If you have an iPhone 6 model or later, you should probably go replace the battery for a discounted rate at your local Apple Store.

Apple is now offering battery swaps for $29 (down from $79) a few weeks earlier than it originally promised. The decision to offer such low-priced battery swaps comes days after the company issued an apology for secretly slowing down older iPhones with software updates to prevent them from taxing the battery to the point where the phone might shut down unexpectedly.

Rich Lunak, president and CEO of Innovation Works, has been the struggling entrepreneur trying to raise money, secure customers, get products out and hire the right team to execute.

Lunak’s company went from a three-person startup to an acquisition by McKesson Corp., the nation’s 16th largest company. That business grew to employ about 2,000 people and generate hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue. Today, the tables are turned as he leads Innovation Works’ efforts to support the entrepreneurial technology community.

Fighting a $300 million loss in 2004, and in a masterstroke of innovation, LEGO hired ‘adult fans’ of the brand as their design team and began to crowdsource. LEGO has earned the right to celebrate. For a company that was on the brink of bankruptcy in 2004, the toymaker has made an amazing turnaround.

They restructured, hired a new CEO, and forged more licensing partnerships than ever before. Most importantly, they discovered the secret to some of the world’s most successful, low risk innovation strategies.

Building confidence is a daily habit that every entrepreneur needs to incorporate into their routine. It can be easy to listen to that inner voice and recognize your faults over your accomplishments. Having the proper amount of self-esteem is necessary to perform as a business owner, and you need to learn how to silence the critic that seems to take over your mind at times.

There are a variety of techniques that you can employ to increase your self-confidence, from good posture to a sharp outfit, according to a report by Pick The Brain. These tips can help you focus on the task at hand instead of your shortcomings, making you a more effective leader and business owner.

Image: All images courtesy of Young Entrepreneur Council members. Members of Young Entrepreneur Council share the top ways to boost your confidence.

Most of us want to work in an innovative workplace, but you could be subliminally creating a culture that squelches creative thinking. From conversations held during meetings to the tone of internal communications, words can send a message to employees that they shouldn’t spend time exploring new ideas, let alone bring them up to the team.

In 1797, at the dawn of the industrial age, Goethe wrote “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice,” a poem about a magician-in-training who, through his arrogance and half-baked powers, unleashes a chain of events he cannot control.

About 20 years later, a young Mary Shelley answered a dare to write a ghost story, which she shared at a small gathering at Lake Geneva. Her story would go on to be published as a novel, “Frankenstein; or, the Modern Prometheus,” on Jan. 1, 1818.

Digitization is causing a radical reordering of traditional industry boundaries. What will it take to play offense and defense in tomorrow’s ecosystems?

Rakuten Ichiba is Japan’s single largest online retail marketplace. It also provides loyalty points and e-money usable at hundreds of thousands of stores, virtual and real. It issues credit cards to tens of millions of members. It offers financial products and services that range from mortgages to securities brokerage. And the company runs one of Japan’s largest online travel portals—plus an instant-messaging app, Viber, which has some 800 million users worldwide. Retailer? Financial company? Rakuten Ichiba is all that and more—just as Amazon and China’s Tencent are tough to categorize as the former engages in e-commerce, cloud-computing, logistics, and consumer electronics, while the latter provides services ranging from social media to gaming to finance and beyond.

Welcome to another challenging new year ahead! You’ve probably already made your resolutions for 2018, but if not, I suggest a renewed commitment to finding happiness and satisfaction in your chosen business lifestyle. After all, most of us spend more hours in this role than any other, and life is too short to spend most of your life unhappy.

As a mentor to entrepreneurs and business owners, and seeing their workload and challenges, it would be easy for me to conclude that starting a business is a big hit to health and happiness. Yet I continue to see articles with evidence that entrepreneurs are happier and healthier than their employees, or even most other professions, regardless of how much money they make.

Image: http://blog.startupprofessionals.com

Whether you’re a workaholic or you’ve got a family to support, many people across the U.S. choose to work later into life. And depending on factors such as where you live, what you do and how big your family is might determine whether you’ll work into your old age.

Compared to other states, people in South Dakota (28 percent) and Vermont (27 percent) still work while they are 65 years and older. When it comes to working later in life, men were more commonly found to do so than women. In Vermont, nearly 32 percent of men older than 65 years old are working, which is higher than any other state. For women, New Hampshire has the most women older than 65 years old working.

A wonderful New York Times article from 2007 recounted the 20th annual “Operator’s Challenge” — aka the “Sludge Olympics” — a competition for New York sewage treatment workers. The participants compete to show skill in their work, and often do so with great passion. Emily Lloyd, the commissioner of the New York City Department of Environmental Protection, said of the work the competitors do, “It’s tough work. It’s frequently unpleasant work. And they’re terrific at it.” And as you read the article, you note the pride the competitors have in their work and the purpose they find in doing it well. One man, George Mossos, noting how anonymous their work can be, is quoted saying, “It’s enough to serve the public.”

Did you have a productive 2017? Don’t answer that. No matter how much you got done last year, or how efficiently you did it, you can probably give your work habits a tune-up for the year ahead.

Maybe it’s a change to your morning routine or a different approach to your to-do list. Or maybe it’s reducing your reliance on to-do lists altogether. Since everyone’s productivity problems differ, so should their solutions. So Fast Company asked 18 of the most productive people we could find–starting with our top contributors–to share their own tips, hacks, and habits.

2018 is here and 2017 is in the rear view mirror getting smaller by the minute. In the world of Fintech, the past twelve months have been momentous as new innovations in finance have risen in prominence while others, once promising, have waned. So what were some of the biggest Fintech stories of 2017?

Below we attempt to highlight some of the stories that are indicative of the digital revolution that is taking place in finance today. There are plenty of other stories that may be added and there will be many more to come. If you have suggestions, please do share via email or in the comments below.

Image: https://www.crowdfundinsider.com

It’s that time again, time to send the old year into the history books and welcome in the new. In what can only be seen as a fitting ending, CNBC has altered the look of its screen to include a LIVE BITCOIN WATCH box.

What will 2018 hold? The possibilities are endless and the intrigue intense.

If the sell side and Federal Reserve economists are right, at this point next year we will still be enjoying an expanding economy. The current expansion stands at 102 months which puts us four months shy of surpassing the second longest expansion in U.S. history which ran from February 1962 to December 1969. If the economy is still growing in 12 months’ time, we will be six months shy of the 10-year record expansion that ended in March 2001.

Image: https://www.linkedin.com

I expect progress. Here’s my list of major trends and issues that will affect the lives of cancer patients in 2018:

1. Less chemotherapy

A recent report finds that among patients with the most common form of early-stage breast cancer, chemotherapy prescriptions slid, overall, from around 34.5% to 21.3%, in a recent 2-year interval (2013-2015). That’s a huge drop, from over a third of women with stage 1 or 2 disease getting chemo, to just over a fifth taking chemo. This trend is impressive and credible in context of growing discussion and awareness of overtreatment and (although authors of this particular study found no link) wider use and acceptance, among oncologists, of recurrence predictors like OncotypeDx and MammaPrint.

Do your friends sometimes disappoint you? Ever feel like there is something missing in your relationships? You’re not alone.

Tom Rath and the Gallup organization discovered something interesting: the vast majority of the time, no one pal offers you everything you need from your relationships.

Some of your friends are great listeners… but they’re not always there when you need them. Others are intensely loyal… but just not that great at helping you out of a jam. And so on.

Ross Baird developed the Village Capital concept in 2009, and has led the development of programmes worldwide. Before launching Village Capital, he worked with First Light Ventures, a seed fund focused on impact investments. Prior to First Light, Ross worked on the development of four education-related startup ventures: the Indian School Finance Company in Hyderabad, India, the National College Advising Corps in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, and two ventures using technology to promote civic participation. Village Capital is at the forefront of a new kind of venture investing, using a process that is much more democratic and inclusive, and this method promises to dramatically increase success for everyone involved.

Image: https://yourstory.com

The two questions I get asked most frequently when I tell people that I report on tech startups across Middle America are: Which startups outside of Silicon Valley are getting the most traction? And which cities are home to the most interesting tech activity?

I find that it’s typically easier to answer the first question. There are certain metrics I can point to that make it easy for people ingrained in the startup community to understand what makes a company worth watching: They recently raised a large round of venture capital funding. They doubled their revenue. They doubled their headcount.

Over the last decade, we studied CEOs of companies that thrive within some of the most challenging business environments on the planet. Though very different in many respects, these CEOs share leadership behaviours and attitudes that strongly parallel those of top athletes. We further theorise that these athletic traits make CEOs uniquely suited to tackle contexts where little can be taken for granted.

Four of them, in particular, achieved extraordinary results against the backdrop of a prolonged economic recession and international economic sanctions.

Let's suspend disbelief for a moment and watch Hitchcock give new meaning to "scaredy cat." Enjoy.

Image: http://www.openculture.com