Imagine if carbon dioxide (CO₂) could easily be converted into usable energy. Every time you breathe or drive a motor vehicle, you would produce a key ingredient for generating fuels. Like photosynthesis in plants, we could turn CO₂ into molecules that are essential for day-to-day life. Now, scientists are one step closer.

Employers can’t find people with the skills needed for the today’s workplace, because high schools and universities fail to teach students useful job skills. The skills gap is a decades-old and well-known problem that will remain unsolved unless we flip priorities not only in our school systems but also in parenting.

It’s an article of faith that technological innovation is crucial to prosperity and is currently changing our lives at an unprecedented rate, but how do we know if the pace of pioneering breakthroughs is any faster today than it was during Thomas Edison’s era? In fact, some economists argue that today’s information revolution has had much less impact on our lives than the big inventions of the late 19th century had on people living then.

In our Feb. 23, 2018, episode of QDL, we considered if writing a novel makes you a better CEO, patents and innovation, and if should you blindly trust academic studies. Plus, we threw in cost of quality... just because.

“Five Things I Learned Writing a Novel That I Wished I Knew When I Was a CEO”

Matt Bianchi had a problem. As chief of the division of sleep medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital, he needed a better way to diagnose sleep disorders. Typically, a patient seeking a diagnosis needs to come into a sleep lab and be attached to a number of devices. This setting is hardly representative of the patient’s normal sleep environment. Bianchi needed a way to track and measure sleep at a patient’s home.

Manufacturing activities have strong ties to economic prosperity. Deloitte’s 2016 Global Manufacturing Competitiveness Index states, “Nations and companies are striving to advance to the next technology frontier and raise their economic well-being.” It’s no surprise that the manufacturing sector is increasingly competitive. Many companies struggle; some go under.