Ecosystems create powerful forces that can reshape and disrupt industries.1 In healthcare, they have the potential to deliver a personalized and integrated experience to consumers, enhance provider productivity, engage formal and informal caregivers, and improve outcomes and affordability.2 We define an ecosystem as a set of capabilities and services that integrate value chain participants (customers, suppliers, and platform and service providers) through a common commercial model and virtual data backbone (enabled by seamless data capture, management, and exchange) to create improved and efficient consumer and stakeholder experiences, and to solve significant pain points or inefficiencies.

Last week, in the op-ed pages of the Wall Street Journal, Vice President Mike Pence made a highly misleading claim: There is no “second wave” of coronavirus in the United States, he wrote, and the Trump administration is winning the war against “the invisible enemy.”

Epidemiologists mostly agree on the first point—although not for the reason that Pence gave.

“He was completely right that we’re not in the second wave,” says Ashish Jha, Director of the Harvard Global Health Institute. “This is not a second wave, because we’re still in the first wave.”

Charles Andres, Ph.D., RAC, is an associate in the Washington, D.C., office of Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati. He focuses on patent prosecution, strategic patent counseling, IP due diligence, drug and medical device FDA regulatory counseling, invalidity and non-infringement opinions, life-cycle management, Supreme Court and Federal Circuit amicus briefs, and related business matters.

The process of choosing startups in open innovation is proving increasingly difficult in the face of the proliferation of emerging companies globally. BBVA has various scouting mechanisms, and to do this it takes into account factors such as the degree of maturity, whether the solution dovetails with the bank’s needs, and the entrepreneurial team’s passion.

E-commerce giant Amazon.com Inc. (AMZN) is launching a Climate Pledge Fund that will invest in companies developing products, services, and technologies that will "facilitate the transition to a zero carbon economy," as stated in the company's press release. In 2019, Amazon was a co-founder of The Climate Pledge, which aims to reach the goals of the Paris Agreement 10 years ahead of schedule by generating net zero carbon emissions by 2040. Other signatories include Verizon Communications Inc. (VZ) and Infosys Ltd. (INFY).1 Amazon said its initial investment in the climate venture fund will be $2 billion, but the company did not detail over what time period it planned to invest the money.2

How can consultants, coaches, and other gig workers with time on their hands during the pandemic and economic downturn stay productive?

As client work has slowed or even stopped, tens of thousands of business advisors have unexpectedly open calendars. Getting back to busy will take months. Many of these professionals are filling the void by catching up on work reading, exercising, and spending time with their families.

According to recent surveys, most workers and most CFOs want to make some measure of remote work a permanent reality. While business drivers like reduced overhead and digital transformation initiatives are certainly at play here, surveys like these and our recent global experiment in remote working also hint at the fact that our creativity actually increases when we work remotely.

I’m Goldie Blumenstyk, a senior writer at The Chronicle of Higher Education, covering innovation in and around academe. As the Covid-19 crisis continues, here’s what I’m thinking about this week.

College? Gap year?

It shouldn’t have to be either/or. Relax. This isn’t another article urging undergrads to take a gap year rather than enroll for what inevitably will be a less-than-ideal college experience, even under the most optimistic scenarios. Sure, gap years can be great. But news-media fawning over them aside, I also recognize that gap years are, as the Lumina Foundation president Jamie Merisotis recently argued, “a fantasy for the vast majority of students” who lack the financial resources, flexibility, and family support to pursue them.

As the pandemic wreaks havoc on the job market, a quarter of American adults say they plan to enroll in an education or training program within the next six months, according to the latest results of a national poll conducted by the Strada Education Network. That share was 37 percent for 18- to 24-year-olds and 23 percent for 25- to 64-year-olds.

Image: https://www.insidehighered.com

Digital transformation will create trillions of dollars of value. While estimates vary, the World Economic Forum in 2016 estimated an increase in $100 trillion in global business and social value by 2030. Due to AI, PwC has estimated an increase of $15.7 trillion and McKinsey has estimated an increase of $13 trillion in annual global GDP by 2030. We are currently in the middle of an AI renaissance, driven by big data and breakthroughs in machine learning and deep learning. These breakthroughs offer opportunities and challenges to companies depending on the speed at which they adapt to these changes.

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- New research from the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) and Gallup finds that former NCAA student-athletes who graduated from college between 1975 and 2019 were more likely to be "thriving" in four of the five key areas of wellbeing than nonathletes were. These include the purpose, social, community and physical domains. The two groups were equally likely to be thriving in the fifth element -- financial. Differences in wellbeing between student-athletes and non-athletes are seen among both minority and white alumni.

The annual European Innovation Scoreboard (EIS) provides a comparative assessment of research and innovation performance of in EU countries, other European countries, and regional neighbours. It allows policy-makers to assess relative strengths and weaknesses of national research and innovation systems, track progress, and identify priority areas to boost innovation performance.

McKinsey’s research has shown that diversity can help organizations increase innovation, reconsider entrenched ways of thinking, and improve financial performance.1 Organizations can take full advantage of the perspectives of a diverse workforce only if leaders and employees enjoy a sense of inclusion,2 which we define as the degree to which an individual feels that their authentic selves are welcomed at work, enabling them to contribute in a meaningful and deliberate manner. We also know from our work that individuals’ sense of inclusion is influenced by their experiences with the organization as a whole, the organization’s leaders, and peers or team members.3 For our recent McKinsey Global Survey on the topic,4 we approximated inclusion by combin ing survey respondents’ reported feelings of authenticity, belonging, and comfort participating in the workplace.5 Our survey research finds that respondents of all backgrounds encounter barriers to feeling included—and that women, respondents who are ethnic and racial minorities, and those who identify as LGBTQ+ encounter additional challenges.6

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration today launched Project Patient Voice, an initiative of the FDA’s Oncology Center of Excellence (OCE). Through a new website, Project Patient Voice creates a consistent source of publicly available information describing patient-reported symptoms from cancer trials for marketed treatments. While this patient-reported data has historically been analyzed by the FDA during the drug approval process, it is rarely included in product labeling and, therefore, is largely inaccessible to the public.

While every business owner has a unique way of doing things, certain skills and habits are almost a necessity for rising to the top, regardless of industry, product or service.

The habits of successful business owners go beyond a commitment to black turtlenecks, even though many of the world’s most iconic business minds have been notorious for their work uniforms. These habits are more like best practices for life, giving small but strategic advantages that make success a more likely outcome.

This survey is a special interim report to highlight changes in the Silicon Valley venture capital environment in light of the COVID-19 pandemic. It focuses on April financing activity and supplements our March Flash Report that looked at financings in the first quarter of 2020.

Please note that when providing data on a monthly basis, and especially when analyzing trends among industries or series on a monthly basis, we are working with smaller numbers than in our quarterly report and accordingly the possibility of statistical anomalies increases.

Amazon.com Inc. is launching a $2 billion internal venture-capital fund focused on technology investments to reduce the impact of climate change, the latest sustainability initiative from the technology giant after criticism of its environmental record.

The new fund, which will be called The Climate Pledge Fund, will invest in companies across a number of industries, including transportation, energy generation, battery storage, manufacturing and food and agriculture, according to the company. The aim is to help Amazon and other companies reach a goal of "net zero" carbon emissions by 2040. Amazon and a number of other companies are seeking to reduce the climate impact of their operations, both through reduced use of fossil fuels and investments in projects such as reforestation.

If you’re facing a job search right now, you’re not alone. There are record numbers of people filing for unemployment benefits in the U.S. and half of the global workforce is at risk of losing their livelihoods. Whether you were recently laid off, were unemployed before the global pandemic hit, or are choosing to make a change, looking for a job now — amidst hiring freezes and layoffs — will be different than it was a few months ago. But how different? How has the crisis affected how you approach a job search — from finding open positions to writing a cover letter and resume to (ideally) interviewing? Does the usual advice still apply?

For decades, Canada has struggled with sub-par business investment in innovation – a “low-innovation equilibrium.” Where innovation is happening, opportunities to participate and benefit from it have been distributed unevenly. As the COVID-19 crisis exposes socioeconomic disparities in the country, it should force us to change the way we think about innovation policy. How can we use it to expand the reach of our social policies, strengthen local supply chains, and secure a future of decent work? How can our policies ensure that more Canadians prosper from innovation-driven growth rather than be excluded from it?

Lost on some in the Covid-19 news cycle was an initiative by the Securities and Exchange Commission that could help smaller companies as they raise money. The crowdfunding changes took hold May 4 and last through at least Aug. 31.