Highly innovative leaders need to share a clear vision, practice effective communication, and make a commitment to roll imagination into reality.

Business success today depends on innovation. Business innovation depends on innovation leadership. The ultimate criterion of “innovation leadership” is to envision the future trends in business, technology, and society, explore emerging opportunities and unleash human potentials, create more and more authentic and creative leaders, and amplify innovation impact. Here are five strengths of innovative leaders.

If you are already successfully running a women-owned business, pat yourself on the back. You have made it! And if you have a great idea to initiate the one, there is no better time than now. This is because women-owned businesses are soaring.

Grand Ventures LLC has finished raising capital for its $28 million flagship fund intended to help startups based in Michigan and the Midwest.

The Grand Rapids-based venture capital firm announced Tuesday that it made the final close on its Fund I LP, which has invested about $5 million in six companies so far and aims to provide capital to 15-20 over the life of the fund, according to a news release.

Image: Tim Streit

The second annual BHCR Investment Conference, which is an invitation-only event, will be held at AstraZeneca in Gaithersburg on October 15 and 16, 2019.   

BioHealth Innovation (BHI), J.P. Morgan, Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati (WSGR), Deloitte, AstraZeneca and The Maryland Department of Commerce have worked closely to ensure the 2019 investment conference builds on the success of last year’s event.

The role of a Non-Executive Director (NED) is to represent and safeguard the long-term interests of shareholders and broader stakeholders, including employees, customers, society, and environment. As stewards of the company, the Board and its NEDs, have two primary governance responsibilities:

• Ensuring regulatory conformance: compliance with relevant rules, regulations, accounting standards, disclosure requirements etc. 
• Driving company performance: guiding management and ensuring that the company’s resources are deployed efficiently and productively.

We’re living in an extraordinary century:

• Almost six in ten of the nearly 8 billion of us on Earth are connected to the Internet; adding the next 4 billion people to the Internet is the biggest learning opportunity in history.  
• In the last two decades, we became a planet of cities. About 55% of the world’s population lives in cities and by mid-century—when there are 10 billion of us—it will be more than two thirds, so we’ll need to invent ways to make cities workable, livable, and sustainable.

Image: Jake Marshall, aerospace and aeronautics program, in the St. Vrain Valley Schools' Innovation Center. TOM VANDER ARK

When I moved from Brooklyn back to the Bay Area a few years ago, I thought, at first, that the apartment I found was charming. It’s also very small: At the end of a long driveway, inside a former garage, it’s 240 square feet, or roughly the size of one and a half parking spaces.

The clustering force: It’s the big reason behind the comeback of cities, and perhaps the most powerful driver of the knowledge economy. Alfred Marshall identified the economic power of clustering, or agglomeration, way back in the 1890s. Jane Jacobs later documented its role in catalyzing innovation and propelling the wealth of cities. The Nobel Prize-winning economist Robert Lucas described it as the underlying engine of today’s knowledge-based creative economy.

Image: Passersby walk near an art installation in Boston's Seaport, where many tech companies are located. Steven Senne/AP - https://www.citylab.com

Nutrition research is consistently conflicting. Everything from a study’s design to the way its data is analyzed can affect the outcome of a particular experiment—hence the frustrating and common phenomenon where something considered healthy today is condemned tomorrow.

But new nutrition recommendations published in the Annals of Internal Medicine are causing even more of a stir than usual. The guidelines say individuals do not need to eat less red and processed meat to stay healthy, despite prior studies that have linked these foods to conditions such as heart disease and cancer, and years of scientific support for a largely plant-based diet.

Israel’s elections — held in September for the second time this year — are stuck in stalemate following inconclusive results. Prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been asked to form the government but, according to media reports, he may fail to do so. Netanyahu is scheduled to meet this week with his main rival, former military chief Benny Gantz of the Blue and White Party. Both will try to cobble together a so-called national unity government. If they fail to strike a deal, will a third round of elections become necessary?

This is just one of many questions that hover over Israel. Others concern the economic implications of the elections. The country, which has long been lauded as a “start-up nation” focused on innovation and entrepreneurship, faces several economic challenges. Among them: How will Israel deal with high inequality and lagging productivity? What should be done about poverty and rising housing costs? And if the world economy slides into a recession, as many signs seem to indicate, how should Israel respond?

The news: SpaceX CEO Elon Musk gave a presentation on the development of the company’s rocket Starship, which is intended to fly passengers to the moon and Mars, on Saturday night. His talk took place at SpaceX’s facility in Boca Chica, Texas, in front of a huge prototype of the rocket (pictured). The timing of the event was no coincidence: it was the 11th anniversary of the company’s sending the first private liquid-fueled rocket into orbit.

Image: https://www.technologyreview.com

A week ago today, millions of students took to the streets to protest the lack of action governments are taking to combat climate change. On Monday, 16-year-old Swedish campaigner Greta Thunberg made an intense and emotionally charged speech at the United Nations, begging world leaders to step up their commitment to protecting the planet’s future. Headlines around the world echo her rallying cry, accusing our leaders of failing us. 

Analysis: open innovation allows companies to use and benefit from valuable knowledge and expertise outside their own organisation

"No matter who you are, most of the brightest people don't work for you. They work for someone else. (So) you need a strategy that allows for innovation elsewhere". That's what Bill Joy, co-founder of Sun Microsystems famously said, and the quotation later became known as Joy's Law. Open Innovation is built on this very principle that valuable knowledge and innovation exists outside your organisation, but the challenge is how to find and integrate this knowledge for the organisation’s benefit.

Female entrepreneurs and female investors risk being boxed in if they seek only each other’s company.

“Don’t think of yourself as a woman in business,” Lori Greiner, a millionaire businesswoman on Shark Tank, a hit TV show in which contestants pitch their start-ups to a panel of investors, advised female entrepreneurs. “You are a person in business equal to anyone else.”

From the perspective of an entrepreneur, the government sector represents a deep well of potential customers. From health and education to transport and defense, policymakers are constantly looking for ways and means to drive efficiencies and deliver services in the most cost-effective way possible. And that - in theory at least - creates opportunities for tech-sector innovators. 

Two years ago, Yale University psychologist Laurie Santos began to wonder why students seemed so detached from their classmates. Like a good academic, she connected her observations to data — and found it troubling. The National College Health Assessment (pdf) showed that 42 percent of college students reported being too depressed to function well in the previous year. A range of other surveys and indicators have suggested that older people are also having difficulty finding happiness and connection in our 24/7, hyperconnected world.

Image: Photograph by Aaron Kotowski

Outside of dreams, there is no real business opportunity without risk. Serious entrepreneurs know that, but too many “wannabes” still fall for that elusive get-rich-quick scheme with no risk. As an active angel investor, I still hear entrepreneurs asserting large opportunities with minimal risk and no competition. My conclusion either way is that they have no market, or haven’t looked.

According to the classic book by serial entrepreneur and former race car driver Tom Panaggio, “The Risk Advantage: Embracing the Entrepreneur's Unexpected Edge,” smart business owners embrace two essential risks to every opportunity – decision and change. First, they decide on a direction to jump, and then they make adjustments and innovations to keep going and growing.

Venture Capital has always been an industry that likes to play its cards close to the chest, and as such, there remains a lack of transparency and understanding about a great many things that go on within it. 

Unsurprisingly, one of the most guarded secrets is industry salaries.

Primary among the reasons for this is the fact that, due to the radically different fund structures and sizes that exist within the industry, standardization has fallen by the wayside. 

For instance, an associate at one venture capital firm could be on a completely different track than one at another firm, making it difficult for these peers to have comparable data as it pertains to how much they’re bringing home.

We’d all love for our bosses to be connected and knowledgeable inside our organizations. An in-the-loop manager can give direct reports timely and accurate information, introductions to important people, appropriate guidance on projects, and, in best-case scenarios, a leg up in their careers.

Unfortunately, some bosses lack political aptitude and networks, while others are missing competencies that should be required of their higher position on the company ladder. Whatever your manager’s standing, you need to protect yourself and your reputation by making sure you’re progressing. When your supervisor is too out of the loop to help you navigate a work situation, try these three techniques.

Jessica Wells was part of the Leadership Health Care delegation that recently made a trek to Boston. Here's what she says Nashville could learn from the trip to Beantown.

Image: Jessica Wells is the board chair of Leadership Health Care, an initiative of the Nashville Health Care Council, and assistant vice president of education & research, graduate medical education for HCA Healthcare Inc. MICHAEL GOMEZ