Alan Kay, the educator and computer designer, famously declared, “The best way to predict the future is to invent it.” But what does it take to invent the future in such a turbulent and uncertain world? How do successful organizations build on their history, even as they craft a new point of view about what comes next? How do established brands stay true to their original promise, while also making themselves relevant to new customers with different values and preferences? How can accomplished executives be sure that all they know — their hard-earned wisdom and expertise — doesn’t limit what they can imagine?

When the U.S. media began reporting on the phenomenon of “forest bathing” as a therapy for mental and physical health, the online commentariat—as it will—mocked the concept relentlessly as yet another pretentious, bourgeois repackaging of something thoroughly mundane. Didn’t we just used to call it “going outside”?

When Sofia Blanno transferred to Florida Gulf Coast University, she decided to major in communications, thinking that one day she would work in public relations at a fashion design company.

But Blanno said that wasn't what she really wanted to do career-wise. She said she was a fashion design major at Auburn University and only majored in communications because there wasn't a similar major at FGCU.

Global venture capital investment has hit an all-time record, with more than $142 billion already disbursed in 2017, according to data provider PitchBook.

Fewer startups are raising money, but the round sizes are getting appreciably larger. For example, though mid-October, eight companies had raised rounds of $500 million or more. There has been a boom in fundraising by Chinese startups, partially driven by an increase in local capital sources.

Traditionally, the majority of entrepreneurs have been logical thinkers, problem solvers, with full attention to details. These are the stereotypical left-brain engineers. Yet I see a big shift from the knowledge age, with its left-brain foundation, to a critical focus today on visualization, creativity, relationships, and collaboration, which are more in the domain of right-brainers.

We're not sure what you were doing when you were a kid, but if you did have an after school job, it probably wasn't one that netted you millions of dollars and thousands and thousands of fans.

Say what you will about social media, but when it comes to getting the word out about your brand, it can be a great equalizer, lowering the barrier to entry for all sorts of up and coming entrepreneurs, even ones that can count their ages on one hand.

Google’s Vice-President for South East Asia and India, Rajan Anandan has a portfolio of over 80 startups. He is probably the most sought-after angel investor in the country yet Rajan believes it’s the other way round.

“It’s a privilege to be investing in awesome companies. The startups that make it are because they are awesome, angel investors get lucky,” opined Rajan Anandan in a candid chat with Amit Somani, Managing Partner at Prime Venture Partners at the LetsIgnite Mumbai event.

In an Innovation Point article, Founder Soren Kaplan notes that only one third of Fortune 1000 companies have defined innovation metrics. And yet 77% of business leaders see innovation as a priority. How is it possible that something that is so important to business leaders doesn’t have a defined set of KPIs?

Well, one reason is that innovation means different things to different people and different things to different businesses… and even different business units. And most of the time we are talking about measuring two different things: innovation capability and innovation results. And it’s actually important to measure both. But how?

If you want to win, you need to be smart. As a pitch presenter, you’re ought to not just capture the attention of your prospects but also win their hearts. In today’s marketplace, innovation is highly appreciated and wanted. Coming up with a brilliant new product idea is the first aspect. The second is about how you present it to those who might be interested to get involved.

In today’s post, we’re presenting several effective strategies which you can take advantage of when presenting your next pitch. You’re also getting a lot of extra tips and tricks, so pay attention and take some notes!

Team leadership style doesn’t have to be a personality trait; it can be chosen.

Working with an amazing leader is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity – not everyone can work with Nelson Mandela or Gandhi or even a rock star boss like Bruce Springsteen. Leaders in the knowledge economy, those who have moved up the ranks from team member to team leader, aren’t always charismatic. It’s far more commonplace to find team leaders who were promoted to a leadership role without developing their leadership skills.

Michael Peres is a photography professor at Rochester Institute of Technology. He became obsessed with photographing snowflakes with his microscope since 2003 when he visited an exhibit featuring Wilson Bentley's snowflake work. 

When snow falls, he catches the flakes on a black velvet tray and then transfers them onto the microscope glass with a needle. Since the snowflakes melt quickly, he usually has less than a minute to capture the flake before it's gone forever. 

Image: http://mashable.com

Everyone thought 2016 was bad. That was before 2017. Over the past year, we learned Russia used social media ads to meddle in our election. Our data was stolen from Equifax, Yahoo, and Uber. It felt like virtually every man in a position of power was revealed to be a total dirtbag. The list goes on.

In the design industry, there is some good news. Many designers are taking their own roles in the events of 2017 to heart–and many of them have big plans to make 2018 a better year. We talked to everyone from systems thinkers and industrial designers to AI specialists, political activists, and chocolatiers, and asked each of them to name the trends and forces they think will shape the coming year.

Getting things done effectively in a startup requires total individual and team accountability. You can’t afford excuses and multiple people doing the same job. In my view, “taking responsibility” is the core element behind accountability. Many people hear responsibility as an obligation, but I hear it as “the ability to respond.”

Unfortunately many people don’t have the ability to respond, because they lack confidence in themselves, or simply don’t have the skills required. Therefore an entrepreneur’s first requirement is to hire or team only with people who are accountable (already have the confidence and skills you need) – training them on the job is prohibitively expensive when you have minimal income.

Image: http://wrbl.com

The amount of sea level rise that many of us will experience in our lifetimes may be more than double what was previously anticipated, unless we sharply curtail greenhouse gas emissions, according to a new study that factors in emerging, unsettling research on the tenuous stability of the Antarctic Ice Sheet. 

Importantly, the study highlights that cuts we could still make to greenhouse gas emissions during the next several years would significantly reduce the possibility of a sea level rise calamity after 2050.

The CEO of Wickrott Corporation was known as a suspicious control freak. Symptomatic of his leadership style were the numerous “internal consultants” hired to keep him informed of the goings-on in the organisation. Staff described their work environment as a cutthroat, Darwinian “soup”. Information was power; secrecy was the norm; transparency and teamwork were conspicuous by their absence. To add to the company’s paranoid culture, the CEO demanded pre-signed resignation letters from all of his senior executives so that he could fire them on the spot if he felt that they had transgressed. At meetings, he frequently subjected them to abusive, even profane tirades. During these humiliating sessions, he made it quite clear that the firm owed every bit of its success to him alone.

We characterize the factors that determine who becomes an inventor in America by using deidentified data on 1.2 million inventors from patent records linked to tax records. We establish three sets of results. First, children from high-income (top 1%) families are ten times as likely to become inventors as those from below-median income families. There are similarly large gaps by race and gender. Differences in innate ability, as measured by test scores in early childhood, explain relatively little of these gaps. Second, exposure to innovation during childhood has significant causal effects on children’s propensities to become inventors. . . . We develop a simple model of inventors’ careers that matches these empirical results. The model implies that increasing exposure to innovation in childhood may have larger impacts on innovation than increasing the financial incentives to innovate, for instance by reducing tax rates. In particular, there are many “lost Einsteins” — individuals who would have had highly impactful inventions had they been exposed to innovation.

For clothing retailer Patagonia, taking firm stances on issues is in its DNA as a company. The company's decision to add a black landing page instead of the usual December retail madness of most retailers, with the simple message: "The President Stole Your Land," is perhaps unlike any move we have seen from a well-known brand.

Kenneth Cole's New York billboards about gun violence come to mind, but they smack of marketing. Can anyone remember what any of them even said? The "controversy" surrounding them seemed to "trump" (pun intended) any moves by the company around a particular social issue.

It's not uncommon to hear about entrepreneurs who used the wealth they made from a previous endeavor to build a thriving new startup, or about seasoned business owners who took over a decades-old franchise and transformed it into something new. These stories are inspiring in their own way; but to me, it's even more inspiring to hear about people who started with nothing.

Koch Industries has launched an early-stage venture capital arm that will be led by Chase Koch, the son of company chairman and CEO Charles Koch.

Bottom line: Charles and David Koch might differ strongly with most of Silicon Valley on politics, but they believe there can be alignment when it comes to disruptive technologies.

• It’s called Koch Disruptive Technologies, and will be separate from the company's private equity group (Koch Equity Development), which is supporting Meredith Corp.'s takeover of magazine publisher Time Inc. 
• No word on dollar allocations, but a Koch source calls it a "significant focus" for the company, as evidenced by putting the boss' son in charge.

You’ve been working around the clock, beating every deadline and taking on extra assignments: that dream of a raise seems to be close to a reality. But office politics, competition and new clients can take the spotlight away from you and your achievements. Luckily, there are ways to implement the art of persuasion to showcase yourself and secure that raise.

Small and simple things such as taking an active interest in your superiors and reciprocating body language can pave the way to success, showcasing both your skills and value to your company.

Image: https://www.entrepreneur.com