SMITH BRAIN TRUST – When Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited with President Donald Trump this week, much of the coverage was about the Rose Garden handshake-turned-hug.

SMITH BRAIN TRUST – President Donald Trump signed an executive order this week to formally walk away from the Trans Pacific Partnership, in what looked like the final chapter for the 12-nation trade deal. 

SMITH BRAIN TRUST — Several world leaders opted out of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, this week. Xi Jinping didn't.

SMITH BRAIN TRUST — Technology entrepreneurship and venture capital were born and grew up along the U.S. East Coast, so why has Silicon Valley dominated the Cambridge-Boston area in venture capital investments for so long? For years the disparity has been attributed to Silicon Valley's less-hierarchical and more-risk-taking culture.

Companies worried about disruption need science and technology to stay relevant in the 21st century, but speakers at the fifth annual Smith School Business Summit pointed to soft skills as the real competitive advantage. “If you get leadership, management and culture right, everything else takes care of itself,” keynote speaker David Williams told an audience of more than 300 faculty, staff, students and working professionals gathered Oct.

SMITH BRAIN TRUST — Borrowing a newspaper from a neighbor might have been the extent of social media as recently as 20 years ago, says professor Anil K.

SMITH BRAIN TRUST — Does China’s first quarter GDP growth of 6.7 percent signal that the country is solidly on course for growth between 6.5 and 7 percent per year by 2020 — a key benchmark to its recently adopted five-year plan? “Let’s be cauti

SMITH BRAIN TRUST — Cadillac has just opened a state-of-the-art $1.3 billion plant outside Shanghai, and it plans to open another $1 billion factory in Wuhan next year.

SMITH BRAIN TRUST — Some people think business is all about crushing the competition. But Anil K. Gupta, the Michael D. Dingman Chair in Strategy and Entrepreneurship at the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business, says smart entrepreneurs focus more on collaborating with partners in their ecosystem. “If you succeed, it will not be because you want to succeed or because you’re super brilliant,” he says.

Professor Anil K. Gupta at the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business will join Ratan Tata plus leaders from Google, Airbnb and NextEV in mentoring India tech startups through KStart, an initiative of Bangalore-based VC firm Kalaari Capital.