Top News
The number of African-American entrepreneurs in America appears to be growing slightly, according to a new survey—but they still lag behind their white counterparts. In the U.S. Census Bureau’s Annual Survey of Entrepreneurs, which includes responses from 290,000 employers, only 2.1% of American businesses with at least one employee were black-owned in 2014. About 14% of those black-owned businesses were operating for less than two years. ( Fortune)
Visit http://fortune.com/2016/09/01/black-businesses-us/ to view the full article online.
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Diversity in the Workplace
Thus most of the work of diversity and inclusion approaches in companies to date has focused on empowering the "out" groups or training the "in" groups about their unconscious biases. This has succeeded only in annoying everyone. Meanwhile, most senior executives are still white men. The more companies talk about it all, the more skeptical everyone becomes. ( Harvard Business Review)
Visit https://hbr.org/2016/09/corporate-diversity-initiatives-should-include-white-men to view the full article online.
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International
He jumped to the bank as they try to win back trust in a EU wounded by Britain’s Brexit vote. EU officials are livid at their former boss Jose Manuel Barroso for taking a job at Goldman Sachs that has drawn public scorn just as they are trying to win back trust in a European Union wounded by Britain’s Brexit vote. ( Fortune)
Visit http://fortune.com/2016/09/08/barroso-eu-officials-goldman/ to view the full article online.
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Technology
Elon Musk's solar energy company wants to equip 5 million homes in the U.S. with its new solar-powered roofs, according to The Guardian. This comes a month after Musk revealed SolarCity's plans to create entire roofs made up of solar panels. When installed, they would look like traditional roofs--thus potentially removing the aesthetic obstacle inherent to going solar. ( Inc)
Visit http://www.inc.com/kevin-j-ryan/solarcity-wants-to-put-its-roofs-onto-5-million-us-homes.html to view the full article online.
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Entrepreneurship
500 startups is raising a $25 million dollar microfund to make early stage investments in Black and Latino founders. This fund will invest in ~100 companies and give Black and Latino founders the access to capital, networks, and expertise that they need to grow their businesses. The fund will be led by Monique Woodard, Venture Partner at 500 Startups and co-founder of Black Founders. Monique has access to some of the best deals in this market and her network has a massive pipeline into game-changing founders. ( Black Entrepreneur)
Visit http://www.blackentrepreneur.com/monique-woodard-to-lead-25-million-investment-in-black-businesses/ to view the full article online.
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Meet Tiannia Barnes, a successful engineer turned high-end Italian shoe designer. She is an NYC-area resident, and a native of Oklahoma City. She is also an alumna of Clark Atlanta University and Georgia Institute of Technology, where she holds a dual degree respectively, in Mathematics and Industrial Engineering. Additionally, Barnes holds an M.B.A. from the University of Maryland, and has had a long and successful career in IT consulting. If you think this is impressive, what she’s accomplished next will inspire you to move beyond your comfort zone. In 2013, this STEM guru did what many only dream of doing. She turned a life-long love for shoes, into a business. ( Black Enterprise)
Visit http://www.blackenterprise.com/career/top-careers/soul-sole-stepping-destiny/ to view the full article online.
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The Economy
By many key measures, the economy has looked fine in recent months. After gradually sliding for most of 2015, industrial production has bounced up. Consumer spending has done well. The economy added 151,000 jobs last month. Initial jobless claims are near a four-decade low. Yet most economists, when asked to assess the odds of a recession in the next year, have continued to place the odds at about one in five. Not a prediction of imminent doom, but double the odds of a year ago. ( The Wall Street Journal)
Visit http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2016/09/08/why-so-few-economists-are-prepared-to-say-recession-risks-are-fading/ to view the full article online.
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Corporate America
Michael Dell and Meg Whitman may be business competitors, but they can each claim a technology industry superlative. One has overseen one of the largest mergers in the tech industry. The other has engineered its biggest breakup. Different as they seem, both deals were in reaction to tough competition and declining markets. And so far, neither has provided a clear way for how a storied giant can survive changes like the rise of so-called cloud computing that are undermining the way they operate. ( The New York Times)
Visit http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/08/technology/dell-gets-bigger-and-hewlett-packard-gets-smaller-in-separate-deals.html?ref=business&_r=0 to view the full article online.
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The United States—almost by accident, and almost alone among the world’s nations—has created an innovative, practical structure by which a company’s employees can own the business they work for. Today, according to the nonprofit National Center for Employee Ownership, about 7,000 U.S. companies are substantially or entirely owned by their employees. These are not tiny co-ops or buyouts of bankrupt firms; they are conventional profit-seeking businesses, most of them thriving. ( The Atlantic)
Visit http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/09/life-changing-magic-of-turning-employees-into-shareholders/498485/ to view the full article online.
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