From the SARS outbreak in 2003 to the Zika epidemic last year, airplanes have often served as ideal vehicles for propagating disease. The forced proximity. The long journey time. The mix of people from different locations. These factors all help illnesses to jump from one person to another, and from one continent to another.

This gives airlines a special responsibility as outbreaks occur. The decisions they make about who to board, and whether to fly at all, can have widespread consequences. And, according to new research, most carriers could do a better job than they do now. By changing how they board passengers, and perhaps by using different types of planes, they could stop people being infected so readily, the study shows.

Learn what successful lean leaders do to integrate new technologies and approaches, and to ensure that the practices that support continuous improvement also improve continuously.

Image: http://www.mckinsey.com

As I look out the window of my workspace in downtown Seattle, all I see are cranes, construction, and excavations. While this might seem like poetic exaggeration, my perch has put me at the epicenter of Seattle’s transformation from a big little city into something that feels more metropolitan. More accurately, though, it might be called Amazon’s transformation of Seattle.

Amazon’s closest tech peers, old and new, were born in suburbs or decamped there: Microsoft, Apple, Google, Facebook. Jeff Bezos started Amazon in a suburban garage in 1994, but the company has since been housed in a succession of ever-more-expansive digs in Seattle proper: next to a well-regarded barbecue joint south of the now-demolished Kingdome (the “Sodo” neighborhood); in the lovely onetime heroin district downtown, in which office I worked during a six-month stint at the firm in 1996–97; and in a former medical complex that loomed like a supervillain’s gleaming lair high above Seattle as you drove into the city from the south.

Image: Geodesic biodomes sit in the middle of Amazon’s anchor skyscrapers, with more space under construction. (Photo: Glenn Fleishman)

As a business advisor, one of the most disheartening things I see in business today is a serious lack of engagement at all levels, consistent with Gallup’s most recent global engagement survey, finding only 13 percent of workers fully engaged in their job. I see people walking around every day like zombies in a trance. The sad part is that is seems to be getting worse, rather than better.

I’ve heard many views on how to fix this, but I was most impressed with the specifics in a new book, “The Workplace Engagement Solution,” by David Harder. He speaks from years of work with companies now leading the way, including Walt Disney, HBO, and Morgan Stanley. In my view, every company needs to follow all his action items, including the ones paraphrased here:

New York City’s existing 1.7 million s/f of life science and research space is currently fully occupied, pushing companies to establish outposts in Westchester County and New Jersey.

According to a report from brokerage firm Transwestern, New York City is facing space constraints as it hosts the highest concentration of academic institutions and the largest life science workforce in the country.

As of the middle of this year, the city hosted 91,097 life science employees, most of them spread out between eleven major academic medical centers such as Columbia University, Weill Cornell Medical College, New York University and Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai.

Image: http://rew-online.com

Most people don’t give a second thought to using their cell phone everywhere, from their morning commute to the dinner table to the doctor’s office. But research shows that cell phones are far dirtier than most people think, and the more germs they collect, the more germs you touch.

In fact, your own hand is the biggest culprit when it comes to putting filth on your phone. Americans check their phones about 47 times per day, according to a survey by Deloitte, which affords plenty of opportunities for microorganisms to move from your fingers to your phone.

In the 1980s, the first generation of Indian entrepreneurs broke through the glass ceiling and began making a mark on the American technology landscape as startup founders and CEOs. Among these legends was my partner, Kanwal Rekhi, along with Vinod Khosla, Naren Gupta, Prabhu Goel, Suhas Patil and many more who went on to found notable companies like Sun Microsystems (acq: Oracle), Excelan (IPO) and Cirrus Logic (IPO).

Research from Australia's first book on innovation and coworking, Innovation Coworking, shows the innovation sector in the coworking context has exploded in the past year, with Victoria leading the way.

I visited hundreds of coworking spaces across Australia and globally to research the book and the book lists 308 coworking spaces nationwide and there are new ones opening up all the time.

Image: Taylor Tran visited hundreds of coworking spaces across Australia and globally. - http://www.smh.com.au

It’s a common trope that government has a lot to learn from Silicon Valley when it comes to technology. But in cybersecurity, Washington is leading the way in many respects.

When federal leaders and lawmakers praise industry’s tech savvy, they're usually talking about innovation, flexibility and speed to market. IT companies aren't burdened by a labyrinthine acquisition process. They can shift quickly when customers want something different, abandon failing efforts and push products out at the lowest cost.

An article last week in the Silicon Valley Business Journal suggested that some Apple employees are less than thrilled with the futuristic headquarters building it recently opened.

Now, the information in the article was secondhand at best. It quotes John Gruber, who runs an Apple-centric podcast and blog, saying there were rumors “that some high-level Apple staffers are unsatisfied with the company’s open floor plan — which has many company engineers working at long tables with co-workers, instead of in cubicles or offices.” The article further intimated that some prominent teams had asked to work in a separate space.

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I – I took the one less travelled by, And that has made all the difference.

Robert Frost wrote this poem in 1916. In those days a moment’s perusal of the ground let you know which road was most used. But how did you determine the choice of paths to follow? And for that matter, how do you choose which path to follow in our internet age?

You don’t need an MBA degree to launch a business and raise capital. But plenty of business school graduates have founded startups that have raised millions of dollars in funding. 

The school that tops a new Crunchbase ranking of business schools that have produced the most successful alumni-founded startups (defined as raising $1 million or more in the past year) is Harvard Business School — by a wide margin. The school has 124 funded startups setup by its alumni, according to Crunchbase, though as Harvard has larger class sizes than its peers, that is perhaps not so surprising. Stanford GSB, in the heart of entrepreneurial ecosystem Silicon Valley, and the Wharton School are in second and third places with 59 and 53 startups apiece. 

Image: http://www.businessbecause.com

Join us on October 16-17 in Washington, D.C. at the 3rd University Startups Demo Day and Conference!

The Demo Day is more than a conference, it's a startup development platform for corporate open innovation and venturing groups, universities, Certified Startup Development Officers, VCs, and angels to discover, review, develop, partner with, and fund university startups.

If you are a startup in your pre-Series A, post-early seed stage, you are in the Valley of Death.

The "Valley of Death" isn't one of those buzzwordy startup terms.

The Valley of Death isn't an LTV, PoC, MVP, or CAC, or some other incomprehensible combination of letters.

It is a very literal term.

Companies that successfully cross the Valley of Death are twice as likely to succeed (or, put another way, are more likely not to die).

If you’re working in tech and carefully follow venture capital, you can’t ignore what’s happening in China.

Silicon Valley Bank has a footprint in the two most dominant VC markets—the U.S. is #1 and China is a close #2. SVB thrives on knowing the similarities, differences, and needs of these ecosystems.

They just concluded a study of Chinese Venture Capital dynamics. I spoke to Sean Lawson, Senior Manager of SVB Analytics about their findings and the implications for global innovation.

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.

Hackensack Meridian Health has invested $25 million to set up its own healthcare incubator with New Jersey Technology Innovation Institute (NJII), according to an announcement from the Institute. The collaboration reflects a broader national effort by hospitals and health systems, particularly academic medical centers, to create their own innovation network or partner with groups that can give them access to one.

In today’s society, entrepreneurship is a skill that is widely admired. Some of the most respected leaders in the world are entrepreneurs: those that innovate for a purpose, attempting to make the world a better place and striving for something that creates value for businesses, people and the planet alike. Those who do so offer a significant contribution to society, thinking of new ways to tackle some of our biggest challenges, as well as their businesses, enabling them to have longevity and retain a competitive edge.

Image: http://www.bqlive.co.uk

The international community has already missed its chance to limit global warming to between 1.5 and 2 degrees Celsius, according to a new study by Switzerland-based researchers. But a solution to the problem could lie in geo-engineering technologies.

Under the Paris Agreement, countries agreed to try and prevent global warming from exceeding 2 degrees Celsius in order to avoid irreversible and dangerous climate change.

Image: A direct air capture plant in Zurich could be part of the solution to global warming. (Climeworks)

Even Hippocrates believed that the changing seasons had something to do with health—and that the key was how much available daylight there was during different times of the year.

Many centuries later, it's clear he was onto something. As people spend more time indoors staring at computer and television screens, scientists are starting to appreciate how exposure to sunlight affects various body systems.