WASHINGTON — Northrop Grumman will form a new business sector focused on new, innovative technology once it closes on its acquisition of Orbital ATK this year, a top Northrop executive said during a Thursday earnings call.

“As we prepare for integration, we are making good progress in our plans to combine our two outstanding companies after close,” said Kathy Warden, Northrop president and chief operating officer, adding that she continues to expect the transaction to close in the first half of 2018.

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In Daymond John’s new book Rise and Grind, the Shark Tank investor lays out a game plan for being more productive in your day-to-day life and career. He mines tips and anecdotes from numerous high-profile people to illustrate his points, too. For example, he details how Catherine Zeta Jones, who John has collaborated with on her home-design line, keeps herself laser-sharp focused. Or how entrepreneur Gary Vaynerchuk starts his day and how musician Carlos Santana finds balance in his life. Alongside these anecdotes, John weaves in his own personal philosophies on how you can be more productive in your own day-to-day and work life. Here are five of his most important tips.

Over the past decade concepts like full employment, the skills gap, and the gray tsunami—once primarily of interest to workforce professionals—have become pressing concerns in the economic development arena. Technological disruptions from automation and control engineering to digitalization and artificial intelligence, continue to cast a shadow on the future of jobs. In the face of these challenges, here are three trends that are worth paying attention to over the short term as you consider your community’s ability to support business growth.

It’s a common call – we want more innovation, disruptive innovation, new options.  We need to think outside the box.

It often makes sense to think outside the box.  When the usual thinking hasn’t solved the problem, new approaches are needed.  After all, if the same people are sat at the same table trying to solve the same problem in the same way, they are likely to get the same result.

But there are times when thinking outside the box is the wrong thing to do.

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Supplements live in the wild west of the wellness world. They’re largely unregulated and under-researched, so people are often left to make not-so-educated guesses about what they’re putting in their bodies.

Two new resources from the National Institutes of Health’s Office of Dietary Supplements (ODS) may help. On Wednesday, it released two new fact sheets — one for exercise and athletic performance supplements, and another for weight loss supplements — meant to help people determine what’s safe and effective.

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When the Ellen MacArthur Foundation launched its New Plastics Economy initiative two years ago, it made a dark, headline-grabbing prediction. It said if nothing is done to arrest the rate at which plastic is entering the oceans, those oceans will contain more plastic than fish by 2050.

About 8 million tons of plastic become maritime garbage every year, according to scientifically grounded estimates. Only about 14% of the plastic used for wrapping food and bottling water is currently recycled and reused, and the numbers are going up all the time. As countries like China and Vietnam take on western-type lifestyles, they produce more plastic waste–but often without the infrastructure to capture and reconstitute it.

Image: Full Cycle Bioplastics. (Photo: courtesy Ellen MacArthur Foundation)

Over the past two decades, an unprecedented number of tall buildings have been constructed around the world. The world of skyscrapers began to change rapidly in 1998, with the completion of the Petronas Towers, twin towers in Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia). These 482 meter (1,483 foot) structures ended the quarter century reign of the Willis Tower (Sears Tower---442 meters, 1,451 feet) in Chicago.

In the past, the United States had been exercised something of a near monopoly in skyscrapers. As late as 1962, nine of the world’s tallest buildings were south of 59th Street in Manhattan. The world had changed little by 1981, when Manhattan still had five, Chicago three and the US nine of the top 10. Toronto had joined the top ten, in ninth place (see: 125 Years of Skyscrapers). Now, only one of the tallest 10 is in the United States, One World Trade Center in lower Manhattan.

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Nothing new. Your company has few if any new products. Yet competition is on a creative binge. This is the path to terminal stagnation. You can wait until someone in the organization comes up with the next winning idea. Dangerous. Or, you can build an intensely innovative culture. In other words, innovate innovation. How?

There is no right time to be creative. Be creative constantly. It is the way of a successful business life. Develop a creative culture that spins out a bright stream of highly innovative ideas. Particularly those that are contrarian.

The U.S. housing market is hot, with more than half (52.6 percent) of all homes nationwide worth as much or more than they were at the peak of the national housing boom in April 2007.

Some markets, though, have proven hotter than others – kept at a boil by healthy income growth, abundant job opportunities and above-average housing appreciation.

It’s largely those markets that will continue to be hot in 2018. San Jose, Calif., tops the list of hottest markets for 2018. Home values in the Silicon Valley hub gained 17.4 percent over the past year – the fastest growth among the 50 largest metro areas – and it tops Zillow’s list of hot markets for 2018, as high-paying tech jobs continue to keep pace with climbing housing costs.

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Larry Fink’s letter to CEOs was the talk of Davos. But the stunted nature of the conversation shows how far we still are from consensus that every company must “show how it makes a positive contribution to society,” as Fink declared. The reactions fell into three categories, according to Business Insider: “Larry’s right,” “Yes, but,” and “Pissed off.” Or as Sam Zell put it, “I didn’t know Larry Fink had been made God.”

Image: Photo by Kirstyn Paynter on Unsplash

If you want to grow a field full of barley but don’t want to get your hands dirty, never fear: robots can do the whole dang thing.

That’s what researchers from Harper Adams University in the U.K. have shown. In a sleepy hectare of land in Shropshire, England, robots have been tending the land without a human setting foot on the field. A series of roboticized tractors and harvesters, along with drones for aerial surveillance, have carefully planted seeds, taken soil and crop samples, sprayed herbicides and fertilizers, and even harvested the resulting crop of barley. You can see them in action above.

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In business, we're always talking about the bottom line. We measure success by asking about metrics like net profit and annual growth. However, more and more, companies are setting up their businesses for reasons beyond money.

Their companies are born out of a desire to do good, to give back -- to let someone else reap the fruits of their labor.

Of course, profit margins are still important. But it's what a company does with its success that can go farther with consumers. In fact, Unilever just reported that a third of consumers opt to buy products from brands they believe are doing social and environmental good.

George Steinmetz's spectacular photos show Africa from the air, taken from the world's slowest, lightest aircraft. Join Steinmetz to discover the surprising historical, ecological and sociopolitical patterns that emerge when you go low and slow in a flying lawn chair.

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Over the last few years, many cities like Los Angeles have joined the ranks of Silicon Valley and New York as some of the world’s top hubs of tech innovation. Between 2013 and 2016, startup funding in the city of Los Angeles has tripled.

We have seen the small spread of funds throughout the United States for sure, but other major cities worldwide have not seen the same growth. Ahmed Shabana, Founder of Global Ventures Summit and Managing Partner at Parkpine Capital, noticed this trend and decided to do something about it.

Image: Photo: Bloomberg

For both fast-growing small companies and established multi-nationals, cost is no longer king in the search for a new corporate headquarters.

As companies across a wide range of industries face limited talent pools, new priorities are reshaping relocation efforts, focusing far more on people than balance sheets.

“Real estate costs were traditionally a major focus in headquarters decisions, with considerably less concern over how a move would affect talent,” says Scott Homa, Senior Vice President and Director of U.S. Office Research at JLL.

See how monkeys teach manners, elephants show empathy and ants imitate water in ScienceTake, combining cutting-edge research from the world of science with stunning footage of the natural world in action.

I was recently on a panel where the host asked us what was the best career advice we’d ever received. I decided to answer with the worst career advice I’d been given, which actually ended up helping me in the long run:

It was during my freshman year at college and I had gone to a career counselor to get help building my resume. She told me that employers like to see a “diverse work history” so I should learn different skill sets in different industries. That made sense to someone with no work history; so every year, I worked at a different internship in a different field; PR, real estate–at one point I even worked in an art gallery.

Image: Photo by Justin Luebke on Unsplash

The journey of entrepreneurship is not one devoid of struggle. Every day, there is a new challenge that the entrepreneur has to face. Walking through the highs and lows of the start-up journey, an entrepreneur has to not just deal with the good days and the bad days but also ensure that there is no spillover effect on his/her employees.

One of the most important qualities of being an entrepreneur is to be able to turn the tide in their favour, while making sure that they don’t fall but ride the wave with pride.

Agile organizations—of any size and across industries—have five key elements in common.

Our experience and research demonstrate that successful agile organizations consistently exhibit the five trademarks described in this article. The trademarks include a network of teams within a people-centered culture that operates in rapid learning and fast decision cycles which are enabled by technology, and a common purpose that co-creates value for all stakeholders. These trademarks complement the findings from “How to create an agile organization.”

In January 1993, Ewing Kauffman scheduled the launch of a new business planning program for entrepreneurs: Kauffman FastTrac.

Traditionally delivered via in-person facilitators, the immersive FastTrac course provides tips, exercises and tools to aspiring entrepreneurs as they flesh out their business ideas.

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