How HR managers can look for, develop and reinforce certain behaviours to break down barriers within their organisations.

HR managers who strive to identify and cultivate the best talent for their firms understand certain truisms. They know that hiring can’t be done by a bot, that there is a human aspect to finding the right fit for a particular team, and that there is great value in working across divides, be they cultural or functional.

Close scrutiny of VC deal terms in India reveals a nuanced pattern of objectivity and discrimination.

No matter how rational we may claim or want to be, no human being is entirely free of bias. The challenge is to be aware of one’s own bias – or, failing that, to design processes that mitigate bias – so that objective considerations can prevail. This challenge becomes especially pertinent in a field such as venture capital, where intrinsic uncertainty renders decision makers particularly prone to irrational influences.

Use the “Filter” tool to narrow data by Gender, Generation, or Race, or click a category under the “Group” legend to highlight the data for that group. Hover over any point to view data. To see a larger version of the graphic, click on the "Enlarge" icon on the right, below the graphic.

Image: https://www.apa.org

Across an entire desert or ocean, migratory birds make some of the most extreme journeys found in nature, but there are still huge gaps in our understanding of how they manage to travel these vast distances and what a changing climate means for their migration patterns. ‘Some species of migrants might be affected by a changing climate,’ said Professor Stuart Bearhop, an animal ecology expert from the University of Exeter in the UK.

Capitalism has been good to hedge fund billionaire Ray Dalio. But “the system of making capitalism work well for most people is broken,” he argues in a LinkedIn post. 

He began publicly speaking about capitalism’s flaws in April, saying that the current wealth gap should be declared a national emergency. The lengthy post he published yesterday throws shade at private companies flush with capital.

Image: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ray_Dalio#/media/File:Web_Summit_2018_-_Forum_-_Day_2,_November_7_HM1_7481_(44858045925).jpg

CEO Pascal Soriot knows what’s at stake for AstraZeneca’s business. It is whether China, now the British drugmaker’s second-largest market, can sustain double-digit growth—and some investments that support the Chinese government’s goals are necessary.

In a slew of news coming out of Shanghai on Wednesday, AstraZeneca is teaming up with investment shop China International Capital Corporation to launch a $1 billion fund focused on healthcare, upgrading its Shanghai R&D operations to a global center, establishing a new artificial intelligence innovation center, and partnering up with Sun Pharma to market some oncology drugs in China.

Being an entrepreneur and starting a company is not for everyone. Hence, nine out of ten start-ups fail.

Of course, bringing your unique vision and innovative idea to life while being your own boss would sound appealing to most. But, as most successful start-up founders can attest, it’s a long road filled with failures and challenges ranging from human capital to raising capital.

For years, experts and business leaders have debated what makes a good entrepreneur more successful than his or her peers. More recently, the conversation has often focused on the educational attainment of the entrepreneur in question, with many arguing rather persuasively that an MBA is necessary if you want to strike out on your own and start a thriving small business that could one day evolve into an international corporate empire.

Success in any business these days requires a constant flow of new and innovative solutions, to keep up with changes in the market, competition, and to attract new customers. Yet in my role as a small business advisor, I still see a singular focus on achieving repeatable processes and “cookie-cutter” manufacturing. I don’t believe these two objectives have to be mutually exclusive.

Image: https://blog.startupprofessionals.com

In my experience as an advisor and mentor to entrepreneurs in business, one of the biggest failures I see is a lack of self-leadership. You can’t lead a business to success, if you can’t lead yourself. I define self-leadership as the capacity to set direction and make decisions, to positively drive your own performance. Leadership in business starts with making good personal choices.

Image: https://blog.startupprofessionals.com/

When the UAE government announced in May that it would grant some 6,800 investors permanent residency under its new “Golden Card” system, the news was welcomed by business professionals- a move that would largely stabilize the economy, and boost the property market. It’s a historic development in the timeline of the UAE economy. What can it mean, long-term, for business owners and SMEs? I believe the permanent residency and long-term visas will help attract significant amounts of capital and skilled resources, if the policy is implemented properly.

On Wednesday, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) marked the granting of the nation’s 10 millionth patent. Patent filings and issuances are at historically high levels, with more than 2.8 million active patents in the United States, which is both good and troubling news.

This plethora of patenting is the scorecard of a championship American season of innovation. But it has also given rise to challenges that could cut that season short. With the USPTO receiving more than 650K patent applications a year and issuing more than 350,000 patents a year based on an average examination time of 19 hours per patent, many invalid patents have been mixed in with the valid and valuable ones in recent years.

Startups hoping to create commercial businesses in the sustainability world face special problems, Brandt told the crowd in Lisbon attending the Web Summit tech conference, where the announcement was made. These startups struggle with everything from a lack of investors to difficulties finding other startups with similar goals.

So Google is looking for 8-10 startups from Europe, the Middle East, and Africa to take part in a six-month accelerator program in early 2020. Applications for the first cohort will open soon and Google plans to organize a second cohort later in the year.

Image: Google Sustainability Officer Kate Brandt - Business Insider

What’s stopping you fulfilling your potential, preventing you from taking action or slowing your progress as a business owner?

Conditioning your mind for success involves letting these things well and truly slide:

The opinions of naysayers

If you have a plan that you are convinced will work, go for it. If it’s true to your values, fits with your vision and you feel good about it, why not? Not everyone will agree with you because they don’t know what you are capable of. They don’t realise you’ve already done your research, weighed up the pros and cons and crafted a strategy. You know your audience and only they

An experiment that involved reducing the workweek by one day led to a 40% boost in productivity in a Microsoft subsidiary in Japan, the technology giant announced last week.

The trial was part of Microsoft's "Work-Life Choice Challenge," a summer project that examined work-life balance and aimed to help boost creativity and productivity by giving employees more flexible working hours.

When you're inside something, it's hard to see its shape. We're still finding out new things about the shape of our galaxy.

The shape of the universe? That's a lot harder to gauge, but years of observational data, cosmological models and physics suggest it's flat. Send a beam of photons out across the void, and it will just keep going in a straight line.

A new study argues otherwise. Based on data released last year collected by the European Space Agency's Planck satellite, astronomers have argued the case that the universe is actually curved and closed, like an inflating sphere.

Image: The oldest light in the universe, called the cosmic microwave background, as observed by the Planck space telescope is shown in an oval sky map. Planck Collaboration/ESA

This summer, we published an analysis showing that the gap between large and small firms has grown over the past 15 years, with large companies becoming more likely to maintain their dominance and small ones less likely to become big and profitable. Several readers wrote to us asking about what’s happened to medium-sized firms — those not included in the top 30% or the bottom 30% of firms as measured by market value but those in the middle 40%.

Studies in healthy human volunteers have shown how a sleepless night can increase anxiety levels by 30%. In some participants just one night of disturbed sleep resulted in levels of anxiety the next day that were above the threshold for common anxiety disorders. The research, carried out by scientists at the University of California (UC), Berkeley, found links between sleep loss-related anxiety and impaired activity in specific areas of the brain, and also indicated that slow-wave, non-rapid eye movement (NREM) sleep has an anxiolytic effect on brain networks.

Image: Study shows that a sleepless night boosts anxiety levels up to 30%. (Graphic by Eti Ben Simon and Matthew Walker.)

Innovation is at the heart of economic growth and job creation. It can transform productivity and efficiency and address many of the world’s longstanding and emerging challenges, such as climate change, health, education and social inclusiveness.

Governments are trying to balance supporting entrepreneurship with ensuring people aren’t left behind. Alongside this, globalization and rapid technological advances have disrupted innovation pathways and hastened the pace of change.

Image: https://europeansting.com

In “Uberising Luck”, the Economist (October 5, 2019, page 57) notes a number of programs that help entrepreneurs and laments the fact that “schemes to make entrepreneurs more successful are hit and miss.” I have a high regard for the Economist, It is one of the best business magazines in the world, but this article misses the point. Here’s why?