The Maui Food Innovation Center is now offering the Maui Food Industry X-celerator program on-line to support the Hawaiʻi’s food “startup” community.

The Maui Food Industry Accelerator Program (MFIX) is the first food-industry business accelerator program in the state of Hawaiʻi.  MFIX allows businesses to identify areas for growth and improvement geared towards the special challenges and opportunities of the food industry for Hawaiʻi-grown and manufactured food products.

 Image: https://mauinow.com

In their book, Hidden Value: How Great Companies Achieve Extraordinary Results with Ordinary People, authors Jeffrey Pfeffer and Charles O’Reilly claim that there is mounting evidence that delegating more responsibility for decision making increases productivity, morale, and commitment, all of which impact company culture. A 2015 Gallup study of the entrepreneurial talents of 143 CEOs on the Inc. 500 list showed that companies run by executives who effectively delegate authority grow faster, generate more revenue, and create more jobs.

In late 2019, the giant Ocean Cleanup device—a huge floating barrier created to catch pieces of plastic trash floating in the sea that for years was the just a theoretical idea (and the subject of much press attention)—headed out for its  first mission to the middle of the Pacific Ocean for a second time. The big question: Could the system actually work?

Image: courtesy The Ocean Cleanup

Is the Big Apple losing its allure?

With a long history of attracting young professionals, New York City has long been known as a "must move to" hot spot.

But in a July 2019 SmartAsset report tracking the top cities millennials were settling in, New York didn't even make the top 25.

Coca-Cola is sold everywhere. Well, almost.

Ever since it was first created by John S. Pemberton in 1886, Coke has been a favorite among Americans, and starting in the early 1900s, it slowly grew into a global phenomenon. Today, there are two places where you still can't buy Coke: Cuba and North Korea. But that wasn't always the case.

Coca-Cola opened one of its first bottling plants in Cuba in 1906, but pulled production in 1962 because of a trade embargo, not long after Fidel Castro took over the country.

It’s been more than a year since the Baton Rouge Area Chamber, Research Park Corporation and LSU paid local consulting firm Emergent Method $50,000 to study how LSU and RPC can work more closely together to better serve Baton Rouge’s entrepreneurial community. In April, the firm released the results of that study, which essentially concludes the ecosystem is fragmented and recommends the two entities collaborate more.

Image: BEST LAID PLANS: Officials with the LSU Innovation Park and the Business Technology Center say a joint venture with Research Park Corporation isn’t necessary because the two entities already work together when necessary. (Don Kadair) 

A massive geomagnetic storm stunned Quebec in 1989, triggering blackouts across the province. The storm—a disturbance in Earth's magnetic field caused by a blast of charged particles from the sun—created electric currents that raced through underground power lines and overloaded the grid. Now new research suggests the composition of rock in specific regions could influence the risks from such “superstorms,” which occur about once a century.

Perhaps the report on China’s strategy for eclipsing the U.S. lead in biopharma from the Information Technology & Innovation Foundation (ITIF) resonated so strongly with me because of several articles in The Wall Street Journal. Taken together, they present a sobering picture of what we’re up against.

The first was a book review of “Leadership and the Rise of Great Powers” by Yan Xuetong, a prominent Chinese professor. Characterized as “a window into Chinese elite thinking about the world; it is as much a political manual as an international-relations text book.”  The thesis is the inevitable rise of China as the world’s dominant power at the expense of the United States.

It’s no secret that startups fail. Depending on the source of information, it is estimated that about 90% of startups fail due to various reasons. A lot is written about the reasons why startups fail, but there is little information on what happens with the entrepreneurs after the collapse of their businesses.

A successful exit may also be a challenge as many entrepreneurs feel in the middle of nowhere. Their business is not their responsibility anymore and they are still not ready to start a new venture.

As the home of Silicon Valley and global success stories from Google to Apple, the United States tops the global ranking of the best countries to be an entrepreneur. With a highly-skilled workforce, competitiveness and openness for business, as well as having easy access to capital for entrepreneurs, the U.S. rates highly across the board. The country comes first in the overall “best countries for entrepreneurship” index, 2019.

EDA is encouraging its economic development partners to think of Opportunity Zone investment as a new arrow in their quiver to not only enhance ROI for business interests, but also to encourage the public/private partnerships needed to drive private investment to distressed areas.  

We now have an EDA Opportunity Zone Web page for economic development stakeholders and others to use as a resource to further help foster job creation and attract private investment to support development in economically distressed areas across the United States.

When it comes to communications, founders are often laser-focused on the outward-facing victories, like securing a splashy podcast spot or landing the coveted cover story. But while earning external press helps to add a coat of polish to your brand, it’s the day-to-day work of internal comms that keeps the engine running.

Although public colleges do not dominate the Forbes America’s Top Colleges List — only a quarter of schools in the top 100 are public and less than half of the overall list is made of public institutions — public schools provide some of the most accessible and high-quality education in the country.

More than 5 million students attend the public colleges that make America's Top Colleges List. The average in-state cost of attendance for the public colleges on the America’s Top Colleges list is nearly $30,000 a year less than private colleges on the list: $25,759 compared to $57,128.

Karan Mehandru, a venture capitalist at Trinity Ventures, had only started investing in 2007, but has had quite the 2019. In the span of only one year, his early-stage investments Cohesity, Outreach, and Auth0, achieved “unicorn” billion-dollar

valuations. At that threshold, he now has more unicorns in his individual portfolio than the vast majority of venture firms can claim as a whole. As an Indian-Canadian, Mehandru is a unique investor not just for his global outlook and track record for picking early winners, but also, perhaps more importantly, for his outspoken commitment to values-driven decision making.

Despite a few high-profile retreats from remote work policies in recent years, data on the U.S. workforce suggests that remote work is increasing. A 2017 Gallup poll reported that 43% of employed Americans had spent at least some time working remotely, and US Census data released in 2018 reported 5.2% of U.S. workers being based entirely at home.

Cities today are more important than ever before. On one hand, they are the economic and political engines we need to take on the world’s biggest problems, such as climate change and social inequality. On the other hand, urban development that lacks bold vision and coordination could create problems that endure for generations to come.

As the economy flourishes after some tough economic times, more and more people seem to be turning to entrepreneurship as an alternative to traditional employment. I applaud this trend, but caution all of you thinking this direction to approach entrepreneurship with your eyes wide open. It is not for everyone, as the entrepreneur’s path is fraught with challenges.

Image: pprofessionals.com/2019/08/10-keys-to-your-new-venture-success-and.html

From the outside, the Cell and Genome Sciences Building on UConn Health’s Farmington, Connecticut campus doesn’t look all that remarkable. On the inside, the building located at 400 Farmington Avenue is bustling with entrepreneurial activity and scientific discovery.

That’s because the building is home to UConn’s Technology Incubation Program, and 40 high potential startups working primarily in biotech fields.

Image: The QRFertile lab at the Technology Incubator Program (TIP) space at the Cell and Genome Sciences Building in Farmington on June 14, 2019. (Peter Morenus/UConn Photo) 

In many ways the Big Wave Risk Assessment Group (BWRAG) Safety Summit on the North Shore of Oahu was different from other risk conferences I’ve attended. Risk conferences are usually my domain (I am a retirement economist, after all). Everyone (but me) was tan and in excellent physical shape. Most wore shorts, T‑shirts, and flip-flops. The day included workshops on holding your breath led by deep-sea divers. Former Special Forces officers instructed us on how to tie a tourniquet and perform an emergency tracheotomy with a pen. At one point, someone used the word gnarly, but as a technical term. I even renewed my CPR certification.

Image: Photograph by Alejo De Achaval / EyeEm

City and state entities are considering developing Oklahoma City's Innovation District into a research hub. Journal Record editor Russell Ray discusses the project's potential $1.2 billion economic impact and how it could create 6,600 new jobs, while strengthening nearby neighborhoods, parks and schools.

Image: An artist’s conception shows a proposed expansion of the 10th Street bridge over Interstate 235 in Oklahoma City would include walkable space alongside traffic as part of an innovation district. COURTESY PERKINS & WILL