Dinis Guarda, my guest today on Inside Ideas, is spearheading an urban revolution that connects cities to the digital innovations that can transform the lives of their citizens. The respected author and academic is behind the Citiesabc project, which is taking this forward by turning cities into live digital platforms.

In a 2010 Deloitte survey, 80 percent of workers reported unhappiness in their jobs. In another survey, 52 percent said they would start over if they could. Yet the number of resignations remained very low until the pandemic hit. Why do so many people hesitate to leave unfulfilling careers?

Image: https://knowledge.insead.edu

When Joel Marcus, a trained accountant and biotech industry lawyer, started lab real estate giant Alexandria Real Estate Equities in the 1990s, the sure bet many see in biotech wasn’t visible to many. The company’s first leases in San Francisco charged lab tenants just $6 per SF. Now, the REIT's average tenant pays just shy of $70.  

Image: Courtesy of Alexandria Real Estate Equities Alexandria Real Estate Equities Chairman Joel Marcus

Waseem Daher has proven his startup bona fides. His first two startups snagged successful exits (KSplice acquired by Oracle and Zulip acquired by Dropbox). His current startup, Pilot, recently nabbed unicorn status. And he's managed to stick together with his two co-founders, Jessica McKellar and Jeff Arnold, through the turbulence of all three companies.

Intelligent.com, a trusted resource for online learning, higher education planning, and career advice, has announced the best cloud computing bootcamps of 2021. The guide features courses that provide you with the real-world skills you need to succeed in the industry. Researchers considered core features as well as enrollment levels and reviews to determine the top courses.

OKLAHOMA CITY (KFOR) – Oklahoma State University is setting its sight on the stars.

University officials were on hand at OSU DISCOVERY in Oklahoma City on Wednesday, announcing their plans to build the Oklahoma Aerospace Institute for Research and Education (OAIRE), a facility that will work toward fostering aerospace industry growth in the state and beyond.

OSU seeks to drive collaborations and innovations across the aerospace industry, said OSU President Kayse Shrum.

Image: https://kfor.com

The purpose of the Lunar Surface Innovation Consortium (LSIC) is to harness the creativity, energy, and resources of the nation to help NASA keep the United States at the forefront of lunar exploration.

LSIC operates in collaboration with the NASA Space Technology Mission Directorate under the Lunar Surface Innovation Initiative. LSIC fosters communications and collaborations among academia, industry, and Government. Members have expertise in LSII key capability areas.

Several years ago, the engineers, designers, architects, and construction experts at Clayco earned the opportunity to develop, design and build a research and development facility for a major pharmaceutical company. As the cutting-edge plant was built, Clayco’s teams flew drones over the Chesterfield, Mo., site daily to scan and capture the placement of every pipe and piece of conduit both above and below ground. Clayco used the footage to create a digital model of the building. This allowed headset-wearing team members to virtually walk through the facility, “seeing” through the walls to the infrastructure behind them.

Image: During the pandemic, the Pfizer plant in Chesterfield, Mo., had to retool on the fly—a process made easier thanks to a digital model Clayco had created.

A recent Axios survey finds that venture capital is still overwhelmingly dominated by men, with 65 percent of U.S. venture capital firms lacking female partners.

In terms of numbers, the industry is still very much a boys’ club. As female representation in venture capital continues to lag in North America, more action is required to increase their representation.

Image: https://news.crunchbase.com

Disagreements on a team aren’t necessarily a bad thing. But you want to watch out for unhealthy conflicts that hijack precious time, trust, and energy. Often this type of animosity develops when there’s a “conflict entrepreneur” on your team — someone who inflames conflict for their own ends. The author suggests several actions you can take to identify these people and mitigate their negative impact, including resisting the urge to demonize them, spending more time with them, redirecting their energy when possible, and encouraging open disagreement and decency from everyone in the organization by establishing good-conflict practices.

As you craft your company’s hybrid work plans and policies, be aware of the inequities hybrid work can create or make worse. Designing with five practical dimensions of inclusion in mind is critical for creating an equitable organization. First, create a positive recruitment and onboarding experience by providing new hires with the right technology and support and implement a buddy system to replace the informal learning that typically takes place in the office. Second, bridge physical distance by making smart use of digital tools to keep people connected. Third, increase psychological safety to enable people to speak up when they experience interpersonal conflict. Fourth, break up in-groups by identifying “weak ties.” Finally, monitor who gets promoted and why to identify patterns that favor one group over others.

In the summer of 2020, as the pandemic raged, infecting more than 200,000 people a day across the globe, Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla and BioNTech CEO Uğur Şahin boarded an executive jet en route to the hilly countryside of Klosterneuburg, Austria. Their destination: a small manufacturing facility located on the west bank of the Danube River called Polymun Scientific Immunbiologische Forschung. Bourla and Şahin were on a mission to get the company to manufacture as many lipid nanoparticles as possible for their new Covid-19 vaccine, which was on a fast track to receive emergency authorization from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. 

Image: https://www.forbes.com

Viv Galinari’s career has taken many turns. The self-taught coder started out in her native Brazil as a business student. After graduating, she moved to Europe where her CV racked up job titles like au pair and newspaper vendor.

A seven-year stint at D&AD’s London office kicked off her creative career in earnest, and she supplemented this with a masters course in innovation. Another degree under her belt, she realised she needed a grounding in coding if she really wanted to innovate, so she moved herself to South East Asia – where she knew rent would be cheaper – to teach herself.

Image: https://www.designweek.co.uk

To me, a person with Parkinson’s, the HoloLens 1st Edition has been more than a developer’s tool or an Enterprise level piece of equipment. It has been an entertainment platform, a media kiosk and lately a valued productivity tool. I am writing this post (soon to become an article) in MS Word via my HoloLens Jarvis while Remoting into my Windows 11 Laptop. Yes, I am quite able to Remote Desktop to my laptop and work anywhere in my house via Jarvis connected to either my Windows 11 laptop or my Raspberry Pi linux SoC SBC.

BNP Associates can lay claim to inventing the first automated baggage handling system back in 1971. Half a century later, such systems are a familiar feature in airports around the world. 

The challenge for airports remains much the same as it did then. Moving baggage manually to and from the airport terminal to the aircraft is time-consuming, costly and labour-intensive. Automating check-in conveyors, baggage screening, sorting, make-up and reclaim is proven to improve process efficiency, passenger experience and safety.

Image: https://www.airport-technology.com

This isn’t about hating on apps like Clubhouse – they’ve earned their chops – but innovation should come from true needs. Think sustainability, food security, prolonging life, and promoting diversity. This idea has been on my mind for a while now, especially during the pandemic, but Steve Case’s latest piece in the Wall Street Journal underscored my passion.

Image: https://news.crunchbase.com

To many people, the year 2020 will probably go down in history as one of the most consequential of the century. After all, it was the year when governments, health professionals, and business owners all seemed to have a common goal: stopping the spread of Covid-19 at all costs. Indeed, in a majority of the cases, stopping the spread of the virus was said to require shutting down economies and forcing the scared masses to stay indoors. These measures, in turn, forced ordinary people to find ways to carry on with their lives without offending governments or without exposing themselves to the virus. It is these circumstances that brought to the fore the importance of an equally consequential innovation — blockchain technology.

Kristian Ebbesen Fjelde and his team knew that the executive committee meeting scheduled in mid-2019 to discuss the future strategy of their company was more important than most. Equinor’s leadership had changed the company’s name in May 2018 from Statoil to signify its intention to make it a more diversified energy company and take a leading role in the long-term goal of transitioning out of fossil fuels. Equinor was Norway’s biggest energy producer, and its leaders understood that the structural shifts in the market necessitated a radical shift in the business that would require more than a simple rebranding. Instead of putting together a presentation, Fjelde decided to run a “strategic beliefs” card game. His team circulated 16 statements, each describing what might become a core belief of the company.

Image: Illustration by Dan Page  - https://www.strategy-business.com

High turnover, the shift to hybrid work, and continued uncertainty about the future mean that your entire workforce may be feeling unmoored. These upheavals mean that even long-time employees — who have spent years building their reputations within an organization — may now feel they’re starting from scratch. That has enormous implications for performance, innovation, and well-being. By seizing this fall as a moment to re-onboard everyone, managers can boost team cohesion, performance, and well-being. The author presents five steps managers should take.

"The climate is f’d. Even worse than it seems." That's from the opening page of a 12-page letter sent by venture capitalist Chris Sacca to potential investors in Lowercarbon Capital, the climate-focused firm he launched last year after a brief retirement.