17 must-read stories for the weekend

Meet the Forum’s 49 technology pioneers to watch in 2015. Cutting-edge companies using their “millennial mindset” to address global challenges like climate change, healthcare and digital security.

From agrarian society to post-industrial powerhouse. Charting China’s dazzling economic growth.

This year’s Tech Pioneers, in their own words. The people behind 2015’s innovative technologies: brain-mapping, quantum computing,solar cells, even smarter AI, gene-therapy, electricity-generating plants, lamps that mimic natural light, high-end goods made from trash, and digital healthcare.

The end of the assembly line? Self-building, programmable 3D-printed bricks could change the future of manufacturing and construction.

How can Europe become more innovative? By promoting entrepreneurship and getting behind fast-growing companies.

Why you shouldn’t always do what you love. Aligning passions with your career makes sense – some of the time.

Some of the global coverage of the Forum’s 2015 Technology Pioneers. (Il Sole, City AM, Datanami)

An encrypted internet is a basic human right. 2015 Tech Pioneer Wickr on the importance of securing online privacy. (LiveScience)

Technology is levelling the playing field in finance. Taavet Hinrikus of TransferWise, another 2015 Tech Pioneer, on how fintech will change banking. (Business Insider)

‘Smart contracts’ arrive on Wall Street. They’re traditional securities that use bitcoin for verification and trading. Quotes Forum research. (WSJ)

Can we reverse ageing? A Stanford neurology professor discusses ground-breaking research first presented at the World Economic Forum’s Annual Meeting in 2014. (Guardian)

What makes some start-ups tech companies, and others just … companies?

Is the ‘gig’ economy the future of work? Stanford’s Jeffrey Pfeffer hopes not, the FT’s John Gapper says with the right safeguards, it could be liberating.

Can freelancing fight off the robot future? Machine intelligence is coming to the professions. But is tech anxiety and the future of economic growth different this time?

Women are starting to out-earn men. “Newly minted female college graduates earn as much as, or more than, men in 29 of 73 majors.” But by mid-career, that trend stops.

Which university produced the most 21C Nobel laureates? It isn’t Harvard, MIT, or Oxford.

What is a grade point average worth in the job market? A big UK graduate recruiter finds “no evidence” that success at university is correlated with achievement in professional qualifications.

To keep up with the Agenda subscribe to our weekly newsletter.

Author: Adrian Monck is Managing Director and head of Public Engagement at the World Economic Forum.

Image: A woman takes picture of an LED television installation at the Internationale Funkaustellung (IFA) consumer electronics fair in Berlin, September 3, 2009. REUTERS/Tobias Schwarz