If you play well with others, then it might be time to get tough. Friendly social support makes you work out less often, while cutthroat competition is the key to motivating yourself to get to the gym.

So finds a new study published in the journal Preventive Medicine Reports, in which almost 800 graduate and professional students at the University of Pennsylvania were put through an 11-week exercise program with running, spinning, yoga, Pilates and weightlifting classes. Each person was assigned to work out alone or in a team, and the dynamics were designed to be either socially supportive or competitive.

In the same way that flexibility has come to the workplace — where, when and how we work — so, too, has arrived the age of the tailor-made retirement. Phased retirements, bridge jobs, “un-retirement” and second and third acts have caught on. Workers are demanding it, and firms have good cause to accommodate the idea that work does not one day simply stop.

What’s the future for the connected car, for digital financial services, or for smart and sustainable cities in the new industrial reality? How are innovations and technical developments in 5G, the Internet of Things and spectrum management impacting on future networks and future businesses? And if meaningful, affordable connectivity is the single best bet for accelerating socio-economic development and meeting the UN’s sustainable development goals (SDGs), how can we ensure we reach the billions of unconnected most in need?

The Pentagon is taking cues from tech executives about how to nurture a culture of innovation.

The Defense Department will seek out a chief innovation officer to oversee programs designed to encourage employees to solve problems creatively, the Pentagon announced last week.

The move comes at the recommendation of the Defense Innovation Board, chaired by Google Alphabet's Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt and includes Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, LinkedIn Co-founder Reid Hoffman and celebrity astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson.

Image: Defense Secretary Ash Carter meets with Eric Schmidt, executive chairman of Google parent company Alphabet and new chairman of the first DoD Innovation Advisory Board. // Defense Department 

Facebook already has 1 billion users. Apple has sold 1 billion iPhones. So what's left for tech companies to do? 

According to the founders of the startup accelerator Grand Central Tech, the answer is in the real world. 

The Manhattan incubator is the largest tech accelerator in New York, and its latest project is a startup space dedicated to urban tech. 

NIH is committed to improving the participation of all people in our small business research SBIR & STTR programs. One of the goals of the SBIR and STTR programs is to encourage participation in innovation and entrepreneurship by socially and economically disadvantaged small businesses (SDB) and women-owned small businesses (WOSB), groups who historically have been underrepresented in both the SBIR/STTR applicant and awardee pools, and have slightly lower success rates than applicants across the board.

I’ve been building businesses for 20 years, and the one lesson that has stayed true over time is this: entrepreneurs need to have the courage to hire people smarter than them.

Insecurity has no place in the entrepreneurial world and is a certain recipe for failure. By hiring people that challenge, outthink, and push forward the status quo, a company can reach levels of success that otherwise would have been unachievable.

For governments looking to turn their urban areas into the high-productivity innovation ecosystems of the future, the key might just be the “squishy stuff.” And it might also be the key to future growth in the innovation economy in local government areas in Western Sydney. The “squishy stuff” — the networking infrastructure that fosters collaboration and creativity in an urban area — is one of the key strengths of the US city of Boston, according to a case study produced by the Future Cities Collaborative at the University of Sydney.

Over the last month two CEOs asked me for help developing strategic plans. After participating in long meetings with each of them during which we discussed their business, their organization, their vision for the future, and the outcome they expected for the help they were requesting, I was struck by the similarities in the discussions.

It’s hard enough to maintain a first-place finish in Site Selection’s annual ranking of state business climates three years in a row. Georgia did that last year. This year, it extends that winning streak with a fourth consecutive top billing. This ranking combines an equal share of subjective and objective criteria.

Fifty percent of the ranking is based on a survey of site selectors – corporate facility investors and site consultants — who indicate simply which states they deem to be the most business friendly.

There are a lot of scientific papers out there. One estimate puts the count at 1.8 million articles published each year, in about 28,000 journals. Who actually reads those papers? According to one 2007 study, not many people: half of academic papers are read only by their authors and journal editors, the study's authors write. 

But not all academics accept that they have an audience of three. There's a heated dispute around academic readership and citation—enough that there have been studies about reading studies going back for more than two decades.

The Ohio Third Frontier Commission has awarded up to $28.2 million to a coalition led by JumpStart Inc. of Cleveland under a program that helps entrepreneurs develop products and grow their companies.

Other Northeast Ohio recipients of Third Frontier money, through separate programs, are Kent State University, Case Western Reserve University, the Cleveland Clinic Foundation, the University of Akron, University Hospitals, and two small companies, ICBM Medical in Cleveland and Smart 3D Solutions in Akron.

Imagine playing online games that allow you to carry out staid banking transactions, or collecting a parcel delivery and paying for it via 1,200 news agencies conveniently located across the country.

Those are just two of the technology-enabled ideas from startups that Australian entrepreneur Jeremy Liddle helps to get funded so that they can succeed and hopefully make a difference to people's lives.

"I want to see great entrepreneurs change the world," Liddle said. "It makes me angry that there might be another Elon Musk or Jack Ma sitting with an amazing technology that they can't do anything with because they can't get money."

YEREVAN, October 31. /ARKA/. The European Union’s Investment Fund will be an accelerator to small and mid-scale businesses in Armenia, the Head of Cooperation Section in the EU Delegation to Armenia, Hoa-Binh Adjemian, told journalists on Friday. 

Way out in the Ain Sokhna desert in Egypt, near where the Red Sea meets the Suez Canal, untouched landscape is interrupted by a Chinese-built industrial city. Nearing the center of town, a flurry of factory buildings and shipping containers give way to lines of storm troopers, wandering animatronic dinosaurs, and colossal Transformers—all inhabitants of a colorful amusement park called Fun Valley.

Yesterday was Halloween in the United States where children dress up and try to scare people as they “trick-or-treat” for candy. Yet the only horror I experienced was watching Peter Thiel stand in front of a national media audience and re-endorse Donald Trump for President. In his defense he made it clear that he didn’t agree with the all of the things Trump had said (or done?) but that, “The big things he’s right about” and Thiel continued to publicly support the unsupportable.

Stephen Quake’s laboratory at Stanford University looks like biology’s version of Thomas Edison’s famous New Jersey workshop. Roll-down curtains cast shadows across odd devices buzzing and clicking in the aisles. You half expect to find Quake, author of 135 patents and rarely seen wearing anything other than a faded polo shirt, sleeping on one of the benches, just as the Wizard of Menlo Park was known to.

Though 2016 may have felt like a tumultuous year, a variety of factors are poised to ripple through 2017, further disrupting business as usual.

That's according to Brian Kropp, the human resources practice leader for CEB. The best practice insight and technology company that works with 20,000 senior leaders at 10,000 organizations worldwide gathered and analyzed internal and external data to look at broader trends that will influence the way we work next year. Kropp says major changes in public policy, technology, and employee demands will shape the challenges faced by business leaders and employees in the year to come.

After spending years and significant financial investment to earn a university degree, why do people take jobs outside of their field of study? The lack of jobs in their area of education must have forced these workers into a mismatch, right? At least, that’s what many people assume. But this is not the full story. To be sure, labor market conditions are important. Yet even in STEM fields where unemployment rates are low, many highly trained scientists still work in jobs outside of their field of education.

For those of you who have developed ideas and technology you wish to capitalize on, The Great Lakes Ag-Tech Business Incubator (GLATBI) based in West Olive, MI, can help you do just that.

The GLATBI, which officially opened its doors in 2014, is designed to support growers and ag-related entrepreneurs to help develop, market, and sell their agricultural inventions. Whether it is a piece of equipment, a tool, or software, GLATBI works one-on-one with clients to help get his or her product or service to market successfully.