Life-span theories explain successful aging with an adaptive management of emotional experiences like regret. As opportunities to undo regrettable situations decline with age, a reduced engagement into these situations represents a potentially protective strategy to maintain well-being in older age. Yet, little is known about the underlying neurobiological mechanisms supporting this claim. We used a multimodal psychophysiological approach in combination with a sequential risk-taking task that induces the feeling of regret and investigated young as well as emotionally successfully and unsuccessfully (i.e., late-life depressed) aged participants. Responsiveness to regret was specifically reduced in successful aging paralleled by autonomic and frontostriatal characteristics indicating adaptive shifts in emotion regulation. Our results suggest that disengagement from regret reflects a critical resilience factor for emotional health in older age.

Since the days of Henry Ford, mass production has been the Holy Grail of business, rather than build-to-order. Too many businesses haven’t noticed that we have come full-circle, where mass customization is required now to win. Customers have come to expect immediate and tailor-made responses to their needs, and the businesses that fail to deliver quickly fall behind.

Changing the culture and mindset in an existing business is difficult and slow, so this becomes another “opportunity” for smart entrepreneurs and startups to excel. John M. Bernard does a great job outlining seven key steps to success today in his recent book, “Business at the Speed of Now.” They apply to any business, but every startup better lead with these:

Companies that wish to take full advantage of their data must build strong, new, and different organizational capabilities. There is a lot to do, and data scientists are front and center. Good ones are rare. And critically, the difference between a great one and a good one is like the difference between lightning and a lightning bug.

A good one can help you find relationships in vast quantities of disparate data — often important insights that you would not have gotten in any other way. Great data scientists, on the other hand, develop new insights about the larger world. They certainly use data to develop those insights, but that is not the point.

You’re never not going to have critics. And it’s probably always going to bother you. The harsh truth about being successful is that you are going to make people irrationally mad at you in the process. It’s  inevitable. Part of the painful journey. Your peers, your family, your community — they can all seem like enemies at times. Each one tearing you apart as you pass by in your quest for achieving big expectations.

The results of your actions have little to do with what you are actually doing and almost everything to do with your attitude. Which is ironic because we spend most of our time creating lists and getting organized and listing resolutions about what we should be doing, forgetting that who we are being is much more important. That’s why we’re called human beings. Not human doings.

Sometimes the best work happens while walking, broadcasting, flying -- even on the beach. LinkedIn Influencers show where they work and explain what it means.

When I urge managers in a company to make open innovation part of their innovation strategy, they get it conceptually. They see that a solution coming from outside is more likely to be a dramatic leap versus an incremental one—simply because it came from a mind not narrowed by conventional thinking. They understand that the infusion of fresh ideas can also open their own R&D engineers and technologists to new and different possibilities and cause them to push their thinking further. At a minimum, they agree that better solutions tend to emerge when there are more options to consider in the first place.

A recent project we did for FVA, a branch of the German trade association VDMA for companies that provide drive-train systems and components, bears this out. Every year, FVA conducts an industry-wide technology search to identify new and emerging solutions, and it shares the results as a service to its member companies. Although the search has been productive, members within the FVA leadership circle wanted to see if there was a better search process that would unearth more solutions and potentially create more value. A vice president of the group had been to a presentation on Open Innovation and was intrigued by the concept. And although he seriously doubted it could work in a field as specialized as drive-train technology, he was willing to find out. FVA commissioned Aachen University to manage a selection process and trial study, and the selection committee found us at NineSigma most suitable to conduct a series of technology searches.

I ran into Ricardo Dos Santos and his amazing Qualcomm Venture Fest a few years ago and was astonished with its breath and depth.  From that day on, when I got asked about which corporate innovation program had the best process for idea selection, I started my list with Qualcomm.

This is Ricardo’s “post mortem” account of the life and death of a corporate entrepreneurship program.  Part 1 outlining the program is here.  Part 2 describing the challenges and “lessons learned” will follow.

The University of Connecticut ranked at the top of a list of the most sustainable campuses in the world, according to results of the University of Indonesia’s GreenMetric Ranking of World Universities, released this month. Four other American universities ranked in the top 10: Northeastern University (Mass.); the University of California, Los Angeles; The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; and the University of California, Merced.

This is the third year UI has released the ranking, which is one of several sustainability rankings in higher education. It scores institutions’ efforts in categories including green statistics, energy and climate change, waste management, water usage, transportation, and energy. This year, the field included 215 universities from 49 countries that applied online, an increase from last year’s 178 universities from 42 countries.

Let me tell you a tale of business.

A small businesses starts out as a one man show, just a guy who “bought himself a job.” Let’s call our guy Bob. Bob’s got no one to manage and nothing to direct. Just do the work; go home; repeat.

And then it happens: Bob succeeds. Bob’s business starts getting busy, really busy. It’s a nice problem to have but it’s a problem all the same.

Bob realizes something has to give. So he hires Mark. Now Bob is no idiot. He makes sure that Mark is the kind of guy who can handle himself. As a result, things get busier yet.

A bipartisan group of senators announced on Monday a plan that would ease the path to citizenship for students who are in the United States illegally and would make it easier for some foreign graduates of American universities to remain in the country to work.

The plan, outlined in a document titled a "Bipartisan Framework for Comprehensive Immigration Reform," deals with border security, employment verification, and legalization alike. Its release comes a day before President Obama is scheduled to offer his own immigration plan at a speech in Las Vegas.

The eight senators who agreed on the plan, dubbed the "Gang of Eight," comprise equal numbers of Democrats (Michael F. Bennet of Colorado, Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, Robert Menendez of New Jersey, and Charles E. Schumer of New York) and Republicans (Jeff L. Flake of Arizona, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, John McCain of Arizona, and Marco Rubio of Florida).

The Financial Times is out with its latest rankings of the world's business schools, with Harvard taking the top spot from Stanford. As always, these rankings are somewhat idiosyncratic, Bloomberg Businessweek puts Chicago Booth in the top spot, and it barely makes the top 10 in the FT. Our rankings had Stanford at number one. 

This post reviews basic terminology commonly used in the venture world. First, the entities into which capital sources are aggregated for purposes of making investments are usually referred to as "funds," "venture companies," or "venture partnerships." They resemble mutual funds in a sense but are not, with rare exceptions (AR&D was one), registered under the Investment Company Act of 1940 because they are not publicly held and do not offer to redeem their shares frequently or at all. The paradigmatic venture fund is an outgrowth of the Greylock model, a partnership with a limited group of investors, or limited partners, and an even more limited group of managers who act as general partners, the managers enjoying a so-called carried interest, entitling them to a share in the profits of the partnership in ratios disproportionate to their capital contributions. Venture funds include federally assisted Small Business Investment Companies (which can be either corporations or partnerships) and, on occasion, a publicly held corporation along the AR&D model, styled since 1980 as "business development corporations." This post, following common usage, will refer to any managed pool of capital as a "fund" or "partnership."

What’s different about building a successful for-profit and nonprofit startup?

Not much, according to Paul Graham, founder of Y Combinator, an elite accelerator program in Mountain View, Calif., that accepted a nonprofit for the first time this month, Watsi.org. “You could never tell there was a nonprofit mixed in,” he said in a phone interview on Friday.

Rebecca Micciche Watsi, a medical crowdfunding platform that launched in August, is among 47 startup businesses in the latest Y Combinator class. Past graduates of the competitive three-month program include DropBox, Reddit and Airbnb.

The competitiveness of U.S. businesses and their ability to hold and return manufacturing jobs to the United States will depend in part on success in advanced manufacturing, according to a report released today by the National Governors Association (NGA).

“Making” Our Future: What States Are Doing to Encourage Growth in Manufacturing through Innovation, Entrepreneurship, and Investment examines how states are looking to bring new focus to advanced manufacturing, setting the stage to ensure their companies and workers are ready for the challenges ahead.

“Manufacturing in the U.S. is changing,” said Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett. “It is important that governors continue to learn so they are able to determine the best way forward, ensuring good businesses and jobs for our citizens.”

We are off and running with HHS/NIH releasing their large omnibus SBIR/STTR solicitation that remains open all year, with 6 separate receipt dates (includes AIDS related topics that have 3 of their own dates). The DoD released their FY-2013A STTR solicitation, which is usually their largest of the 2 STTR solicitations they do each year.

There are some surprises in both solicitations, but it is early in the cycle for you to plan and respond. As we've noted before, this is a new day and you should read the solicitations very carefully, because they may not match your impressions of the SBA's SBIR and STTR Policy Directives, and new size rulings.

“The US Debt is the single biggest threat I see to innovation in American business.”  –  Erskine Bowles

In a long and distinguished career, Erskine Bowles has taken on one challenge after another.  He has served as Director of the Small Business Administration, as Deputy Chief of Staff and Chief of Staff to President Bill Clinton, as a candidate for the US Senate, and as co-chair along with Alan Simpson of the 2010 National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform. That’s all in addition to a long and distinguished business career, and five years as President of the seventeen-institution North Carolina University system.

Perhaps the greatest challenge of a lifetime of service, though, is his commitment to solving the debt and deficit problem facing our country.

More than five hundred companies submitted their web-based products to the fifth annual SXSW Interactive Accelerator. Competition was tough and we're extremely grateful for all of the great submissions we received this year. Congratulations to all the finalists who will be showcasing their products during SXSW Interactive on Monday and Tuesday, March 11 and 12 at the Hilton Austin Downtown. Get more SXSW Interactive Accelerator information here.

Every winter the allure of skiing on deep, untracked mountain snow attracts skiers to backcountry areas. Yet the thrill of skiing in an off-the-beaten-path bowl with waist-deep powder comes with a risk of being caught in a dangerous, potentially life-threatening avalanche.

Most experienced skiers pay close attention to avalanche safety and carry specialized equipment such as avalanche beacons, shovels and probes that can help in location and rescue. This season a new device has been added to the tool kit: an “avalanche air bag” equipped with inflatable bladders that fill instantly in the event of a snowpack slide. When an avalanche strikes, skiers can be carried along in a thunderous mass of snow moving up to 100 kilometers per hour down the mountainside. Death is usually caused by suffocation.