Inside each of us there's a little efficiency guru who views every single email within a larger matrix of all the stuff we could be focusing on: the big deadline that needs to be met, the presentation that needs to be prepared, the client conflict that needs to be resolved, the errands that need to be run. I call this the "busy bias," and it colors how much—or how little—attention we are willing to give any one interaction or piece of information.

If recruiting, vetting, hiring, and onboarding even one qualified employee is a difficult task, then hiring more than 15,000 may seem beyond the realm of possibility. Yet EY will have to do just that over the next 12 months.

The multinational professional services firm, which just announced $29.6 billion in global revenues in its latest fiscal year, is currently on a blitz to fill 15,200 seats across their American offices during the next fiscal year, which began on July 1. To put that into perspective, the firm will be hiring 6,200 more people than the organizing committee of the London Olympic Games.

Image: Flickr user David Reber

In an 11-page document issued by the city authorities in August about the program to support small and medium-sized enterprises’ innovation to 2020, there are five projects on start-ups. This is considered one of the first concrete steps in terms of policy to realize the ambition to turn the city into a Silicon Valley of Vietnam.

HCM City aims to directly and indirectly support 2,000 start-ups project from now to 2020 through consultancy, training, connections, incubation activities ... 

To do this, 40,000m2 of floor and two international-standard incubators will be created for the startup community. In the next four years; 50% of secondary schools in the city will have clubs on innovation; andv20 universities and colleges will have courses on startups.

Image: http://english.vietnamnet.vn

If you’ve achieved a measure of success in your career, you’ve probably gotten requests from others to "pick your brain." These may range from earnest invitations for coffee meet-ups or phone sessions, to ongoing appeals to pump you for your hard-won experience and contacts.

Of course, there’s nothing wrong with professional generosity and mentoring. However, time is a valuable resource and you don’t want to waste it on someone who isn’t serious, or who is just going to ask for short cuts you don’t want to give. But these savvy professionals have found smart ways to manage brain-picking requests—and even make money from them—without alienating prospective clients and contacts.

The latest pilot plant at Iowa State’s BioCentury Research Farm is a joint project with Chevron. University engineers are using the pilot plant to develop and demonstrate an advanced biorenewables technology called solvent liquefaction. The technology converts biomass such as quarter-inch wood chips into a bio-oil that can be processed into fuels or chemicals and a biochar that can enrich soils.

The project is supported by a four-year, $3.5 MM grant from the US Department of Energy’s Biomass Research and Development Initiative, obtained by Iowa State.

Image: Lysle Whitmer, Ryan Smith and Martin Haverly, left to right, led the development of a pilot plant as part of a joint biofuels project with Chevron. Photo courtesy of Iowa State University.

The McKinsey Global Institute examines all the ways people are earning income, as well as the challenges independent work presents.

Working nine to five for a single employer bears little resemblance to the way a substantial share of the workforce makes a living today. Millions of people assemble various income streams and work independently, rather than in structured payroll jobs. This is hardly a new phenomenon, yet it has never been well measured in official statistics—and the resulting data gaps prevent a clear view of a large share of labor-market activity.

Do you still remember the story about the New Machine Age? Figure 1 (below) can help you stop dreaming: Growth rates of labour productivity (i.e. value added per working hour) in the US, Japan and Europe have never since 1945 been as low as during the past ten years! Remember that value added is identical to National Income that can be distributed between labour, capital and government. The productivity crisis will hence put pressure on wages and/or on profits and/or on government revenues, which is not a good message against the background of demographic change.

Image: https://www.socialeurope.eu/ 

While immigration is often subject to contentious political debate, there is little debate about the economic contributions of immigrant entrepreneurs. Immigrants are twice as likely to become entrepreneurs as native-born Americans. Immigrant entrepreneurs have begun and lead some of the world's most successful and innovative companies. The risk-taking that defines an immigrant's experience in starting anew in a new country often continues to benefit immigrant entrepreneurs as they channel a healthy appetite for risk in a way that leads to new business ideas.

As the U.S. presidential candidates lay out competing visions for the country, I have been thinking about a topic they have not yet discussed in detail: what political leadership can do to accelerate innovation. Innovation is the reason our lives have improved over the last century. From electricity and cars to medicine and planes, innovation has made the world better. Today, we are far more productive because of the IT revolution.

Image: Courtesy Bill Gates

Earlier this year, BIO launched our Value Campaign. One of the main goals of this effort is to shine a spotlight on the insurance industry’s efforts to restrict patients’ access to the medications they need.

For years, the insurance industry and its allies have made patients pay more for less coverage. That’s just plain wrong.

In the post-Affordable Care Act (ACA) age, insurers—banned from  excluding patients with pre-existing conditions—have taken to more creative means to discourage sick people from enrolling in their plans – such as outrageously high out-of-pocket costs or 50% coinsurance for the medications they need.

Innovators are often difficult to recognize. They don’t wear signs or fit a particular personality profile. Sometimes they quietly go through the day while drawing little attention to themselves and many times it seems they cannot stop talking about their ideas or inventions.

What often happens is inventors fall into different categories. These categories tend to define how the inventor and the company interact. While the majority of innovators are normal everyday employees who happen to have a good idea, you will find others tend to fit into specific categories with their own reasons for innovating.

Image: http://innovationexcellence.com/

Across the world countries have implemented a national approach to university-industry partnerships to boost economic growth. One example is the United States of America, which introduced the Bayh-Dole Act in 1980. This Act facilitated commercialisation of new technologies and other inventions that emerged from Government-funded research and development and the transfer of technology from universities to industry through a proliferation of university-industry partnerships.

Image: http://www.jamaicaobserver.com

Entrepreneurship isn’t easy. It’s risky, it’s stressful and the success rate for new businesses really isn’t all that encouraging. So, why do people become entrepreneurs? Usually, it’s because we find that simply working a job just isn’t enough. We need to challenge ourselves, to test our ideas and to take control. Working for someone else just can’t satisfy that kind of personal drive.

How, then, can you be sure you’ve got the kind of drive necessary to make the leap from wage-slave to master of your own domain? Plenty of people fantasize about owning and running their own business, but more often than not, those same people prefer to wait until a business is handed to them. It takes a certain desperation to strike out on your own.

There seem to be a lot of lists out there that enumerate things an entrepreneur should NOT worry about. But let’s face it, there are certainly things that SHOULD keep you up at night. Here’s my list. What’s on yours?

1. Am I building something that lots of customers will pay for?

You’re small. You’re just getting off the ground, but you are dedicated and you’ve put your heart and soul into a product or service. You’ve built it, but will they come? There are lots of apps in the world, and a lot of them are free.

Image: http://www.forbes.com

Martin Davis may not be Mr. Wonderful, but the branding firm he leads has become a version of “Shark Tank.”

Duffy, the design and technology firm where Davis is chief executive, has launched an incubator program called Duffy Ignite. With it, Duffy offers to provide a tech start-up with a team of developers and designers in exchange for an equity stake in the company. It’s the kind of deal portrayed on ABC-TV’s “Shark Tank” program.

Image: http://www.startribune.com

If you’re on the water off Cape Cod, you’re going to need a bigger paddleboard.

On Friday afternoon, paddleboarder Terence Roche was photographed only feet from a great white shark while out on the water off of Nauset Beach in Orleans. Roche didn’t know the shark was there, and he had only been out for about 20-30 minutes, he said.

“But then I saw the spotter plane, and the plane isn’t out there looking for me,” he said. “I was in the center of the plane’s circle, so I got out of the water.”

Image: https://www.bostonglobe.com

We are all, to some degree, the products of our environment. Research conducted by UCLA and the American Academy of Pediatrics, for example, finds that children whose parents are more educated tend to perform more successfully in school themselves. Another indicative guide for predicting a child’s academic success, according to the study, are the parents’ expectations.

Chief technologist at the United States Small Business Administration doesn't immediately sound like the most exciting title, which is part of why after three years, G. Nagesh Rao prefers to be known as the Geek In Residence. He's responsible for coordinating and leading programs to boost entrepreneurship via the SBA and in partnership across nearly a dozen federal agencies as with the Small Business Innovation Research program. But Rao ranges far beyond just his job. He's an advisor for half a dozen entrepreneurship related groups including local organizations like Village Capital and LAUNCH, a group jointly run by Nike and a handful of federal agencies.

Many professional choose full-time employment as a default career path after they graduate from college. According to a report from the McKinsey Global Institute, there have been more than one billion people who entered the global labor force in 2012, which has since increased.

This mindset is the expected path for college graduates since they get a specialization for jobs that they want to do. The security of having a steady paycheck and being paid to learn new skills are also appealing to any person who wants to be secured financially.

Have you ever donated to a GoFundMe, Kickstarter or another online fundraising campaign? The crowdfunding sites allow people to donate funds to help a cause or help an inventor get a project off the ground.

The problem with crowdfunding, the thing that’s convinced me and thousands of others to stay away, is once you’ve contributed because of yet another hard luck story, or a new idea that could change the world, you’ll never know how your money is spent.