Thought Leaders

As entrepreneurs we are risk takers by nature, we shoot for the moon, and swing for the fences. But this attribute can also become our biggest weakness as it leads many entrepreneurs towards the path of frustration and eventual failure. We are all looking for the 10x technology advancement, but...

I often tell people that BrightMa didn’t start as a company — it started as a calling. My ancestors were enslaved farmers who worked the same South Carolina soil I walk today. Their sacrifice, resilience, ingenuity, and stewardship of the land are the foundation for everything I do. BrightMa Farms...

Each morning from my desk at Schell Games (pre-pandemic, obviously), I can look through the Station Square windows at the Monongahela River and the skyline of the city of Pittsburgh, which if you’ve never visited is probably one of the most beautiful in America that not everyone knows about. On...

Work is underway to increase operational capacities in several application sectors such as health, safety, or transport. The intelligent agent we are developing is not just a digital double. The Agent covers three functionalities: 1) a permanent watch on the operational situation in the context of use while keeping the...

STORY & CHALLENGESIn 2016, I was nearing the end of a frontier research project to combine interdisciplinary knowledge to ask if a biological cell could sustain light circulating inside: called ‘whispering gallery modes’. Could we go further, and turn a cell into a laser, with the hope of it being...

Both society and technology are changing ever more rapidly. Higher education is historically designed to be steady and slow in changing. The conflict caused between slow-moving institutions and a rapidly changing world has become ever more obvious – to the point, for many, that it has reached a definitive inflection...

Missouri has not one, but many, outstanding research institutions— Washington University in St. Louis, the University of Missouri, Saint Louis University, and Stowers Institute for Medical Research among them. As the Executive Director of the Missouri Cures Education Foundation, I cultivate and maintain relationships with key policymakers, business leaders, researchers,...

À mon arrivée à Montréal en 2015, j’ai trouvé au Québec un environnement des plus stimulants, où la collaboration entre les grands établissements universitaires est non seulement encouragée, mais aussi reconnue comme un moyen de parvenir à une carrière fructueuse. Cela a sans aucun doute été un facteur déterminant dans...

Over a period of 40 years as an entrepreneur, while building six professional service firms and three nonprofits, I used to network like a madman. As you might imagine, with my hands in several things at once, it was sometimes difficult to answer the question: “So, Gill, what do you...

As I engage in conversation with Kiara Kaur, the air fills with an electrifying sense of the future. At just seven years old, Kiara, a prodigious talent and a beacon of hope, articulates her vision with the clarity and passion of a seasoned leader. Her achievements are staggering: the world’s...

In 2014, I met—and fell in love with—the All Stars Project and its Afterschool Development approach as a new way of engaging poverty. I have always loved to perform—discovering dance as a teenager and growing up poor in Teaneck was a life-changer for me—and I immediately saw the effectiveness of...

Mentor and Investor “True tech innovation in India is happening in life sciences, nanoscience, chemistry, mechanical engineering and the like”, says Prof. Vijay Chandru, one of the earliest academics in India to move from an impressive career in academics to highly successful deep science entrepreneurship. “If you look at creativity...

It might be odd to hear this from someone who leads incubation at a university, but not everyone needs to be an entrepreneur and not every startup will succeed. Our success has come as a result of embracing this experience, and how it develops students and innovators. Leveraging startup and...

Innovation is not the work of one person. It happens when people come together, share ideas, and support each other. Milwaukee is full of individuals and organizations pushing boundaries, taking risks, and making an impact. The real strength of this city lies in its people, their resilience, creativity, and willingness...

Have you ever experienced the sinking feeling of discovering that your identity or credit card information has been stolen? I have. As a technologist, this experience led me on a personal journey to create new standards of trust, security, accountability, and privacy for every individual, every business, every transaction. While...

Austin has long been known as a hub of and for creativity. Monikers like the “Live Music Capital of the  World” and “Keep Austin Weird” are known by those far outside of Austin’s City Limits. While it might have been music that initially landed Austin on the map, it’s our...

I grew up in the north of Sweden dreaming of becoming a fashion designer. Like many young creatives, I believed in the magic of making clothes, their power to express, connect, and transform. I worked hard to realize that dream and eventually found myself inside the industry I had once...

  I’ve been doing angel investing since the early 1980s after I took my first venture, a computer terminals manufacturer in Waterloo, public on the Toronto Stock Exchange. Since then, I’ve invested in well over 200 startup ventures. I often hear entrepreneurs complain about the lack of funding. One of...

Innovation is taking two things that already exist and putting them together in a new way.” — Tom Freston The term ‘innovation’ often evokes visions of rockets bound for Mars, self-driving cars, or the alluring promise of fusion energy. Yet to me, innovation is as crucial in our daily lives...

In the media landscape, technology has been the ultimate disruptor—creating several inflection points that have changed the scope of reach for content and business models. To put the evolution of our industry and its future roadmap into perspective, we can take a closer look at the three waves of media....

With an increasing number of startups looking to scale up, we spoke to angel investor and advisor Revathy Ashok about what investors look for. Ashok is one of the early members of the Indian Angel Network and co-founder of Strategy Garage, a boutique advisory for startups & SMEs, and says...

  Thirty years ago when I started my career at Novell, I never imagined that someday Utah would benefit from a vibrant and amazing technology community, dubbed Silicon Slopes. Back then, technology was a small ecosystem in which super-nerdy coders and geeks – like Bill Gates, Steve Jobs and Michael...

Decades of ups and downs, helping others start companies, starting my own companies (and sometimes failing) has taught me the power of pattern recognition. It is key to both innovation and entrepreneurship because it is also at the core of being an early adopter and a connector. That was how...

There’s no greater transformative force in the world’s businesses than technology’s ability to connect people, increase competitiveness, and ultimately help organizations grow. But as the business technology market nears $4 trillion in annual spend, two significant challenges have emerged for both the businesses  who buy technology and the vendors who...