(THE INVESTOR) In the age of “digital health care,” high-tech wearables, cutting-edge medical devices and integrated apps combined with major breakthroughs in data computing and analytics capabilities are set to pave new frontiers in the health care sector.

And in the global race to take over this emerging industry, South Korea’s innovative tech startups with an expertise in so-called “deep tech” involving complex engineering skills and software expertise could gain an upper hand, according to the founding chief of German pharma giant Bayer’s digital health care startup accelerator program.

Image: Jesus del Valle Rosales, global head of Bayer’s Grants4Apps Accelerator program. Bayer Korea - http://www.theinvestor.co.kr

AOL will be shutting down AIM, its instant messenger service, on December 15. This iconic product was highly popular during its heyday. According to the Wall Street Journal, AIM grew from 13 million users in 1997 to over 65 million users in 2000. While some of us will lament the the closure of AIM, these feelings are more nostalgia than anything else. The truth is that many of us stopped using the platform long ago and we have migrated to other platforms such as WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger.

Entrepreneurship communities are booming across the world. From 15 to 50, people in all age groups are generating the brightest ideas and are not afraid in the slightest to launch their own ventures. No wonder, then, that globally, more than 100 million startups are launched every year (three startups every second!).

NAVYA, with project collaborators Michigan Economic Development Corporation (MEDC) and Ann Arbor SPARK, recently announced that it will locate a manufacturing plant in the Ann Arbor region. At the 20,000+ sq. ft. facility, in Saline, Mich., NAVYA plans to build its ARMA fully autonomous shuttle vehicles by the end of 2017.

NAVYA, created in 2014, is a French company specializing in developing innovative, smart and sustainable mobility solutions. NAVYA develops driverless, automated electric vehicles that are independent of all infrastructure. These vehicles are designed for the intelligent transport of people and goods.

If Bill Nye reinvented his show for the modern era, he'd probably be the Data Science Guy. Skilled analytics professionals are in high demand across all sorts of industries nowadays, and IBM predicts that need will only continue to grow over the next three years. Get everything you need to break into this dynamic field through the Certs School's Complete Data Science Certification Training Bundle, available now for less than $50.

Image: PEXELS

History is a messenger of memory. Its messages include the unique academic syllabus of St Patrick College in Maynooth, Ireland, which was at the origin of Maynooth University founded in 1997. It is a lasting heritage on which universities of the third millennium should rely to build they future.

To avert the risk of sinking into the darkness at the bottom of the well of specialization, transculturation and anti-discipline play a major role. A term coined by Cuban anthropologist Fernando Ortiz, transculturation is a network of reciprocal exchange of cultural influences that overlap each other.

We are living in a new generation of business, where customers drive the experience, and highly engaged employees are required to keep up with customer expectations. Traditional business leadership practices, including autocratic, reactive, and narcissistic, aren’t working. Only 13 percent of workers are fully engaged, and half have left a job because they hated their boss.

We have all heard the examples of the great new company cultures, popularized by Google, Zappos, and Facebook, which seem to imply that company perks are the secret to success. Of course, these are great, but they don’t happen without enlightened leadership coming first. I believe that business cultures are a function of people and leadership, more than programs.

At the center of every significant innovation is always an idea. Clarence Birdseye’s idea about freezing fish revolutionized the food industry and American diets. Charles Schwab’s idea about flat commissions changed investing forever. Steve Jobs idea about creating a device that could hold 1000 songs in your pocket turned around Apple’s fortunes. Yet we shouldn’t confuse a great idea with where it came from. Truly useful ideas don’t arise from out of the ether or through fancy techniques like brainstorming or divergent thinking. The best ideas come in response to an important problem and thrive under constraints.

When Caleigh McKinnie moved to Roanoke in 2015 she didn’t have a job, but she did have skills.

After working as an academic adviser in New Orleans, she wanted to return to Roanoke, her hometown, whether she had a job lined up or not. She had a variety of creative skills and was used to having a side job or two, and she figured she could make it work in the right environment.

According to a new report, 17 crowdfunded companies have successfully exited over the past five years in Israel. Israel, also known as the “startup nation”, is one of the most vibrant entrepreneurial scenes in the world and has recently seen the launch of a new equity crowdfunding marketplace, iAngels. One of its co-founders, former Goldman Sachs analyst Shelly Hod Moyal told Dealbreaker.com that:

Many business leaders suspect that their organization is lagging or outdated - but they're not sure how to respond. In Deloitte's 2017 Global Human Capital Trends report, 88 percent of respondents told us that "building the organization of the future" is important or very important. However, only 11 percent believed they understand how to build such an organization. 

What explains the gap?

Leaders see the organization of the future as digital, but we tend to judge 'digital-ness' by outward appearance. Is the company paperless? What does its mobile app or website look like? How active is it on social media?

Innovation……..you know that word that gets tossed around a lot? Well what does it mean, and how can you prepare yourself and your company to become more innovative? Who better to ask then Lisa Bodell, an award-winning author and CEO of Futurethink. As a futurist and expert on the topic of change, she serves as a global council member of the World Economic Forum; and has helped thousands of senior leaders ignite innovation. I had the pleasure and honor of having her as my most recent guest on my What’s Next! podcast.

Working at home continues to grow as a preferred access mode to work, according to the recently released American Community Survey data for 2016. The latest data shows that 5.0 percent of the nation's work force worked from home, nearly equaling that of transit's 5.1 percent. In 2000, working at home comprised only 3.3 percent of the workforce, meaning over the past 16 years there has been an impressive 53 percent increase (note). Transit has also done well over that period, having increased approximately 10 percent from 4.6 percent.

Image: http://www.newgeography.com

Plenty of sweeping generalizations are being made about the millennial age group nowadays. I'm one of them, so I want to put these rumors to rest.

After all, we’ve gotten used to hearing about how we’re destroying multiple industries, relying too much on technology and being largely impractical. Luckily, most of these myths are easy to shrug off, as just another case of the older generations misunderstanding and mistrusting the younger ones.

That’s the title of an article in the “New England Journal of Medicine.”

It’s interesting to see how innovation is thought about in other fields. Medicine is different from war in that doctors operate every day, but some officers can go through an entire career without ever seeing combat.

That said, the authors, David Asch and Roy Rosin, list four basic questions that need to be addressed in considering an innovation:

Image: http://foreignpolicy.com

Over the last decade and a half, the cloud computing giant Salesforce has rewritten the rulebook for how corporate philanthropy is supposed to work. That includes formalizing a commitment to give at least 1% of its time, product, and equity to charity no matter how well the company may be doing. Then it formalized a process for others to follow suit in replicating that commitment: The company’s early effort became the basis for Pledge 1%, an advisory program that launched two years ago, which helps others do the same in at least one of those three areas. Pledge 1% has been adopted by well over a thousand companies, including unicorns like Atlassian, Box, Pure Storage, and Twilio.

Because we can never have enough reasons to keep exercising, a new study with mice finds that physical activity not only increases the number of new neurons in the brain, it also subtly changes the shape and workings of these cells in ways that might have implications for memory and even delaying the onset of dementia.

As most of us have heard, our brains are not composed of static, unchanging tissue. Instead, in most animals, including people, the brain is a dynamic, active organ in which new neurons and neural connections are created throughout life, especially in areas of the brain related to memory and thinking.

The world’s leading global cities may be sitting on top of the pile for now but they have a group of ambitious contenders increasingly challenging their dominance.

The chasing pack are already household names in their own right but there’s more to the top group of London, Paris, New York, Tokyo, Hong Kong, Singapore and Seoul than size alone. They’ve also got a critical mass of corporate headquarters, deep talent pools, efficient infrastructure – not to mention the influence to set and shape the world stage.

Startup founders seeking to raise venture capital should expect to face tough questions, and lack of preparedness may see investors choosing to focus their attention elsewhere.

The questions will likely come thick and fast, and it is best to have all bases covered when fronting investors. But what are some of the more common questions that startup founders can expect to face?

Tourist traps are a dime a dozen in big cities, but many popular urban destinations have up-and-coming neighborhoods that offer cool alternatives to the guidebook staples.

The travel experts at Lonely Planet scouted the neighborhoods that will deliver the goods if you're looking to visit promising eateries, browse artisan products at local shops and sip some craft brews on your next vacation or work trip. The travel company worked with U.S.-based experts to highlight the hottest up-and-coming neighborhoods in America.