Scott D. Anthony is a Senior Partner at Innosight and former Managing Partner of the firm. As the leading expert on disruptive innovation and strategic transformation, Innosight brings a unique set of lenses to growth strategy. In his more than a decade with Innosight, Scott has advised senior leaders in some of the largest companies in the world. He has extensive experience in emerging markets, particularly in India, China, and the Philippines. In 2019, Anthony was recognized as the 9th most influential management thinker by Thinkers50, a biannual ranking of global business thinkers. In 2017, he was awarded the Thinkers50 Innovation Award, which recognizes the world's leading thinker on innovation.

Des Moines, Iowa — Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds, along with the Iowa Economic Development Authority and the Iowa Innovation Council, have announced the state’s Manufacturing 4.0 plan. They call it a roadmap to help Iowa manufacturers remain globally competitive through a fourth industrial revolution that emphasizes automation and smart technology.

Image: https://kiwaradio.com

On December 23, 2020, the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), in consultation with the National Council for Expanding American Innovation (NCEAI), announced a request for public comments to assist in the development of a national strategy to expand the innovation ecosystem demographically, geographically, and economically. The USPTO is extending the time to submit comments to February 23, 2021. Submit comments through the Federal eRulemaking Portal at www.regulations.gov.

The coronavirus pandemic has kept many office workers away from their workstations for nearly a year. And, with vaccines slow to roll out, it’s likely they’ll still be home for at least a few more months. While companies have found ways to use remote productivity tools such as Zoom, Slack, and shared document editing tools to substitute for in-person collaboration, most office workers have still gone close to a year without any quality coworker socializing.

Image: courtesy of Peek

As of February 2021, COVID-19 has killed more than 2.2 million people around the world. The pandemic has changed the way we work, live, and socialize.

At the same time, 2020 also brought new reasons to be hopeful about climate change. With the election of Joe Biden as president, the United States is poised to resume a leading role on the issue. China committed to the ambitious goal of being carbon neutral by 2060. In 2021, the United Nations will gather in Scotland for another major summit on climate change. Of course, none of this guarantees that we’ll make progress, but the opportunities are there.

This week is National Entrepreneurship Week. 

If you’re not yet an entrepreneur — but you want to be one — you might be wondering how you can use this week to help inspire your big idea... and how to take that leap. Well, I’m here to help!

Let’s study and celebrate five entrepreneurs — people I’ve been lucky enough to meet —  who all took very different approaches to finding their ‘big’ idea.

They all started small, took risks, and had plenty of failures along the way. Here are five big names who’ve all used different, time-tested methods to find their game changer of a start. 

As COVID-19 causes layoffs and extends uncertainty about employment in 2021, many people are considering new options, reinventing themselves, or trying to decide whether working for themselves is more desirable than finding another 9-to-5 job that might not last.

Image: Tim Mercer

Although a nascent industry, particularly in Europe, venture capital has become an integral part of innovation and the technology sector. Since 2012 there has been a continuous increase in fundraising by European venture capital funds, and VC has been instrumental to the growth of some of the most successful and advanced European companies, ranging from Klarna to Kahoot, DeepMind to Spotify.

Gary Herzig was stunned.

It was March 2020, and the State University of New York’s campus in Oneonta, where Herzig is mayor, had responded to the Covid-19 pandemic by abruptly shifting to remote learning while students were on spring break. Some students were expected to return to dorms or off-campus housing, and Herzig argued that they needed to be told about bans on gatherings and other Covid-related protocols.

Throughout the last decade, wealthy families have gravitated away from hedge funds to private investments, including private equity and venture capital.

A big reason is that entrepreneurs who are comfortable with risk, and evaluating management teams and the potential success or failure of a business idea, are usually the reason a family became wealthy. And these families are drawn to the potential private investments offer for high returns. 

In every pursuit these days, “the narrative” seems to be the thing. Tell a story that checks enough of the right boxes in the zeitgeist, the thinking goes, and you can get citizens, taxpayers and consumers to “buy” what you want them to buy.

Image: http://www.newgeography.com

CHICAGO, Feb. 25, 2020 – JLL (NYSE: JLL) has been recognized as one of the 2020 World’s Most Ethical Companies by Ethisphere, a global leader in defining and advancing the standards of ethical business practices. For the 13th consecutive year, JLL has been honored for its commitment to improve communities, build capable and empowered workforces and foster a corporate culture focused on ethics and a strong sense of purpose.

JLL is one of only four honorees in the real estate industry. In 2020, 132 honorees were recognized spanning 21 countries and 51 industries.

Indiana University of Pennsylvania was already shrinking. As regional demographics ebbed and competition for the remaining students increased between 2011 and 2020, the public college lost a third of its enrollment. Leaders had little choice but to cut back, trimming about 150 faculty positions over several years, mostly through attrition — retirements or not filling vacant positions.

In his new book, How to Avoid a Climate Disaster, Bill Gates lays out what it will really take to eliminate the greenhouse-gas emissions driving climate change.

Maryland will become the first state in the nation to take a new approach to paying for education: taxing digital advertising. With the new law, the state will collect a tax of between 2.5% and 10% on revenue that a company makes on digital advertising. Aimed at the big tech companies like Google, Amazon and Facebook, the law could generate up to $250 million in the first year.

Image: The Maryland State House in Annapolis. (Photo by Stephen Babcock)  - https://technical.ly

Even the experts were startled by the remarkable success of the two first-of-their-kind messenger RNA vaccines developed by Moderna and Pfizer/BioNTech against COVID-19.

"If you had told me before that there would be 95% effectiveness for these vaccines, I'd have said you were dreaming," says Andrew Pekosz, a professor in the Department of Molecular Microbiology and Immunology at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Their adaptability for infectious threats beyond COVID-19, too, is something vaccine researchers have dreamed of.

America’s urban leaders seem to prepare for the post-pandemic future with delusions that everything will go back to the way before the COVID-19 pandemic set in. Nothing can be more dangerous to the prospects for cities; the pandemic and recent rise in crime have created a vastly different prospect for cities, necessitating serious reconfiguration.

Image: http://www.newgeography.com

Earlier this year, 15 top U.S. universities joined forces to launch a one-stop shop where corporations and startups can discover and license patents.

Working in concert, Brown, Caltech, Columbia, Cornell, Harvard, the University of Illinois, Michigan, Northwestern, Penn, Princeton, SUNY Binghamton, UC Berkeley, UCLA, the University of Southern California and Yale formed The University Technology Licensing Program LLC (UTLP)  to create a centralized pool of licensable IP.

A key component of America’s ability to innovate is its world-renowned system of higher education, which is the envy of the world. However, there’s room for improvement. Universities can do more to promote the inventive talents of their students and faculty. Recently, I discussed this potential — and the steps higher education institutions should take in order to realize it — in an interview with Korok Ray.

One key factor that likely advantages American startup companies relative to those in less-developed economies is the existence of a thriving venture capital industry (VC) that enables bold innovation. In the spirit of the adage that government could learn a lot from businesses, here are some practices and concepts from the VC ecosystem that differ from those found in government, and which some government agencies might be able to embrace. Based on a recent presentation by venture capitalist Rob Ness at a Government Analytics Breakfast Forum event sponsored by Johns Hopkins University and REI Systems, government agencies that seek innovation as a key part of their mission, like NASA, the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health, may find this useful.