When leaders foster a culture of innovation, they enable their teams to be creative, flexible problem-solvers who thrive in the face of change. But what is a culture of innovation? And how does a leader begin to foster one? Building a culture of innovation originates with embracing The 3 Cs: critical thinking, curiosity, and customer-centric design.

Critical Thinking

There is a commonly held theory that critical thinking stifles creativity and innovation. Critical thinking, this theory goes, is traditional, formal and process-oriented. Creativity and innovation, on the other hand, require an unconventional, free-form environment for everyone to tap into their unique ideas. In this theory, critical thinking and creativity cannot possibly coexist.

Bill Gates and Elon Musk are two of the biggest names in tech.

Gates cofounded Microsoft in 1975, helping to spark the PC revolution. Now he focuses most of his time on philanthropy.

Musk founded PayPal and currently splits his week traveling between Tesla and SpaceX.

Both men also share one habit that's helped them navigate their jam-packed schedules: They plan out every moment of their days.

Gates and Musk are both said to adhere to schedules divided up into five-minute slots.

Just because a big pharma company is successful today doesn't mean it will be successful in a few years. Even the biggest blockbuster drugs eventually lose patent exclusivity or face new and improved competition. That's why continued research and development (R&D) is a must. 

Throwing money at R&D doesn't guarantee success -- but not making smart investments in developing pipeline candidates will almost certainly ensure failure. The odds for success are better for drugmakers that can invest in plenty of experimental drugs. 

If you live in Silicon Valley, Seattle, DC, Chicago or LA, you may think that entrepreneurship is on the rise. However, the US has actually seen a steady decline in startups. In fact, CNN reported that the amount of startups per year are currently about 400,000. While that might sound like a lot, Americans were opening nearly 600,000 businesses per year in the 70s. That last fact really stuck out to me.

After 23 years with global information technology (IT) giants like IBM and SAP, in 2014 Lalitha Indrakanti, 42, made the surprising move to foods & agriculture multinationnal Cargill. “I couldn’t have asked for more,” Indrakanti told ET Magazine earlier this week.

If you’re wondering why a techie would be so upbeat about such a switch, the answer is a simple one: Indrakanti had joined as head of Cargill’s business services centre in Bengaluru, which provides the parent company back-end services across functions like IT, human resources, logistics and sourcing.

Image: Vijay Ratnaparkhe, MD, Robert Bosch Engg and Business Solutions 

Not that long ago, a somewhat mysterious cloud shrouded creativity on the work floor. Everybody seemed to have their own definition and understanding of the word. The connotation with more artistic professions or (applied) art forms was never far away. Designers, copywriters, architects, film makers, musicians, … yes, those by definition are creative professions and creativity belongs there. Of course.

Bill Gurley is one of the smartest venture capitalists in Silicon Valley, which is a big reason that the general partner of Benchmark Capital held a coveted seat on the board of directors at Uber until recently.

However, Gurley and then-CEO Travis Kalanick had a falling out, and two of Gurley’s colleagues, not Gurley himself, asked Kalanick to step down. Now Benchmark has sued Kalanick, claiming that he failed to tell the board about a “pervasive culture of gender discrimination and sexual harassment,” according to the lawsuit. If Gurley is so smart, and so plugged in to Silicon Valley, why did he not detect such a serious problem himself?

In a recent post on Vanguard's blog, senior financial adviser Julie Virta invited recent and soon-to-be retirees to share some of the lessons they've learned about planning for retirement. She specifically asked them what they might do differently if they could go back in time and have a "do-over." The idea was to help people still working gain insights from those who've already navigated the retirement planning process. Her readers responded big time, posting more than 37 pages of comments, many of which Virta shared in a later column.

As the economy flourishes after some tough economic times, more and more people seem to be turning to entrepreneurship as an alternative to traditional employment. I applaud this trend, but caution all of you thinking this direction to approach entrepreneurship with your eyes wide open. It is not for everyone, as the entrepreneur’s path is fraught with challenges.

An agile approach to data-lake development can help companies launch analytics programs quickly and establish a data-friendly culture for the long term.

Increases in computer-processing power, cloud-storage capacity and usage, and network connectivity are turning the current flood of data in most companies into a tidal wave—an endless flow of detailed information about customers’ personal profiles, sales data, product specifications, process steps, and so on. The data arrive in all formats and from a range of sources, including Internet-of-Things devices, social-media sites, sales systems, and internal-collaboration systems.

Artificial Intelligence. I can’t think of a reference to the intellect that would feel more unauthentic and fake. It’s no wonder people turn to The Terminator or The Matrix to fathom what it’s all about. Fortunately, after 60 years of AI rumors fueled by academia and movies, we’re finally starting to see signs that it means more than just robots taking over.

Working in the tech industry, it’s ironic that the AI lightbulb clicked not through an understanding of machine learning or engineering — but through the human challenges we face in the technology world.

Recently I had the opportunity to join in on an Office of Community and Rural Affairs Listening Session in Sullivan. The information shared by regional residents was valuable and it fostered the idea for this article today. It appears there is a tremendous amount of confusion regarding the differences between a co-working space and an incubator. Often the terms are used interchangeably, but there are tremendous elements that set the two apart in their services provided to the business owners and community at large. However, I do recognize the missions of co-workspace and incubators tend to overlap.

An extraordinary book has been written about, or set in, every single state in the country — including Washington, D.C. These novels, which range from contemporary fiction to classics to childhood favorites, bring these places to life in such a way that reading them can almost transport you there.

We selected the best books based in every state by looking for titles that almost use their state as another character. The setting is so deeply entwined with these texts, the story couldn't even exist in another place or time.

Focusing on research can be big business for Iowa's universities.

A single "home run" invention can yield tens of millions of dollars. And as universities face funding pressures from all angles, some have suggested a focus on bringing in more research dollars could be a solution.

Explore the two data visualizations below to learn how a university invention (typically) goes through the patenting and commercialization process, and key stats about research commercialization and how Iowa's universities stack up. 

Earlier this year, as the annual Angel Venture Fair was wrapping up, MilkCrate CEO Morgan Berman dropped some truth to Philly.com reporter Diane Mastrull:

“It is a little bit awkward for me to just go up to all these middle-aged men in sports jackets in the Union League.”

A diversity-challenged angel and venture capital scene isn’t just a Philly issue. The problem also goes beyond just gender. And as our sister site Generocity has reported, the lack of diversity is also found in the impact investment scene.

Image: Venture capitalists opened up about failure at #Failfest during Philly Tech Week 2017 presented by Comcast. (Photo by Roberto Torres)

With technology at our fingertips, it’s easier than ever to find answers to questions — even medical ones. All you have to do is type your query into the Google search bar.

Thus, quite fittingly, Google has teamed up with the National Alliance on Mental Illness to give users more access to mental health information.

More specifically, the tech giant and NAMI are helping educate the population on depression.

When Google users in the United States search for “depression” or “clinical depression,” they will now see a box that reads “Check if you’re clinically depressed.”

Understand the science behind the headlines in How It Happens, which combines simple explanation and elegant animation to reveal the inner workings of the physical world.

In case you haven’t noticed it, the rapid evolution of do-it-yourself (DIY) facilities for developers, including 3-D printers, SketchUp and makerspaces such as TechShop, have scaled down the cost of prototypes and hardware design by an order of magnitude. This movement, coupled with free websites and apps, makes it possible for almost any technical person to start a business.

This Maker Movement has now spread across the world, spawning hundreds of events and companies, including Maker Faires, Makerspaces, Hackerspaces, and Maker Film Fests. This technology is not only spawning a new generation of entrepreneurs, but is also changing the educational landscape, all the way down to early grade school.

Silicon Valley has long been considered the most viable option for starting a business or finding a job in the tech industry. Its reputation is largely self-affirming, though — as long as it’s seen as the hub of the tech world, it will be by virtue of attracting an abundance of startups and the top talent in the industry.

Silicon Valley’s reputation has been slipping lately, however, which could indicate that it will be surpassed as the foremost entrepreneurial hub in the not-too-distant future.

I recently traveled to China, along with 12 CEOs, to meet with Chinese companies, consider investment opportunities and see first-hand how they stack up against American innovation, technology and work ethic.

Our trip consisted of meetings with top executives from Baidu (the Google of China) and Xiaomi, Inc., venture capitalists and startup companies. We met with these groups to understand how they approach innovation and disruption not just in China, but worldwide.