My latest column is online in the Indianapolis Business Journal. Obviously it’s about Indianapolis, but similar arguments apply to basically every other basically well-performing Midwest city. They are completely parochial talent sheds and need to attract from further afield. Here’s an excerpt:

Image: http://www.newgeography.com

If you haven’t already, you’ll eventually reach a crossroads in your career where you’re faced with three choices: stay with your current employer, find another company to work for, or work for yourself. In my case, I chose the third option and became a personal branding pioneer—and it was absolutely the right choice for me.

Johnson & Johnson Innovation – JLABS together with the Texas Medical Center and AngelMD invite innovators from across the world to submit ideas for potentially game-changing medical device innovations with the aim to impact human health in the Breakthrough Medical Technologies QuickFire Challenge.

2. Carbon $260M Round: Series E Description: Carbon is reinventing how polymer products are designed, engineered, manufactured, and delivered, towards a digital and sustainable future. Founded by Dr. Joseph M. DeSimone and Philip DeSimone in 2013, Carbon is backed by investors that include Autodesk, Baillie Gifford, GV, Johnson & Johnson Innovation, and Sequoia Capital. Carbon is headquartered in Redwood City.

Many startup businesses begin as something the founders pursue in their spare time, while still working a full-time job. If your dream is to turn such a side hustle into your livelihood, how do you know when the time has come to make that leap?

My latest book has the answer to that question- as well as 19 other key considerations for any would-be entrepreneur. I have been directly involved in several startups, taught entrepreneurship at Michigan Ross for 16 years, and I’m an entrepreneur in residence at the Zell Lurie Institute. Now, I’ve gathered the lessons I’ve learned along the way in a book, The Launch Lens: 20 Questions Every Entrepreneur Should Ask, published by the University of Michigan Press.

Each of the seven startups received $150,000. To date in fiscal year 2019, $4.22 million in investments have been made through the Maryland Innovation Initiative program.

Most people agree that entrepreneurs have to think differently and take risks to have much chance of building a successful business. Yet I have found that serious entrepreneurs usually go way beyond these platitudes in their actions and thinking, and often won’t volunteer their real views, for fear of alienating “regular” people, and being branded a fanatic.

In the classic book “The Entrepreneur Mind,” from serial entrepreneur Kevin D. Johnson, he outlines 100 essential beliefs, insights, and habits of serious entrepreneurs. Most of these are predictable, like think big and create new markets, but I found a few, like the ten below, that will likely raise the hackles of many people outside this lifestyle, and many “wannabe” entrepreneurs.

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For the past decade, growth rates have defined success for most technology companies. Moore’s Law enabled unprecedented computing power, setting off a sprint in winner-take-all marketplaces with increasing returns to scale. Growth-hacking became the entrepreneurial mantra of the early 21st century, resulting in the creation of new tech giants, entirely new industries, and an era in which online community, content, and commerce have redefined how we live, learn, and work.

Salvador Jorgensen has spent more than 15 years studying great white sharks near California's coast. The senior research scientist from the Monterey Bay Aquarium and his team have attached tracking tags to 165 of the toothy predators, which routinely visit islands west of San Francisco and prey on elephant seals. But something odd happened one autumn: “In 2009, 17 of those tagged white sharks were simultaneously swimming around the Farallon Islands, when they abruptly departed. Not just one or two but all 17, in a matter of hours,” Jorgensen recalls. “Normally the sharks hang around for weeks or months at a time.”

After nearly 40 years of providing free and low-cost support services to thousands of small businesses and entrepreneurs, the Wharton Small Business Development Center is closing at the end of July, confident it is not leaving an unfillable void in Philadelphia but rather freeing up state and federal funding for sister programs at Temple and Widener Universities.

Image: JOSE F. MORENO / STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER

Recently, a four-star general invited me to share my thoughts on how to make leadership a concept that scales across an organization, and make smarter decisions in an era of constant change. My answer was simple: Embolden and empower staff to take action more frequently by giving them more opportunities to speak up and assume leadership roles.

People heard the sound of the flute being played, became intrigued, flocked over, and exchanged whatever they had in their pockets for the candy. That flute player successfully grabbed the attention of strangers and was ultimately able to provide them with something they didn’t even know they wanted.

Image: Source: Wikipedia

On her first visit to Tulsa, Okla., Joanna Schreck went apartment hunting — with US$2,500 in her pocket to cover up-front relocation costs and the knowledge that she would get a $500 monthly stipend just for settling there. Schreck, a 34-year-old native New Yorker who works remotely for a company that organizes trade and consumer shows, is one of the first batch of Tulsa Remote fellows, enticed to the city to work with a package of goodies, including up-front cash and a membership to a coworking space.

Image: Photograph by Westend61

Oklahoma’s expanding innovation economy is having a significant and lasting impact on our state.

When I joined i2E more than six years ago, I welcomed this as a unique opportunity to work alongside contributors from private and public sectors to help Oklahoma’s entrepreneurs build companies and create jobs through the realization of their dreams, inventions and hard work.

Mid-June has proven to be something of a rollercoaster ride for Hungary when it comes to international rankings.  

To start with the worst first, Hungary found itself bottom of the National Energy and Climate Plans Ranking. The organization behind the ranking is a serious umbrella body for NGOs, the European Federation for Transport and Environment, generally better known as Transport & Environment.

A fog of burnout surrounds you: You’re perpetually exhausted, annoyed, and feeling unaccomplished and unappreciated. Everything in you wants to quit your job. But is that the best choice? Ultimately only you can know what is right in your situation. But there is research that can help you determine whether you can salvage your current job or whether the mismatch between you and your current position is so great that you need to look for a new one.

For the past decade, the soaring stock prices and nosebleed valuations of Silicon Valley’s IPOs and unicorns has been a boon for California, helping create a record budget surplus of almost $22 billion.

Yet this bonanza has occurred just as the state’s overall job creation, once among the country’s leaders, has slowed to a more middle of the road status, well below the rates for key competitors such as Nevada, Arizona, Washington State and Texas. On a GDP basis, according to the most recent federal data, Texas by the last quarter of 2018 was growing nearly three times as fast.

Image: http://www.newgeography.com

The United States is among the wealthiest countries in the world. However, this level of economic development is not the norm in much of the world, and neither is the standard of living the typical American enjoys.

The material wealth of the United States has been generated through a complex, diversified economy, developed over centuries. The U.S. gross national income (GNI) per capita is $55,351. Meanwhile, there are more than half a billion people spread across dozens of countries worldwide where per capita GNI is about $2,000 or less.

While everyone agrees that the “gig economy” is really here, the practical realities, other than not counting on long-term employment, are not so obvious. In my role as a mentor to many business professionals, I still see some who have no idea how to adapt to the new realities. The simple answer is that we all have to start thinking like entrepreneurs, rather than entitled employees.

WELLINGTON, July 8 (Xinhua) -- The New Zealand government plans to boost research and development through funding to connect top researchers with budding innovators so as to create more high-value jobs and diversify the economy.

"We're supporting people starting out in business to commercialize their research by connecting them to New Zealand's top thinkers, early," New Zealand's Minister of Research, Science and Innovation Megan Woods said on Monday.