The question is no longer if a company should use AI, but where it brings the greatest competitive advantage. There are three areas where AI has now shifted from a “nice-to-have” to a “must-have” technology. Companies that push the boundaries of AI to sharpen predictions, boost efficiencies, and optimize the real-time pricing or stock control of their products are moving faster and further than rivals still conservatively wavering over the wisdom of using AI for these purposes.

Connected strategies can become a powerful new source of competitive advantage. And connected technologies have greatly advanced over the recent past. Customers and employees are increasingly expecting well-designed digital experiences, a trend that certainly has further accelerated during the pandemic. Consequently, the question companies face currently is not a matter of “whether they should implement a connected strategy,” but a matter of “how.” When designing a successful connected strategy, the technological innovation is only one piece of the puzzle. In order to create a lasting competitive advantage, companies need to match the right technological solutions with the right customer needs. This article discusses four connected customer experiences that firms can create: 1) respond-to-desire; 2) curated offering, 3) coach behavior, and 4) automatic execution, to turn episodic interactions with customers into continuous relationships.

Smart potential customers only visit and buy from credible and memorable websites. In the past, if your startup had a website presence, the company was credible by definition. In today’s world, a website is necessary but not sufficient for credibility. Dreamers and gamblers have found out that if the website isn’t validated as credible, it’s probably a scam, and everyone loses.

Hans Tung, managing partner of GGV Capital, has often said that when it comes to a potential investment, he cares more about the size of the opportunity, the strength of the team, and how much runway the company has than he does about its valuation.

But at his venture capital firm’s Monday morning meeting this week, Tung and his partners discussed a cybersecurity company that had raised a prelaunch round at a $1 billion valuation. “That, even for me, is too much to take,” Tung said Tuesday at Fortune’s Brainstorm Tech conference in Half Moon Bay, Calif.

Image: https://fortune.com - From Video

An entrepreneur lifestyle that continues to gain in popularity these days is being a “social entrepreneur.” In the simplest of terms, these are people who seek to generate “social value”, rather than profits, and use traditional business principles to provide solutions to social issues

On the surface, this sounds like entrepreneurs who want to build a non-profit organization. Yet the term seems to be more often associated with people who intend to make a profit, but whose work is targeted toward long-term socio-economic change. Think Bill Gates, with his current investments in energy management, or Blake Mycoskie with TOMs Shoes, as opposed to the leaders of the American Cancer Society or Goodwill Industries.

Ten years ago this month, we witnessed what may very well go down as one of the most significant events in modern American history: In downtown New York’s Zuccotti Park, police officers stormed a small, makeshift compound, evicting a small throng of occupants and putting an end to what became known as the Occupy Wall Street movement.

Forming a California corporation provides entrepreneurs with a number of benefits. If properly operated, a corporation will protect the shareholders of the corporation from the debts and liabilities of the business. The corporation can raise capital from angel investors, venture capital firms, and other investors. Incorporation can provide a business with credibility and brand recognition, and can facilitate a future sale of the company. Corporations can also have shares that are easily transferable.

While food, sports, and tradition are wonderful parts of the holiday season, it's also a very convenient time to take a pause, create special moments with loved ones, and reset. Doing so can pay large dividends to your business, because a well-rested entrepreneur is one who can tackle the new year with renewed vigor and focus. 

If you are just plain tired of working so hard, or your startup is not getting the traction you expected, should you shut down cleanly, or just file for bankruptcy and walk away? For those who think that bankruptcy is the easy way out, think again. Bankruptcy should always be the absolutely last resort.

The “advantage” of filing for bankruptcy, of course, is that it gets creditors permanently off your back, with no continuing lawsuits, based on funds derived from selling all assets. You can hand the stressful job of liquidating assets and negotiating with creditors over to the court.

Image: https://pixabay.com/illustrations/place-name-sign-bankruptcy-96612/

A dynamic visionary and an exemplary leader from the life sciences industry, Vin Singh is a well-known name in the industry today. He has extensive experience in founding start-ups, as he has conceived and built several companies in the life science space including BullFrog, Next Healthcare Inc., and MaxCyte Inc. A strategic thinker, Vin Singh is the CEO and Chairman of BullFrog AI, a leading company with a proprietary Artificial Intelligence platform, aimed at improving biopharma drug development. Excerpts from an interview with him:

This week's episode of Elevator Pitch features pitches from minority founders in the finance, beauty, cannabis and beverage industries. Some of the founders have years of experience with starting ventures and raising funds, while others are pitching in front of cameras for the first time. Regardless of their previous experience, every person in our elevator has to stare down the ticking clock and battle their nerves to deliver a succinct and compelling 60-second pitch. 

Nuro, a leader in autonomous delivery vehicles, is kicking off a new service in California in partnership with 7-Eleven. The company will deliver convenience store products to customers in its autonomous Toyota Prius vehicles, which will include a safety driver behind the wheel, before eventually shifting over to its fully driverless R2 delivery vehicles.

Image: https://www.theverge.com

Time released its "100 Best Inventions of 2021" list, and it featured several healthcare technologies.

The publication solicited nominations worldwide and evaluated inventions on factors such as originality, effectiveness, creativity and impact. Here are the healthcare technologies featured on the list, released Nov. 10:

With a 20-year history, the Maryland Technology Development Corporation (TEDCO) is reporting an economic impact in 2021 four times greater than what they experienced in 2013. A new independent study found that its six core programs have provided “significant value” to the state’s start-up community, supporting over 10,000 jobs and more than $2 billion in statewide economic activity as of 2021. Meanwhile, BioCrossroads, a non-profit based in Indianapolis, has reported growth in its life sciences initiatives over the past 15 years. BioCrossroads conducts market research and promotes business and technological innovation in life sciences across Indiana. Both TEDCO and BioCrossroads have utilized public capital to develop industry within their respective target states.

I am one half of a partnership managing an international company. With more than ten business projects, including an e-sports media holding company, service and product IT companies, the production and distribution of merchandise, a venture studio, and more.

Several years ago, each of these was scattered businesses—united only by the founders’ names. In each of them, my partner and I had key roles, but there was one undesirable point: we were drowning in a sea of day-to-day business operation hassle—and companies were approaching the threshold of stagnation.

The discovery of omicron — the new variant of coronavirus with a high number of concerning mutations — has kicked off a frenzy of research. Scientists are racing to figure out how transmissible this variant is and how resistant to vaccines.

They're also grappling with a mystery: How did omicron get created?

NPR spoke with two scientists in the thick of this research. Trevor Bedford is a computational virologist and professor at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle. Richard Lessells is an infectious disease specialist at the University of KwaZulu-Natal in Durban, South Africa, and part of the team that identified omicron in South Africa and alerted the world. Here's what they have to say.

Delivering more vaccines to low- and middle-income countries is vital if we want to limit the emergence of new coronavirus variants.

With lockdowns targeting the unvaccinated taking place across parts of Europe, there has been much debate about the levels of vaccine uptake in certain wealthier nations. However, this only serves to deflect from a much more critical issue, namely the staggering imbalance between vaccination levels in wealthy countries and those in lower income nations. This imbalance has been highlighted by the emergence of the new Covid-19 virus variant, Omicron. It is a sombre reminder that we need to expedite efforts to protect populations everywhere and that inward looking strategies will not work.

The pandemic accelerated many trends, from streaming, e-commerce, and food delivery platforms to the widespread adoption of remote work. But instead of taking advantage of this opportunity to improve how we work, most organizations simply took their offices online, along with the bad habits that permeated them. A move to a better way of working remotely is desperately needed. If your digital transformation is going to be successful, you need to give your employees the right tools and systems to work in a digital, distributed, virtual environment. However, digital tools are only as effective as how effectively you use them, and alignment between managers and employees on remote work best practices will be critical to the success of any digital transformation initiative.

Debbie Cohen and Kate Roeske-Zummer, cofounders of HumanityWorks, are sounding an alarm bell for employee retention. Record numbers of people are quitting their jobs due to burnout and better opportunities. Those resignations leave their former colleagues burdened with even more work and a sense of despair. Cohen and Roeske-Zummer argue that employers should re-recruit their existing employees and even think of them as customers. And the two consultants outline steps managers can take to openly appreciate those employees and keep a positive culture. Cohen and Roeske-Zummer wrote the HBR.org article “With So Many People Quitting, Don’t Overlook Those Who Stay.”

The two billion teenagers and young adults born after 1995 that we call Generation Z have been described as many things. They’re seen as uncompromising, not swayed by political or marketing tricks, but also supporters of “cancel culture” — the public and vocal shutting down of speech perceived as problematic. They’re at once entrepreneurial, educated, perceptive and sensitive — sometimes bordering on fragile — and they value authenticity, transparency and radical inclusivity.

As a young millennial investor, I often wonder how this new generation is going to shake up venture capital and the startup ecosystem. Gen Zers have cancelled mainstream consumer brands before; could large institutional investors be the next victims?