Over the last two years, the world has seen a rise in the adoption of digitized platforms. Since the Covid-19 crisis began, organizations in every major industry have adapted to the “new normal” to provide a seamless employee experience for their team members. As professionals were locked within their homes, they had to find a way to use to technology in order to continue with business operations.

This led to an increase in the implementation of collaborative platforms and tools that allow companies to digitize and automate their business processes. From onboarding new employees to providing them with personalized support, organizations worldwide are using software platforms to improve employee experience in all departments.  

Business ventures often have similar beginnings. An aspiring entrepreneur discovers a promising idea and proceeds to start a business inspired by it.

For some, it becomes a side hustle helping them earn extra income every month. Others dedicate all their time to developing it and may even succeed in building it into a global brand.

It is easy to lose sight of the importance of a commercial mindset early in the life of a biotech. Many companies fail to see or understand its value proposition or its critical role in the creation of clinical development plans. Unfortunately, because the access and reimbursement stakes are so high in this market segment, operating without a commercial lens and throwing a product over the fence to the commercial team a couple of years prior to launch with the expectation that they can take it to market and sell it are not luxuries many biotechs can afford.

While it’s somewhat common for university students to say that a particular class was transformative for them and their own personal trajectory, it’s less common for students to leave a class with a sense that the things they learned in it could be transformative for the world at large. But that’s exactly how Ruchitha Arvapally, a junior studying biochemistry and economics, felt when she was a member of the Inclusion in Innovation (I3) team last semester.

Image: https://news.stonybrook.edu/

About a hundred years ago the Pittsburgh region hit its peak. Nestled in the southwestern corner of Pennsylvania, it hosted an industrial system of world historic proportions.

The population had been exploding for years, growing by double digit percentages every decade, as workers and their families arrived to fuel the area’s mammoth steel manufacturing concerns. Growth would slow almost to a halt during the 1930s, where the first seeds of deindustrialization were sown, but at the same time, one of the most powerful unions of the New Deal emerged to redistribute some of the fruits of this economic dynamism to those on the shop floor.

Image: Pittsburgh's Jones and Laughlin Steel Works in 1967, with downtown Pittsburgh in the background (The Brookline Connection)

A strategic plan released Wednesday by the Missouri Technology Corp. includes recommendations to pursue more than a dozen initiatives the report says would help the state better promote entrepreneurship and advance startups.

MTC's report, which is called "Catalyzing Innovation: Strategies for Missouri to Drive Innovation and Entrepreneurship," identifies five main areas where the state's innovation and entrepreneurship economy currently is lagging and offers 16 recommendations to combat those challenges. The items outlined include plans for piloting creative startup financing methods, establishing new programs to help startups more easily find employees and better connecting entrepreneurship organizations across Missouri.

Image: Dedric Carter is chairman of the Missouri Technology Corp. James A. Fisher | Washington University

As the United States approaches the second anniversary of its initial COVID-19 shutdowns, we're daring to dream about what the end of the pandemic might look like. With omicron cases plummeting, indoor mask mandates in every state but Hawaii are set to expire—a change that would have seemed unthinkable just weeks ago.

In my consulting work, when I ask team members in startups and small businesses how they know whether they are doing a good job, the typical response I get is “Nobody has yelled at me today,” or “No news is good news.” This means you are missing the positive impact of catching people doing things right and reinforcing that performance with timely praise and support.

Most managers try to create an environment in which their employees feel comfortable sharing their ideas and opinions. Unfortunately, new research suggests that actively soliciting input can have unintended negative consequences: The more managers solicit input from their employees, the less likely they are to reward employees for speaking up. This can be very demoralizing for employees, who have likely invested time and effort into developing and sharing their thoughts.

Artificial intelligence has been found to aid the new omicron variant as per a study at the Michigan State University.

The MSU researchers report omicron and other variants are evolving increased infectivity and antibody resistance according to an artificial intelligence model. Therefore, new vaccines and antibody therapies are needed, the researchers say.

If you have been an entrepreneur long enough, you have been knocked down. It’s inevitable, whether your obstacle is a business setback or a health problem.

I have had many setbacks in my life, too numerous to itemize. When that happens, there are steps you can take to get back up. But more on those later.

The Covid-19 pandemic has fundamentally changed many traditional ways of doing business. For entrepreneurs, the trends that are emerging from these alterations present both challenges and opportunities. In either case, they bear watching and taking action.

To be successful starting a business, you don’t have to be a fabulous person, but it helps. Some people, and some entrepreneurs, have that something extra that you can’t quite put your finger on, like the judges are searching for on American Idol. But the entrepreneurs that have it, including Elon Musk and Richard Branson, seem to be able to effortlessly get team members, investors, and customers to follow them anywhere.

Image: https://blog.startupprofessionals.com

Keeping up with ever-changing digital marketing trends may seem challenging, but it’s crucial for business owners to do. As more of us are working from home, there has been a huge spike in social media usage. While digital marketers are hopping on to this opportunity, other small business owners scramble to adapt to the changes in consumer behavior — and it doesn’t have to be you.

Thanks to the pandemic, Canadians working in sales, marketing, and product saw their salaries jump 38 percent in 2021, the second fastest-rising rate only after Mexico. The latter country’s salaries spiked by 57 percent, according to a new report from Deel.

Deel, a global hiring and payroll startup, published the information in its newly released State of Hiring Report 2021. The startup used data pulled from more than 100,000 work contracts from over 150 countries, along with 500,000 third-party data points. The trends in the report were tracked from July to December 2021.

The metaverse has been a hot topic of conversation recently, with Facebook and Microsoft both staking claims. But what is the metaverse? And when will it get here?

Author Neal Stephenson is credited with coining the term "metaverse" in his 1992 science fiction novel "Snow Crash," in which he envisioned lifelike avatars who met in realistic 3D buildings and other virtual reality environments.

Since then, various developments have made mileposts on the way toward a real metaverse, an online virtual world which incorporates augmented reality, virtual reality, 3D holographic avatars, video and other means of communication. As the metaverse expands, it will offer a hyper-real alternative world for you to coexist in.

You can’t win as an entrepreneur or business owner without full confidence in your own ability, as well as in your solution and business model. As an angel investor in startups, I always look for this self-confidence, no matter how innovative the solution. Of course, you can be overly confident or unrealistic in your expectations, without the skills or plans to run a business.

Image: https://blog.startupprofessionals.com

Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health Professor and Virologist Andrew Pekosz discusses the path of Covid-19 infections and the emergence of new variants of the virus on "Bloomberg Surveillance." The Bloomberg School of Public Health is supported by Michael R. Bloomberg, founder and majority owner of Bloomberg LP, the parent company of Bloomberg News. (Source: Bloomberg)

Members of the Alabama Innovation Commission shared the next steps to growing the state’s innovation economy with Alabama economic developers.

The newly formed Alabama Innovation Corporation will initiate some of those next steps, but others should be undertaken by communities throughout the state, members of a panel at the Economic Development Association of Alabama (EDAA) 2022 Winter Conference said recently.

Image: The Innovate Alabama panel at the Economic Development Association of Alabama 2022 Winter Conference shared some next steps in building a robust innovation economy in the state. (Michael Tomberlin / Alabama NewsCenter)

A strategic plan released Wednesday by the Missouri Technology Corp. includes recommendations to pursue more than a dozen initiatives the report says would help the state better promote entrepreneurship and advance startups.

MTC’s report, titled "Catalyzing Innovation: Strategies for Missouri to Drive Innovation and Entrepreneurship” and compiled by Columbus, Ohio-based research firm TEConomy Partners LLC, identifies five main areas where the state’s innovation and entrepreneurship economy is currently lagging and offers 16 recommendations to combat those challenges. The items outlined include plans for piloting creative startup financing methods, establishing new programs to help startups more easily find employees and better connecting entrepreneurship organizations across Missouri.

Image: Dedric Carter, chairman of the Missouri Technology Corp. Washington University