It’s Friday the 13th, so Should We Be Worried?

Well, actually, yes.

There have been enough financial disasters on Friday the 13th over the years to make us all a little nervous. Traders are notoriously a superstitious lot anyway. On Friday 13th, noticeably less business gets done.

The World’s 50 Most Innovative Companies- 16: National Marrow Donor Program

Bone-marrow transplants are a numbers game. Ten thousand Americans annually require a transplant from someone unrelated to help treat leukemia or lymphoma. Yet only 5,573 received one worldwide last year.

People With Bigger Brains Have More Friends

Oxford University researchers found maintaining friendships requires more brain power.

Their study concluded that people with real friends have to use more cognitive skills to understand what someone else thought.

This, however, did not occur with “online” friends, such as those made on social networking sites including Facebook or Twitter.

Five technologies to watch

Innovation in energy technology is taking place rapidly. Five technologies you may not have heard of could be ready to change the energy landscape by 2020.

Recent breakthroughs in natural-gas extraction highlight the speed with which game-changing technologies can transform the natural-resource landscape. Just over the horizon are others—such as electric vehicles, advanced internal-combustion engines, solar photovoltaics, and LED lighting—that are benefiting from the convergence of software, consumer electronics, and traditional industrial processes. Each has the potential to grow by a factor of ten in the next decade.

The World’s 50 Most Innovative Companies- 17: Greenbox

Here are five words every children’s clothing chief hopes to hear in her lifetime: Disney wants to work together. Fangfang Wu heard them last year, when the House of Mouse asked the CEO of Greenbox, a children’s clothier based in Shanghai, to manufacture a line of Disney-branded apparel.

How To Identify The Tipping Point In Any System

The term “tipping point” crops up frequently, especially in discussions of world events such as financial collapse and climate change. Like the word “sustainable” which gets used with increasing abandon, and often with little thought to the actual meaning of the word, so too the term tipping point can be elusive and used in contexts where it may or may not be suitable. I’ve probably been guilty of this myself, but recently my thinking on the subject has been greatly clarified and I hope to pass on what I’ve learned about what does, and does not, constitute a tipping point.

A CEO’s guide to innovation in China

Dynamic domestic players and focused multinationals are helping China churn out a growing number of innovative products and services. Intensifying competition lies ahead; here’s a road map for navigating it.

The World’s 50 Most Innovative Companies- 18: Jawbone

Jawbone, whose $1.5 billion valuation makes it one of the hottest private companies in the world, is setting the standard for today’s gadget startups: Invest heavily in eye-catching design and innovative interfaces, and master a globe-crossing supply and manufacturing process that allows for frequent and spectacular upgrades.