Entrepreneur burnout syndrome is real and in severe cases, can be life-threatening. In fact, the World Health Organisation (WHO) recognises burnout as an official medical diagnosis in its International Classification of Diseases (ICD). 

The official description says, “Burnout is a syndrome conceptualised as resulting from chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed.” WHO stresses that the phenomena relates specifically to work-induced burnout and not “burnout” brought on by stress in other areas of your life (marriage, kids, personal conflict etc.).

Starting a business is simple. You take a great idea and a passionate drive to see it come to life, combine it with a fantastic Go-To-Market Strategy and the rest is history, right? Unfortunately, not.

“Approximately 50% of all start-up businesses in South Africa fail within 24 months. One of the main reasons for the premature failure is that they are started as survivalist ventures. It is almost inevitable for them to fail because their owners do not have the skills, experience or resources to build a sustainable business,” says Ravi Govender, Head of Small Enterprises at Standard Bank.

Four tech juggernauts—Amazon, Apple, Google, and Facebook—are suddenly the target of new scrutiny by the US government. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC),  Department of Justice (DOJ), and Congress have all begun to investigate whether these companies have too much power.

Breaking up will be hard to do. It’s going to be a long process and the outcome is far from certain.

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Markets are buoyant this week on the Fed’s hints of potential rate cuts. But interest rates have been low for more than a decade already and there are downsides to persistently low interest rates: such rates have in the past caused the creation of bubbles. These are then rapidly deflated by rate hikes, recessions, or hiccups in the corporate bond market. There’s reason to worry we’re in a low-rate-fueled bubble today: just look at the venture capital market.

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In times past, the flow of new tech was controlled by a few big companies. Smaller competitors stood little chance, and consumers had to wait while new products were polished for retail. But in recent years, crowdfunding platforms have completely changed the landscape. Via Kickstarter and Indiegogo, consumers can back creators to the tune of millions, and receive the latest inventions in return.

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The Center for Innovative Technology (CIT) announced Thursday that it has selected 41 Virginia-based research projects to receive funding awards from its Commonwealth Research Commercialization Fund (CRCF). Virginia Governor Ralph Northam made the announcement that the fund is awarding a total of $2.51 million in funding support from CRCF for these ventures.

Busy career? Try these easy peasy peeling hacks!

OK, raise your hand if you remember the travel industry before Kayak (millennials, you are excused from the question). Planning a trip was tedious, right? You had to find a travel agent and exchange a gazillion emails and phone calls. You had to check your voicemail, and there were even (gasp!) faxed itineraries for your trip. Not the best of times. Except for the part about how amazing it was to have a relationship with a great human being -- the travel agent -- who would patiently wade through your budget and time constraints.

It is said—and widely accepted—that culture eats strategy for breakfast. Company culture is also an important driver for innovation. According to a 2016 Gartner Financial Services Innovation Survey, “The biggest threat to innovation is internal politics and an organizational culture which doesn’t accept failure, doesn’t accept ideas from outside, and/or cannot change.” Another MIT Sloan School of Management study found that corporate culture was a much more important driver of radical innovation than labor, capital, government or national culture.

Those working to accelerate economic growth in the Heartland must face some stark realities. The Great Lakes region continues to export wealth to coastal economies, even as investment leaders try to equalize growth between the coasts and the Heartland. The region sees only a tiny fraction of venture capital (VC) deals, despite producing one quarter to one third of the nation’s research and development, new patents, and top talent. Great Lakes VC funds are currently seen as too small or too unknown for investors—at a time when VC is funding fewer firms with bigger exits.

The great American political divide shows no sign of ending as the United States lurches toward the 2020 presidential election. However, one of the few areas where the parties have joined together in recent years has been where NIH funding is concerned.

Days after President Donald Trump proposed a 12% cut in NIH funding, to $34.368 billion, as part of his proposed $4.75 trillion budget for the 2020 federal fiscal year, leaders in Congress—on both sides of the proverbial aisle—made it clear they wouldn’t go along.

Nearly four decades ago zoologist Michael Thompson, then at the University of Adelaide in Australia, made an alarming discovery: invasive red foxes were gobbling up more than 90 percent of all the turtle eggs laid along the banks of Australia’s Murray River. Thompson’s surveys also revealed a disproportionate number of older turtles, suggesting that fox predation had already reduced the amount of juveniles in the river. If no one took action, he warned, the formerly abundant turtles would eventually disappear.

Whenever we talk to executives and ask how their past innovation efforts have succeeded, we usually get quite a muted response.

Most have tried at least some innovation initiatives or programs, and many have had positive experiences from some of them, but overall the end result often seems to be a bit of a disappointment.

These executives aren’t alone. According to McKinsey’s Global Innovation Survey, only 6% of executives are satisfied with their innovation performance.

There has been a Canadian consensus on the merits of foreign direct investment (FDI) for decades that cuts across sectors and partisan lines. In our traditional industries, it makes perfect sense. When foreign investors put up a hotel or finance resource development, there are obvious positive economic spillovers to the benefit of Canadians.

However, as the driver of wealth creation in the global economy shifts from tangible assets such as infrastructure to intangible assets such as algorithms, data sets and software-as-services, the national benefits of FDI into the domestic tech sector become opaque.

The movie version of scientists is a lone scientist having a "Eureka!" moment in a laboratory - thanks, Archimedes. In modern times, for example, ecoterrorists attack because humanity is a plague, science creates a cure, we are saved, or a scientist is a myopic tinkerer who creates a virus and government wants to weaponize it, etc.(1) 

In reality, academic inventions are rare, the private sector in the US instead funds almost all applied science and half of basic research. And before they happen there are often large teams with long cycles of testing, validation and regulatory approvals before they can be turned into something useful, such as a new vaccine. Since inventions are not the strong suit of universities, how do technology transfer offices pick and choose winners to support?

Bringing a new employee onboard is both an exciting and stressful time. And while managers play a critical role in shaping a new employees’ first weeks and months, a broader team effort can ensure the experience is both positive and productive.

Over the last few years, Microsoft has been working to improve its onboarding process. At the outset, we learned that a seemingly simple action — managers having one-on-one meetings with their new hires during their first week on the job — has outsized benefits. Through our continued research, we’ve also come to another conclusion: Onboarding buddies play an important role in ensuring a successful onboarding experience.

The Internet has empowered creators—writers, musicians, filmmakers, and other content creators—to showcase their creativity. The “disintermediation” of traditional publishing houses and record label companies due to the digital distribution model is old news. But how much have independent creators tangibly benefited from the digital economy? A recent case study by the Re:Create Coalition of nine platforms that are popular among creators—Amazon Publishing, eBay, Etsy, Instagram, Shapeways, Tumblr, Twitch, WordPress, and YouTube—suggests that 16.9 million creators in the U.S. earned an estimated $6.8 billion on these platforms in 2017.

In his 2019 Canadian venture and startup predictions, OMERS Ventures Managing Partner Jim Orlando laments the lack of big exits of VC-backed tech companies in 2018.

The market in Canada appears to be doing a better job on this front this year.

For example, Aeryon Labs, a Waterloo developer of commercial drones, was acquired in January by FLIR Systems for $265 million. Previously, Aeryon was financed by Summit Partners and MaRS Investment Accelerator Fund.

February saw an even bigger M&A: Clementia Pharmaceuticals, a Montréal maker of treatments for rare bone disorders, agreed to be bought by Ipsen in a $1.7 billion deal.

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The U.S. Air Force is working to fundamentally change the fabric of university entrepreneurship in America by making the service a partner of choice through the Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) program.

The Air Force Research Laboratory and the Air Force Office of Scientific Research debuted a revised and accelerated version of the program April 19 in partnership with AFWERX and the Department of Defense Small Business Innovation Research(SBIR)/STTR Office.

“Academia produces disruptive science and technology innovations at an increasingly rapid pace,” said Lt. Col. Randy “Laz” Gordon, STTR capability lead for AFWERX. “We realized we have to meet them at the speed they’re going in order to harness the power of their ideas and tech for use within the Air Force.”

The revised NAFTA agreement — now the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) — has been making progress, and Canada is now proceeding with ratification of the deal. However, a challenge standing in the way of full ratification is objections to some of the life-sciences, copyright, and other intellectual property (IP) provisions established in USMCA’s Chapter 20.