Morningstar recently published a new study analyzing the presence of women in the global financial marketplace. The study revealed that it was more likely that a woman would be running a passively-managed fund or fund of funds, and women were also more likely to be a member of a team of managers as opposed to single-handedly helming a fund by themselves.

The study went on to say that women who hold more credentials than men are also under-represented in the industry, even though women are more likely to hold the Chartered Financial Analyst designation than men. Another study conducted in 2014 showed that while men have a tendency to brag about the results they generated from their fund management, women tend to estimate their results on the low side.

So you’re an entrepreneur with high-growth aspirations and you don’t live in Silicon Valley, Boston or New York City. Crazy, right? While there are perceived advantages to locating a business that needs private investment in these high-performing regions – capital concentration results in shorter fundraising cycles, deep talent pools satisfy technical hiring needs, professional/social networks spur acquisition scenarios – capable entrepreneurs and successful companies exist in every state. It defies logic, common sense and shared economic interests for America’s entrepreneurs to physically relocate to a small number of cities.

The tech community didn’t rally to Donald Trump’s side during his campaign — with a few notable exceptions — but the nation’s largest venture capitalist network does have some advice for the president-elect as he prepares to take office.

The National Venture Capital association published an open letter Thursday, imploring Trump to enact and support policies that promote innovation and entrepreneurship.

The lobby group warns Australia is falling behind in global innovation, and calls for urgent tax, immigration and other reforms. StartupAUS has issued its annual Crossroads report for 2016, warning Australia is falling behind other countries in terms of innovation, risking an economic slump unless governments implement reforms to promote startups and innovation.

The report notes that Australia is falling on the Global Innovation Index, dropping to 19th spot behind countries such as New Zealand and South Korea.

Back in August, PepsiCo North America held an internal challenge called Fast Pitch, asking its marketers to pitch ideas for areas critical to the business, with the chance to win $1 million in marketing activation funding.

Employees from PepsiCo’s North America Beverages marketing teams, from entry level to senior executives, across brand, customer, field, sports, and music marketing departments, and representing Mountain Dew, Lipton, SoBe, Pepsi, Stubborn Soda, and more gathered in Manhattan at the PepsiCo Design & Innovation Center to pitch their ideas Shark Tank-style to a team of judges in three minutes, with five minutes for questions.

Entrepreneurs focused on growing their businesses face countless issues related to marketing the company’s products or services to drive revenues, incentivize employees, protect intellectual property and rights, and, most importantly, afford to do all of it.  

Most decisions facing an entrepreneur in early- and mid-stage companies revolve around affordability. In a tight financial climate, entrepreneurs may dismiss the role of an outside lawyer as a luxury they cannot afford and reject the protection afforded by a business lawyer’s advice.

Five go on a strategy away day – from the new series, Enid Blyton for Grown Ups, the Famous Five have a new mystery to solve – one involving marketing jargon and team-building games. At only £6.99, it’s the perfect stocking filler.

Cocktails for eating – Smith & Sinclair originally ran fun dating nights, with a candy bar serving edible cocktails. The grown-up sweets took off – choose between the gin, whisky, vodka, rum or mixed sweet selections from £9.99, per box of six.

Mindfulness is the height of fashion in leadership development circles. At a recent conference in the field, we saw a missionary-type fervor among some trainers who claimed that mindfulness could fix every ill in the organizational world. It’s easy to succumb to enthusiastic hyperbole; one HR director we spoke to was characteristically delighted to be introducing a two-hour workshop to her board of directors to help them become more resilient, more focused, and more open to challenge.

Google has tons of products that do a million things. You can search for sites with Google.com, get directions via Maps, compose files with Docs—and there's a world of knowledge about how to best use each of these services. To get a better look into some of the smarter ways to use the products, we asked some Google employees about the best tricks they use. Here are a few of our favorites.

The Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF) has released an open memo to President-elect Donald Trump and his transition team outlining actionable proposals that the new administration can accomplish in its first year to bolster America’s innovation economy.

ITIF, a U.S. science and technology policy think tank, proposes 36 policies that can be achieved quickly through executive authority or discrete legislative measures—all aimed at fostering innovation, boosting productivity, and improving U.S. competitiveness.

Amazon is looking for startups that can build innovative technologies using the company’s Alexa artificial intelligence platform.

The tech giant today announced the Alexa Accelerator, a new program it will launch next year in partnership with Techstars. The two companies will work together to host accepted startups at the University of Washington’s Startup Hall in Seattle, with the first cohort kicking off in July 2017.

The 13-week program will support early-stage companies “advancing the state-of-the-art in voice-powered technologies, interfaces and applications, with a focus on Alexa domains such as connected home, wearables and hearables, enterprise, communication devices, connected car and health and wellness,” Techstars noted today.

A five-year extension of the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) and Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) programs took a big step forward at the end of November.

U.S. Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, D-NH, announced that language she wrote seeking the extension was included in a compromise National Defense Authorization Act, with votes expected soon.

While SBIR and STTR do not expire until the 2017 fiscal year, reauthorization is seen as ensuring stability of the programs.

Image: The programs 'keep America at the forefront of innovation,' says U.S. Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, D-NH. - http://www.nhbr.com

The Money Show’s Bruce Whitfield interviewed Aurik Business Accelerator’s Pavlo Phitidis for his weekly small business feature.

Phitids spoke about how to raise funding through the different stages of a business’ growth.

Declines in the venture capital market are hitting startups of all sizes, but the ones left particularly vulnerable are the thousands of young companies that raised seed funding during headier times just a year or two ago.

The seed frenzy peaked in the first quarter of 2015 when more than 1,500 startups raised their first rounds of capital, according to research firm PitchBook Data. Many of those companies are now running out of cash, and most won't be able to get more.

Now Chicago Booth is a couple months into the school year, I have had dozens of coffee chats with first-year students who want to start businesses during and after business school. Since I am focusing on entrepreneurship, I have taken many of the classes under that umbrella, and I have been able to advise first-years on how they might plan their MBA experience.

Marriott Hotels in Europe has launched an accelerator program for tech companies to enhance the travel and hospitality experience. Each startup will be given expert guidance and the opportunity to pilot their product. Following a successful test period, Marriott Hotels could potentially offer them an ongoing partnership.

The National Venture Capital Association (NVCA) today sent a letter to President-elect Donald Trump outlining how the entrepreneurial ecosystem is the key to creating new jobs and economic opportunity for Americans who feel left behind by the modern economy.

We describe to Mr. Trump the policy agenda that we believe will be crucial for supporting entrepreneurship and building a strong economy in all areas of the country, including: a tax policy that encourages new company formation; making capital markets work for small-cap companies; encouraging talented immigrants to build or work at American startups; making life-saving medical innovation a reality; increasing basic research investment; and other key policies that would bolster the entrepreneurial ecosystem and foster new company creation.

Every entrepreneur that is preparing to pitch to investors or raise capital at some point in the future, should know the words of Richard Harroch, “It’s almost always harder to raise capital than you thought it would be, and it always takes longer. So plan for that.” These words ought to be imprinted in the minds of every founder, and every entrepreneur, regardless of how amazing they think their idea may be.

BOSTON, MA (December 1, 2016) - Investigators at the Institute for Clinical Research and Health Policy Studies (ICRHPS) at Tufts Medical Center (Tufts MC) and Tufts Clinical and Translational Science Institute (CTSI) - a shared resource between Tufts Medical Center and Tufts University School of Medicine (TUSM), together with the Johns Hopkins University (JHU) School of Medicine's Brain Injury Outcomes (BIOS) Division and the Institute for Clinical and Translational Research (ICTR), won a seven-year, $25 million award from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS) to form one of only three new national Trial Innovation Centers (TICs) that will provide high-quality design and operational support to investigators conducting multi-center clinical trials.

You’re ordering tickets to a play or a big sports event online. You’re almost done when that annoying Captcha screen comes up and makes you type some blurry letters and numbers into a box. This step, as most people know, is to ensure that you’re just a person buying tickets and not a computer program deployed to illicitly to grab up a bunch of seats.