Rich data, ubiquitous connectivity, and real-time communication are changing the way companies work. For leaders, that transformation will extend much further than the machines on the factory floor.

For decades, many of the world’s best companies have used their production systems as a source of sustainable competitive advantage (see sidebar “What is a production system?”). But such a system isn’t just about doing things well, with fast, efficient manufacturing processes and consistently high quality. What differentiates benchmark organizations like Danaher or Toyota is their ability to improve those operations continually, at a pace their competitors struggle to match.

Let me start by saying I am a huge fan of Elon Musk and the energy he brings to the business world. His major companies include: Tesla, SpaceX, Boring Company, HyperLoop, Solar City, and Giga Factory.

All Musk companies have a major theme, vision and technology. These companies all have one major theme in common; they are set on pushing boundaries. In fact, this innovative concept has practically become synonymous with Musk’s name.

It seems like everyone wants to be an entrepreneur and get rich these days. As a business mentor, I sometimes feel besieged by people begging for my view and support of their latest idea. In reality, I like most ideas, but I have to tell them that the real challenge is taking the inspiration from a dream to a business reality. All the evidence says that over 99% fail to make that leap.

So a better question than asking about the quality of an idea, is asking about the quality of your plan to implement the idea. There are lots of resources available for that question, including the Internet and mentors like me. It’s really a multi-step process, with the first step getting you from an idea to a viable product, and the remaining steps creating a sustainable business.

Earlier this week we held our third annual Patent Law and Policy event in Washington DC. With the approach to patents in the new administration slowly taking shape, the Supreme Court continuing to have its say in key areas, the PTAB celebrating five years of activity and investors in the patent space grappling with the culture of uncertainty, there was a huge amount for panelists and delegates to discuss.

A higher proportion of Harvard Business School graduates are going into venture capital and private equity than in years past, according to career statistics the Business School released for its MBA class of 2017 last week.

The data shows that graduates entered professions in more than 48 industries. Financial services and consulting continue to be the most popular, comprising 31 percent and 23 percent of graduates, respectively. While the share of students going into financial services has remained relatively constant, the overall proportion of students going into venture capital and private equity in particular has increased from 10 percent in 2013 to 18 percent in 2017.

WINSTON-SALEM - “As a city, we’re transforming ourselves,” declares Karen Barnes, executive director of Venture Café, one of Winston-Salem’s hottest new success stories. “We’ve shown remarkable resilience and grit in reshaping our future.”

And there are marks of true collaboration amongst stakeholders. According to Barnes, all six colleges and universities within Winston-Salem recently pledged between $25,000 and $100,000 per year for the next three years to support recent alumni and graduating senior students in pursuing their entrepreneurial ventures.

Image: http://wraltechwire.com

We live in the age of  FOMO, which extends beyond possessions and experiences to achievements.

I like to think that I don’t fall to those traps, but the truth is, I do. When I think about what I want to have achieved by the end of the year, month, week, or day, I always try to do more than what I can realistically handle, and then feel disappointed when I’ve only achieved two out of eight.

Image: Flickr user danyeela

This week, scientists using instruments at the European Southern Observatory’s La Silla facility in Chile reported finding an Earth-sized planet orbiting Ross 128, a red dwarf star residing a mere 11 light years from our solar system. What makes this discovery so exciting is that, unlike the case for other known Earth-like neighbors, the evidence for the new exoplanet’s surface temperatures and radiation environment suggest that the body could potentially support life.

Image: https://blogs.scientificamerican.com

Think you can escape the digital revolution and keep your job? Think again.

No profession is untouched by the changing digital landscape, from construction to retail, never mind the health care and finance professions, according to a report from Brookings Institution. What's more, the pace is accelerating. 

Almost 4 million of 13 million new jobs created since 2010 require "high-level" digital skills, the think tank concluded, adding that two-thirds demand high- or medium-level skills

High-income countries are grappling with the challenge of caring for aging populations, many of whose members have chronic illnesses and declining capacity to manage activities of daily living. The 2017 Commonwealth Fund International Health Policy Survey of Older Adults in eleven countries showed that US seniors were sicker than their counterparts in other countries and, despite universal coverage under Medicare, faced more financial barriers to health care. The survey’s findings also highlight economic hardship and mental health problems that may affect older adults’ health, use of care, and outcomes. They show that in some countries, one in five elderly people have unmet needs for social care services—a gap that can undermine health. New to the survey is a focus on the “high-need” elderly (those with multiple chronic conditions or functional limitations), who reported high rates of emergency department use and care coordination failures. Across all eleven countries, many high-need elderly people expressed dissatisfaction with the quality of health care they had received.

WASHINGTON: That Indians are not only heading global IT giants like Google and Microsoft but also a number of startups in diverse sectors, including biotechnology, across the US is evident from the fact that of the 52 companies operating out of the two innovation hubs in Rockville and Germantown in Maryland 11 are either headed or run by Indians.

From mobile technology platform connecting doctors and patients to pre-market cybersecurity for IoT (Internet of Things) devices, Indian Americans are the driving force behind several firms at the two innovation hubs managed by BioHealth Innovation, Inc, a non-profit public-private partnership, which aids early stage biotechnology companies from research to commercialization.

Image: Shahed Amanullah, co-founder and chief technology officer of the Virginia-based startup incubator Affinis Labs, has his roots in Chennai. - https://www.gadgetsnow.com

The number of millionaires in the U.S. just hit an all-time high, a new banking report finds.

In its annual report on the state of global wealth, Credit Suisse says 1.1 million new millionaires were created in the U.S. in 2017. That brings the total number of millionaires in the U.S. up to approximately 15,356,000, or about one in every 20 Americans.

Podcasts have been surging in popularity year after year. As an efficient way to absorb media and information while multitasking and on the go, they've become an essential news, entertainment, and learning source for busy entrepreneurs.

With 2017 winding down, driven entrepreneurs have their minds set on reaching new heights in 2018, and that requires growth on both a business and personal level. These eight podcasts focus on just that, and any growth-minded entrepreneur should prepare for the new year by subscribing.

Last year, John Lettieri of the Economic Innovation Group testified before the U.S. Senate that millennials were on track to be the "least entrepreneurial generation" in the past 100 years.

Related: 5 Unique Traits of Millennial Entrepreneurs

Data supports this: The Small Business Administration reported that in 2014, less than 2 percent of millennials described themselves as being unemployed, compared to 7.6 percent of "Gen-X" and 8.3 percent of baby boomers.

Median deal size from angel groups fell by 5.5 percent from $127,000 in 2016 to $120,000 in the first six months of 2017 (H1’17), according to the 2017 ARI HALO Report First-Half from Pitchbook and the Angel Resource Institute. In addition to a decline in median deal size, early-stage pre-money valuations also decreased from $3.6 million in 2016 to $3.5 million in H1’17. While there was only a slight drop from 2016, the median pre-money valuation dropped by nearly 24 percent from the record high median pre-money valuation of $4.6 million in 2015.

“Here’s hoping Animoji karaoke becomes a thing.”

That was what I tweeted on Halloween night when I shared a video–10 seconds of a cartoon fox lip-syncing a snippet of “Bohemian Rhapsody,”–which I had made with the iPhone X’s Animoji feature, which uses the phone’s TrueDepth camera to map your face movements to an animated emoji character.

24 hours later, I figured out how to break through the 10-second ceiling imposed by the Animoji applet inside the iPhone’s Messages app. I then used iMovie to edit together two Animoji characters performing a duet of the first song that popped into my head—”Hooked on a Feeling,” as performed by Blue Swede (ooga chaka!)—and added the soundtrack in post-production for better audio fidelity. Then I tweeted the results and went to bed.

Image: courtesy of Apple

You’re thinking about making a career change (or perhaps getting your first real job out of grad school), and you’re looking at different types of organizations. Startups are appealing for the excitement and opportunity, but will you thrive in a less-structured, fast-paced organization? How can you evaluate whether that’s the right work culture for you? What factors should you consider, and which questions should you ask yourself?

The qualities that separate good performers from those who are future-proof — high-impact leaders who have long, successful careers — are not always evident. Although strong performers demonstrate some common traits — they communicate effectively, rely on trusted instincts for decision making, and leverage the people and resources around them to solve problems — it’s the less-obvious intangibles that often mark the difference between productive and invaluable. Chief among these is the capacity to navigate the hidden curriculum of work.

Alphabet, the parent company of Google, has its fingers in a lot of pies. Subsidiaries include self-driving car company Waymo, research and development lab ‘X’ and smart home firm Nest.

One that receives less attention is GV, formerly called Google Ventures, its venture capital investment arm founded in 2009. GV has backed about 350 companies and has £1.9 billion in funds.

Image: TED.com

There is a broad assumption in society and in education that the skills you need to be a leader are more or less transferable. If you can inspire and motivate people in one arena, you should be able to apply those skills to do the same in another venue.

But recent research is rightly challenging this notion. Studies suggest that the best leaders know a lot about the domain in which they are leading, and part of what makes them successful in a management role is technical competence.