Many startups and entrepreneurs I advise still default to growing their business via the traditional top-down, order-taking culture. I’m convinced that you can’t stay competitive that way with today’s customers, and today’s employees. It’s time to push decision making down into the organization –insisting that the people closest to the customer and the markets learn and make the decisions.

As part of the Innovation to Impact roundtable held at KAUST, we hosted parallel ‘super’ one-day version of the STEAM Innovation Challenge:  Reimaging Education in the Digital Age. Over 85 students from 8 Saudi universities participated including King Abdul-Aziz University, the University of Jeddah, Effat University, Umm al-Qura University, King Saud bin Abdulaziz University for Health Sciences and Dar AL-Hekma University in addition to KAUST students and participants of the KAUST Gifted Students Program.

Image: https://innovation.kaust.edu.sa/

Whether we praise its genius or dispute its validity, it’s hard to deny the influence of Clayton Christensen’s theory of disruptive innovation. In explaining the kinds of technological breakthroughs that enable upstarts to challenge industry incumbents, the Harvard Business School professor’s theory changed the way many organizations develop new products and services.

Image: https://www.strategy-business.com

A highly respected European eco accreditation stamp handed out to environmentally sound products – launched 25 years ago – has huge relevance to the circular economy.

The European Union’s Ecolabel (EU Ecolabel) has clearly defined criteria and is reviewed on an ongoing basis to take account of advances in technology. Its flower logo adorns around 40,000 products, including accommodation, paper, televisions, paints and shampoos.

At both the popular and academic level, those three words pretty well sum up the problem with millennials. But why stop there? They’re job-hopping, promotion-expecting, still-living-at-home-with-their-parents, social-media junkies whose only shared passion seems to be the vague desire for fame. Oh, and they’re also insecure (so if you could not call attention to those deficiencies, that’d be great). Of course, it’s one thing to identify the problem … it’s another to go after the solution.  

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is advancing so rapidly that even its developers are being caught off guard. Google co-founder Sergey Brin said in Davos, Switzerland, in January that it “touches every single one of our main projects, ranging from search to photos to ads … everything we do … it definitely surprised me, even though I was sitting right there.”

The long-promised AI, the stuff we’ve seen in science fiction, is coming and we need to be prepared. Today, AI is powering voice assistants such as Google Home, Amazon Alexa and Apple Siri, allowing them to have increasingly natural conversations with us and manage our lights, order food and schedule meetings.

Hugh Herr sits at a table in his austere glass office in the famous Media Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, scrolling through images of a striking fashion model born without a right forearm. As head of biomechatronics research at MIT and one of the world’s leading developers of wearable robotics, Herr is making a point about how disability is becoming obsolete as the boundary between humans and robots vanishes.

Image: https://www.strategy-business.com

The gig economy is growing at a pace faster than some might have imagined. And driving it forward are freelancers who are redefining the modern workspace. Not all of these people are gravitating to freelancing for the same reasons. A new infographic created by LinkedIn ProFinder and Intuit (NASDAQ:INTU) reveals there are five different types of freelancers in the gig economy today. They have different income levels, career objectives and motivations.

Image: https://smallbiztrends.com

Moving to a circular economy model could create millions of jobs across Europe, according to one of the continent’s leading politicians.

And jobs are the focus of the European Union’s (EU) Green Week programme, which kicks off tomorrow. This year’s theme ‘green jobs for a greener future’ will make it the hot topic at events being held around the continent, including at the EU Green Week’s showcase conference in Brussels.

Google CEO Sundar Pichai was obviously excited when he spoke to developers about a blockbuster result from his machine-learning lab earlier this month. Researchers had figured out how to automate some of the work of crafting machine-learning software, something that could make it much easier to deploy the technology in new situations and industries.

Image: ANDREA CHRONOPOULOS - https://www.technologyreview.com

"Jump out of the plane on my count, at 5. Ready?" the sky diver instructor says to you, a nervous first-time customer, crouched in a tiny Cessna plane flying 10,000 feet above the air. You are pulsing with adrenaline. Wide eye fear.

"Ok," you say, unconvincingly. "Ready."

The instructor kicks open the door to the plane. Air rushes through the open door and the aircraft rattles a bit in the sky. Fear turns to panic, as every fiber of your body -- everything evolution has taught you -- says to not jump out of an open aircraft.

What makes some CEOs successful while others crash and burn? The stereotypical view — often promoted in magazines and on television — is that these leaders are charismatic, armed with an Ivy League degree and larger than life. That impression is both superficial and wrong, according to Elena Lytkina Botelho and Kim Powell, consultants at ghSMART, a Chicago-based management consulting firm. After a 10-year study, Botelho, Powell, and their colleagues found that successful CEOs have four behavioral attributes that are often overlooked because they are not particularly glamorous. These CEOs make decisions quickly; they are relentlessly reliable; they excel at managing relationships; and they adapt swiftly to changing circumstances.

Image: http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu

The National Angel Capital Organization (NACO) has released its annual report on angel activity in Canada for 2016.

The report, which is based on a survey of 35 angel groups across Canada that represent 3,300 active angels, was developed in partnership with the Government of Canada, BDC Capital, RBC, Ryerson Incubate, and Innovate Network Canada. The report highlights key trends and statistics of Canada’s angel market, and finds that more angel groups are participating in larger syndicated deals and follow-on investments in Canada.

Prestigious startup accelerators like Techstars and Y Combinator (YC) have a lower acceptance rate (only 1-2%) than Harvard (5%). Top accelerators give entrepreneurs the opportunity to rapidly scale their companies over an intensive three-month program by providing access to mentors, investors, advisors and a network of other founders.

The dangerous “Portuguese man-of-war” has a deadly sting despite its exotic beauty. Beachgoers in on the east coast of the U.S. should look out for it.

Swap.com is the fastest growing online consignment store in the United States. With over 1.5 million unique items available from its inventory, Swap.com offers the largest selection of pre-owned baby, kid’s, maternity, women’s and men’s apparel and accessories. CEO and Co-Founder Juha Koponen says he and his team are always working towards making sure the selection of items fits the needs of his customers. Koponen knows that it’s going to take lots of time, and if the first thing doesn’t work, change it. How is Koponen’s company unique from the rest? Click play to find out.

You’ve never quite figured out the best way to organize your to-do list–join the club. Perhaps you’ve got dozens of pages of to-dos stored away in the Notes app on your phone, and dozens more spread out across Slack and Trello. Or maybe you’ve tried a bunch to-do list apps and haven’t been able to commit to one. Fear not: There’s no right way to do to-do lists.

Raleigh-Durham, USA (ECONOMYNEXT) – A little-known American grant programme for research has been critical for the success of startup technology companies, some of which, like chip maker Qualcomm and cyber security firm Symantec Corp., are now multinationals.

The United States federal Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) programme emerged out of concerns about U.S. competitiveness in the late 1970s, especially in the face of competition from Japanese exports, particularly in electronics.

Sorry, but the small funding cuts imposed on the universities in the budget don't rouse any sympathy from me.

In an ideal world we'd be investing more in our universities, but our world is far from ideal. And so are our unis. They're inefficient bureaucracies, with bloated administrations and over-paid vice chancellors.

Unless you feel that your innovation program is a runaway success and exceeding your expectations, the answer might very well be… yes. Ten Signs You Need an Innovation Intervention Nobody can articulate your definition of innovation (or you don’t have one) Nobody can articulate your innovation vision/strategy/goals (or you don’t have them) People struggle to tell the story of one or more innovations launched to wide adoption by the organization