WASHINGTON — The world’s two largest economies are locked in negotiations that may soon produce a deal to suspend their trade war.

Yet despite signals from Chinese and U.S. officials that some truce could be forthcoming, there are few signs of any truly transformed trade relationship. Beijing’s longstanding policy of subsidizing its own businesses and charges that it illicitly obtains U.S. technology remain key obstacles to any meaningful U.S.-China trade deal.

Beyond classrooms and laboratories, dormitories are where college students spend most of their time, and not just when they're sleeping. These spaces have a history that many overlook. Enter Carla Yanni, a professor of art history at Rutgers University, and her upcoming book Living on Campus: An Architectural History of the American Dormitory (University of Minnesota Press), in which she explores these dwellings as places crucial to the student experience and the development of campus architecture.

Image: https://www.insidehighered.com

Singapore will allocate a further S$300 million ($222 million) to spur research in digital innovation as the government transforms the economy through technology.

The amount, almost double the current budget, is part of the next phase of the National Research Foundation’s five-year plan ending 2020, Minister for Communications and Information S. Iswaran said during a parliamentary session Monday. It will be used for research in the services and digital economy.

I've been writing on Linkedin occasionally and thought of summarizing some massively trending posts that might help explain my motivation for posting these mini-videos.

Trending Video #1 - Pace of innovation in tech is driving traditional companies out of business This example clearly shows how Apple came from near-bankruptcy to take the crown of the most loved brand in the world. Same applies for companies that did not even exist 20 years ago like Google, Amazon, Facebook.

Experts have long said that you can’t make up for lost sleep by snoozing more on your days off. But in 2018, a study published in the Journal of Sleep Research called that conclusion into question, suggesting that sleeping in on days off could cancel out at least some of the health risks associated with work-week sleep deprivation, including the threat of early death.

But a study recently published in Current Biology echoes previous convictions. It says extra weekend rest is not enough to make up for sleep lost during the week, and concludes that the “benefits of weekend recovery sleep are transient.”

Our map shows the top VC investing in tech companies in each state, from Andreessen Horowitz in California to Lerer Hippeau in New York.

Although startups based in California, New York, and Massachusetts have traditionally accounted for the majority of VC tech investment in the US, VCs are spurring other hotbeds of innovation across the country.

Using CB Insights data, we analyzed the most active venture capital firm in each state, based on unique tech investments from 2014 to 2019 YTD (1/24/19).

Image: https://www.cbinsights.com

Google’s senior vice president of global affairs has weighed in on the European Union’s copyright directive, describing it as “one step forward, two steps back” for Europe’s creative economy.

In a blogpost on Sunday, March 3, Kent Walker said the directive “would not help, but rather hold back” content creators and rights holders.

The final agreement on the directive was published on February 20.

Technology is powering the rise of smart cities, transforming everything from traffic management to waste collection. We dig into the digital revolution giving rise to cities that are more connected, sustainable, and efficient — and what the future of urbanization might look like.

Cities are evolving at a rapid pace.

Over half the world’s population currently lives in urban areas. By 2050, that number is expected to jump to 70%. 

Along with a growing population, new challenges are emerging as cities look to improve everything from infrastructure to connectivity. Many see this as a viable business opportunity, developing technology to help cities efficiently provide proper foundation, energy, transportation, resources, jobs, and services to their residents.

Over the past few years, businesses across many industries have been increasingly relying on artificial intelligence to deliver business value. According to Forbes, Gartner estimated that artificial intelligence (AI) will contribute $3.9 trillion in business value by 2022. But where does that value come from? A press release from PwC argues that a major component of the value it creates will come from increased worker productivity. To be precise, the release says that AI will drive over $15 trillion in global GDP gains in the next 10 years or so and that half of those gains will come from increased worker productivity. An interesting question to ask is whether AI can improve more than just worker productivity -- specifically, can AI deliver value by enhancing human innovation?

At 11:58pm on October 13, 2015, Flipkart’s product and engineering teams were assembled in a series of war rooms. It was the eve of ‘The Big Billion Days,’ the Indian e-commerce giant’s annual blockbuster event. Mobile phones were about to go on sale, and the stakes were incredibly high — the team knew that this event that could bring in many months worth of revenue in a span of five days.

At the stroke of midnight, however, the site promptly crashed. With traffic dropping precipitously, each second that ticked by meant thousands of dollars lost. As stress skyrocketed and panic set in, Punit Soni was in the proverbial hot seat. As Flipkart’s Chief Product Officer, the team was looking to him and his engineering counterpart, Peeyush Ranjan, for their marching orders.

Would-be entrepreneurs of all ages come to me for advice about whether they should start a business and what it takes to succeed. They range from the students in my entrepreneurship classes at Princeton, through men and women at midlife looking for a change, to soon-to-be retirees who aren’t yet ready for nonstop golf. They make for quite a study in contrasts: the young brimming with self-confidence, energy and sometimes naiveté; the older adults projecting experience, prudence, and sometimes self-doubt about their ability to keep up with the twenty-somethings they read about in the business press.

Image: Ray A. Kroc, founder of McDonald's Corporation. Kroc was a 52-year-old milkshake machine salesman when he founded his McDonald's franchising enterprise. (AP Photo)ASSOCIATED PRESS

Three fundamental myths about patents frequently result in missed opportunities and lost value for innovators. These simple misconceptions cause real damage to real companies.

Myth #1:  I Need to Build it Before I Patent It This false assumption is particularly dangerous. Patent law does not require companies to actually build, implement, or even test their innovations before seeking patent protection. Instead, the law requires only that the inventor describe the invention in enough detail—including a written description and figures—so that others in the same field of technology could build it if they wanted to.

Paul J. LeBlanc remembers the day, about a decade ago, when a public research university in New England announced that it was starting an online M.B.A. Southern New Hampshire University, where LeBlanc is president, had just rolled out its own ambitious online program and started its rise from undistinguished private institution with a few thousand students to today’s online-education juggernaut with more than 92,000 undergraduates enrolled.

The chief executive of Pfizer has said US President Donald Trump should use trade deals to fight price controls on medicines in other countries.

Albert Bourla told a US Senate hearing that other nations are "free-riding on American innovation".

His proposal was one of several put forward by the pharmaceutical industry at a hearing in Washington where firms were grilled about high US drug costs.

Senators told the companies the current pricing system is "unacceptable".

The Defense Department announced the 10 research areas where it wants innovative small businesses to direct their efforts in 2019.

The agency’s research office is also standing up an in-house startup accelerator to help companies usher their tech out of the lab and into the real world.

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency on Friday laid out the focus areas for its Small Business Innovation Research, or SBIR, and Small Business Technology Transfer, or STTR, programs. Over the next year, DARPA will recruit companies to participate in cutting-edge national security research efforts like advancing “third wave” artificial intelligence, developing miniature satellites, building lethal lasers and upgrading the country’s nuclear arsenal.

The phrase “fail forward,” repeated to the point of cliché, is part of the modern gospel of the innovation economy. We’ve all heard the anecdotes of famous failures: Steve Jobs at Apple; Mark Zuckerberg’s Facemash; Sir Richard Branson’s disastrous line extensions such as Virgin Cola and Virgin Clothes. Indeed, you can hear spectacular stories of face-planting in Palo Alto, New York, Cambridge, and Austin and any TEDx. Of course, invariably the story ends with a plucky innovator dusting herself or himself off and trying again, eventually to succeed.

I run a global business accelerator and from 2010–2018, our team interviewed over 6,000 entrepreneurs and leaders in the UK, USA, Australia and Singapore. We discovered a common journey that businesses go through time and time again. When we looked at the data, it was clear that this was happening across the economy.

Out of 5.7Million businesses in the UK, Over 4.3Million of them have no employees. Despite making up 76% of businesses, these early-stage businesses account for just 7% of business revenue. Conversely, there are just 40,000 companies in the UK with over 50 employees and these businesses account for over 60% of business revenue.

Image: https://www.forbes.com

Speaking up is hard to do.

You see something ethically questionable. Notice someone not being included. Run up against offensive speech. Disagree with an opinion that’s all too quickly become consensus. Want to add a different idea to the decision-making process.

While we’d all like to think that if we saw something, we’d say something in these situations, we are strikingly bad at anticipating how we’ll feel in future circumstances and, for a whole host of cognitive reasons, it can be incredibly difficult to speak up in the moment. In fact, research suggests that most people tend to not act, and then rationalize their inaction.

Corporate partnerships resemble marriages in many respects – including an unfortunately high failure rate.

The number of companies establishing strategic partnerships is growing all the time. According to Greve, Rowley and Shipilov, companies around the world formed nearly 42,000 alliances between 2002 and 2011. Steve Steinhilber cites a report claiming that more than 2,000 strategic alliances are launched each year and the number is growing at 15 percent per annum.

This past Valentine's Day, Amazon stunned New York City by announcing it was withdrawing its plan to build its new Queens headquarters. The company's 14-month long search for a new home, which spanned all of North America and attracted wall-to-wall media coverage, ended unceremoniously that morning when it announced it would take its 40,000 jobs elsewhere.

This loss for New Yorkers is disappointing. This was the single biggest job creation opportunity in New York State history, projected to deliver close to $30 billion in tax revenue over the next quarter century, fortify the city's economy, and given tens of thousands of people new pathways to the middle class. New Yorkers were excited about these career ladders; a Siena poll published two days before the company backed out showed that 58 percent of New York voters approved of Amazon's headquarters, with the margin even wider in communities of color.