It’s good to see some of the first unicorns being asked hard questions. And new unicorns being minted - huge congratulations to Rent the Runway (a female-founded company encouraging us to ‘Buy less stuff’) and Allbirds (which sells recycled plastic based, gender-neutral, comfortable shoes). But entrepreneurship is still overly romanticized, and the ratio of media coverage for funding rounds to rounds of layoffs still isn’t quite right. It never needs to be 1:1. After all, everyone prefers a happy ending.

The steady decline in transit ridership, combined with the growth of driving, is revealed in passenger-mile data published by the Department of Transportation. The table below shows changes in transit’s share of motorized travel for the nation’s 25 largest urban areas. Outside of these areas, transit’s share declined by more than 10 percent in Sacramento, San Jose, Indianapolis, Milwaukee, and Charlotte, among many others.

Industry 4.0 holds the promise of a new era of globalization. Yet while our latest survey identifies companies successfully implementing Industry 4.0 technologies, many senior executives remain less prepared than they think they are.

A year ago, Deloitte’s inaugural survey assessing private and public sector readiness for the Fourth Industrial Revolution observed a “tension between hope and ambiguity.” We found that while executives conceptually understood the profound business and societal changes Industry 4.0 may bring, they were less certain how they could take action to benefit.

St. Louis, Missouri is one of the fastest-growing and top-ranked emerging life sciences markets in the U.S., ranking sixth in a recent CBRE Research report. In terms of BioSpace’s hotbed, St. Louis falls into the very large BioMidwest, which includes Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, Nebraska, Ohio, Wisconsin and, of course, Missouri.

Image: https://www.biospace.com

Last week we completed our six part series on creativity at work. Drawing from research, our experience, and interviews with experts, we identified seven tips for making the innovation magic happen at work.

Here's your "cheat sheet" on how to get #creative at work, via @ValuesDriven. #Innovation

Too busy to go to the market for groceries? Big Basket has you covered. Learning algebra is getting tougher in grade 9? Watch Byju’s for easy tricks to solve. Short on cash? Paytm is at your rescue. These new age businesses are the brainchild of 21st-century entrepreneurs who have managed to change the world.

Rapid evolution in high-speed internet connectivity and penetration of smartphones among the dynamic and young population has created a fertile ground for new businesses. And for young India, this ecosystem is rife with opportunities for entrepreneurs.

You’ve probably heard that Warren Buffett is called “The Oracle of Omaha.” But do you know about the Soothsayer of Silicon Valley?

His name is Jim Coulter, and he co-founded TPG in 1992. TPG now has more than $103 billion of assets under management, and their investments include Uber, Airbnb and scores of successful, high-growth ventures.

He is also someone with a passion for New Orleans. Jim has done far more than invest in New Orleans’s startups, though. He invested in our city itself.

Image: Attendees gather on Fulton Street for New Orleans Entrepreneur Week, Friday, March 27, 2015. (Photo by Dinah Rogers, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune)

Each year, thousands of ambitious entrepreneurs start new businesses. These entrepreneurs feel bright and full of hope. And plenty of small business statistics show that by the end of four years more than half of them will be gone. Small business failure rate aside, many small businesses make it past that critical period and thrive. How many make it and what industries fare best? We’ve collected these startup statistics for small businesses from a variety of sources to answer those questions.

Ross DeVol and the Walton Family Foundation just did small-town America a huge favor. They showed every rural community, through quantitative data and objective research, the way out of recession.

They did it by measuring the performance of every micropolitan area in the nation, from first through 531st. In case you’re wondering, Pecos, Texas is the top-performing small town in America. Zapata, Texas ranks dead last.

Image: Jackson, Wyoming ranks as one of the Top 20 Most Dynamic Small Towns in America, according to The Walton Family Foundation. Photo courtesy of Wyoming Office of Tourism

Getting an MBA can be a huge boost to a career in finance. Here are some of the best MBA programs in the world where you can get that boost.

Education specialists QS Quacquarelli Symonds annually rank the best MBA programs in the world based on surveys of employers, academics, and business school programs.

Image: These MBA programs will give you a jump on your finance career. Flickr / Jack Duval

The emergence of a new technology is often cited as what drives the disruption of an industry or business. But that’s not true in most cases, according to Harvard Business School professor Thales Teixeira. Instead, startups disrupt established companies by decoupling the customer value chain — picking one aspect of the business and doing it better than the incumbent.

His findings, based on eight years of researching startups, tech companies and incumbents, are explained in his new book, Unlocking the Customer Value Chain: How Decoupling Drives Consumer Disruption. Teixeira joined the Knowledge@Wharton show on SiriusXM to talk about his book. (Listen to the podcast at the top of this page.)

Lately it seems trendy for VCs to say they’re looking to invest outside of Silicon Valley. At least that’s what we’ve been hearing from more of them.

So we decided to ask someone who has actually been doing it for years what he thinks.

“We’re delighted that there’s a bandwagon forming,” Steve Case told Crunchbase News.  “We’ve been hoping for that for a number of years.”

Image: https://news.crunchbase.com

Economists have a warning about the future of the workforce. Texas — along with many other states — could miss out on opportunities because too many people don’t have the skills that a growing number of jobs require. Starting in 2018 and extending to 2028, there will be 4.6 million U.S. manufacturing jobs to fill, according to a study by Deloitte and The Manufacturing Institute. The skills gap may leave an estimated 2.4 million positions vacant during that 10-year period.

Meeting the sustainable development goals (SDGs), addressing youth unemployment and promoting entrepreneurship are all top issues on global and national agendas. But do governments have a plan to address them in a cohesive way?

There is currently a $2.5 trillion funding gap standing between us and the realization of the SDGs, according to the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development. At the same time, one in five people globally aged between 15 and 34 are either unemployed, not engaged in formal education or not involved in training. In some countries it’s as high as 60%.

Image: Achieving the SDGs means harnessing the passion and energy of today's young people. Image: REUTERS/Simon Dawson

Representation of women in business has skyrocketed, especially within academia.

For example, women are at near-parity in business school enrollment, representing 44.3% of all students in undergraduate programs, 40.5% of MBA programs, and 41.3% of doctoral programs. This suggests women are increasingly willing to take on risk and venture into entrepreneurship as a career.

The data also bears out that women are just as capable of finding success in that arena as men, as women excel at college venture competitions. Among winning teams, more than half had at least one female founder, and one in three teams had a female CEO.

Outside of the private sector, colleges and universities perform the vast majority of R&D in the United States – but where do these funds come from? An SSTI analysis of data from the National Science Foundation’s National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics (NSF NCSES) finds that, across the country, the federal government was the source of more than half (53.5 percent) of all R&D performed at colleges and universities in 2017. Institutional funds (25.1 percent), nonprofit organizations (6.8 percent), businesses (5.9 percent), state and local governments (5.6 percent), and other sources (3.0 percent) comprised the remaining sources of higher education R&D funding. The interactive chart below shows the breakdown of funding sources for research and development at colleges and universities for each state.

The European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT) opened yesterday in Silicon Valley the first Community Hub outside of Europe. Building on the existing Silicon Valley Hub of EIT Digital, the EIT Hub in San Francisco will support European innovators to attract US customers, partners and investors. It will also showcase innovation made in Europe and bolster the visibility of innovative European solutions to global challenges.

Image: https://www.climate-kic.org

In January, the USPTO announced it would seek comments on the new Guidance it had published on patent subject matter eligibility. We have previously discussed this Guidance and won’t repeat ourselves here. Instead, this post will highlight the wide range of views expressed by the thousands of comments that the USPTO received. Although the comment period ended on March 8, the USPTO cautioned that its web page posting the comments might not be complete for a couple of weeks thereafter. By now, all the submitted comments likely have been posted so it’s time to take a look at them.

A new report indicates that over five years the University of Colorado's commercialization projects contributed nearly $2 billion to the economy, validating a shift toward entrepreneurial support and business partnerships.

Brian Lewandowski, an associate director in the business research division at the Leeds School of Business, found that from 2014 through 2018 CU contributed $1.9 billion to the economy, $1.2 billion of which stayed in the state.

Image: An attendee makes a pitch at the 2018 Lab Venture Challenge at the University of Colorado. The challenge is presented by Venture Partners at CU, formerly known as the Technology Transfer Office, which a new reports contributed $1.9 billion to the economy from 2014 to 2018. (Courtesy photo / Casey A. Cass/University of Colorado))

You already know women are few and far between in the venture capital world. Sutian Dong and Jessica Peltz-Zatulove want to change that.

On Monday, the venture capital investors officially introduced their Global Women in VC Directory, an online database of nearly 1,000 women investors, which Dong and Peltz-Zatulove hope will help encourage more women investors to enter the field and grow within it.