Every leader will end 2016 with a story to tell. The leaders I speak to are working their butts off to make their stories end happily: they want stories about exceeding their goals with as many people as possible energized and positive.

Many leaders won't have this story to tell. Many will end the year with mediocre or worse tales. Tales with morals that include “our team didn't get it together” or “our company doesn't care about us” or “we never had a chance.” Why? Most leaders don't address one area of leadership that ensures a happy ending.

MOUNTAIN VIEW, CA--(Marketwired - November 11, 2016) - Fenwick & West LLP, one of the nation's premier law firms providing comprehensive legal services to high technology and life sciences clients, today announced the results of its Third Quarter 2016 Silicon Valley Venture Capital Survey.

The survey analyzed the valuations and terms of venture financings for 149 companies headquartered in the Silicon Valley that raised capital in the third quarter of 2016.

This election has been hard on our country. I have had numerous conversations with people who struggle to call home and speak with family or friends because the divisions are too raw. These are people who now live in Los Angeles, San Francisco or New York City but grew up in Cincinnati, Central Florida, Utah, Michigan and similar places where their parents, families or friends may have different political views.

Many friends and colleagues have reached out privately either to grieve or offer kinds words of support. I guess that must mean that my public emoting was obvious and while many prefer private ways of dealing with the world around them I have always found solace in being part of a public, real-time community.

The day following the election of Donald J. Trump as President, a survey of leaders in biotechnology in the United States, conducted by GENETIC ENGINEERING & BIOTECHNOLOGY NEWS (GEN), showed that Trump’s presidency will negatively impact NIH research funding as well as STEM education;  a plurality said it will also spark a “brain drain” as foreign-born researchers educated in American universities will be more likely to leave.

Imagine. You lead a large basic-resources business. For the past decade, the global commodities supercycle has fueled volume growth and higher prices, shaping your company’s processes and culture and defining its outlook. Most of the top team cannot remember a time when the business priorities were different. Then one day it dawns on you that the party is over.

The National Science Foundation (NSF) estimates that U.S. research and development (R&D) funding reached an all-time high of $499.3 billion in 2015 – an increase of approximately $21.6 billion over 2014 levels ($477.7 billion). The $21.6 billion increase marks the third time in three years that overall U.S. R&D funding grew by more than $20 billion – $20.4 billion in 2013 and $21.1 billion in 2014.

RICH BELLIS 11.11.16 5:00 AM In the waning hours of Tuesday night with votes still tallying up, Canada’s immigration website crashed, presumably as U.S. users scrambled to figure out how to move across the border.

At many points in the long, ugly campaign that finally culminated in Donald Trump’s election to the U.S. presidency this week, many Americans vowed they’d move abroad if their candidate lost. There was always something unpatriotic about that sentiment: Democracy doesn’t just work best when there’s a loyal opposition, its very existence depends on it.

Individuals often struggle to know where they need to grow in order to move up to the next level. One of the best strategies for aspiring leaders to rise through the ranks in organizations is to create a personal board of directors. The board is a group of six to eight people you select to help with your professional development — individuals who can help you uncover your blind spots, provide specific feedback by seeing you in action, and, in some situations, advocate for you. They can help you navigate tumultuous political waters, provide you with insight on a regular basis that can inform the ways you work and think, and even change the minds of your toughest critics.

IBM announced recently that they are making it easier for developers to jump into machine learning. At the World of Watson conference, the IBM Cloud-based Watson Data Platform with Machine Learning was launched. At the core of it all was the concept of the interconnectivity of data made possible through APIs.

IBM Lead Architect for Streams Product, Mike Spicer, summarized the advantages during an AMA session. Watson, he said, “brings in historical data, builds a picture of what’s happening in the real world, and applies models to predict outcome in real time. All within 10 milliseconds.”

It’s November 9th, 2016, and while I am attending the same tech conference in Lisbon, Portugal as I had the previous two days, it seems like a completely different event. The enthusiastic gathering of about 50,000 geeks and tech titans who'd previously walked gleefully through the four conference buildings, introducing themselves to anyone within earshot, and drank local beer well before the noon hour, turned to a somber and eerie hush on this post-election morning. Conversations became more muted, more reserved, and the many that were held in foreign languages were peppered with English words like "America," "Clinton," and "Trump."

In 2006, Netflix took a long, hard look at its world-class Cinematch Technology. Cinematch was as straightforward as it sounds: With user-submitted data, the technology could predict which movies a user may or may not enjoy. With it, Netflix created personalized movie recommendation lists, custom-built for each individual user.

In the first 24 hours since the U.S. presidential election on November 8th, we saw the stock market dip and rip, the spike of gold, and the plummet of the peso. Investors and business leaders are all too aware that it's easy to read the signals wrong.

"Change generally means opportunity to those who are willing to take risks," says Amir Korangy, Publisher, The Real Deal, the largest real estate media and information outlet in the country. Korangy adds, "Right now, no one really knows how the new agenda is going to roll out. But, we can say that they're going to want to make changes and they're going to need help.

Going Against the Grain

Trump’s victory defied widespread predictions that he would suffer a crushing loss from his Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton. Now, his shocking electoral college win could change the future of political campaigning and polling. Moreover, his brand will cast its shadow on the GOP and the U.S.

Image: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Donald_Trump_August_19,_2015_(cropped).jpg

PHOENIX--(BUSINESS WIRE)--At a prestigious gala attended by the top technology companies in Arizona to honor the state’s science and technology innovators, the Arizona Technology Council in conjunction with the Arizona Commerce Authority, today announced the winners of the 2016 Governor’s Celebration of Innovation (GCOI) Awards presented by Avnet, Inc.

“Congratulations to all the nominees and winners who contribute so much to growing our knowledge-based economy,” said Steven G. Zylstra, president and CEO, Arizona Technology Council. “It is incredibly rewarding to see so many winners from the software sector this year, as Arizona has become a prominent destination for developers. The growing breadth and depth of Arizona’s technology industry continues to be a tremendous boon to the state.”

The race is on build a ‘universal’ quantum computer. Such a device could be programmed to speedily solve problems that classical computers cannot crack, potentially revolutionizing fields from pharmaceuticals to cryptography. Many of the world's major technology firms are taking on the challenge, but Microsoft has opted for a more tortuous route than its rivals.

President-elect Donald Trump made strong appeals during his campaign to restore economic opportunity for workers, particularly those displaced by changes in the manufacturing and energy sectors. An economy driven by transforming America’s scientific research into good-paying jobs and high-growth businesses would deliver on the promises Trump made to voters. SSTI has a policy agenda to provide entrepreneurs and investors with the support they need to make this transition to an innovation economy.

HAL 9000, the sentient computer in 2001: A Space Odyssey, offers an ominous glimpse of a future in which machines endowed with artificial intelligence reject human authority. After taking control of a spacecraft and killing most of the crew, HAL responds to a returning astronaut’s order to open the ship’s pod bay door in an eerily calm voice: “I’m sorry, Dave, I’m afraid I can’t do that.” In the recent science-fiction thriller Ex Machina, the seductive humanoid Ava tricks a hapless young man into helping her destroy her creator, Nathan. Her machinations lend credence to Nathan’s dark prediction: “One day the AIs are going to look back on us the same way we look at fossil skeletons on the plains of Africa. An upright ape living in dust with crude language and tools, all set for extinction.”

The University of Notre Dame is dialing up its focus on entrepreneurship. Vice President of Research Bob Bernhard says a two-year study "stood back" from the typical school processes and made several recommendations to help reshape the way the school handles innovation. The study helped spur the launch of the IDEA Center, which is located at Innovation Park and will support commercialization and business creation. Notre Dame is also set to hire a new vice president of innovation.

The University of Michigan created a record 173 license and option agreements with companies seeking to commercialize the discoveries of university researchers in the past fiscal year.

“It is gratifying to see this record-setting number for our most important metric in tech transfer performance,” said Ken Nisbet, associate vice president for research-technology transfer. “It reflects the deployment of U-M inventions into the marketplace where they can have positive benefits for the general public.”

I lived with my parents until I was 23.

Yep, I was that guy — the twenty-something nerd without a real job, living in his parents’ house, and spending all his time on the Internet.

But if I hadn’t lived with my parents as long as I did, I probably wouldn’t be enjoying the success I have today.

Our house was a single story, 1,400 square feet home in La Palma, California. Eventually my parents expanded the house and added another living room. As far as I was concerned, the house wasn’t bad, except there wasn’t any air conditioning in hot California, and the rooms were small.