An entrepreneurial growth mindset is one of the most important keys to an entrepreneur’s success as a leader. Entrepreneurs are those who have mastered the art of developing companies from nothing and turned them into profitable businesses and products. But many people feel it’s something they can’t learn, which I believe is not valid.

Selling robotics and automation — it should be a no-brainer for businesses to adopt deep tech to power their factories and live happily ever after. The mental picture that many entrepreneurs have is that a startup gets introduced to a big company, the company showcases bleeding-edge tech that blows the customer’s mind and a commercial deal is sealed right off the bat.

To successfully and sustainably drive digital transformation, we need to upgrade the way we think about, talk about, and act upon technology in our companies. Leaders need a toolkit for combining human capabilities and advanced technologies to create solutions that are more than the sum of their parts.

Algorithmic Business Thinking, a concept developed here at MIT, is a series of insights and frameworks for business leaders that enable you to:

Most aspiring entrepreneurs I know are just waiting for that unique idea to strike them that will kickstart their new venture, put them in control of their lifestyle, achieve financial independence, and maybe even change the world. Unfortunately, these goals are often mutually exclusive, and focusing on the wrong ones won’t bring you that business success and satisfaction you crave.

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For six years, Kristy Shen and Bryce Leung had been laser-focused on saving up for a home. “We wanted to be like everyone else–buy a house, work until you’re 65, and go the normal route,” Shen says. But after cobbling together C$500,000 in savings, the couple felt disillusioned by the housing market in Toronto. “Every time we went to an open house, it would just turn into a bidding war,” she says. “I started to think, ‘Is this really a good idea?’ People seemed to have gone nuts and were throwing everything they had at a mortgage.” When a coworker collapsed at his desk due to a grueling work schedule, Shen and Leung decided it was time to carve out a new path. “It took that to open my eyes,” Shen says. “I was like, this is not worth it. I don’t want to be dying at my desk just to pay off a mortgage.”

Image: Bharath Mohan/Unsplash

Every business I know is intimately familiar with outbound marketing, or pushing your message out to customers through email, newspaper, and television advertising. Only a few really understand the process and value of inbound marketing, for pulling customers to your brand. In my experience, it’s the fastest way to create trust and authenticity in this age of the consumer.

Scott Wilson founded his Chicago design firm Minimal 14 years ago, after leading design at big companies like Nike and Motorola. When you first meet him, you know how he’s done it: He’s the epitome of energetic. He thinks fast. He speaks fast. He’s the type of person who somehow gets just a few hours of sleep each night, but manages to walk into the office each day with a pep in his step.

Wilson knows this is weird. And when COVID hit last year, he recognized something even more strange: “I’ve had renewable energy for my whole career. Even after my hardest day, I bounce back,” he says. “But I was feeling fatigued.”

Embracing new technologies. Flipped and adaptive learning. New concepts and strategies. More cooperation and listening. These were some key take-aways from a debate on innovation and technology at the triennial conference of the International Association of University Presidents (IAUP).

“We should pay attention to all forms of innovation, and support collaboration among universities,” said Dr Bernardo Gonzalez-Arechiga, president of the large Universidad del Valle de Mexico.

Smart cities, 5G and autonomous driving hold the promise to improve the quality of life in the future. But these technologies also require a massive increase in computer processing power. This is a challenge that current microprocessors have been unable to meet. A new computer chip is about to change that. 

Make that 70,000 chips. This is the number of SpiNNaker2 chips that will form a cloud spread out across 16 server cabinets at the Technical University of Dresden, Germany. Not only is the sheer number impressive, each one is designed with the ultimate computing machine in mind: the human brain.

STAMFORD, Conn., August 23, 2021--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Engineering trust, accelerating growth and sculpting change are the three overarching trends on the Gartner, Inc. Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies, 2021 that will drive organizations to explore emerging technologies such as nonfungible tokens (NFT), sovereign cloud, data fabric, generative AI and composable networks to help secure competitive advantage.

Armed with brilliant ideas, experience and a determination to disrupt, these 50 women are making an impact on society and culture through healthcare, robotics, music, dance, and so much more. It’s the third chapter of our 50 Over 50 project, launched in June and produced in partnership with Mika Brzezinski’s Know Your Value initiative.

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Walter Isaacson has made a habit of profiling world-changers: innovators who, through their discoveries, upend the way we live. Recently, he’s been preoccupied with individuals who have unlocked what he calls “fundamental kernels of our existence” - first Albert Einstein and the atom, then Steve Jobs and the bit, and now, in his latest work, Jennifer Doudna and the gene.

While there are multiple ways to define the term “innovation,” in a corporate setting, it refers to the fundamental way in which a company brings constant value to its stakeholders. As such, innovation plays a pivotal role in the sheer survival and sustainability of any given company.

In case you hadn’t noticed, the world of business is becoming more and more a “gig economy.” This simply means that the number of people with a long-term single-employer agreement is going down, and the number of short-term contractors and freelancers is going up. It’s good for professionals, who get more control, and good for companies, who need more flexible staffing.

It was August 2017, and pleasant and breezy in the central mountains of Madagascar. The passengers loading their bags into the minibus leaving Ankazobe, a small town in the highlands, were grateful for the morning coolness. It would be warm and sticky on the trip they were taking to Antananarivo, the island’s million-person capital 100 kilometers to the south, and then to Toamasina on the coast, another 350 kilometers away. One of the passengers, a 31-year-old man, looked uncomfortable already. Four days before, he had arrived on a visit. Now he was headed home, but he was feverish, achy, and shaking with chills.

Northwestern University announced today it will create a multimillion-dollar technology accelerator in downtown Evanston to support startup companies led by Northwestern faculty in health, life sciences and related fields, amplifying scientific discovery and innovation by supplying the laboratory space, networking opportunities and management training necessary to address the world’s biggest problems.

Image: The accelerator will be at 1801 Maple Ave. in Evanston. Photo by Stephanie Kulke

Sofia spent 15 years as an active-duty member of the military. While deployed in Afghanistan and stationed in Georgia and Japan, she was involved in logistics planning and management as well as transportation and distribution services. But now, as she seeks to re-enter civilian life, she can’t signal her qualifications to employers because she has no documented evidence of her skills.

The Chief Data Officer is arguably one of the most important roles at a company. It’s also a position that has become notoriously hard to stay in. The average tenure of CDOs is just two to two-and-a-half years. There are a few reasons for this. The role is relatively new, so companies are still trying to decide what they want from the person in this position. Many companies expect the impossible from their CDO. Finally, CDOs often have trouble selling their actual accomplishments to a business audience — they just don’t speak the language. But, it doesn’t have to be this way. One successful CDO imparted two pieces of advice: 1) Start with a clear connection to business strategy with tangible examples of how data analytics can drive business outcomes (topline, bottom line, cash, stewardship), and 2) lead with 1-2 forward thinking business partners to demonstrate what is possible. Those partners become the change agents across the organization.

Sam Lessin’s post in The Information, “The End of Venture Capital as We Know It,” prompted heated debate in Silicon Valley. He argued that the arrival of new players with large amounts of capital is changing the landscape of late-stage investing for venture capitalists and forcing VCs to “enter the bigger pond as a fairly small fish, or go find another small pond.”

The message I hear publicly from most entrepreneurs is that you have to think outside the box and take big risks to ever beat the odds and be among the less than ten percent that experience real success. But privately, as a mentor to many entrepreneurs, I see mindsets and attributes that may be equally critical to success, but are not readily admitted, for fear of being too wacky.

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