Global real estate firms rebounded this year, as the panic of the pandemic’s early days appears to have cooled. Of the 31 real estate firms on The Global 2000, Forbes’ annual ranking of the world’s largest and most impactful public companies, more than 80% saw their stocks go up compared to last year’s list. 

South African’s have a demonstrated history for innovation, from tech start-ups going global to successful township and rural economy entrepreneurs. Most innovative ideas however never take off as small businesses simply don’t have the resources or market access to launch their ideas. To bypass these barriers to entry, many entrepreneurs are now accessing Business Accelerators to unlock potential and access an effective springboard for growth.

The finding that startups founded by women outperform male-founded ones is actually not a unique finding. This is backed up by quantitative evidence from BCG, which found that companies with a woman on the founding team delivered twice as much revenue per dollar invested than those run solely by men.

Who do members of Gen Z want to work for most in the future? Themselves.

According to a recent survey conducted by EY Ripples and JA Worldwide of 6,000 active and former JA Worldwide participants born between 1997 and 2007, 53% hope to run their own business within the next ten years. That proportion increases to 65% for those who have already entered the workforce.

Image: Daniel Lincoln/Unsplash

A few parts of the country have made out like bandits in recent years. In the decade between the Great Recession and the pandemic plunge, 90 percent of the job growth in technology and innovation sectors occurred in just five major metropolitan areas. In any given year, roughly 80 percent of the nation’s venture capital funding flows to just three states: California, Massachusetts and New York. The pandemic didn’t change that.

Plans to help boost the number of privately owned European companies valued at more than $1 billion (€820 million) are to be presented to the EU Commissioner for Innovation Mairya Gabriel on Monday. Representatives from organisations across the EU will formally deliver their plans at a virtual start-up summit as part of a bid to encourage the European Commission to do more to help promising companies become so-called “tech unicorns”. Overall, the aim is to increase the number of such companies tenfold over the next decade.

Image: European companies have lagged counterparts in the US and Asia in creating tech unicorns  - https://www.irishtimes.com

The AIM-HI Accelerator Fund’s Women’s Venture Competition is a first-of-its-kind program that provides funding, coaching and networking opportunities to women-led oncology start-ups. Subject to due diligence and negotiation, the winning company of 2021 Women’s Venture Competition will receive a total of $1 million in investment from AIM-HI and co-investors. Click here to download the flyer!

As a mentor to aspiring business owners. smart people stand out to me with intellectual power and depth of knowledge on many subjects. The tougher question is whether you are also wise, in the sense of cultivating the right relationships, understanding team dynamics, and keeping to the correct side of the ethical line to maintain the trust of team members and customers alike.

Image: https://blog.startupprofessionals.com

US-based biopharma groups have always had access to much deeper pools of venture capital than European start-ups, but the divide has become starker amid the venture capital boom of the past few years.

Over the five years to 2020 the annual venture haul in the US almost doubled, to $13.6bn. Europe mustered a mere 26% growth in the pot over the same period, with young developers banking $2.3bn last year, according to Evaluate Pharma. Dig deeper and some of the differences start disappearing, however, with average round sizes expanding by a similar amount.  

DURHAM – Duke University is restructuring its technology transfer operations in a move the institution refers to in a statement as “sweeping.”

The university aims to enhance the ability for its faculty and staff to commercialize their research while simultaneously spurring additional economic opportunity in the Triangle, it says.

Image: https://www.wraltechwire.com

Most managers know that onboarding new employees virtually is just plain hard, and many recognize the long-term impact a poor onboarding experience could have on their employees. Onboarding is more than logistics, such as making sure your new employee has a computer. The more critical, make-or-break parts of onboarding include:

It's long been known that immigrants have been a source of lifeblood for American innovation. Though there's a common narrative that immigrants take what are supposedly "American jobs", actually in many cases immigrants are filling up positions that U.S. citizens simply aren't qualified for – and therefore immigrants are indispensable to the U.S. economy. 

The COVID pandemic has killed more than half a million people in the United States and caused the greatest economic crisis since the Great Depression. If this pandemic taught us one thing, it’s that we weren’t ready for it. The scientific and medical community wasn’t ready. The government, the military and industry weren’t ready. And most of us at home weren’t ready either: scrambling for basic supplies, regretting not having a deeper pantry and struggling with the financial fallout.

Explore the US rollout of COVID-19 vaccinations in comparison to the impact of cases.

Image: https://covid-tracker.mckinsey.com

One of the biggest mistakes I made six years ago as a brand new entrepreneur was putting my love of learning on pause. Before starting my company, I'd take at least one new course every quarter to improve different skills. 

I took a 10-week fiction writing course, an 8-week stand-up comedy class (where we painfully had to perform at a real comedy club for our final exam), and an 8-week improv class. All of these classes didn't apply directly to my job at the time (I was working for a tech startup) but they did teach me elements of communication and creativity that influenced what I brought to the table in the workplace.

Image: Jen Glantz

Arizona State University’s Economic Development team is celebrating Economic Development Week at a most unusual time. While the event is recognized nationwide May 9–15, many cities across the country are continuing to struggle in the midst of pandemic rubble. Fortunately, ASU continues to develop innovative ways to promote and advance a resilient economy that, in the long run, will be less susceptible to future disruptions.

“The decision to abandon the traditional U.S. defense of the patent system, blaming it without any evidence as a barrier to producing desperately needed vaccines for the developing world is a real body blow…  Particularly galling is that we’re voluntarily harming ourselves.”

Do you believe in destiny? Sometimes, it seems like things are predestined.

Elon Musk, the CEO and co-founder of private space exploration company SpaceX, announced last October that his company hoped to send a manned spacecraft to Mars in 2024.

The Red Planet has been a part of Musk's dreams for a long time, given that Musk himself has argued that the only salvation for life on Earth lies in achieving space colonization. The SpaceX CEO has even said that he wants to be buried on Mars.

Image: Image credit: Depositphotos.com / Saturday Night Live vía Twitter

In the past year, the COVID-19 pandemic has quickly and dramatically accelerated the need for new workforce skills. The rapid rise of digitization and remote work has placed new demands on employees who, in many instances, now require different skills to support significant changes to how work gets done and to the business priorities their companies are setting. Also required: help from their employers to develop the skills that will make the overall business, and its individual employees, future-ready.

Collaboration between companies and startups through established models, known as Corporate Venturing (CV), generates mutual benefits such as: innovation, commercial capacity, value generation, stability, scalability, among others. For this reason, every day more companies decide to venture and seek formal ways to generate this collaboration, in the search to accelerate the digital transformation, retain existing customers or attract new ones through differentiating products and services. However, the path is not so easy, so the following 5 points should be considered, before launching a Corporate Venturing initiative.