In both C suites and boardrooms, discussions about business performance usually center on topics like market momentum, M&A opportunities, capital management, and productivity enhancements. While these factors are important, in my experience they are best leveraged when employees are engaged, aligned, and motivated to win.

In the course of leading six successful turnarounds and transformations at Schering-Plough, Pharmacia, Pharmacia and Upjohn, Wyeth, and two operating units within Novartis, I've learned that culture can be powerfully leveraged to enhance long-term success. Yet many executives don't make culture a priority. It was this disconnect that prompted me to write my recent book, Reinvent: A Leader's Playbook for Serial Success.

In business and in life, the most critical choices we make relate to people. Yet being a good judge of people is difficult. How do we get better at sizing up first impressions, at avoiding hiring mistakes, at correctly picking (and not missing) rising stars?

The easy thing to do is focus on extrinsic markers — academic scores, net worth, social status, job titles. Social media has allowed us to add new layers of extrinsic scoring: How many friends do they have on Facebook? Who do we know in common through LinkedIn? How many Twitter followers do they have?

The performance of venture capital funds in the UK, important for new and early-stage businesses, is lagging further behind the US, according to research by Nesta, the innovation body. In a report published on Tuesday, the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts said venture capital investment in the UK was $2.3bn in 2012 compared with $41bn in the US. Adjusted for the relative size of their economies, that meant UK venture capital was less than half the size of the US industry.

There’s a massive amount available on the interwebs on how to improve the odds for success in new ventures. But almost nothing concrete is available on the care and feeding of your investors. You can do all of the Lean Startup experimentation you want, but we’re here to tell you that one of the the easiest and most underrated skills that a startup CEO needs is knowing how to keep your investors updated, excited and engaged.

The reason is: The CEO is the investor’s user interface into the business. It’s how investors see what’s going on, and in some minimal ways, interact with the business.

You may have seen little squares of Tcho chocolate in their brightly colored wrappers decorated with futuristic parabolas of gold and silver. They’re easily found: Starbucks has sold them; Whole Foods sells them now.

Those usually aren’t the stores you visit to track down handcrafted chocolate from bean-to-bar makers, the new wave of chocolate producers that find and blend the rarest and most richly flavored cacao beans. Artisans like Mast Brothers, in Brooklyn, promise that each batch of bars will be different; nothing will be blandly mass-produced. In a video on their website, the lavishly bearded Mast siblings extol the “inconsistency” of their chocolate. Inconsistency generally isn’t what gets you orders from Starbucks and Whole Foods.

Ever since General Electric GE +1.51% built the first industrial lab in 1900, research and development has been a highly secretive affair.  Security protocols have been regarded almost important as scientific ones to stay ahead of the competition.

More recently, Apple AAPL +0.08%, arguably the world’s most innovative company, has become renowned for keeping its cards close to the vest and even “don’t be evil” Google GOOG +1.26% has launched its own super-secret research center.

A recent study by Andy Cosh and Joanne Jin Zhang of the UK Innovation Research centre set out to examine how companies were using open innovation. The report makes a thought-provoking comparison of the innovation styles of companies. It indicates that those companies that are active in open innovation in both giving and receiving ideas achieve higher rates of innovation and of revenue growth.

A survey was sent to 12,000 UK companies and 1202 responded. The authors categorised the respondents as falling into one of three categories which had similar behaviours and practices:

A bill to restart the Maine Seed Capital Tax Credit program rests now at the state's special appropriation table, where lawmakers will decide if the investment-encouraging program will continue. The Bangor Daily News reported Tim Agnew, a principal at Masthead Venture Partners in Portland, told the paper that the bill's placement at the special appropriation table is not a good sign for continuation of the program, which supporters say has encouraged investment in Maine companies. The program hit its $30 million cap earlier this year. It allowed state income tax credits of up to 60% of their cash equity to eligible Maine businesses, spread over four years.

A group of scientists, business leaders and public figures from around the world met this past weekend to discuss evolution, but this wasn't the same old discussion about where we came from, but about where we can go from here, and how technology could make us immortal by 2035.

The 2045 Initiative was started in 2011 by Russian entrepreneur Dmitry Itskov, with the goal of engineering the future of human evolution. The plan is to first create life-like robotic copies of our bodies in the next 2 to 7 years, which we would control and interact with the world through, similar to the movie Surrogates. From there, in roughly 5-to-10-year steps, the initiative would work towards transplanting our brains into robot bodies by 2025, and then by 2035, do away with the flesh entirely by allowing us to transfer our personality into a robot 'avatar'. The final step in the plan, scheduled for 2045, would be to divorce ourselves completely from the body, and just have our robotic minds controlling holograms to interact with the world.

Mobile devices are edging closer to fulfilling their long-delayed promise as digital wallets.

Consumers are beginning to see the advantage of channeling offline payments through their mobile devices, rather than carrying around clunky coins and cash — even debit and credit cards. Consumers are primed to go wallet-free and begin paying for goods and services via their mobile devices, and as a result, mobile payments are set to explode. 

More small business owners say business conditions are good or excellent today than at any point in years, according to the latest Citibank® Small Business Pulse released today. Nearly half of small business owners (48%) rate conditions as good or excellent, up from 43% in May 2012 and twice the rate three years ago (24%). Current confidence also represents a rebound from August 2012, when the fiscal cliff caused uncertainty.

Meanwhile, those that say conditions are poor dropped to 14%, the lowest level since the Citibank® Small Business Pulse began in 2010. Half of small business owners say they expect annual sales to grow in 2013, with one-third saying they will grow by more than 10%. In addition, more than half (54%) expect an even stronger 2014.

“The rise in those that have a favorable view of current business conditions is unmistakable,” said Jerome Byers, head of Citibank Small Business. “While about half still fault sales for preventing them from achieving business goals, just as many business owners project improved sales this year and next. In recent years, as conditions have improved and small businesses have looked to grow, we have sought to be there for them – our small business lending has grown annually, from $4.5 billion in 2009 to $9.6 billion last year.”

Fifty years ago this month, I chanced to hear the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. I was a mild-mannered kid with a speech impediment and a love of math. That day, I was focused on solving math problems, not issues of justice and equal rights. But King broke through to me when he said this: If the children of Birmingham march, Americans will see that what they are asking for is a better education. They will see that even the very young know the difference between right and wrong.

I chose to march, and found myself among hundreds of children jailed for five terrifying days. Mind you, I was not a brave child. But even at 12 years old, I believed and hoped that my participation could make a difference.

Google has made a video that documents the first week at Google for five actual interns, in an attempt to  portray the work experience accurately — and not the way it's seen in the movie "The Internship."

The Mountain View Google HQ is plenty quirky, filled with unique features such as an outdoor volleyball court, spherical work stations, and a campus filled with Android sculptures and other art.

For parents looking for educational toys, a hardware startup developed electronic buildings blocks and a companion augmented reality app that make for an interactive learning experience.

Founded by Tarun Pondicherry and Josh Chan, LightUp magnetic building blocks that can teach anyone about how electronics work.

SparkLabKC, a business accelerator program sponsored by some established Kansas City area businesses and universities, has selected 11 regional start-ups for its initial assistance.

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Summary

The Hershey Company, the largest chocolate manufacturer in North America recently hosted its first open innovation conference.

Description

The hope is that the combined insights of internal and external players will lead to long-term sustainable growth for the company and its suppliers. The idea is for all members of Hershey’s innovation ecosystem to benefit.

We're excited to be launching two additive manufacturing quests that invite entrepreneurs, companies and institutions to offer their solutions to two additive manufacturing challenges: 3D Printing Design Quest and 3D Printing Production Quest: High Precision and Advanced Materials.

Additive manufacturing is a key part of the advanced manufacturing revolution. With additive techniques, we can transform the things we make and the way we make them, significantly reduce production times and achieving cost savings without sacrificing performance. GE is already putting additive technologies to work on an industrial scale, and through external collaboration will accelerate the application of these technologies.

As a college student at Brown University, Jerry White spent his junior year abroad studying in Israel. On a sunny day during the Passover holiday in April 1984, White and two friends set out for a camping trip in the Golan Heights. “I was walking out ahead of my friends with a song in my heart. I like being the leader, the one out in front,” he recalls. “Then, boom! A huge explosion.” He had stepped on a land mine. As blood poured from his leg, White screamed, “I have no foot! I have no foot!”

Never underestimate the value of a good headline word, but St. Louis’ $100 million regional entrepreneurship fund isn’t really a fund, and it may never be. Regional leaders certainly want to raise money to support startups, and they want to do so on a scale that hasn’t been tried in St. Louis. The fundraising may take a couple of different forms, and some independent efforts may end up being counted toward the total.

Quebec International recently unveiled a new edition of Investing in the Quebec City Region, a promotional brochure designed to promote the region’s competitive advantages to foreign investors. Showcasing the region’s most appealing features, the brochure seeks to convince investors that Quebec City is the ideal place to set up and grow a company.

“Attracting foreign investment is a highly competitive global endeavour, and the Quebec City region has to promote itself in this regard. This brochure demonstrates that our region boasts an outstanding business environment. Its robust, diversified and innovative economy, highly skilled workers, state-of-the-art research facilities and high-quality infrastructure all contribute to our region’s attractiveness. More than just a publication, this brochure is a sincere invitation to take part in our region’s economic success,” said Carl Viel, President and CEO of Quebec International.