It might sound odd, but people need the most help not at the beginning of their careers, but in mid-career — especially when it comes to making decisions. That’s a key finding from a research study coordinated by one of us (Julia). The study asked 500 college-educated adults in professional careers (representative of 16% of U.S. adults) to indicate the degree of their agreement with statements about their behaviors when making important work decisions throughout their careers. The questionnaire also asked them to assess each decision’s degree of success.

Sand Hill Road is as well-known an address to business people as Rodeo Drive, Wall Street and Pennsylvania Avenue. This arterial road in western Silicon Valley is home to many of the venture capital firms that provide the money that powers the most innovative technology companies in the world. Scott Kupor, a lawyer turned entrepreneur turned VC, works as managing partner in one of those firms, Andreessen Horowitz. He’s written a best-selling book that offers advice and guidance for entrepreneurs on how to work with venture capitalists. Kupor spoke about his book, The Secrets of Sand Hill Road: Venture Capital and How to Get It, during a segment on the Knowledge@Wharton radio show on SiriusXM. (Listen to the podcast at the top of this page.)

Africa has taken three significant steps in recent months on its journey to a stronger economic future.

In March, the African Union launched the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA). This landmark agreement aims to create a single market expected to generate a combined GDP of more than $3.4 trillion and benefit over 1 billion people.

In April, the South African government announced the launch of a new Affiliate Centre of the World Economic Forum’s Centre for the Fourth Industrial Revolution (C4IR).

Image: North Beach Pier, Durban, South Africa Image: Captureson/Unsplash

Israeli universities, research institutions, hospitals, and HMOs set up 74 companies, filed 623 new patents and created 329 new licensing agreements last year, according to the Israel Technology Transfer Network 2018 annual report.

The most active sectors for Israeli technology transfer operations — when technologies and research developed in universities and other centers cross over to the industry in a bid to become commercially viable products — were in the fields of pharma and biotech, accounting for some 40 percent of activity, the report said.

When most people think about sun-related damage, they probably worry about their skin. But the sun’s ultraviolet rays also pose a threat to a person’s eyes.

According to a 2014 study funded by the U.S. National Eye Institute, part of the National Institutes of Health, UV radiation can damage proteins in the eye’s lens. Over time, this damage can raise a person’s risk for cataracts, which impair vision.

As many readers familiar with win-win negotiations know, power moves are deemed counterproductive when it comes to enhancing mutual value. Examples of power displays include “take it or leave it” tactics, threatening to go with a competitor or making an unreasonable offer. But what about silence?

An engineer by training, Stan Chang, MS/MBA 2020 candidate in the SEAS/HBS joint degree program, came to Harvard to “balance a business curriculum with an advanced engineering education. When I saw the curriculum here and the focus on ways to help people start companies, I knew that this was the best program for me.”

Stan had already gained an impressive amount of experience at Microsoft where he worked on operating systems and with online payments technology, responsibilities that “shaped my view on software development and how to make the process better.”

Image: https://www.hbs.edu

Bristol-Myers Squibb has partnered with biotech accelerator BioMotiv. Bristol-Myers will become a limited partner, investing in projects of mutual interest, with an option to buy the companies once there is a preclinical candidate.

“This new partnership will allow us to leverage the extensive expertise of Bristol-Myers Squibb across multiple disease areas,” stated Ted Torphy, BioMotiv’s chief executive officer and chief scientific officer. “Combined with BioMotiv’s unique model and focus on accelerating breakthrough discoveries from leading academic institutions, we have the opportunity to make a real impact on the lives of patients.”

Forbes released its annual list of the country's most innovative leaders, comprising 100 founders and CEOs known for encouraging creative and highly successful innovation at their organizations.

To compile the list, leaders from top U.S. companies were ranked based on their media reputation for innovation, social connections and capital related to innovation, track record of market value creation and investor expectations of future growth and innovation. Exemplifying these qualities are Amazon's Jeff Bezos and Tesla's Elon Musk, who tied for first place.

Vensana Capital—an independent, medtech-focused venture capital investment firm supported by Versant Ventures—has launched with a $225 million fund and ambitions to support new breakthroughs in medical devices, diagnostics and data science.

With locations in Minneapolis and the Washington, D.C. area, Vensana was co-founded by Versant’s Kirk Nielsen and New Enterprise Associates’ Justin Klein, who between them have helped gather more than $1 billion in capital raises for healthcare startups and supported the development of nearly three-dozen FDA-approved products.

Image: Versant's former medtech practice leader Kirk Nielsen (left) and NEA's Justin Klein, M.D., J.D., (right) will serve as Vensana's co-founders and managing partners. (Image: Vensana)

Deadlines are powerful forces in our work, signaling what’s most important, forcing focus, and driving tasks to completion. That’s why projects that don’t have a deadline can languish on your task list for weeks, months, or even years.

Sometimes this happens because a project is ambiguous, boring, or messy. You naturally deprioritize it whenever possible, because working on it feels uncomfortable. But other times you don’t mean to avoid the project. You just never get to it, because items with clear deadlines feel more pressing.

It really is possible for an introvert to succeed as an entrepreneur, even though you can’t expect to start and build a business alone. You need to build business relationships with partners, team members, investors, and of course customers. In fact, all you need to do is follow the model of some famous self-proclaimed introverts, including Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, and Bill Gates.

Image: https://blog.startupprofessionals.com

When the crewmembers of the starship Enterprise pull into orbit around a new planet, one of the first things they do is scan for life-forms. Here in the real world, researchers have long been trying to figure out how to unambiguously detect signs of life on distant exoplanets. 

They are now one step closer to this goal, thanks to a new remote-sensing technique that relies on a quirk of biochemistry causing light to spiral in a particular direction and produce a fairly unmistakable signal. The method, described in a recent paper published in the journal Astrobiology, could be used aboard space-based observatories and help scientists learn if the universe contains living beings like ourselves.  

Burlington, VT (September 4, 2019) Burton is proud to announce that the company is joining millions of students and workers around the world in support of the Global Climate Strike on September 20. All Burton offices and owned stores will be closed for business the day of the strike so employees worldwide can walk out and join nearby marches. In addition, Burton.com will be closed for online orders globally on September 20, with the website re-directing to the Global Climate Strike homepage to build awareness for the cause.

A co-founder of WeWork, Adam Neumann, once said that “people are the most important thing. Business model and product will follow if you have the right people.” This is true by and large, but it’s missing something even more fundamental. The people with which an entrepreneur will do business are, first and foremost, wrapped in culture.

In the world of serial entrepreneurship, especially as your ideas move across borders, culture plays a key role in how a business owner will manage his or her team. With the EU and Switzerland, Europe offers strong benefits to aspiring entrepreneurs, while it also inheres a myriad of cultural norms and challenges.

When the history books are written, Warren Buffett will likely go down as one of the greatest investors of our time. In a little more than six decades, the Oracle of Omaha, as he's affably known, has grown roughly $10,000 in seed capital to a net worth of almost $80 billion. Mind you, his net worth would extend well beyond $100 billion if not for generous charitable contributions throughout the years.

Contxto – Uruguay’s National Research and Innovation Agency (ANII) plans to debut a new program to attract more innovative entrepreneurs to the country.

Affordable travel The campaign consists of a three-stage acceleration program, but it offers an interesting perk. Since selected founders will be required to travel and live in Uruguay for the duration of the program, the agency is offering a promotion for carry-on luggage at just US$1. Yeah, you read that right.

Hurricane Dorian made landfall in the Bahamas on Sunday as a Category 5 storm, with sustained wind speeds of 185 miles per hour. The onslaught of wind, rain, and storm surge inundated roads, destroyed homes, and claimed at least five lives.

Dorian was moving toward the Florida coast as of Tuesday afternoon, and its effects are expected to hit Georgia and South Carolina in the coming days as well. Though the hurricane's winds are growing weaker, the storm has become larger, which could increase the risk of flooding in coastal areas.

Image: https://www.businessinsider.com

Kunming, Sep 4 (IANS) BRICS countries are stepping up technology transfer and transformation, said a conference organised by the BRICS Technology Transfer Center in Kunming, capital of southwest China's Yunnan Province. Technological innovation and transfer experts from BRICS and south and southeast Asian countries as well as scholars of key fields, including biomedicine, clean energy, modern agriculture and digital economy attended the conference, which was held on Tuesday.

You’re a science professor. A colleague asks you to arbitrate a dispute with a student over a question on a physics exam. Your colleague thinks the student deserves a zero, but the student demands full credit.

Here’s the question:

“Show how it is possible to determine the height of a tall building with the aid of a barometer.”

The traditional answer is clear: You take pressure measurements with the barometer at the top and at the bottom of the building, then use the difference to compute the height.