carbon dioxide-emitting activities. As a direct result of climate change, we are witnessing more climate extremes as communities around the world face deadly heatwaves, intense rainfall and flooding.

What’s Nike’s symbol? What’s its slogan?

Unless you’ve been cryogenically frozen for the past 50 years, you can probably answer both of these questions without thinking. Nike is one of the most well-recognized brands on earth — it even earned a place in the Smithsonian Institution for its outsized influence on American culture. 

Any entrepreneur or creative person can relate to the challenges or resistance that may surface around delegating tasks or asking for help. Essentially, this stems from having to shift from a mindset of I can do it all to I need a team for this or even I get to have support for this! This will likely become especially evident if scaling your business is something you desire. You’ll start to notice places where, frankly, what you’re doing is "no longer your job".

On 6 August 2021, the United States Securities Exchange Commission (SEC) approved rules, collectively dubbed Nasdaq’s Board Diversity Rule, relating to the demographics of boards of directors of Nasdaq-listed companies. In the few months since, commentary has focused on the supposed need to grow the pool of qualified directors from diverse backgrounds, the belief that these directors will need special training in public company board norms and the logistics of allocating board seats to new directors.

Over the last two years, many venture firms pledged to increase the diversity of their investment staff and the companies they back. It’s been difficult for venture capitalists, startup founders and others to determine the effectiveness of these efforts, but findings from The Information’s latest VC Diversity Index hold some answers.

Our survey of more than 100 firms and nearly 1,000 investment professionals reveals that the VC industry has improved its diversity in many ways in the three or so years since we last compiled this index: The number of Black partners who make investment decisions and lead deals at the top U.S. VC firms rose to more than two dozen from seven. Women make up about 22% of check writers, up from 15%. And at 21 firms, at least 40% of investment partners are Asian.

Keith Ferrazzi, founder of the consulting firm Ferrazzi Greenlight, led a survey of more than 2,000 executives to study how they reengineered operations during the pandemic. The research identified a kind of extreme adaptability at the team and organizational levels that helped some companies come out on top. Ferrazzi argues that after months of ruthlessly adapting, leaders should continue on a path of resilience and agility to stay competitive in the post-Covid-19 world. And he offers concrete steps to take. Ferrazzi is a coauthor of the new book Competing in the New World of Work: How Radical Adaptability Separates the Best from the Rest.

Oklahoma officials want to leverage tax dollars, pension funds and other state-managed money to provide seed capital for local startup businesses, an effort spearheaded by a governor’s office that is aggressively pushing for programs that assist new companies. 

The Commerce Department is currently soliciting bids for companies to operate three new business accelerators that would cultivate new businesses and then give the Oklahoma Center for Advancement of Science and Technology (OCAST), a state agency, the opportunity to invest in the new businesses in exchange for equity. 

Image: https://www.oklahoman.com