Harvard Innovation Labs, the school’s university-wide hub for entrepreneurial activities, has appointed a new executive director from the Harvard community.

Matt Segneri, 38, who has been the director of the Harvard Business School’s Social Enterprise Initiative for the past five years, said he will start in his new role “sometime in March,” but has no firm date yet. He’s succeeding Jodi Goldstein, who was a member of the i-lab management team since its launch in 2011. 

Image: Matt Segneri will become executive director of the Harvard Innovation Labs (i-lab) in March 2020. PHOTO COURTESY OF HARVARD INNOVATION LABS

What Nobel Laureate Dr. Jim Allison’s Story Can Teach Entrepreneurs and Innovators Jim Allison shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2018, along with Tasuku Hanjo, for pioneering the use of immune checkpoint inhibitors to develop cancer therapies. 

Allison’s remarkable and groundbreaking research into T-Cell activation, and his subsequent work developing his discoveries into viable cancer treatment, has extended the lives of thousands of cancer patients. Allison’s work is more than remarkable: It represents an earth-shaking paradigm shift in scientific thought about how cancer works and could be defeated.

As concerns about geopolitics, demographics and climate change rise and technological advances redefine established city hierarchies, the attention of citizens, businesses, investors and policy-makers is turning towards a much broader set of criteria when thinking about the next place to live, invest or do business.

As a result, the factors contributing to a city’s success are shifting from pure economic prowess to softer urban attributes such as how cities build a customer service culture, foster urban experiences, innovate and achieve sustainability.

Tokyo, one of the top seven "Established World Cities" Image: Photo by Jason Ortego on Unsplash

Scholars at the Brookings Institution are suggesting that Congress invest in a $100 billion package to support 10 potential technology growth centers and foster innovation outside of traditional tech hubs like Silicon Valley.

At a Jan. 29 event, members of the think tank and outside experts explained that the technology sector of the U.S. economy grows in a geographically uneven way. To spread the benefits of the tech boom, Congress should establish a competition to decide which metropolitan areas will receive financial and regulatory support to boost local innovation industries, a Brookings report argues.

A recent IBM study found that 81% of consumers say they have become more concerned about how their data is used online. But most users continue to hand over their data online and tick consent boxes impatiently, giving rise to a “privacy paradox,” where users’ concerns aren’t reflected in their behaviors. It’s a daunting challenge for regulators and companies alike to navigate the future of data governance.

In Los Angeles and New York City, more than half of renters are now what’s called “cost-burdened,” which means they’re spending more than 30% of their income on rent. But this isn’t just a question of high rents in big, expensive cities: In Troy, Alabama, population 19,000, more than 62% of renters now spend too much on rent.

“This is a really geographically dispersed problem, and it pops up in different places for different reasons, but it’s basically a national issue,” says Whitney Airgood-Obrycki, the lead author of a new report from Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies that maps out where Americans struggle most to pay for rental houses and apartments across the country.

Growth in the number of graduates earning degrees in high-demand fields, a thriving research and innovation ecosystem, and a commitment to serving the state have lifted the University of Georgia’s annual economic impact to its highest level yet: $6.5 billion.

“This report demonstrates that the University of Georgia is more vital to our state’s success than ever,” said President Jere W. Morehead. “It is gratifying to put a number on UGA’s value to the state economy, even as we know that some of the additional benefits, such as civic engagement and improvements to quality of life, cannot be quantified.”

Image: https://news.uga.edu

The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act just about doubled the standard deduction amounts for individuals for 2018 through 2025. As a result, the law eliminated or curtailed various itemized deductions. Today, most individuals (the Tax Foundation estimates 90%) choose the standard deduction instead of itemizing personal deductions. You have to decide which option is better for your situation. You can’t do both.

Intense, high-stress jobs where you might face a lot of pressure aren't right for everyone.

Fortunately, for those who would like to work under more relaxing conditions, there are plenty of high-paying jobs that also tend to offer low-stress work environments.

The Department of Labor's O*NET Online occupational database includes survey-based measurements of how important various skills, activities, and personal traits are for a particular job. One of the characteristics measured is stress tolerance, which O*NET describes as jobs requiring "accepting criticism and dealing calmly and effectively with high-stress situations."

Image: https://www.businessinsider.com

Good Luck Chiefs!!!  Bring it home!

In his tenth year as NIH Director, Francis Collins is expanding the reach of marquee programs launched under his tenure, and growing the institutes’ footprint in artificial intelligence.

In a conversation with BioCentury, Collins identified his top priorities for the new year, and discussed emerging scientific areas that stand to make a big impact on drug development.

He called out single cell analysis, CRISPR and AI as technologies poised to deliver a wealth of new translational insights, and said NIH plans to invest in data collection and workforce development to support AI.

Around the world, populations are getting older, and their health needs are becoming more complex. At the same time, technological advances are changing healthcare delivery. In this edition, The Next Normal explores how hospitals will innovate in the coming decade—and what it will mean for both patients and healthcare professionals.

Image: https://www.mckinsey.com

The Federal and State Technology Partnership (FAST) is intended to increase innovation-based small business awareness and participation in the SBIR and STTR programs in places and populations that are underrepresented in the programs’ award portfolios.  Through FAST, the Small Business Administration (SBA) makes small, matching one-year awards to state programs on a competitive basis. The most recent class of 24 FAST winners was announced in August 2019.  First funded in 2001, FAST has become the cornerstone for funding many states’ initiatives intended to help SBIR applicants become involved in the federal SBIR/STTR programs. But does the program work?

As the Kansas City Chiefs prepare to take on the San Francisco 49ers at the Hard Rock Stadium in Miami for Super Bowl 2020 on Feb. 2, marketers were gearing up off the field to do battle for spectators' attention.

And with the cost of a 30-second spot on Fox hitting as much as $5.6 million this year, the stakes are higher than ever.

Image: credit: Pepsi

Many family businesses take on the distinctive identity, focus, and idiosyncrasies of the family leaders who run them. These norms can be motivating and can create a sense of common purpose.  But they can also make non-family employees feel like they’re missing out on the skills training and career development typically found in more corporate environments. They may suffer from the lack of structure, potential favoritism, and emotional interpersonal dynamics that reflect the preferences and behaviors of the family.

Writing an effective cover letter has changed a lot in the past few years.

Gone are the formal, stilted rules governing the “Dear Sir/Madam” page-length introductions. As attention spans shrink, emails pile up, and recruiters and HR people are busier than ever, cover letters have simplified.

The automobile is such an important part of American culture, life, and commerce that it can be hard to really grasp all the negative externalities of our driving habits: Commuters in Los Angeles now spend 119 hours each year stuck in unmoving traffic; in Moscow, they spend an average of 210 hours, or nine entire days. There are as many as 2 billion parking spaces in the U.S. (eight times more than there are cars), often on valuable urban land that could otherwise be used—along with excess road space—for housing or parks. Pollution from tailpipes is linked to hundreds of thousands of deaths globally each year.

Image: https://www.fastcompany.com

Your firm produces data, so surely it can benefit from applying AI, right? Wrong. Here are five questions to ask yourself about whether a business problem is “AI-solvable”.

Machine learning, the latest incarnation of artificial intelligence (AI), works by detecting complex patterns in past data and using them to predict future data. Since almost all business decisions ultimately rely on predictions (about profits, employee performance, costs, regulation etc.) it would seem obvious that machine learning (ML) could be useful whenever “big” data are available to support business decisions. But that isn’t quite right.   

Few things have stood the test of time as well as Warren Buffett's investing prowess. Beginning with around $10,000 in seed capital in the mid-1950s, Berkshire Hathaway (NYSE:BRK.A)(NYSE:BRK.B) CEO Warren Buffett has seen his net worth climb to nearly $90 billion as of this past weekend. Had he not donated tens of billions of dollars over the years, there's a very real chance he'd have surpassed Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos as the richest man in the world.

To stay on top, the U.S. must subsidize more foundational research and reform education, immigration, and trade. The United States is an innovative nation. The nation’s founders put a premium on inventiveness. They thought so highly of the role science and technology play that they wrote it into the Constitution, saying the government should “promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts.”