To ponder preparing for retirement in the U.S. these days depends very much upon who is doing the pondering. On the one hand, there is great freedom over the when and how of it. Some retire and find a second career, or shift into a public-service phase of life. Others are choosing to never retire at all.

On the other hand, many never get the luxury of choice. Age discrimination makes finding or keeping a job after 55 harder than ever, and a surprisingly large slice of the population hasn’t set aside an adequate nest egg.

If you attended any of the events, conferences and panel discussions in the BioHealth Capital Region this year you probably would have picked up on a consistent theme. Whether it was at the ISPE Chesapeake Bay Area Chapter’s MAST Showcase, the BioHealth Capital Region Forum held at AstraZeneca in April or the more recent NCI Tech Transfer Showcase, talent and capital were hot button topics discussed intensely during the sessions, over lunch and while networking at each event. 

Entrepreneurs are praised as the lifeblood of innovation, but the stress and anxiety makes them prone to mental health conditions, according to numerous studies.

For tech and brand entrepreneurs dealing with prospective multi-million-dollar overnight valuations, the pressure can lead to drug addiction, insomnia and binge eating, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Selling on Amazon is a great way of starting, and even building, a business. However, if you want to start and build a six- or seven-figure business more effectively, you must go through stages. 

Ryan Daniel Moran is the founder of Capitalism.com, Freedom Fast Lane and the author of an upcoming book titled 12 Months to $1 Million. 

Innovation is the key driver for sustenance and prosperity of start-ups or conglomerates or governments trying to maximise their service delivery, or institutions excelling in research and academics. Innovation is the process for measurable value-enhancement in any activity. The process can be a breakthrough or disruptive one, ushering in game changing business practices. It could also be incremental or iterative one, resulting from continuous improvements for better customer satisfaction and market share. Disruptive innovation brings something ‘new to the world’ and hence it is associated with higher business risk. On the other hand, incremental innovation introduces something ‘new to the market’ and thus it is fraught with less risk.

Image: https://www.financialexpress.com

Doctors make a lot of money across the United States.

Using data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics' Occupational Employment Statistics program, we found the job in each state with the highest average annual salary as of May 2018, the latest available data. For our calculations, we considered jobs employing at least 1,000 people in the state for which the BLS reported annual mean salaries.

Image: https://www.businessinsider.com

A founder’s life leaves little time for pause. From the moment that the next big startup idea strikes, the tempo is set by the breakneck quest to scale. There’s always another hole to patch, another fundraise, another urgent priority that compels founders to be both masters of time management and of managing stress in a pressure-cooker environment. Pulling the brakes on the forward-barrelling train of startup life seems unthinkable — and if you do dare to halt the momentum, it can feel like pitching into a free-fall.

Portugal’s capital Lisbon recently received recently a group of very interesting international specialists to discuss the challenges of the new connected economy. It was an opportunity to listen to strategies for the New European Innovation Council and its challenges when it comes to articulating the main objectives of a digital Europe.

In a New York Time’s article titled Tech Is Splitting the U.S. Work Force in Two, written by Eduardo Porter in February of this year, it was argued that the technology sector is breaking our economy in ways that are destabilizing our society, at large. In his piece, Porter argued that while the technology sector has promised a future where we’ll be capable of doing meaningful work we care about while being paid livable wages, we’re really just getting lulled into a world where robots do all the work and a small handful of individuals aggregate the majority of the wealth leaving the rest of us to live off some “yet-to-be-invented welfare program... a Silicon Valley pipe dream.” 

Amazon's accelerator program has existed for almost a year, and you've probably never heard of it. A new report could help explain why.

Amazon Accelerator gives sellers prominent placement on Amazon's website and individualized support from Amazon's marketing team. It also gives the tech giant the right to buy your brand for a predetermined price on just 60 days notice, according to the Wall Street Journal. Some who join the program are reportedly required to sign nondisclosure agreements, further explaining the secrecy.

Back in 1897, Spanish neuroscientist Santiago Ramón y Cajal -- winner of the Nobel Prize -- wrote a book called Advice for a Young Investigator. He argued that instead of spending hours reviewing books, lectures and broad research, scientists should focus deeply on a single object of study. This state, he wrote, “refines judgment, enriches analytical powers, spurs constructive imagination, and -- by focusing all light of reason on the darkness of a problem -- allows unforeseen and subtle relationships to be discovered.”

What do Walmart, Facebook, and Lockheed Martin have in common? They all recently unveiled lavish new innovation labs. These kinds of labs go by different names — accelerators, business incubators, research hubs — and my research suggests their numbers are growing. Over half of financial services firms have started their own creative spaces, and you’d be hard-pressed to find a health care company or retailer without at least one innovation lab, whether it’s a conference room with sticky notes or a 20,000-square-foot incubator space, like the one launched by Starbucks in November of last year.

When it comes to funding, a business grant is the closest thing an entrepreneur can get to acquiring “free money” to grow his business. With a business grant, you don’t have to pay the money back, so you don’t have to take on debt, refinance your home or put up your assets as collateral.

Faced with increasing competition, the leading accelerator is making start-up know-how widely available as it searches for the next Airbnb.

Last summer, Y Combinator (YC), the original start-up accelerator that has invested in more than 2,000 fledgling firms with a combined value of US$150 billion, sent acceptance emails to 11,000 of 15,000 applicants to its Startup School instead of the estimated 4,000 originally intended. Rather than jettisoning the surplus applicants, the company that nurtured the likes of Airbnb, Dropbox, Reddit and Quora decided to keep everyone on board.

In 1950, the global population hit 2.5 billion.

Today, there are 7.7 billion people in the world, and with refugee crises, wars, droughts, and changing work opportunities, populations in some countries are booming while others are shrinking.

INSIDER Data found the 15 countries with the biggest population growth since 1950, and the 15 countries with the least population growth since 1950. Here are the results.

Image: Pilgrims hold umbrellas during Mass in Romania, 2019. Vadim Ghirda / AP

We often judge career decisions as good or bad by only evaluating the rewards the commitment brings. Money, status, networks, progress up the career ladder, decision-making power and degree of influence are classic feedback indicators we look to as success measures or lack thereof.  Such external markers can lead us to make bad career decisions in many forms.

Golden Seeds, a national angel investors’ network with a focus on funding women-led companies, will be establishing a chapter in New Jersey.

This development was announced jointly by the New Jersey Economic Development Authority (NJEDA) and the first lady of New Jersey, Tammy Murphy.

The collaboration among Tammy Murphy’s office, the NJEDA, and Golden Seeds will advance Governor Phil Murphy’s efforts to make New Jersey the “State of Innovation” by providing new funding sources and mentorship opportunities for female entrepreneurs, the parties said in a press release.

A new twist on lightweight organic materials shows promise for artificial-muscle applications. Chinese scientists spiked a crystalline organic material with a polymer to make it more flexible. They reported their findings in a new paper in ACS Central Science, demonstrating proof of concept by using their material to make an aluminum foil paper doll do sit-ups.

Image: https://arstechnica.com

Whether it’s an entrepreneur who finally succeeds in the marketplace after numerous failed attempts or bankruptcies, a scientist who generates the breakthrough compound for a life-saving medication after years of failed drug trials, or a basketball player who overcomes a severe injury and a shooting slump to advance their team in a big tournament, resilience is often identified as one of the factors that helps individuals get ahead. But few of us work entirely alone, and how our teams persevere matters just as much as how individually resilient we are.

From Toronto to Tokyo, the challenges faced by cities today are often remarkably similar: climate change, rising housing costs, traffic, economic polarization, unemployment. To tackle these problems, new technology companies and industries have been sprouting and scaling up with innovative digital solutions like ride sharing and home sharing. Without a doubt, the city of the future must be digital. It must be smart. It must work for everyone.