As Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh invests $350 million of his own money to change downtown Las Vegas, he's relying on others to carry out his vision. This is a huge challenge, especially since it's a run-down part of town in the middle of the desert — not the easiest place to attract top talent.  But he's convinced leaders like Andy White, who ran tech accelerator BoomStartup in Salt Lake City, and developer Andrew Donner of Resort Gaming Group, to help manage the $50 million tech fund and $200 million real estate funds, respectively.

The eight early and growth-stage health IT companies selectedfor the New York Digital Health accelerator represent ways to improve communication among doctors and nurses, and harnessing data to reduce readmissions.

The program that has an initial $4.2 million investment, is the largest funded health IT accelerator in the country, according to a press statement.

It will also be the first to provide access to the state’s healthcare network, SHIN-NY, a healthcare information exchange “that embodies all of the federal and state policies for usage of patient data by the community,”New York eHealthCollaborative executive director David Whitlinger said in a statement.

When we're taken out of our comfort zone, our default is to slow down, seek guidance, and avoid mistakes. This is because uncertainty makes most people nervous. Howard H. Stevenson, a professor emeritus at Harvard's Business School, teaches that this way of thinking results in a lot of missed opportunities.

The woman was gravely ill. Her name was Ms. Yamato. Thirty-seven years old, born in Osaka, Japan, she had never smoked, and yet there it was anyway: a spot on her lung.

A doctor had already performed a bronchoscopy and had made the diagnosis of cancer. Then he referred the patient to Mark Kris, an oncologist at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York. Seated alongside me in his office on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, Kris is showing me Ms. Yamato's electronic medical record on an iPad. "I'm preparing for the first visit," he explains, swiping the screen to show what that entails. He's interested in running at least two tests on the patient. The first is an MRI, to find out if the cancer has spread to her brain. The second involves a deeper diagnostic regimen. Lung cancer tumors are not all the same; there are thousands of variations. So a test that examines the mutations within a tumor will be crucial, he says. It so happens that cancer patients born in East Asia who have never smoked often have a particular mutation that responds well to a medication by the name of Erlotinib. That may be the case here. One can hope.

Recent years of low approvals of new blockbuster products have given rise to the perception that pharmaceutical drug development, in its current format, no longer works. Recent late-stage failures of clinical trials have also served to emphasise the risky nature of drug development. So what’s the alternative?

At the end of last week, GlaxoSmithKline placed its bets on open innovation as a new way forward for developing medicines.

My business partner and I had a tough decision to make. One of the top producers at our boutique partnership development firm was having a detrimental impact on company culture. Should we continue to support and reward him given his strong results, or should we cut him loose?

Our company, Axcess Worldwide, was shaped in its early years by a small, tight knit group: my partner, Kirk Posmatur, and me and our first few employees. Now, after significant growth, we were honing our strategy, placing the right people in the right roles, continuing to deliver profitability while simultaneously maintaining a strong and meaningful corporate culture, something we consider to be one of our most powerful assets.

Diagnostics for All, a nonprofit in Cambridge, Massachusetts, is making a test for liver damage that could cost just pennies. It consists, remarkably, of a stamp-size square of paper with wells that change color when a drop of blood is applied.

The test could provide an enormous benefit in poor countries, where liver damage is widespread as a side effect of drugs administered to HIV and tuberculosis patients. (As many as one-fourth of people taking antiretroviral drugs in the poor world develop liver problems—five times the rate elsewhere.) The liver function tests administered regularly in the developed world require tubes of blood, lab equipment, and electricity. The paper chip from Diagnostics for All needs none of that.

is to start with people who want what you want.

Identify, organize and excite people who are already predisposed to achieve what you had in mind and you're much more likely to have the outcome you seek. It's far easier (but less compelling) than turning strangers or enemies into customers/voters/supporters/colleagues. Over time, an engaged and motivated base of followers is the single best way to earn more followers.

Assisted suicide. Euthanasia. Death panels. Rationed health care.

There’s nothing like a well-chosen phrase to inflame talk about end-of-life care -- how the health-care system cares for those who are in the last stages of a terminal illness and how much control patients and their families have over that process.

It can be an emotional and divisive issue, and for lawmakers, a dangerous business. That’s certainly something President Obama quickly learned when a provision in the Affordable Care Act (ACA) that encouraged doctors to engage patients in discussions about end-of-life care quickly deteriorated into a nationwide war of words over whether such one-on-one discussions between patient and physician would result in “death panels” determining who should receive care. 

SPECIAL REPORT / Increasing divergence in the performance of Europe’s small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) is contributing to a jobless recovery and, says a new Commission report calling for more cross-border efforts and a new entrepreneurial policy to redress the situation.

The Commission’s SME Performance Review 2012 report, conducted by consultancy Ecorys, confirmed the domination of the European business market by SMEs, with 98% of all enterprises with some 20.7 million firms and more than 87 million people employees.

The lion’s share of these firms (92%) are micro firms, employing fewer than 10 employees, but performance of across the EU is increasingly divergent, said the report, published yesterday (15 October).

Every time I hear about a new startup that is in stealth mode, I wonder what problem they are hiding from whom. Of course they pretend that they are trying to avoid alerting competitors prior to launch, but too often it becomes an excuse to move slowly in a world that’s all about getting to market fast.

I believe stealth makes sense for large companies who can be sued for “pre-announcing” a new product to stall the market or kill a competitor. It also makes legal sense to never disclose the details of your patent application, before the product is ready to ship. But otherwise, startup companies should seek out publicity and the open sharing of information, from day one.

The ease with which technology connects us, means that at a global level, human knowledge is accelerating. With this increased knowledge we will be able to create a new set of wealth and opportunities.

That’s according to Google chairman Eric Schmidt, who argues that technology offers far more solutions than problems, particularly when it comes to education, human governance, and conflict.

Speaking at Google Zeitgeist Americas, Schmidt uses the example of how massively open courses like the Khan Academy and Coursra are changing the face of education. Because all of these courses have to get the edge on each other, they bring competition to a sector that’s never had it before. That’s without even going into the potential for collaboration, the ease with which they can be used by people already holding down full-time jobs, and the manner in which they spread knowledge, which would have once been restricted to a small locale, around the globe.

LIMA — US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton arrived in Peru on Monday to push for greater access for women to capital and know-how to start their own businesses and become a motor for economic growth.

Clinton was to meet with Peruvian President Ollanta Humala late Monday for talks, followed by a dinner at the presidential palace in the capital Lima.

On Tuesday, the final day of her two-day trip, the top US diplomat was to address a conference on "Power: Women as the Drivers of Social Growth Inclusion," before touring the Gamarra textile district.

What many envision entrepreneurship as is almost the exact opposite of what being an entrepreneur really is all about. The Young Entrepreneurship Council weighed in on the biggest misconceptions they have heard about starting a business and how to shake yourself of them fast.

You need to be niche

"Entrepreneurs always worry about finding an incredible differentiation point so they can outwit and outsmart their competitors all the time. The fact is, a niche does not guarantee success, and it won't save your company from failure either. Businesses should be built if they will offer a valuable product or service at a reasonable price."

A couple of days ago Neil Patel posted a very interesting post on his QuickSprout blog, titled 8 Core Beliefs of Extraordinary Entrepreneurs. As usual Neil hits the nail on the head. For instance, here’s the first point, which I think applies to the majority of people, myself included:

Belief #1: Make a decision and go!

This was one of the first lessons I learned when starting my first business and it was extremely hard to get used to making a decision and then taking action on that decision.

However, there are 5 fundamental steps which need to  be part of any effective change management program.  These steps form the foundation for managing change.  The steps below provide insight into how to manage change effectively:

Step 1 – Build The Case For Change

The first step in any change management program is to establish the case for change. This provides the foundation for the whole change process. You know when you have done this successfully when team members can explain why they, and you, are implementing the changes.

The iPhone has been around for five years, yet every major smartphone maker employs a swipe metaphor for their high-end smartphones. Not long after Apple introduced the iPhone, several competitors began copying Cupertino's innovative approach to navigation.

Regardless, Apple managed to stay ahead of the competition by creating a small ecosystem around the extension of their innovative approach to navigation to the iPod, iPhone, iPad, and even the Magic Mouse. This is possible only because the culture of the organization supports a high level of collaboration.

Want to get seed capital from a venture capital firm? Hoping to get additional funding during what these firms call the “Death Valley Curve,” or the period from the first capital infusion to the point when your company begins making money?

To do either, you have to make an effective, persuasive presentation. Here are six keys for planning and delivering one.

Treatment for tuberculosis in India. A thermostat that programs itself. A lifting device that could help cut workplace injuries. A tsunami barrier that automatically deploys when destructive waves approach.

Read the complete report . These are a few of the winners of this year's Wall Street Journal Technology Innovation Awards. Many winning entries are aimed at improving quality of life—or even saving lives.

When I asked two U.S. Senators from different parties earlier this year how they managed to work together on startup legislation during an election year, both talked of “credible, robust data” as their starting point. Last week I participated in the International Council for Small Business (ICSB) 3rd Annual Global Entrepreneurship Research and Policy Conference at George Washington University to see what was emerging outside the United States.

This annual event has gained increasing importance as policymakers outside the U.S. become more interested in the need to foster young and growing businesses rather than big-firm capitalism. As panelist Salvatore Zecchini, chairman of the OECD Working Party on SME and Entrepreneurship, pointed out in his presentation at the conference, since 2008 governments have shifted their focus to new firm creation and SMEs, marking a fundamental shift from a “managed-type of economy” to an “entrepreneurial economy.”