Three years ago I started a startup podcast because I thought founders were crazy. Why would a sane person willingly endure such intense risks? Part of my curiosity was personal: As a recent college grad just setting out to navigate the workforce, I wanted to understand how they coped with levels of uncertainty that felt to me, anyway, like a bag of bricks on my chest.

We all know that the work landscape is changing. The jobs that will be in demand are shifting as more are automated by artificial intelligence, machine learning, and robots. Teams are becoming more disparate and globalization has added new collaboration challenges. At the same time, more millennials are taking on management roles, and even our work spaces will undergo changes between now and 2025.

Flush from raising $5 million, a “vertical farm” accelerator is getting ready to conquer the world.

The company, according to this Fast Company story, is called Square Roots and it has a “campus” in Brooklyn made from climate-controlled shipping containers where 10 urban farmer entrepreneurs have learned the ins and outs of growing food over the past nine and a half months. The goal: compete against the large industrial farmers that dominate our food chain. The 10 initial student entrepreneurs are all on track to graduate in October and the company is planning to use its recently raised capital to expand to other cities.

Most people who come up with a product idea or invention are incredibly passionate. They’ve seen a need in the marketplace - most often inspired by their own day-to-day frustrations with existing products (or a lack-thereof) - and are excited to fill the gap.

This period of excitement is what I call the "idea bubble". During which, entrepreneurs are enthusiastically planning out their product design guided by their own unique preferences, life experiences, and gut instincts. They may share their concept with friends and family to get “objective” feedback, but loved ones are likely to be encouraging rather than brutally honest

Venture capitalists. You've probably heard all about them: They're greedy, they're out to steal your company, they want to run your life, and they don't add any real value. Except, of course, these statements are all untrue.

Over the years, a lot of unfortunate myths have surfaced surrounding venture capitalists. As a long time Chinese venture capitalist, I feel it's my responsibility to explore the truth and set the record straight. Below are five of the most pervasive myths surrounding venture capitalists, which need to be dashed so investors and startups can make accurate, well-informed decisions.

The 2018 FLC Awards is now open for nominations.  One of the most coveted honors in the technology transfer field, the FLC awards have been presented to over 200 federal laboratories since their inception in 1984. Many of our winning technology transfer efforts have gone on to become products and devices that are indispensable in our daily lives, including:

The PMatX Yavne incubator will serve Israeli startups and focus on next-generation electronics and advanced materials.

German pharmaceutical, life sciences and chemicals giant Merck Group today announced the founding of a technological innovation laboratory that will function as an incubator for startups in Israel. The incubator, to be called PMatX, will focus on next-generation electronics. The program will be supported by other partners, including printing solutions manufacturer HP and the Battery Ventures fund.

Image: http://www.globes.co.il

Gener8tor is bringing its latest series of training programs for entrepreneurs to Madison, WI, as part of a new partnership with the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s computer sciences department.

Launched in 2012, Wisconsin-based Gener8tor coaches and invests in early-stage businesses through different types of programs. Its most recently introduced series is gALPHA, a three-week hackathon-accelerator hybrid.

Gener8tor said Wednesday it will hold two gALPHA programs in Madison during the upcoming school year. They will be supported in part by a private gift to UW-Madison from an anonymous donor who earned a graduate degree in computer science from the school in 2010, Gener8tor said.

Our minds are our most precious resource. You’ve heard motivational speaker Tony Robbins say time and time again that it doesn’t matter what resources you have — what is important is how resourceful you are. To be fruitful and feel organized, your greatest resource–your mind–must be improved to match and adapt this rat marathon.

How do we do this? By being more productive. When you’re more productive, you’re more time-energy efficient. A lot of people don’t work on optimizing their minds for full, powerful performance to enjoy life more, or get more work done. This is why investing in a life coach who helps you grow as a successful person is important.

Image: https://smallbiztrends.com

When it comes to digital assistants like Amazon’s Alexa, my four-year-old niece Hannah Metz is an early adopter. Her family has four puck-like Amazon Echo Dot devices plugged in around her house—including one in her bedroom—that she can use to call on Alexa at any moment.

“Alexa, play ‘It’s Raining Tacos,’” she commanded on a recent sunny afternoon, and the voice-controlled helper immediately complied, blasting through its speaker a confection of a song with lines like “It’s raining tacos from out of the sky” and “Yum, yum, yum, yum, yumidy yum.”

Arthritis impacts more than 90% of people over 65 – as well as an increasing number of younger people. New research indicates that algae could be the secret ingredient in tackling this degenerative disease.

Lab tests revealed that ‘polysaccharide alginate extracted from the stems of brown algae’ contain properties which could stop the degeneration of cartilage – the knees shock absorber – arthritis causes. The lab work was led by Katharina Maniura, a researcher from the Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology (EMPA), Marcy Zenobi-Wong, from ETHZ, along with SINTEF in Norway.

The academic biomedical research community is a hub of employment, economic productivity, and scientific progress. Academic research institutions are drivers of economic development in their local and state economies and, by extension, the national economy. Beyond the economic input that the academic biomedical research community both receives and provides, it generates knowledge that in turn affects society in myriad ways.

The United States has experienced and continues to face the threat of disasters, and, like all entities, the academic biomedical research community can be affected. Recent disasters, from hurricanes to cyber-attacks, and their consequences have shown that the investments of the federal government and of the many other entities that sponsor academic research are not uniformly secure. First and foremost, events that damage biomedical laboratories and the institutions that house them can have impacts on the safety and well-being of humans and research animals. Furthermore, disasters can affect career trajectories, scientific progress, and financial stability at the individual and institutional levels.

What: Innovation hub OneEleven’s new home base

Where: The fourth floor of a concrete complex at Front and Blue Jays Way

How big: 250,000 square feet for 400-odd employees (and 30 companies)

Bilal Khan dreamed up OneEleven four years ago, when he scrawled the idea on a paper napkin. As the policy director for three consecutive Ontario ministers of economic development, trade and innovation, he realized that there were only a few companies creating tech jobs and barely any resources to help start-ups grow. “Toronto’s innovation ecosystem was bursting at the seams,” he says. “But the city was doing nothing to develop the community.” As a result, some of Toronto’s brightest tech minds were abandoning the Big Smoke in favour of Silicon Valley.

Image: Photograph by Brian de Rivera Simon

The word entrepreneurial means the potential and the eagerness to organize and govern a new project for business purpose with a lot of risks involved in it. Today, students are sprinting after multinational companies just after completion of their degrees. Students who want to establish their own business have to wait for the completion of their education - at least up to college level - to achieve formal education.

Teenagers and students must be provided with all the basic entrepreneurial tools at the right time, that is, when they start building their career. Knowledge of the subject at initial stage helps the students to ascertain their objectives. Forming an action plan is easier when the goals are certain and defined, otherwise, aspirants are in a consistent dilemma which diverts their mind to pursuit jobs which they do not prefer.

Unplugging from the business that you’ve built from the ground up can seem like a daunting task for the committed entrepreneur, but we should never downplay its importance.

After all, there is plenty of evidence, both anecdotal and scientific, indicating that entrepreneurs who can take a break and unplug from time to time are happier, healthier, and more productive than their stressed-out counterparts.

Bloomberg’s U.S. Startups Barometer for August 21, 2017 highlights an environment ripe for startups to attract venture capital (VC). The weekly index tracks the overall health of the business environment for private technology companies based in the U.S. Driven by the number of VC financing deals, the barometer set a new record high for the second consecutive week with a nearly 65 percent increase from last year’s index score.

While the barometer paints a bright future for startups, there are several other issues regarding the fundamentals of VC market that are more concerning including: a lack of early stage startup capital creating potential pipeline issues; the dearth of successful exits/IPOs by VC-backed startups; and, heavily capitalized mega funds with significant dry power.

Millions of Americans became witnesses to history Monday when a total solar eclipse — exclusive to the U.S. — swept across the country from coast to coast for the first time.

The eclipse, which earned the nickname “The Great American Eclipse,” first touched down in Lincoln Beach, Ore., at 10:16 a.m. PST before cutting across the country diagonally. It moved over parts of Idaho, Wyoming, Nebraska, Missouri, Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee, Georgia and North Carolina, shrouding the states in sudden darkness before ending near Columbia, S.C. at 2:44 p.m. EST.

Image: http://time.com

How Deep Sea Creatures Emit Their Own Light

Image: https://www.nytimes.com - image from video.

We give up. Since President Trump’s inauguration we’ve been arguing with our friends and scientific colleagues that every new president has a lot to learn, and President Trump deserved some time to get up to speed ("By Investing in Science, Trump Can Strengthen the Economy"; "Washington needs high-level science and technology expertise – now!"). But for us his clock has run out.

It’s not just that he failed the moral leadership test with his statements about this summer’s Charlottesville events. It’s not just that he has transformed the United States from a respected world leader into a petulant provocateur. Both would suffice.

Image: http://thehill.com

Three brand experts explain their approaches to the innovation process.

Rebecca Haigh, head of innovation, Heineken

“We often hear that no idea is a bad idea – that we should generate as many ideas as possible, enter them into the pipeline and see what works. This is particularly pertinent in innovation departments where there are innovation rate targets to hit.

“The danger with this approach is that you dilute resources, not just financially, but in terms of people. When you create too many priorities internally, there’s inevitably a lack of focus and, eventually, lower dividends.