In this spring of jaw-clenching uncertainty, everyone expects Covid-19 to derail the plans of prospective college students. One big question is: How many?

Hordes of them, the results of a new survey suggest. One in six high-school seniors who expected to attend a four-year college full time before the outbreak of the novel coronavirus now think that they will choose a different path this fall.

Image: Georgia Institute of Technology The spread of the coronavirus has forced colleges to cancel countless on-campus programs scheduled for March and April.

Many small businesses are struggling as a result of closures and social distancing practices put in place because of the coronavirus pandemic. Here are 25 ways you can help small businesses right now. How to Help Small Businesses If you want to help local small businesses by supporting your favorite local shops, restaurants, and others stay afloat during this time, here are some ways you can do so.

One of the tragedies of the coronavirus crisis is the lack of protection for healthcare workers: With a shortage of N95 masks—the respirators that can help filter out virus-filled droplets from coughs or sneezes—doctors and nurses in the U.S. are begging the government to do more to increase production. In Italy and China, thousands of doctors were infected with COVID-19 in part because they didn’t have masks, gloves, or other protection. Many have died.

Richard Danzig, Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory senior fellow and a Bloomberg Opinion contributor, points out a fundamental problem with President Donald Trump's plan to re-open the U.S. economy in April amid the coronavirus pandemic. He speaks with Bloomberg's Scarlet Fu and Romaine Bostick on "Bloomberg Markets: What'd You Miss?" The Bloomberg School of Public Health is supported by Michael R. Bloomberg, founder and majority owner of Bloomberg LP, the parent company of Bloomberg News. Danzig's opinions are his own. (Source: Bloomberg)

Image: https://www.bloomberg.com

Once upon a time, there was a very clear definition of venture capital. It was used to fund many of the largest technology companies you know, like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, which received funding from venture capital firms by the names of Sequoia Capital, Accel Partners and Benchmark Capital. These firms put in millions of dollars in supergiant rounds for a percentage of equity and got up to 1,000 times returns with an IPO that occurred in less than 10 years. If these venture capitalists (commonly called VCs) got lucky, they would have one, two or three of these moonshot successes in their fund portfolio. This would then give them the return on investment they needed to fall in line with their investors’ expectations. That’s it. That is how VC evolved until today, when the startup explosion.

We're living through the third financial crisis of the modern venture capital era, following the dotcom crash and the housing bust.

The big picture: There wasn't a widespread push for "fund size cuts" in 2008, save for a few efforts tied to funds that had closed just before Lehman went under. While it's too soon to know for sure which path LPs will take this time around, odds are that it will look similar — with already-raised fund sizes remaining static.

Governments are rolling out new loan programs to help local small businesses struggling for survival during the COVID-19 crisis. What will make these loan programs effective? 

Lessons learned from the State Small Business Credit Initiative (SSBCI)* tell us: 

Program Design Program design should reflect current economic realities and local capital needs. This implies that replicating programs designed for the Great Recession may not be right for the “Great Cessation” because the underlying economic effects are different. 

Today, as part of Women’s History Month, the USPTO has officially launched the Expanding Innovation Hub (“the Hub”), an online platform available on the USPTO website that provides resources for inventors and practitioners to encourage greater participation in the patent system. The new platform is yet another step the USPTO has taken to broaden the innovation ecosphere, to inspire novel inventions, to accelerate growth, and to drive America’s global competitive edge. It builds on our SUCCESS Act report to Congress of 2019, as well as our Progress and Potential report on women inventors.

Image: https://patentlyo.com

As AI is increasingly incorporated into our workplaces and daily lives, it is poised to fundamentally upend the way we live and work. Concern over this looming shift is widespread. A recent survey of 5,700 Harvard Business School alumni found that 52% of even this elite group believe the typical company will employ fewer workers three years from now.

Ernst & Young LLP (EY US) and Innovation Works, Inc. are proud to present our eighth annual review of Pittsburgh’s technology investment landscape. This report provides a comprehensive review of investment and exit activity in the Pittsburgh region from 2010—2019.

2019 represented a record year, with 139 unique Pittsburgh area startups attracting close to $3.0 billion in funding. In the past 10 years, nearly 600 unique Pittsburgh companies attracted more than $6.6 billion in investment. While the total number of companies funded declined slightly from 2018, from 147 to 139 companies in 2019, the amount of investment dollars increased more than 5X from $550 million to almost $3.0 billion driven by $2.0 billion of corporate investment and $928 million of venture capital investment.

As I’m writing this, the last couple of weeks have been quite eventful around the world.

There’s a lot of uncertainty and even panic regarding the coronavirus, its current and potential impact on our economy, and of course, its effects on people all around the world.

As a result, we’re seeing more and more action being taken to mitigate the spread of the virus. Business are preparing for the tough times that might be ahead, should the disease continue spreading and actions to mitigate it become even more common.

It’s hard to think of a symbol of COVID-19 more fraught than the N95 respirator. The mask fits tightly around the face and is capable of filtering 95% of airborne particles, such as viruses, from the air, which other protective equipment (such as surgical masks) can’t do. It’s a life-saving device that is now in dangerously short supply. As such, it has come to represent the extreme challenges of the global response to COVID-19.

As home to some of the world’s largest firms, China offers lessons for those that are just now starting to embrace the shift to remote working.

From Alibaba to Ping An and Google to Ford, companies around the globe are telling staff to work from home in a bid to stem the spread of COVID-19.

Such remote working at scale is unprecedented and will leave a lasting impression on the way people live and work for many years to come. China, which felt the first impact of the pandemic, was an early mover in this space. As home to some of the world’s largest firms, it offers lessons for those that are just now starting to embrace the shift.

Most regions were beginning to see an acceleration in economic growth during January and February 2020. The 20-state Heartland was poised to see a notable improvement in economic performance that will now be tested due to public health measures implemented to contain the spread of the coronavirus. The additional $200 billion in purchases of grain, industrial supplies and manufactured products over the next two years that China agreed to in the Phase I trade deal will benefit the Heartland greater than any other region of the nation. While that stimulus will be delayed until early summer, there will be a meaningful boost to the Heartland’s economy that should aid its recovery rate from COVID-19. The federal (both monetary and fiscal policy), state and local policy responses will be essential to mitigate the severity of the impacts and spur a more rapid economic recovery.

Our country, Singapore, has managed to contain the spread of the SARS-CoV-2 virus within its borders, as have mainland China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and South Korea. Commonalities of these successful responses include extensive preparation in the wake of the severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) outbreak in 2003, aggressive testing and transparent case reporting to both domestic and international stakeholders, swift and decisive interventions to promote or impose social distancing, and frequent and consistent public health communications.

Today, as part of Women’s History Month, the USPTO has officially launched the Expanding Innovation Hub (“the Hub”), an online platform available on the USPTO website that provides resources for inventors and practitioners to encourage greater participation in the patent system. The new platform is yet another step the USPTO has taken to broaden the innovation ecosphere, to inspire novel inventions, to accelerate growth, and to drive America’s global competitive edge. It builds on our SUCCESS Act report to Congress of 2019, as well as our Progress and Potential report on women inventors.

Image: “To maintain our technological leadership, the United States must broaden our innovation ecosphere demographically, geographically, and economically.”---USPTO Director Andrei Iancu

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking these days about “culture of innovation” — trying to get down to the root of what the heck it’s all about. It’s easy to wax poetic about the topic these day (and a lot of people do), but too much of the stuff I’ve been reading sounds like bad advertising copy for motherhood and apple pie.

In honor of the new JLABS @ Washington, DC – a 32,000 square foot facility located on the new Children’s National Research and Innovation Campus from Johnson & Johnson Innovation, LLC in partnership with Children’s National Health System (“Children’s National”) - Johnson & Johnson Innovation – JLABS announces the JLABS @ Washington, DC Children’s QuickFire Challenge.

1. What is Coronavirus?

Coronavirus is a type of virus that causes disease in animals. Often the symptoms of the virus are those of the common cold. Covid-19 is a strain of coronavirus that is new to humans, hence it's called a novel (or new) virus.

No at-home test kits for Covid-19 are currently approved, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration warned.

In the last week, a slew of startups have rolled out their own at-home Covid-19 tests, as a national shortage has left many scrambling for answers. Several people with symptoms of the disease have said they were unable to get tested — even doctors and nurses.