Everyone is overworked and unhappy. Digital platforms have sucked the last of our attention and sanity. If you read the headlines in 2018, you’d have every reason to feel pessimistic about the future.

But the design experts we talked to–from companies such as Microsoft, Google, Ideo, and Forrester–offer a glimmer of hope. As they look forward to 2019, they agree on one thing: The cold, corporate thinking that has defined the business world over the past several years doesn’t jive with how people want to live.

The U.S. Supreme Court has muddied the waters about patent eligibility in a way that threatens American innovation.  Capitol Hill is beginning to discuss this as a possible legislative issue for 2019.  Some would say it is as important as the intellectual property disputes in the tariff war with China.

This happened over and over again during the production of “Jaws,” with Spielberg and his crew forced to alter – or completely abandon – the director’s original vision to adapt to conditions on the ground. They had to improvise, making up major new scenes as they hit major new problems.

As I watched the documentary, I was struck by how closely the story mirrored case studies from the business world, and how perfectly it illustrated the points I try to emphasize in the leadership and innovation class I teach at MIT.

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Can you really teach someone how to be an effective entrepreneur? This topic has been a source of debate amongst academics and experienced entrepreneurs for a very long time. Regardless of where you stand, the demand for entrepreneurial skills development and education has continued to be on the rise over the last 30 years, with many colleges and universities answering the call.

Most entrepreneurs will tell you that starting a business is something they always felt destined to do. But a surprising number of ‘accidental’ entrepreneurs, people who never in a million years thought they’d be running their own business, can be found among the ranks of the self-employed.

A study of entrepreneurs by The Recruit Venture Group found that a third of business owners never planned on starting their own company. And in spite of the challenges they faced, from raising finance and finding customers to managing with little personal income, only 1% regret their decision, while 12% wish they’d started their business sooner.

Launching a startup and building it is fraught with unforeseen risks. It calls for passion and commitment that extend beyond business goals, according to participants in a panel discussion at the Wharton India Economic Forum held recently in Philadelphia. Four startup founders spoke about how they began their entrepreneurial journeys, found the right partners, went about raising capital and scaled their businesses. They shared stories of struggles to keep their ventures afloat when failure seemed imminent; battles against gender bias; and threats to work-life balance.

With seed deal size rising, more non-traditional investment vehicles, and an increasing amount of companies going public, the venture capital industry continues to evolve.

How will it change in 2019? Analysts from investment data research firm PitchBook made six predictions for how the VC climate may shift from current levels. Read on to see the six predictions, as well as a scorecard for the company’s 2018 predictions.

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Stanford University has become the latest top university to announce that it will no longer consider home equity when calculating how much money a student and her family can afford to contribute toward a college education.

The university's announcement quoted Stanford's board chair, Jeffrey S. Raikes, as explaining the change this way: “Stanford is committed to meeting the full demonstrated need for every admitted undergraduate who qualifies for financial aid, without expecting them to borrow to meet their need. Removing home equity from the financial aid calculation is the first of what we expect will be several additional steps to further enhance our undergraduate aid program in the next few years.”

Most of the entrepreneurs I advise today are ready to declare success when they get that first surge of traction with a real customer. This is a good sign, but they have no idea that the hard work of scaling the business is still ahead of them. It’s a bit like the heady first days after you’ve fallen in love, when you can’t imagine anything will ever kill that passion or commitment.

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It wouldn’t be a stretch to call 2018 the year RNA-based treatments, such as those applying RNA interference (RNAi) or small interfering RNA (siRNA), finally reached the proverbial tipping point predicted ever since Andrew Z. Fire and Craig C. Mello won the 2006 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for discovering RNAi.

Earlier this month, Moderna Therapeutics carried out the largest-ever initial public offering (IPO) for a biotech. And in August, Alnylam won the first-ever FDA approval for an RNAi drug in the U.S. Both companies appear on GEN’s first-ever list of top biopharmas focused on leveraging RNA-based treatments.

The expression “You’re only as good as your word” typically means that if you say you’ll do something, you will do it. Your reputation hinges on your words–and actions. The same holds true for your writing: If you want to create a positive “brand” for yourself, master the rules of grammar.

I read hundreds of job applications. Those with mangled grammar rarely make it past that first reading. To make it in the professional world, no matter your industry, you need to know the rules. So here’s a crash course in grammar.

Front has a story that any budding startup would envy.

Highlights from the past four years include scaling to 100 employees, acquiring more than 4,000 customers, raising almost $80 million in funding and closing the books on its first acquisition.

But as co-founder and CEO Mathilde Collin tells it, the workplace communication tool’s meteoric rise can’t be traced back to an incredible founding vision from their early Y Combinator days. In fact, Collin was unsure where the product was heading at the time and had serious doubts about whether the company would take off.

If proof were needed that UK engineering businesses are short of research funding (particularly research and development), the demise of the Bloodhound SSC project should serve as a warning.

Plans to create a car that could race at more than 1,000mph were recently scuppered after the company behind the project went into administration. Despite the car being close to completion, it ran into a brick wall after £25 million, needed for the final stages of R&D, failed to materialise.

What options do entrepreneurs have to cash out of their startups?

Building a startup takes a lot of work and often a lot of sacrifice. It’s become far easier to launch new startups and small businesses today.

The big question many entrepreneurs wind up encountering then is how to cash out and recapture the value that has been created. This is something that I always ask guests of the DealMakers podcast where I interview some of the most successful entrepreneurs.

Solitude and loneliness are interesting bedfellows. One full of wonder, learning and deep study; the other dangerous and damaging.

Solitude has many positive associations – it is healthy, mind-expanding and brings about a greater sense of self-awareness. It is the state of being alone without being alone. It leads to a deeper awareness of your intimate self, as well as of the wider world around you. It’s a wonderous state, full of exploration and discovery. Solitude is essential for deep learning, reading, and being at one with nature.

The U.S. spends more than any other nation on R&D each year, investing more than $150 billion in federally funded R&D alone. In line with President Donald J. Trump’s Management Agenda, the Dept. of Commerce’s National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) released a paper, “Return on Investment Initiative,” that details steps to modernize technology transfer and innovation for the 21st Century. Actions outlined in paper would improve the returns on the taxpayer investment in R&D.

We first published a young innovators list 19 years ago. Today, many of those we selected, such as Andrew Ng, Helen Greiner, Feng Zhang, and Julie Shah, are leaders in their fields. And nearly two decades later, many of these distinguished scientists, entrepreneurs, humanitarians, and businesspeople still list the honor of being selected prominently on their bios.

Text analysis based on machine learning is beginning to reveal previously inaccessible truths about organisational culture.

This is the first in a series entitled “The Future of Management”, about how changes in culture and technology are reshaping what managers do. INSEAD professors Pushan Dutt and Phanish Puranam serve as academic advisors for this series. 

Research generally shows that having friends at work can increase productivity and engagement. However, a new study by Wharton researchers Julianna Pillemer and Nancy Rothbard finds that there can be a dark side to having friends at work, especially if what’s best for the friendship conflicts with what’s best for the organization.

Being the first to come up with a good idea does not always make the path to success easy. In fact, often, it's quite the opposite.

For example, the idea of micro-learning may be all the rage these days, but it wasn't always that way. In fact, the company that created the first micro learning programs, AthenaOnline, was kicked out of quite a few offices for even proposing the idea.

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