As I have said many times, the cost of entry for an aspiring entrepreneur has never been lower, and the total wealth of opportunities has never been larger. Today you can start a new web site business for as little as $100, produce cheap smart phone apps, or lead the effort to tap the multitude of opportunities brought by capitalizing on our concern for dwindling natural resources.

A while back, I focused on the new sharing economy, so this time I will highlight how a shortage of something, like natural resources, should be seen by an aspiring entrepreneur as a wealth of new startup ideas. I was inspired by the classic book, “Resource Revolution: How to Capture the Biggest Business Opportunity in a Century,” by Stephan Heck and Matt Rogers.

Image: http://blog.startupprofessionals.com

The best performing companies are often the best aligned. But who in your company is paying attention to how well aligned your strategy is with your organization’s purpose and capabilities? In my research and consultancy with companies, I observe that, oftentimes, no individual or group is functionally responsible for overseeing the arrangement of their company from end to end. Multiple different individuals and groups are responsible for different components of the value chain that makes up their company’s design, and they are often not as joined up as they should be. All too often, individual leaders seek — indeed are incentivized — to protect and optimize their own domains, and find themselves locked in energy-sapping internal turf wars, rather than working with peers to align and improve across the entire enterprise.

The entire continental U.S. is experiencing widespread flu right now, the first time in the 13 years of the current tracking system that that has happened, according to the CDC.

The rate of flu hospitalizations nearly doubled last week to 22.7 per 100,000 people compared with the previous seven days.

Joe Rosen, the president of Summit Equity Investments, spends his time looking for investors or meeting with founders who want him to invest in their companies. He sat down with Jessica Abo to share his tips for success, whether you're the one with the funding or the one looking for financial backing.

An analysis of patent applications and usage suggests South Korea has world-leading levels of technology and innovation capacities for the information and communications technology (ICT) revolution, but is relatively lacking in innovation capacities for the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR). The findings were published on Jan. 11 in a paper titled “The Fourth Industrial Revolution and South Korea’s Innovation Capacities: A Patent Data-Based Comparative Analysis by Country and Technology, 1976–2015” by Seoul National University (SNU) economics professor Lee Ji-hong, SNU master’s candidate Im Hyeon-gyeong, and Bank of Korea Economic Research Institute associate research fellow Jeong Dae-young.

Image: http://english.hani.co.kr

Words like “leadership” and “innovation” are often tossed around among business people. You’re as likely to hear these words in a small company as you are in a big one, and as likely to hear them in an established corporate environment as you are in a startup company that can barely afford to keep the lights on.

Both leadership and innovation are crucially important concepts in business and in life, but an essential part of understanding them is knowing how they are similar as well as how they different.

Image: http://www.insideindianabusiness.com

Michigan is well-positioned to grow jobs in six emerging sectors, according to a recent report looking at economic opportunity in the state.

"We've got a chance to play and lead in these growing areas," said John Austin of The Michigan Economic Center, an independent policy and action organization for the state, focusing on its economy.

Austin is its director and former chair of the Michigan Board of Education. An Ann Arbor resident, Austin ran for reelection to the board of education as a Democrat and lost in 2016.

BOSTON—Harvard Business School’s (HBS) Arthur Rock Center for Entrepreneurship has named 18 people to its inaugural group of Rock Venture Capital Partners, who provide in-person mentoring and advice to HBS student entrepreneurs.

“The Rock VC Partner Program brings leading managing and general partners from the top early stage VC firms to Harvard Business School to build relationships with student founders” said Jodi Gernon (MBA 1991), Director of the Rock Center. “We are delighted to have these outstanding venture capitalists share their wisdom and insights with student entrepreneurs. Thanks to this program, HBS students will have unprecedented access to feedback from top investors regarding their ideas, testing plans, fund-raising activities, and more.”

The following report presents Dow Jones VentureSource’s quarterly findings for U.S. venture capital fundraising, investment, valuation, and liquidity. The included charts and graphs offer a comprehensive view of the trends currently affecting the venture capital market.

Image: https://images.dowjones.com

Work used to be pretty simple. You got up in the morning, did your job and came home at the end of the day. Most people spent their whole career doing pretty much the same thing for the same employer. They were judged by their skill, diligence and seniority and, at the end of it all, they looked forward to a peaceful retirement.

As fast as things are changing, they are about to change even faster. Technology is making it progressively easier to access the knowledge, experience, and resources of the crowd. We have already seen how applications of crowdsourcing technology can provide funding, services, and navigation. Now this technology will accelerate innovation, problem solving and even politics.

Each January, tech companies from around the world gather in Las Vegas to show off their latest efforts at CES, formerly called the Consumer Electronics Show, the biggest gadget show of the year.

While the products and demos showcased at CES don’t always reflect the technology you’ll be able to buy in the near future, the show does offer some insight into where tech giants are putting their time and resources.

Image: The Lenovo Smart Display includes support for the Google Assistant Lenovo

Curling is our strange quadrennial winter sports obsession. Depending on one’s taste, it’s either a compelling chess match on ice, or glorified shuffleboard with no proper place in a global sporting spectacle. But once the opening ceremonies of the PyeongChang 2018 Winter Olympics begin on Feb. 9, you — or someone you encounter regularly — will suddenly start caring about curling. You know, that winter Olympic sport with the stones and the brooms and that dartboard-looking-thing on the TV.

The “valley of death” is a common term in the startup world, referring to the difficulty of covering the negative cash flow in the early stages of a startup, before their new product or service is bringing in revenue from real customers. I often get asked about the real alternatives to bridge this valley, and there are some good ones I will outline here.

Two more reports compiling and analyzing venture capital activity were just released— PwC/CB Insights’ Q4 2017 MoneyTree Report and Dow Jones VentureSource. Both differ slightly from each other and the Pitchbook-NVCA report but identify the same overall key trends—over $70 billion in venture capital was invested in U.S. companies in 2017, most of the investments were made in large amounts in late-stage companies, and the number of seed deals dropped.

TOKYO -- In a trend that may help give birth to more innovative young enterprises, such Japanese blue chips as Toyota Motor and Panasonic are increasing investment in startups, pouring 27 times as much money in 2017 as five years before.

Venture capital investments by major Japanese corporations through in-house funds and other channels totaled 172 last year, 19% more cases than the year before and marking their highest level ever, according to mergers and acquisitions consultancy Recof. Such investments began to rise sharply in number in 2011 and amounted to 68.1 billion yen ($611 million) in 2017, also a record.

Image: Toyota has invested in an Israeli conversation robot developer. - https://asia.nikkei.com

Distrust of the unfamiliar and the foreign is a natural survival mechanism for most species, including the human species. But, if empirical evidence is worth anything, a reflexive distrust of the foreigner cannot be said to be equally benign. Distrust sows fear. And fear plays in the hands of demagogues and can turn into a contagious pathology with numerous undesirable consequences.

Image: http://www.newgeography.com

In this video, Entrepreneur Network partner Jason Saltzman sits down with two founders to hear their stories of perseverence and resilience.

Raul Tovar is the co-founder of WindowsWear, a fashion tech company based in New York City that archives display windows. He moved from Mexico to New York determined to make something of himself and resolved that he would not go home empty-handed.

Creating value is always the chief objective of any company, no matter what the business is about. While engendering value for consumers helps companies sell their products and services, creating value for stockholders i.e. growth in the entity's stock price guarantees the inflow of capital to provide finance for operations. Speaking in strictly financial terms, value creation occurs when an enterprise's profits and surpasses its expenses.

Scientists have known for some time the ocean is acidifying because of climate change. The seas’ absorption of human-generated carbon dioxide from the atmosphere is well documented, along with the harm it is causing ocean creatures like shellfish.

But what about freshwater? Is it also soaking up atmospheric carbon? A new paper published today in Current Biology presents some of the first evidence that the answer may be yes, but perhaps not the same way as occurs in the ocean.