Estonia is the most innovative economy in emerging Europe, and the 24th most innovative globally and 15th in Europe, as indicated by the 2019 Global Innovation Index.

Every year the Global Innovation Index ranks the innovation performance of nearly 130 economies around the world. The countries are evaluated based on 80 different factors that affect innovations, including factors such as politics, technology, education, infrastructure, creative output, research and entrepreneurship development to name a few.

While death is inevitable, knowing when it will come isn’t necessarily, and scientists have been trying to develop a test that could reliably and easily predict how long a person will live — or, more technically, how healthy they are and therefore how vulnerable they might be to major mortality risk factors. Blood tests are the most likely avenue to such a test, since it’s easy to obtain blood samples and labs equipped to handle them are common.

In the past decades, Europe has always been one of the world’s top leaders in science and technology. However, it has recently been lagging behind as it encounters roadblocks that obstruct its road to innovation.

Co-organised by the EC’s DG Connect and DG for Research and Innovation (RTD) and the Romanian Presidency of the Council of the European Union, the Innovative Enterprise Week Bucharest 2019 (June 19-21) was a monumental event for scientific experts, innovators, investors and policy makers to talk about the ways to address this problem.

Image: iCube Programme - https://cordis.europa.eu

In the past several years, Greater Boston has cemented itself as the global epicenter of life sciences research. According to JLL’s Life Sciences Outlook report, the region consistently ranks in the top tier of U.S. life sciences clusters, with only San Francisco as its main adversary.

In fact, Boston and San Francisco took more than half of all venture capital dollars in the life sciences industry during 2018.

For decades, my father taught biology at Middlebury College in Vermont. One of his signature courses focused on invertebrates and, as a kid, I’d often tag along on class field trips to the Maine coast. Students would fan out across the rocky shore at low tide and count as many spineless creatures as they could—which, as it turns out, was pretty easy. There were dozens of invertebrate species to be found, including snails, crabs, starfish and, of course, lobster.

Image: Octopuses raised in captivity, like this one, could save their wild relatives from overfishing. Jake Naughton for TIME

Happy Labor Day from Rich Bendis and the Innovation America Team!

TOKYO, Aug. 29, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Taiho Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd. (HQ: Tokyo, President and Representative Director: Masayuki Kobayashi) announced on August 29 that the company has entered into an agreement to invest up to US$30 million in Remiges Biopharma Fund II, LP a biopharma venture capital fund formed by Remiges Ventures, Inc. Taiho Pharmaceutical invested the same amount in the Remiges BioPharma Fund I established in 2014.

Imagine yourself sitting in your home. What’s right outside your front door, and what’s within a 10-minute walk of it? Can you make it to a grocery store or a café on foot, or do you have to drive? Is there a shared space nearby, a park or a patio, where you can mingle with the people who live around you? Do you often see people out and about, or do your neighbors mostly stay inside? What about the street: Is it filled with only cars, or do you see people biking and taking transit? Do you feel safe walking on the sidewalk that lines your front door (if there even is a sidewalk)? Are there places to sit along it?

Image: Photo: ©Gehl - https://www.fastcompany.com

Major industries are undergoing a digital transformation, in which key aspects of new product development are migrating to a software-driven context. In the medical device industry, experience matters, as does the geographic clustering of new product development, which gives advantages to both new entrants and incumbent firms.

The rise in sea levels is not the only way climate change will affect the coasts. Our research, published today in Nature Climate Change, found a warming planet will also alter ocean waves along more than 50% of the world’s coastlines.

If the climate warms by more than 2℃ beyond pre-industrial levels, southern Australia is likely to see longer, more southerly waves that could alter the stability of the coastline.

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.)

It’s hard to describe Vantablack, the world’s darkest black pigment, without seeing it for yourself.

First developed for use in light-sensitive aerospace components (and infamously licensed for artistic use solely by sculptor Anish Kapoor), the pigment uses tiny carbon nanotubes to absorb up to 99.965% of light striking its surface. At Google’s top secret materials lab, I recently gazed upon a sample of Vantablack in real life for the first time. It almost broke my brain. It has no reflection, no contours. It’s like part of the world has been Photoshopped away. Stare at it long enough, and it feels like your soul is being sucked out of your eyeballs.

Image: BMW

Big cities are the engines of the modern economy. They offer workers a range of opportunities — and employers a range of workers, customers, and infrastructure — that smaller places generally can’t match. But when it comes to what many job seekers care about most, smaller cities often are best. In particular, for most jobs, salaries are higher in smaller places after accounting for the cost of living. 

Image: http://www.newgeography.com

There’s an old saying that generals always fight the last war. In communities hit by hurricanes, it could be said that governments often fight the last storm.

That situation is understandable. When a hurricane moves through a city, enormous amounts of data are collected about its path and any storm surge; other related flooding; or power outages. Each hurricane that passes through our coastal communities is followed by a series of “fixes” that draw from those past data to make our power plants and other key facilities more resilient. Yet what if such fixes aren’t really fixes at all?

Image: Aftermath of Hurricane Matthew, 2016 Credit: Paul Brennan Pixabay

A new school year has already begun in many places across the country, and that means thousands of students are getting to know their new teachers.

Oftentimes, the quality of a school comes down to the quality of its teachers. That's why school-ranking website Niche released its 2020 list of public high schools in America with the best teachers. Being a teacher isn't easy: Many teachers have a range of issues to grapple with, from dealing with helicopter parents to using their own salary to pay for classroom supplies.

Image: Google Maps

Traditionally, the entrepreneurship definition has been limited to: starting a new business, scaling for profit and creating business capital. For outside-of-the-box thinkers, that definition was quite narrow. It leaves out the idea that entrepreneurship is a way of thinking—a mindset that is opportunity obsessed, holistic in approach and leadership balanced. This new definition of entrepreneurship is about innovation; about seeing problems as opportunities, and about transforming the world.

Image: http://entrepreneurship.babson.edu

As an entrepreneur, you are no doubt aware that your ability to negotiate effectively is one of the more useful skills in building a great company. Very often negotiation success translates directly into entrepreneurial success.

That’s true whether a negotiation involves partners, investors, employees, governmental agencies, suppliers, vendors, business buyers or sellers. Being an adept negotiator in any of these situations can potentially make a significant difference in how successful you ultimately become.

“I am thinking of becoming an entrepreneur and starting a small business.  But my current job is so uninspiring – I don’t want to get stuck in another boring career. Can you tell me, what does an entrepreneur business owner do all day?”   

–   Susie M. from Anchorage

Fantastic question, Susie. We get asked this a lot.

The short answer is:  small business owners and entrepreneurs do whatever is required to make their businesses a success. This could mean doing everything from emptying the trash cans, to picking up the mail at the post office, to making sales calls, to changing the go-to-market strategy.

So you’re thinking about working at a startup…. But what is it like? And why would you do it?

Startup cultures and environments are unique and offer a different experience than a traditional enterprise level company. But, they also offer tremendous benefits for the right job seeker. Here are the top 5 reasons you should consider joining a startup.

European Commission President-elect Ursula von der Leyen wants to set up a €100 billion fund to bolster “European champions” against American and Chinese tech companies. The so-called European Future Fund is part of a 173-page wish list that “European Commission officials want to put onto (von der Leyen’s) agenda,” including items such as greater restrictions on social media, EU unemployment insurance, unilateral tariffs on the United States (with the expectation that the US will leave the World Trade Organization), and more.