This spring, Governor Chris Christie ushered in New Jersey’s third annual STEM Week with a gubernatorial proclamation celebrating our living legacy of innovation. This was a fitting tribute to a state where researchers not only stand on the shoulders of giants, as Isaac Newton said, but where many are giants themselves.

What worked in the iconic stories of Facebook and Google fifteen years ago might not work so well today. The challenges are entirely different and inspiration knocks the door at odd hours. What is an entrepreneur to do in such an ever-changing climate? As Peter Thiel said in his iconic book, Zero to One — the next Mark Zuckerberg will not be building a social network. The next Larry Page will not be building a search engine.

When it comes to résumés, there's a lot that can go wrong.

Just ask Tina Nicolai — she's read 40,000 résumés since launching Résumé Writers' Ink in 2010.

She recently broke down some of the biggest résumé annoyances for Business Insider, from typos to buzzwords.

However, which irritating slip-up is the worst of all?

Nicolai says that starting a bullet with the worlds "responsible for" is her biggest pet peeve.

Should you let your employees work from home?

To WFH or not to WFH: that is the question.

For the uninitiated, WFH, or “Working From Home,” is an acronym that you’ll likely start seeing in more and more work emails, written by coworkers who are likely in their PJs, and probably feeding their dog at the same time.

We know that this time of year can be extremely hectic; the second quarter is coming to a close and summer is quickly approaching. We also know how important it is to honor the hard work that your team has put into innovating new products and services. In light of this, we have decided to extend the R&D 100 Awards submission deadline to June 23 in order to ensure that all eligible teams can enter their award-worthy submissions for 2017.

Dr. Francis Collins, a holdover from the Obama administration, will remain director of the National Institutes of Health, the White House announced late Tuesday.

President Trump’s show of support for the director comes even as Collins has praised congressional efforts to boost NIH funding in the face of proposed White House cuts, arguing that stability was needed to keep young scientists in the field. The White House last month proposed a massive $5.8 billion cut for next year’s NIH budget.

Image: NIH Director Francis Collins JEFF DELVISCIO/STAT

The European Union has agreed new rules aimed at stimulating venture capital investments in the EU and reviving the region’s securitisation market.

The agreements on both sets of regulations are part of the European Commission’s action plan to create a Capital Markets Union (CMU) in the EU.

Innovation is the lifeblood of entrepreneurship.

Peter Drucker considers it, “the specific tool of entrepreneurs, the means by which they exploit change as an opportunity for a different business or a different service.” That said, the reality is that although organizations value innovation, they struggle to achieve it.

There is so much talk about innovation these days, it’s hard to sometimes distinguish the signal from the noise. In fact, the word innovation gets thrown around so much that it leaves people wondering: What’s really innovative? Well, most of the time that people talk about something being innovative, what they describe isn’t innovative, but instead inventive or creative. These three are all very different. Here is how I like to distinguish the differences between creativity, invention and innovation:

True business success and leadership starts with real personal values, extends to building a team, and finally to inspiring customers and your community. That’s a huge leap from an entrepreneurial idea, to a product, to making money. Is it any wonder that the majority of startups fail? My job as a new business advisor is to help entrepreneurs get over this chasm early.

Startup work environments are always chaos, but they can still be great environments to work in, or they can be terrible. Whether yours is terrible or great, that same tone flows out to your customers, and regulates your productivity inside. You as the founder are the starting point and definer, so you need to get it right.

Could the time finally be right for the flying car to leave the drawing boards of futurists and take to our skies as a new form of transportation? According to Francois Chopard, Founder and CEO of investment firm Starburst Accelerator, the answer is yes. For decades, the idea of flying cars has been used as shorthand for "the future"—something perpetually a few years off in the distance, waiting for technology to catch up and make them possible. Chopard thinks that's finally happening.

Image: This is Lillium Aviation's proposed VTOL vehicle. - https://arstechnica.com

Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) Robotics Institute researchers have developed a simplified interactive design tool that lets you design and make your own customized legged or wheeled robot, using a mix of 3D-printed parts and off-the-shelf components.

The current process of creating new robotic systems is challenging, time-consuming, and resource-intensive. So the CMU researchers have created a visual design tool with a simple drag-and-drop interface that lets you choose from a library of standard building blocks (such as actuators and mounting brackets that are either off-the-shelf/mass-produced or can be 3D-printed) that you can combine to create complex functioning robotic systems.

Image: Two robots — robot calligrapher and puppy — produced using an interactive display tool and selecting off-the-shelf components and 3D-printed parts (credit: Carnegie Mellon University) 

Chris Kuenne, entrepreneurship lecturer at Princeton, and John Danner, senior fellow at the Lester Center for Entrepreneurship at UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business, talk about one of the least understood factors that leads to success at scale: the personality of the company founder. Their research describes four distinct types of highly successful entrepreneurial personalities: the Driver, the Explorer, the Crusader, and the Captain.

It is undeniable that Michigan’s investment community boasts some impressive numbers. According to the 2017 MVCA Research Report, 54 startups received $222 million from Michigan venture capital firms and there was $4 billion of capital under management in 2016. As Michigan’s entrepreneurial community continues to grow and thrive, the investment community is actively fundraising and expanding their networks to keep up with this boom in activity.

Angel investors cautiously retreated in 2016, with the number of investments and deal sizes decreasing, but renewed their focus on startups and seed investments, according to Jeffrey Sohl, director of University of New Hampshire’s Center for Venture Research.

A total of 64,380 entrepreneurial ventures received angel funding last year, a decline of 9.5 percent, from 297,880 active investors, a decrease of 2.3 percent year-over-year. 

Image: Jeff Sohl, director of UNH's Center for Venture Research - http://www.nhbr.com

Ohio has quickly become one of the fastest-growing startup economies in the country, according to a new report on venture-capital funding in the state.

Investors put $470 million to work with 210 new and developing companies in Ohio last year, according to the Ohio Venture Report 2016. That’s a 26 percent increase in venture-capital investment from 2015 and a 46 percent increase from 2014.

“The future is very bright,” said venture capitalist Mark Kvamme, the founder of Drive Capital and chairman of the report’s producer, VentureOhio, a Columbus-based trade association for venture investors, incubators, accelerators, universities and other organizations.

In four small schools scattered across San Francisco, a data experiment is under way. That is where AltSchool is testing how technology can help teachers maximize their students’ learning.

Founded two years ago by Max Ventilla, a data expert and former head of personalization at Google, AltSchool runs schools filled with data-gathering technology.

Image: https://www.technologyreview.com 

The Research Triangle Park arm of the Inception Micro Angel Fund is raising a second tranche of cash, fund executives said Thursday.

Dubbed IMAF-RTP 2, LLC, the new fund will be targeted toward “pre-launch” companies, providing seed financing to innovators in the Research Triangle area.

When the Michigan Venture Capital Association (MVCA) unveiled the findings in its 2017 annual report at a public event in April, there was a lot to celebrate: a 48 percent increase in venture-backed startups over the past five years; every dollar invested by a Michigan firm attracting $4.61 in out-of-state capital; and a total of $4 billion ($2.4 billion of which is from Michigan VCs) in venture funds currently under management in the state.