Fueled by central bank cheap-money activities across the globe, mergers and acquisitions have significantly replaced investment in building and expanding businesses with true-innovation price discovery and entrepreneurial creativity. And now cheap and accessible machine automation in traditional workplaces will eat away at something once greatly valued in industrial, entertainment, media, retail, architectural and service sectors: the individual experience and the...
Michael Glauser: Everyone will be an entrepreneur
Entrepreneurship is Michael Glauser’s calling. Even in high school, “I thought it would be awesome to know how to meet objectives efficiently and create great environments for people to work in,” the Utah State University business school professor says. Now, after starting six successful companies and interviewing more than 100 small-business creators for his book Main Street Entrepreneur — and...
Millennials struggle to become self-employed
Statistically, the millennial generation’s track record of creating successful self-owned businesses is at a historic low. For this generation, the concept of entrepreneurship is about learning hard lessons to find new ways. Often centered around venture capitalists and other investors enticing them to buy into social media or other digital ventures, they are learning this approach is failing to deliver...
Trendpost
The Kauffman Index reported in 2014 that 24.7 percent of new entrepreneurs were ages 20–34. That’s down from 1996, when 34.3 percent of new entrepreneurs were ages 20–34. That also represents a relatively steady slowdown. So while entrepreneurship is at its highest mark since the early 2000s, the millennial generation isn’t contributing much to this trend. But there are reasons....
Will water shortages dry up global economies?
Water shortages will severely stunt Gross Domestic Product in the Middle East, North Africa and parts of Asia by 2050 unless water-management practices are changed, according to a report from the World Bank. The Middle East could lose 14 percent of its GDP, Africa north of the Sahara Desert 12 percent, and central Asia — mostly the “stan” countries —...
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Water shortages will lie at the root of a long menu of future ills in Africa and Asia, from disease and famine to refugee migration and armed conflict. To mitigate the risk of shortages, countries need to focus on basic water stewardship, including replacing leaky urban water mains and building or improving underground storage facilities. Water supply and management will...
Robot in a pill
Tiny robot repairmen or therapists traveling the byways of the human body to keep its systems working have been standard futurist fare for years. Now, a team of scientists and engineers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Tokyo Institute of Technology and University of Sheffield have shown how it might work. The team created what it calls an “origami robot”...
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Advances in nano-engineering, artificial intelligence and bioscience will bring the possibility of on-board medical microbots to reality before 2025 for use in simple chores such as stitching ripped tissue or delivering medication. The second quarter of this century will see in situ robots becoming part of robotic surgery, with robots easily slipping into crannies of the brain and body that...
PTSD in cells
Chronic pain from old accidents or sports injuries is common, but until now, scientists haven’t understood why pain should persist after the injury has healed. They knew that cells involved in the immune system helped perpetuate the pain, but didn’t know how. To answer the question, researchers at King’s College London studied immune cells in mice. They found that damage...
Trendpost
If some forms of chronic pain can be found to have a genetic cause, then those forms could be “cured” through gene therapy. Researchers will pursue this new trail, but approved therapeutic treatments are still at least 20 years away.