AOL co-founder and billionaire investor Steve Case says middle America is being ignored when it comes to venture capital investment. Case aims to change this situation with "Rise of the Rest," a fund that will bring some of that venture capital now going to the tech hubs on the coasts and invest it with worthy entrepreneurs in America's heartland. Sharyn Alfonsi reports on "Rise of the Rest" on the next edition of 60 Minutes, Sunday, March 17 at 7:00 p.m., ET/PT on CBS.

Switching careers can feel intimidating, but you’ve got to make some moves if you’re spinning your wheels at your current job. Tech industry jobs are hot right now, and you can make great money once you’ve got the know-how to compete with other tech candidates. Here’s a breakdown of the fields with the best opportunities.

If you want people to invest in your idea, then my best advice is first write a business plan, and keep it simple. Don't confuse your business plan with a doctoral thesis or the back of a napkin. Keep the wording and formatting straightforward, and keep the plan short. For minimum content, see my original article “These 10 Key Elements Make a Business Plan Fundable.”

Two thought-leaders and former NMotion teammates have reunited and are making waves with a new approach to how startup ecosystems help support founders.

Last year Beth McKeon, former Managing Director of NMotion, launched Fluent, a nationwide entrepreneurial training firm. Now, Fluent is expanding to new markets, running data-driven and dynamically evolving partnerships tailored to each community. McKeon recently brought on Keevin O’Rourke, former NMotion program manager and also formerly of the Global Accelerator Network, as Head of Product.

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The massive shift to digital ecosystems creates brand-new business opportunities in the logistics space.

The logistics industry is in the midst of a massive shift towards digital ecosystems. The digitisation of the industry’s material flows is creating an abundance of data flows. This, in turn, gives industry players greater visibility on business processes and enables the creation of new business models

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Back when our Facebook design team still fit around a conference table, a new designer joining our merry band was a momentous event. Everyone loved sitting down and showing her how we worked —where we kept our design files, what tools to download, which meetings to attend. We were grateful that someone else had come to help us accomplish more together. Two pizzas were still enough to feed everyone.

Technology is transforming the healthcare, finance and legal sectors. This transformation is driven by such demands as transaction efficiency, automation, consumerization and improving patient outcomes.

Although healthcare providers are notoriously cautious when it comes to the adoption of new technology and for the legal world transformative technology is a relatively new concept, both industries have seen a jump in tech companies attracting investment – particularly those that automate mundane, labor-intensive tasks.

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) and Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) programs issued its FY 2019 Phase II Release 2 Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) with approximately $100 million in available funding.

“Small businesses are the backbone of the American economy,” said U.S. Secretary of Energy Rick Perry. “Providing small businesses with greater opportunities to enhance science and technology research and development strengthens the economic security for our entire country.”

"The single most important piece of information that investors need to understand is who owns the company. If there are any questions, that should raise a huge red flag."

Q: What should an investor in venture capital deals think about before moving forward?

Joshua E. French: It’s a common scenario: a venture capital investor has identified an exciting new technology or innovation with the potential to become an industry game-changer and is ready to invest in the company at an early stage. Even after the investor has gone through the code and worked through the company’s financial statements, there could still be certain legal aspects of the situation that should stop the investor’s enthusiasm in its tracks. Investors need to scrutinize: 1) who owns the intellectual property, 2) who owns the company’s stock, and 3) if there are any employment concerns. If there are issues in any of these three areas, the effect of these deficiencies may not be felt for years down the road – right when the investor is expecting a significant return when the company is sold.

JPMorgan Chase Bank got a little smarter today in courting the Bay Area’s fast-growing startups, combining two different groups within the bank to better serve these companies nationally.

Chase (NYSE: JPM) said Monday that it will merge its commercial banking teams focused on mid-sized technology companies and emerging growth companies in a new practice called the “technology and disruptive commerce industry group.”

Austin, Texas, March 12, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The Non-Traditional and Emerging Transportation Technology Council, which aims to explore the regulation and permitting of hyperloop technology to bring this new form of mass transportation to the United States, was announced by DOT Secretary Elaine Chao today at South by Southwest. Virgin Hyperloop One has been engaged with the DOT and Secretary Chao for months, taking the necessary steps to commercialize this technology in the U.S. This council is the culmination of months of work at the federal, state, and local level.

In this episode of the Inside the Strategy Room podcast, partner Tim Koller and Dan Lovallo, a professor of business strategy at the University of Sydney, and Sean Brown discuss how executives can use a set of reference cases to quickly build an “outside view” that will help debias their forecasts. They also talk through who is best placed to deploy this debiasing technique and the outside view can become part of your ongoing strategy process.

“People were so excited and then things just went back to business as usual.”

“Leadership announced our new innovation initiatives at the company-wide meeting but then I didn’t hear another word about it.”

“There was a lot of fanfare in the beginning but then it just fizzled out kind of like every other initiative so I just keep my head down and wait for it to pass like everything else.”

These are just a few real statements people have said to me in the past six months when telling me about the culture of innovation at their company. This is what your team is thinking and saying to each other.

Lemon meringue pie is an American innovation, one that's more than 200 years old. Although this long-time diner staple, lemony custard piled high with fluffy meringue, has the look of something that might have emerged in the Pillsbury Bake-Off in the mid-20th century, its roots go much deeper than that.

And to give it an even stronger "stars and stripes" connection, those roots took hold in Philadelphia, only a few blocks from Independence Hall, where the United States itself was born.

Every March 17, the United States becomes an emerald country for a day. Americans wear green clothes and quaff green beer. Green milkshakes, bagels and grits appear on menus. In a leprechaun-worthy shenanigan, Chicago even dyes its river green.

Revelers from coast to coast celebrate all things Irish by hoisting pints of Guinness and cheering bagpipers, step dancers and marching bands parading through city streets. These familiar annual traditions weren’t imported from Ireland, however. They were made in America.

In 2018, no other country in Europe saw more patents filed relative to population size than Switzerland. This has been found by a new report from the European Patent Office. The most Swiss patent applications come from the Basel pharmaceutical giant Roche.

Image: Image credit: Roche

European universities need to embrace change by continuing to forge alliances with innovative companies and independent research groups to use and develop their knowledge in cooperation with the outside world, experts agreed at the 8 March launch of the European University Association’s new report The Role of Universities in Regional Innovation Ecosystems.

"We want to change the way people experience health care so that it is simpler, better, and lower cost," Gawande said in a statement on Wednesday. "We'll start small, learn from the experience of patients, and continue to expand to meet their needs."

Prior to the big reveal, many industry insiders referred to the venture as "ABC" or "ABJ." The company said the name choice of "Haven" lines up with its mission to be a "partner" to care providers, and to the health care needs of the 1.2 million Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway and J.P Morgan workers. Since his appointment, Gawande has been meeting with employees at these three companies to understand their health care experiences.

In addition to its new brand, the company also unveiled a website with more details about the venture, including a number of areas of focus. These include: Improving the process of navigating the complex health care system, and accessing affordable treatments and prescription drugs.

Image: This combination of photos from left shows Warren Buffett on Sept. 19, 2017, in New York, Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon.com, on Sept. 24, 2013, in Seattle and JP Morgan Chase Chairman and CEO Jamie Dimon on July 12, 2013, in New York. Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway, Amazon and the New York bank JPMorgan Chase are teaming up to create a health care company announced Tuesday, Jan. 30, 2018, that is "free from profit-making incentives and constraints." (AP Photos)

You’d think it would be easy to come up with a list of bad technologies from the past couple of decades. But we had a hard time agreeing: What makes a “bad” technology?

After all, technologies can be bad because they fail to achieve admirable aims, or because they succeed in wicked ones. The most useful technologies can also be the most harmful—think of cars, which are crucial to the modern world yet kill over 1.25 million people a year. And when well-intentioned technologies fail, is it because they are fundamentally flawed or just ahead of their time?

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Tax season is upon us, and while federal income taxes are likely to be the lion's share of most Americans' tax bills, state-level taxes can also weigh heavily on workers, consumers, and businesses.

To get a sense of how the tax burden varies across the country, we took a look at overall tax revenues for each state, adjusted by the size of each state's population.

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