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".

Every enterprise needs to innovate. It doesn’t matter whether you are a profit-seeking business, a nonprofit organization or a government entity, the simple truth is that every business model fails eventually, because things change over time. We have to manage not for stability, but for disruption or face irrelevance.

Image: https://www.innovationexcellence.com

HONG KONG -- For decades, China's southern Pearl River Delta has been a manufacturing hub, supplying TVs, refrigerators, garments, toys and gadgets to the world. The factories employ tens of thousands of people and have helped make Guangdong the country's richest province.

But Beijing's ambitions for the industrial cluster don't stop there. It wants to transform the region into a high-tech megalopolis with a snazzy new name: the Greater Bay Area. The initiative, the brainchild of President Xi Jinping, aims to create a rival to Silicon Valley. The plan envisions a different role for each of Guangdong's nine big cities, as well as the territories of Hong Kong and Macau.

Did you know that about one in five “highly engaged” U.S. workers reported experiencing some form of burnout? That’s according to a 2018 study conducted at the Yale Center of Emotional Intelligence. And as we discovered on this week’s episode of Secrets Of The Most Productive People podcast, our obsession with work is largely to blame.

CEOs are expected to articulate a compelling vision and values for the organization. Just as important, they represent the “tone at the top” that helps define and maintain a common culture across the organization. So does the board, whether its members realize it or not. How they behave in the boardroom directly affects how the CEO and senior management perceive and embody their roles. Board behavior includes everything from the way it conducts meetings to the quality and character of its discourse to the frequency and honesty of its self-assessments of effectiveness. Ideally, the board will establish an even higher-level tone at the top for the CEO and senior management to model in their conduct of business.

When the team behind Mosaic Manufacturing Ltd. sought out angel investors in 2015, they had little more than a good idea and a prototype – which, says co-founder Chris Labelle, would work "sometimes, for a little while.”

But their idea was a potential knockout. At the time, inexpensive 3-D printers could produce only one kind of material, in one colour. Multi-colour, multi-material printers cost upward of $50,000. But Mosaic had a device that could produce complicated, colourful objects at a fraction of the cost by combining multiple types of filament into one, to be run through any 3-D printer.

Image: The co-founders of Mosaic Manufacturing are, left to right, Derek Vogt, chief technology officer, Mitch Debora, chief executive officer, and Chris Labelle, chief operating officer. HANDOUT

For many seniors, the stereotype for retirement is feet propped up, TV on, beverage in hand.

In fact, an increasing number of seniors see retirement as a chance to explore a new path, a new career that will provide a sense of usefulness and purpose, not to mention some extra money for the bills.

Image: Arlene Grasso and her daughter started Access and Design. - https://www.tampabay.com

The European Investment Fund (EIF) cooperates with the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft to launch the Fraunhofer Tech Transfer Fund under the European Commission’s InnovFin programme with a total volume of 60 million euros. They will be supported by the European Fund for Strategic Investments, EFSI, the heart of the Juncker Plan. The aim is to commercialize the intellectual property generated at the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft from its 72 thematic Fraunhofer Institutes across Germany. The agreement is also supported by InnovFin, the European programme for innovative small and medium businesses. The two complementary partners – the EIF as an expert in fund structures and Fraunhofer as Europe's largest application-oriented research institution – want to bridge the gap in early commercialization phases and grow more high-tech start-ups in Germany and Europe.

Sidewalk Labs is one of the most mysterious initiatives inside Alphabet (and formerly, Google). The company says it “imagines, designs, tests, and builds urban innovations to help cities meet their biggest challenges.” In other words, Sidewalk Labs wants to create the smart city of the future. In 2017, the company reached an agreement to build its first “city” in Toronto: A new neighborhood called Quayside developed on the city’s waterfront.

Image: Image: Snøhetta/courtesy Sidewalk Labs

In June, 1991, something surprising happened to the Earth. Mount Pinatubo, in the Philippines, erupted. The first surprise was that it was thought to be a mountain, not a volcano. In fact, pressure built up over centuries beneath this dormant volcano caused the second largest eruption of the 20th Century, spewing vast amounts of white ash and sulphates as high as the stratosphere – 10 km above the Earth’s surface.

If you want to make a lot of money in your career, a medical occupation may be right for you.

Using data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics' Occupational Employment Statistics program, we identified the 30 detailed occupations with the highest mean annual salaries as of May 2017.

I was dubious when Crystal Icenhour approached me to write about her medical testing company.

It sounded too much like Theranos, the discredited start-up that claimed to have medical technology that revolutionized blood testing by using minuscule samples.

Theranos ceased operations last year, and its founder, Elizabeth Holmes, the self-made billionaire and “next Steve Jobs,” faces federal fraud charges. Forbes magazine reduced its estimate of her net worth from $4.5 billion to zero.

Image: Research scientist Crystal Icenhour, CEO and co-founder of the medical testing company Aperiomics, at its Ashburn, Va., headquarters. (Jahi Chikwendiu/The Washington Post)

WASHINGTON, Feb. 26, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- The National Capital Consortium for Pediatric Device Innovation (NCC-PDI) is now accepting applications for its "Make Your Medical Device Pitch for Kids!" competition. The competition is focused on pediatric devices developed for use in the orthopedic and spine sector, an area of critical need which lacks innovation. Winning companies receive awards up to $50,000 and are invited to participate in the newly created NCC-PDI "Pediatric Device Innovator Accelerator Program" led by MedTech Innovator.

I’ve sat on many boards over the past 2 decades and seen my share of high-functioning boards and low-functioning boards. Here are some observations I have from this exposure:

If a company moves from strength-to-strength with predictable outcomes, easy financings, low staff turn-over, limited competitive threats then the composition of the board probably doesn’t matter as much.

Great leaders intuitively know how to listen. They use empathy and mindfulness to be present during every interaction. Their focus and commitment to the goal let them shelve their egos and receive feedback with grace, inspiring innovation at every level. People who are seen as “born leaders” don’t judge others but learn and grow from what they hear.

Active listening is a critical part of being a successful leader. The FBI explains that “active listening involves six skills—paying attention, holding judgment, reflecting, clarifying, summarizing, and sharing.” Better understanding helps leaders communicate well and make good decisions. While listening and absorbing non-verbal communication, you learn so much more. If while someone is speaking your attention wanders, you miss valuable information.

Amicus Therapeutics, a growing biopharmaceutical company that focuses on rare and orphan diseases, is committing to Philadelphia in a big way.

Citing the city as a burgeoning hub for medical breakthroughs, Amicus will launch a new Global Research and Gene Therapy Center at uCitySquare.

Image: https://www.philly.com

Good morning everyone. Thank you, President (Mark) Becker for that gracious introduction and for hosting us here at Georgia State University. Thank you also to the AIPLA, the Georgia Chamber of Commerce, and the Global Innovation Policy Center at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce for co-sponsoring today’s event.

It’s great to be in Atlanta, and great to be at Georgia State University, recently ranked by U.S. News & World Report as the second most innovative university in the nation. The topic for today’s conference, “Driving American Innovation,” is of critical importance. Increasing American innovation is, in fact, key to securing our country’s continued leadership in the global economy. America’s economic prosperity reflects, and in large part depends on, its global and long-standing leadership in technological innovation.

In November 2015, infectious disease epidemiologist Steffanie Strathdee and her husband, evolutionary psychologist Tom Patterson, were spending the week of Thanksgiving exploring pyramids and pharaoh’s tombs in Egypt when Patterson came down with what seemed like a nasty bout of food poisoning aboard their cruise ship. But as his condition rapidly deteriorated and he had to be emergency medevac’d, first to Germany and then to the medical center at UC San Diego, where both scientists were on staff, blood and imaging tests revealed why Patterson’s body was failing. A soccer-ball-sized cyst in his abdomen was infected—teeming with one of the most dangerous, antibiotic-resistant bacteria in the world.

Image: Bacteriophages escaping from a dying bacterial cell. The idea to make these bacteria-preying viruses into medicines began nearly a century ago in the former Soviet Union. The US is just now starting to seriously evaluate phage therapy as a treatment for drug-resistant infections. DENNIS KUNKEL/SCIENCE SOURCE

Although I hear more and more about “global warming,” and the many ways we are destroying our environment, I still don’t see many global business winners in this space, comparable to Facebook and Amazon. Al Gore, by just talking about it, still seems to be leading the way in monetization, having amassed an estimated net worth reported recently as around $300 million.

As more aspects of work become automated, it is increasingly important for people to focus on building skills that support creative and innovative tasks only human beings can perform. Efficiency is turning into the watchword of machines, and the opportunity for humans is work that addresses unseen problems and opportunities.