As the world becomes more urban, more people will live and work in high-rises. What will that mean for builders, real-estate companies, and tenants? In this edition, The Next Normal explores the high-rise of 2030.

The name Austin Russell may not be familiar to you, but it is better to remember it. At just 25 years old , the Californian is the world's youngest new billionaire thanks to his company Luminar Technologies , a startup focused on creating and commercializing technology for autonomous vehicles.

The founder and CEO of Luminar is one of the few who have managed to amass a fortune in the world of self-propelled cars. Furthermore, he is the youngest self-taught billionaire in the world.

Image: Image credit: Luminar Technologies

We caught the tide– but just barely. That the Bayh-Dole Act passed was amazing. That it passed in a lame duck session of Congress with its principal author defeated, the US Senate changing hands, and a sitting president thrown out, was a miracle. Even then success was not assured. The bureaucracy was waiting to undermine the implementing regulations. Yet the new law survived, strengthening the economy while improving public health and well-being.

Image: U.S. Senator Birch Bayh (ret.)

Baltimore, Md. (Dec. 11, 2020) – The University System of Maryland (USM) COVID Research and Innovation Task Force is bringing together people, expertise, and resources from its 12 universities to rapidly advance solutions to challenges presented by the COVID-19 pandemic. With the generous support of several local organizations, the Task Force is inviting members of the USM community to take part in a multimedia, Public Health Challenge seeking creative submissions that highlight ways for USM students, members of the broader university community, and all Marylanders to stay safe and healthy while waiting for a vaccine to become available.

Despite the increase in cases and deaths from COVID-19 , the vaccines that have been developed in recent months have yielded good results during tests. Thanks to this, its distribution and application has begun in some countries such as England and Russia, giving hope to the world population about the possible end of the pandemic.

Tesla and SpaceX founder Elon Musk says the biggest problem with corporate America today is that too many business school graduates are running the show.

"I think that there might be too many MBAs running companies," Musk said Tuesday at the WSJ CEO Summit.

Image: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elon_Musk#/media/File:Elon_Musk_Royal_Society_(crop1).jpg

To do that you need to look inside yourself to understand your behaviors and reflexes. You need to start somewhere in order to build the set of skills that will lead you to success and that “somewhere” is yourself, harness your behaviors and hone them to build positive and effective habits that will help you achieve your goals. Reflection and practice are keys to success. Learn and apply, reflect and  practice - a two-way road from self to the objective world out there and vice versa is your ticket to achievement and success.

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) today announced seven finalists who will advance to the final round of the Artificial Intelligence (AI) Health Outcomes Challenge.  This multi-stage competition launched last year with more than 300 entities proposing AI solutions for predicting patient health outcomes aimed at revolutionizing healthcare for potential use by the CMS Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation.  Today’s announcement aligns with President Trump’s Executive Order on Maintaining American Leadership in Artificial Intelligence and delivers cutting-edge solutions for keeping U.S. patients healthy.

A professor gave a balloon to every student, who had to inflate it, write their name on it and throw it in the hallway. The professors then mixed all the balloons. The students were given 5 minutes to find their own balloon. Despite a hectic search, no one found their balloon.

Two out of three U.S. mayors say that in the long run, cities will be able provide “better opportunities to more people,” but this optimism is blunted by severe budget cuts and a belief that life is not likely to improve for those who have suffered the worst effects of the pandemic. The findings are part of the annual Menino Survey of 130 mayors in 38 states who responded to a series of questions about the impact of COVID-19 on the future of their cities.

Multiple forces have increased attention on stake holder capitalism, and most boards have not sufficiently grappled with the significant implications for their organizations. Last year, Business Roundtable, an association of CEOs who run major US corporations, committed member companies to serving the interests of all stakeholders, but their signatories have found it challenging to deliver fully on their promise. While 181 chief executives signed the roundtable’s statement, only one did so with board approval.

More and more people are deciding the entrepreneurial path, but above all the businesses led by people over 40 have increased. Some of the factors for them to be inclined to start their project is because for many at that age it is more difficult to have job stability in a company, others make this decision to generate extra income or simply because they want to.

Starting a business represents a series of difficulties in all aspects, however, there are studies and stories that show that entrepreneurs who are over 40 years of age are successful. For this reason, here we will tell you the advantages of putting your company at this age.

Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, more people around the world were under stress than was true over a decade ago. More than one in three adults (35%) worldwide said they experienced stress during "a lot of the day yesterday" in 2019 -- up six percentage points from the 29% who said so in 2006. In fact, ahead of the pandemic, people reported feeling anger, stress, sadness, worry and physical pain at elevated levels, according to Gallup's 2020 Global Emotions Report.

Based on these data, we know that stress is a pervasive, growing problem across much of the world. We also know that it doesn't have any boundaries. Half of people in Iraq and Ghana -- and the United States -- were stressed last year.

Size does matter, and global sovereign wealth funds (SWF) are one measure of any country’s economic muscle. Norway, which has the world’s largest SWF at about $1.4-1.8 trillion, owns, on an average, 1.5% of every listed company on Earth. Imagine what will happen to the global capital markets if Norway sneezes. Or if Saudi’s Public Investment Fund (PIF), which is one of the world’s largest investors in Softbank’s $100-billion Vision Fund, or the UAE’s ADIA or Mubadala were to catch a cold? If they caught a cold, the attendant infection could shake up the global markets.

Sarah Gilbert is Professor of Vaccinology at Jenner Institute, University of Oxford. She has been leading the development of COVID-19 vaccine since the beginning of the pandemic.

RIP Tony Hsieh. This article is dedicated to you and the inspiration you provided to me and so many entrepreneurs, helping us to put our passion and focus into the vision and values that led us to our start-up dreams. The investors and the funding are out there!

$69.1 billion! That’s how much has been raised by entrepreneurs in venture capital funding in the US so far in 2020 according to VC, PE and M&A news outlet PitchBook. This figure represents a new high, breaking the record set back in 2018.

COVID-19 STRATEGIC RENEWAL TASK FORCE REPORT

Stu Solomon, President & CEO, Connected DMV joins BioTalk to discuss formation of the Strategic Renewal Task Force, their Covid-19 Pandemic Pivot, the Global Pandemic Prevention and Bioterrorism Center, and much more.

Listen now on Apple https://apple.co/3gqmJlB, Google https://bit.ly/3mVtled, Spotify https://spoti.fi/3mO0j05, and TuneIn https://bit.ly/37FMf2t.

The World Economic Forum and Deloitte examine key applications of 4IR technologies for thriving in a postpandemic world and identify governance challenges that these technologies can help to address.

The recovery from COVID-19 has started a wave of innovations in work, collaboration, distribution, and service delivery—and shifted many customer behaviors, habits, and expectations. Several of the emerging technologies of the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) including Artificial Intelligence (AI), mobility (including autonomous vehicles), blockchain, drones, and the Internet of Things (IoT) have been at the center of these innovations and are likely to play an outsized role in what emerges postpandemic. Working together, the public and private sectors have the opportunity to nurture 4IR technology development while mitigating the risks of unethical or malicious uses. How governments and other stakeholders approach the governance of 4IR technologies will play an important role in how we reset society, the economy, and the business environment. The World Economic Forum and Deloitte’s latest report examines the opportunities and complications of governance for a set of 4IR technologies: AI, mobility, blockchain, drones, and IoT.

Venture capital and philanthropy are both methods of moving large amounts of money around the economy, but they usually do so with very different goals and strategies. VC aims to beat the stock market and maximize returns. Philanthropy cares more about creating impact and change (and obeying the strict rules that govern its practice).

Despite these different lanes that philanthropy and venture capital occupy, there is a growing movement of thought that they are not so far apart, and that there are indeed many lessons that each can take from the other. Philanthropy ought to take lessons on investing in teams, not just ideas; private business investing ought to consider the impact its dollars have on the world.

Image: Technical.ly file image