With the heaviest snowfall in Davos, Switzerland since the year 2000, this Swiss woman decides to have some fun. "Holy shit," someone says as she stands on the ledge of a fourth floor window. "Shit that's high." Someone else - sounds like her son – asks her to go head first, but to that she says "No." And then she does it with a Swiss "Yahoo!" landing safely in the white fluff.

Image: https://boingboing.net

ATLANTA, January 26, 2018 – The Georgia Research Alliance (GRA) has announced that its President C. Michael Cassidy will leave his role at the end of 2018. 

Cassidy joined the GRA in 1993 as Vice President and has served as President and CEO of the organization since 2000. GRA is a non-profit organization that expands cutting-edge research capacity in Georgia’s universities to launch new companies and create high-value jobs.  GRA is best known for recruiting top research scientists to Georgia. 

“The 25-year mark is a good time for transition,” said C. Michael Cassidy. “It has been my distinct honor and privilege to be a part of this great organization.  I am very proud of our team, our accomplishments together, and the reputation we have built for our state’s knowledge economy.”     

While education, degrees, and certification are important for scoring an interview, a new study by the HR software provider iCIMS finds that recruiters place a higher value on soft skills. From an ability to communicate well to being organized, these intangible qualities can be tough to measure, but they affect everything from productivity to collaboration.

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, has become a bit of an urbanist darling — it’s a magnet for educated millennials and with Uber, Google and Ford’s Argo all working on autonomous vehicles and artificial intelligence in the city, it’s quite possible that the future of urbanism is being invented here.

But as recently as a decade ago, Pittsburgh, like Detroit, was a stand-in for the dozens of cities across the U.S. that suffered greatly in the second half of the 20th century, as globalization and technology eroded the manufacturing industries that once defined the Midwest. Between 1970 and 1990, this city lost an estimated 100,000 steel jobs, shed nearly one-third of its total population, and unemployment hit a high of 18 percent.

Happy Thursday, and welcome to Teaching. This week the newsletter is curated by Beckie. First up, Beth shares a scene that stayed with her from a recent reporting trip — and what it means for colleges’ efforts to innovate. Then I’ll fill you in on an effort to improve introductory math, share a list of new books compiled by two of our colleagues at The Chronicle of Higher Education, and run through the highlights of a report on assessing student learning.

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On Monday, January 22nd, Bloomberg published an article discussing the results of the 2018 Bloomberg Innovation Index, an annual ranking of innovation economies from across the world which the business news publication has released for six years. For the first time since the inception of the Bloomberg Innovation Index, the United States was ranked outside the top 10 in the list, ranking 11th out of the 50 economies in the index after having placed 9th in the 2017 version of the index. This latest dip in the standing of the United States’ innovation economy is simply the most recent sign that there are significant issues posed by the current intellectual property regime in this country.

The digital age has democratized the workplace. Now employees can wield just as much knowledge and voice as their managers. It’s a profound change that is forcing an evolution in leadership. Rajeev Peshawaria, who heads the Iclif Leadership and Governance Centre in Malaysia, explores the idea in his new book, Open Source Leadership: Reinventing Management When There’s No More Business as Usual. He contends that leaders must learn to do things differently if they want their companies to innovate and survive. Peshawaria has held senior leadership positions at American Express, HSBC and Goldman Sachs, and he was chief learning officer at Coca-Cola and Morgan Stanley. He discussed his ideas on the Knowledge@Wharton show, which airs on Wharton Business Radio on SiriusXM channel 111. (Listen to the podcast at the top of this page.)  The following is an edited transcript of the conversation.

You thought the Shark Tank was tough? The Third Annual BioHealth Capital Region Crab Trap is now accepting applications at bit.do/crabtrap! Deadline for entries is March 30th – Finalists will be announced on April 9th Submit your application for a chance to be named the startup company with the most commercial potential at the BioHealth Capital Region Forum.

Five finalists will have the chance to win the grand prize by presenting on April 24th in front of a panel of prominent industry funding expert and executives.

Last year was a bonanza for U.S. startups. They collected more than $67 billion in venture-capital funding, a new record that beat the previous high in 2015 by more than 5 percent.

Silicon Valley continues to dominate the VC landscape. But its grip is slipping. Companies in the San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont metropolitan area collected $19.7 billion last year, 12 percent less than in 2015. Part of that is because Lyft Inc. and Uber Technologies, Inc., which raised the most capital in the Bay Area last year, fell short of previous landmark deals, including Uber’s $3.5 billion or Snap Inc.’s $1.8 billion, both raised in 2016. Another reason: many of the biggest deals in 2017 were based somewhere else.

Image: https://www.bloomberg.com

Each year, leading thinkers head to Davos, Switzerland, to have a discussion across industries and interest areas about the needs and realities of today’s global world at the World Economic Forum.

Representatives from leading technology companies, from Google to IBM to Alibaba, have voiced their ideas onstage so far, as have university professors, authors, actors and activists.

In the last decade, there has been an explosion in the number of research deals between companies and universities. Companies, which have been reducing their spending on early stage research for three decades, have been increasingly turning to universities to perform that role, seeking access to the best scientific and engineering minds in specific domains. And faced with stingier government support of academic research and calls for them to contribute more to their local economies, universities have been more receptive.

Finding the right fit at a startup is a process that can be challenging, exciting, self-reflective, and empowering. Check out Suzanne’s story and her advice on how she transitioned back into her local startup community after a one year break at a traditional job.

But first, 3 quick tips to get you started:

1. Tap into your network

Before you commit to your job search, it’s best to have an idea of what kind of job you want. A great way to do this is to learn more about specific jobs from people who’ve actually HELD the jobs. Get out to meetups, networking events, or reach out to your personal and professional contacts.

Mail delivery to the wrong office in Milwaukee’s Global Water Center sparked a research partnership resulting in a super-sensor that is a finalist in the NASA iTech Challenge competition.

Designed by David Rice of Rice Technology LLC and tested with UWM environmental engineer Marcia Silva, the sensor can quickly and inexpensively measure multiple contaminants in water, including viruses, which are so small they pass through bacterial filters.

Image: David Rice of Rice Technology and Marcia Silva, manager of the UWM Water Technology Accelerator, inspect a prototype of a sensor that can measure both bacteria and viruses in water at the same time. The sensor, which has a patent pending, is a finalist in the iTech competition, sponsored by NASA. (UWM Photo/Elora Hennessey)

EFFINGHAM, Ill., Jan. 24, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Open Prairie is pleased to announce that its newest growth-stage private equity fund, the Open Prairie Rural Opportunities Fund, L.P., has received a license from the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) to operate as a Rural Business Investment Company (RBIC).  In conjunction with its licensure, the fund has also completed a first closing with strategic partner commitments of over $55 million from lead investors comprised of institutions within the Farm Credit System, commercial and community banks, family offices, farm organizations and individuals passionate about advancing agriculture and growth throughout rural America.    

One takeaway you may not be surprised to learn in 2018: It’s still great to work in technology.

That’s a finding from the job site Glassdoor’s fourth annual report on the best jobs in America. On this year’s list, the tech sector comprises 20 of the 50 top positions, including data scientist (No. 1), devops engineer (No. 2), and data analyst (new to the list at No. 38).

Most people who work over 30 stories up do so in the safe confines of a skyscraper. Meredith Halfpenny, however, can feel the breeze in her hair from the top of a wind turbine.

By her own estimation, Halfpenny has helped build around 400 turbines and made more than 1,200 trips up and down their giant towers. And she finds herself in what can aptly be described as a job of the future: her skills are in high demand both where she works in Ontario, Canada, and south of the border, where in 2017 the US Bureau of Labor Statistics said it expected wind turbine technicians to represent the second-fastest-growing occupation in America, more than doubling in overall number of employees through 2026 (number one was solar-panel installer).

Diversity is the linchpin of innovative and competitive working environments.

The view that diversity is a resource that can improve performance is spreading throughout organisations. Research shows that for complex tasks that require creativity, diverse teams do better than those comprised of similar individuals – as long as the team members have the skills to collaborate. Diversity of views, experiences, expertise, culture and race can all enhance the way organisations and countries work.

Image: https://knowledge.insead.edu

WASHINGTON & SAN DIEGO & SAN FRANCISCO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--California Life Sciences Association (CLSA), the trade association representing California’s life sciences industry, today commended the U.S. Senate’s confirmation of Alex M. Azar, II as the new secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).

MADISON, WI. Jan. 23, 2018 – The Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation (WEDC) today announced that 11 organizations have been awarded a total of $500,000 in grants to help develop or expand innovative programs aimed at advancing the climate for entrepreneurship throughout the state.

The grants are being awarded as part of WEDC’s Entrepreneurship Support Program, which is now in its second year. The grants will help fund activities that promote entrepreneurship or deliver education, training and other resources to assist new and aspiring business owners. More than 400 entrepreneurs are expected to receive services through a wide variety of initiatives.

1. "The most important thing in communication is hearing what isn't said." - Peter Drucker

2. "The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place." - George Bernard Shaw

3."Think like a wise man but communicate in the language of the people." - William Butler Yeats

4. "We have two ears and one mouth so that we can listen twice as much as we speak." - Epictetus

5. "Speak when you are angry -- and you'll make the best speech you'll ever regret." - Laurence Peters

6. "In the last analysis, what we are communicates far more eloquently than anything we say or do." - Stephen Covey