Envisioning a future where all Americans will have lifelong access to high-quality STEM education, and where the U.S. will be the global leader in STEM literacy, innovation and employment, the federal government released a five-year strategic plan for STEM education.

In a world where it seems like startups are created every other day and market economics remain largely unpredictable, securing funding for your biotech startup can prove to be an arduous task. Venture capitalists prefer tested and proven biotech enterprises, government- and NGO-backed funding remain ever so slightly out of reach, and every other funding outlet seemingly comes with its own set of hard-to-match requirements and specifications.

After months of anticipation, the just released draft paper Return on Investment Initiative to Advance the President’s Management Agenda: Unleashing American Innovation signals that the Administration is serious about addressing a wide range of long neglected issues undermining effective technology commercialization. The paper, generated under the leadership of Commerce Under Secretary Walter Copan, who heads the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), is “a discussion document”  based on feedback from a series of public meetings and written comments for improving the return on investment from $150 B spent annually on government-supported R&D.

Image: Walter Copan, Under Secretary of Commerce and Director of NIST.

A few months back, my body started talking to me. My shoulders and neck ached deeply, a strong headache overtook my ability to think clearly, and my brain felt frazzled. The thought of applying effort to anything at all left me short of breath. I was in a state of sheer exhaustion.

I then spent the next two days in bed. Immobile. Essentially useless. Drowning myself in caffeine and hoping for enough energy just to make it to the carpool lane to pick up my toddler from school. I wasn’t sick -- I was burnt out. And it was really, truly terrifying.

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. 

This difference gives us an edge in a world that is being rewired.

Artificial intelligence, blockchain and the sharing economy are changing human existence and reshaping society as we know it. While geo-economic centres are being rewired around these transformative innovations, geo-political narratives are becoming more turbulent, with the rise of nationalism and threats to free-market values.

As disconcerting as these developments are, they are giving Canada—in particular the Toronto Region—an advantage on the world stage. While others are turning inward, we have doubled down on our commitment to multiculturalism and diversity, creating fast-track visas for skilled tech workers.

Image: (L-R) Yung Wu, CEO, MaRS Discovery District; Abdullah Snobar, Executive Director, the DMZ; and Dean Hopkins, Chief Growth Officer, OneEleven - https://www.marsdd.com

Illinois is a national leader in STEM talent production. Despite being the sixth-largest state by population, Illinois ranks fifth nationally in STEM degree production, with nearly 25,000 STEM degrees awarded in 2017. Illinois is also the second-leading producer of computer science degrees nationally, which have more than doubled over the past five years.

Despite the perception that many of Illinois computer science graduates leave the state after graduation, new analysis of LinkedIn data shows that recent computer science graduates in Illinois are 4.5 times more likely to work in Chicago than any other city. Despite the pull of recent graduates to Chicago, too many recent computer science graduates are still leaving for large tech companies located outside the state.

Image: https://www.istcoalition.org

Safer streets, reduced congestion, resourceful communities – citizen expectations are on the rise for cities to become ‘smart’. With recent trends such as the Internet of Things (IoT), cloud computing and big data, cities now have access to a range of tools to deliver smarter solutions for their citizens.

Research universities rely on government agencies for funding, but the latest word on those agencies’ science policies doesn’t reach campuses instantly. That’s why a few universities have created senior leadership roles dedicated to communicating between Capitol Hill and campus research laboratories. "You can’t really have a loud bell go off and have everybody change their behavior across the country" in response to new policy directions, says Keith Yamamoto, who three years ago became the University of California at San Francisco’s first vice chancellor for science policy and strategy.

Image: Keith Yamamoto - https://www.chronicle.com

Something exciting is happening in Canada, and the whole world is playing a part. The country is emerging as the world’s leading technology incubator, sparking important advances from a range of companies and other institutions and attracting new investment from around the world as companies seek to take advantage of a supercharged innovation ecosystem.

Image: http://www.areadevelopment.com

As the tech ecosystem in the Asia Pacific is still nascent, most entrepreneurs who fundraise for their startup are doing so for the first time. Unfortunately, for as much as local headlines celebrate the latest fundraising news, there are comparatively much fewer resources that give guidance on successfully navigating the world of venture capital in the region.

Chinese start-ups have attracted more venture capital funding than their US counterparts for the first time, according to a report from information and data provider Preqin and graduate business school INSEAD.

The report said that in the first half of 2018, $56 billion was invested in China-based early-stage companies, compared to $42 billion in the US during the same period.

“China’s emergence as a hub of innovation and entrepreneurship has been the major venture capital narrative of the past five years,” Christopher Elvin, Preqin’s head of private equity, said in a release.

Most people, when tasked with remembering something important, jot down a note. But a study published recently in the journal Experimental Aging Research says there may be a better way to keep memories fresh: draw a picture.

Drawing works your brain in ways that writing alone does not, forcing it to process visual information, translate the meaning of a word into an image and carry out a physical act all at once, says study co-author Melissa Meade, a doctoral candidate in cognitive neuroscience at the University of Waterloo in Canada.

This is the third article in our series on the details of the Amazon incentive agreements with Virginia, New York and Tennessee. The state of Tennessee has offered a package of grants and tax incentives with a projected value of $102 million for an Operations Center of Excellence in Nashville that will manage customer fulfillment, transportation and supply chain functions.

Image: https://smartincentives.org

Typically, the gig economy conjures up images of millennials juggling multiple jobs in the creative economy or working as taskers. While millennials may be the de facto face of the gig economy, it would behoove senior-level executives to realize that giggers are far more diverse than most people think.

In early 2018, Prudential released a study on the gig economy. The results of the study revealed that while millennials may be somewhat more likely to gig, Generation Xers and Boomers are also well-represented in the gig economy.

What happens to people who are overconfident? Are they generally rewarded, promoted, and respected? Or do we distrust them and avoid collaborating with them? Our research suggests it may depend on how they express confidence.

One way people express confidence is verbally. We make specific, numeric expressions of confidence in our judgments, such as when making probabilistic forecasts (e.g., I’m 90% sure), or when estimating our performance relative to others (e.g., I’m in the top 10%). Much of the research on overconfidence looks at verbal expressions of overconfidence, because these can more clearly be compared to actual performance and outcomes.

A research paper from Wharton takes a step closer to answering that question by looking at trade secrecy laws and what’s called the inevitable disclosure doctrine. They found that employer-friendly trade secrecy regulations, such as delaying workers from moving to a competitor, do dampen innovation. But not for the reason that current academic literature thinks.

After months of anticipation, the just released draft paper Return on Investment Initiative to Advance the President’s Management Agenda: Unleashing American Innovation signals that the Administration is serious about addressing a wide range of long neglected issues undermining effective technology commercialization. The paper, generated under the leadership of Commerce Under Secretary Walter Copan, who heads the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), is “a discussion document”  based on feedback from a series of public meetings and written comments for improving the return on investment from $150 B spent annually on government-supported R&D.

Image: Walter Copan, Under Secretary of Commerce and Director of NIST.

The most common analogy used to compare the science of DNA to other industries is that of computer software. DNA can be viewed as a series of commands (genes) that are coded in four nucleotides (represented by A, G, C, and T). Those letters are interpreted by the cellular machinery to produce cell products like enzymes, proteins, and various building blocks of the cell itself. This code somewhat parallels the “machine language” of computers. Computer’s lists of commands (coded in zeros and ones) are interpreted to work with numbers or any type of information that is converted to numbers (like audio, video, or sensor data). Resulting numbers generate numerical output for machinery such as screen displays, motors, tools, robots, digital controls, etc.

The U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Office of Technology Transitions (OTT) has issued a Request for Information (RFI) seeking input on the Technology Commercialization Fund (TCF) program improvements.

The TCF was created by the Energy Policy Act of 2005 and includes a nearly $25 million annual funding opportunity that leverages the R&D funding in the applied energy programs to mature potentially high-impact energy technologies. TCF funds are matched with funds from private partners to advance promising energy technologies for commercial purposes and strengthen partnerships between DOE’s National Labs.

Image: https://www.energy.gov/