With climate change and pressing social issues knocking on the door of an increasingly interconnected planet, the world needs social entrepreneurs more than ever.

Tackling some of the world’s greatest challenges requires courage, and a true representative of that courage is Stacy Flynn, co-founder of the trailblazing textile technology start-up Evrnu and winner of the Fabric of Change challenge.

You stressed over every little adjective on your resume ("efficient or productive?"). You wrote draft after draft of your cover letter. And now you’ve arrived at the moment of truth: the job interview, when you’ll be face to face with the person who controls your employment destiny.

Are you really gonna leave this one up to fate?

Even the most charming of candidates needs to practice before stepping in front of a hiring manager.

Mandates for the provision of telemedicine have driven insurance companies and employers to jump into arrangements with pre-smartphone era companies like Teladoc, MD Live, and American Well.

The availability of low-risk arrangements for the payer make these deals attractive because they’re light on out-of-pocket expenses, often only charging when a visit occurs or requiring a co-pay to discourage use. But offering care in a lower-cost venue only saves money if people use it.

Two of the nation’s most seasoned and respected technology investors have delivered a wake-up call to the local sector, warning that the growing number of firms nurturing start-ups must produce quality companies that generate strong revenues and employment.

Daniel Petre and Craig Blair, who together have built almost 25 technology businesses over the past 15 years, said they were excited by the prospect of more than $1 billion in venture capital being raised this year by funds looking to invest in local and international start-ups.

Image: http://www.theaustralian.com.au

The U.S. DOT released Thursday the first version of its National Transit Map, an open data compilation of stops, routes and schedules from 270 U.S. transit agencies. Secretary Anthony Foxx announced the project in March by asking agencies to voluntarily submit data about their routes and schedules. Version one includes 10,000 routes and nearly 400,000 stops and stations submitted from about a third of all urban U.S. transit agencies with fixed-route service. The map includes 84 percent of the top 25 urban transit agencies, and 74 percent of the top 50. The U.S. DOT is hoping future versions will build on this data set.

Image: The National Transit Map (Credit: U.S. DOT)

Well, yes, you should avoid raising money unless:

(x) you need it or

(y) it’s dirt cheap.

Look at Dell. Notwithstanding its current market challenges, Michael Dell himself still owns 80% of Dell worth $18.5 billion (see Dell Gets Bigger and Hewlett Packard Gets Smaller in Separate Deals). Atlassian never required any outside capital (wow) other than selling secondary shares later at a high valuation. Qualtrics did the same. 37 Signals, etc. Awesome.

But …

Year by year, the IBD Awards have grown. This year’s entries represented an astonishingly strong survey of innovation around the globe—over 1,700 designs. In the eyes of our esteemed judges, the projects you'll find below were the best of the best. There were only 15 winners anointed in the entire competition; we also crowned about 231 finalists. Each of those projects represent what's best about design today: Big ideas, meticulously thought-out details, and a clear viewpoint about how we live now—and how it could be better. We hope that you’ll dig in and be inspired.

The “venture recession” of 2016 is in full swing. Combined with the usual summer slowdown, some are already raising the spectre of 2001 or 2008. Recession or not, what is universal is the bewilderment of many entrepreneurs on how negative VCs have become over the past nine months after almost five years of non-stop cheerleading.

As an entrepreneur on the other side of that table many moons ago, I always wondered the same thing – how the venture investment cycle goes from cold to hot to cold again with almost zero connection to the actual fundamentals of the companies seeking funding.

Wilhelm Reich, a colleague of Sigmund Freud, laid the foundation for five classic personality types which, to this day, are well recognized in the field of psychology. Dr. Reich actually identified the body builds of these five types first, and then identified the personality types. Here, I discuss both. The theory of, and how to therapeutically deal with, these types is beyond the scope of this article. However, by knowing about and working with these five classic personality types, you can understand yourself better and become more effective at working with others.

It seems that innovation is now an imperative for every company and every chief executive. Leaders all stress the importance of agility, entrepreneurship and innovation in their organisations, yet most of them are frustrated by slow progress.

What can we do to boost our lateral thinking and creativity? How can we and our teams become the innovative pioneers we aspire to be?

One way is to mimic the approaches of great innovators from the past. What did they do? And which of their insights can we apply to our work?

"It happens every several years," says David Kahan, CEO of Birkenstock USA, the American division of the German company. "The planets line up and Birkenstocks become fashionable again."

Perhaps because Mercury, Jupiter, and Saturn are all currently in retrograde, we're currently experiencing one of these auspicious periods right now.

Almost against their will, fashion magazines are admitting that Birkenstocks are having a moment. In May, Vogue published a story featuring a paparazzi shot of Ashley Olson in a pair of Birkenstock Gizeh sandals and described the brand as "patient zero of the current ugly shoe movement." (Several members of Vogue's staff chimed in saying they "remain unapologetic" about their loyalty to Birkenstocks.)

Image: Flickr user Freedom II Andres

The Small Business Development Center, Invest Detroit, Automation Alley and TechTown are some of the beneficiaries of a budget increase for support of entrepreneurship and innovation by the Michigan Economic Development Corp. for the fiscal year that begins Oct. 1.

According to Emily Guerrant, MEDC vice president of marketing, the budget for entrepreneurship and innovation has been increased from $19 million in the current fiscal year to $21.4 million, while the overall budget for the MEDC was cut by $1.5 million by legislators to $251.9 million.

The content and tenor of debate in this presidential-election season has Washington’s pro-trade establishment in a panic, wondering what has happened to the previous consensus about the merits of global economic integration. Yet rather than question their long-held assumptions, establishmentarians have concluded that the problem must be with the American people and the political demagogues leading them astray. The less charitable among them dismiss opponents as “less educated” isolationists, nationalists, or ethnocentrists. The more charitable assume that if trade supporters would just slow down and enunciate clearly — Trade is good! — then maybe the unwashed would get the message.

US tech giant Google on Thursday asked for applications to attend the next session of its Launchpad Accelerator programme through which startups can utilise Googles mentorship and product access to scale business and capitalise on local markets, while also tapping into new global opportunities.

The Launchpad Accelerator is a specially-designed class to help startups in emerging markets find solutions to their business challenges and successfully scale.

Image: http://gadgets.ndtv.com

Startups in the medical device industry are on pace for an uptick in financing, thanks to interest from private market investors, including corporates. We put together a periodic table of medical device companies to highlight promising startups, industry categories, exits, and active investors in the category.

The table is meant to serve as a guide to navigate the key players in the space. The 140 companies and 10 investors in the table were chosen using CB Insights data on total funding received by each company, number of investors’ unique investments in the category, and exits data.

Image: https://www.cbinsights.com

In the last few years, startup activity has risen, reversing a five-year downward trend, according to the 2015 Kauffman Index.

The rate of new entrepreneurs in the United States has increased about 10 percent, to the tune of nearly 6.3 million new business owners a year.

Very few entrepreneurs are willing to acknowledge the legal realities of running a business. Many are simply unaware of it. While this is mostly for good reason, ignorance is not an excuse. The fact that most legal documents are worded in complex and difficult-to-understand language makes it an uninteresting aspect of business for many founders.

Image: http://www.huffingtonpost.com

Since the JOBS (Jumpstart Our Business Startups) Act was signed into law in April of 2012, the securitized world of publicly raising investment capital has opened to you and me!

In May of this year, the “Crowdfunding Regulation” became law allowing American business starters to raise investment capital using Crowdfunding portals such as Kickstarter or Indiegogo (there are now hundreds).

Before May, it was actually illegal.

It didn't really hit the radar when my former SCVNGR colleague Nicolas Warren set his own course by commercializing Perfect Fuel Chocolate, delicious cocoa morsels he was cooking up in his home kitchen on nights and weekend. I thought it was smart when engineer Joe Lind, after concluding his time at SCVNGR, opened up Terrible Labs and took with him Cort Johnson and later Smith Anderson.

Jeff Robbins, an IEEE Life Member and active IEEE Society on Social Implications of Technology member for over 30 years, admits he pursued engineering for surprising reasons: he first studied the subject “because the three older boys next door did,” and later enrolled in graduate school at the University of New Mexico due to another twist of fate, when his car broke down in Albuquerque. “Of course, it’s not so toss of the coin as that,” he says, citing a passion for “understanding how things worked, the universe included.” A problem identifier and solver from an early age, Robbins conducted experiments with his friends: “Long before solar energy, long before climate change was on the world’s tongues, a fellow student and I came up with a solar energy project that generated electricity — we also cooked a hot dog using a parabolic antenna we bought in New York City’s Chinatown.”

Image: http://sites.ieee.org