Magzter Gold (Sitewide Promotion)

Magzter Gold (Sitewide Promotion)

Digital Delivery

Fast Company October 1st, 2017 Digital Back Issue Cover

Fast Company October 2017 (Digital)

(65)

Single Digital Issue

October 2017

$4.99

Powered By Zinio

Zinio

Satisfaction Guaranteed

Instant Start

Subscribe Instead

1 Year Subscription

6 digital issues

$19.99

($3.33/issue)

Go to Subscription

View Subscription Options

Also available on ZINIO Unlimited logo

Get unlimited access to Fast Company (Digital) + Back Issues & 5000+ other magazines

1-month free trial

Renews at $8.99/month after trial.
Cancel anytime.

Get unlimited access to Fast Company (Digital) + Back Issues & 5000+ other magazines. Renews at just $8.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

Start Trial Learn more

42 Articles

HOW TO LEAD WITH EMPATHY

My first boss was a bully. Just before I started working for him, a rumor circulated that he’d once thrown a desk out the window. Maybe the story was apocryphal, but it didn’t feel that way to those of us under his thumb. He would yell and curse. We were all afraid of him. As unpleasant as it was, though, I have to admit that the fear was a powerful motivator. But there are other, better ways to get a team to perform. In today’s business world, bullying tactics are increasingly backfiring (case in point: Travis Kalanick at Uber). Meanwhile, a new breed of CEOs is rising, defined less by “command and control” and more by “inspire and empower.” No leader better epitomizes this approach, and its potential for outsize success, than…

HOW TO LEAD WITH EMPATHY

STEERING UBER FORWARD

What’s new with members of our MCP community Bozoma Saint John Chief brand officer, Uber During her three years as head of global consumer marketing for Apple Music, Bozoma Saint John used her branding prowess to tap into powerful partnerships (see: an ad that featured Taylor Swift falling off a treadmill while listening to Drake and Future’s “Jumpman”) that helped Apple launch its streaming platform and grow it to 20 million subscribers by the end of 2016. After joining Uber in June, she’s now helping another highprofile company navigate an inflection point: It’s her job to overhaul the company’s image. “I see myself as chief storyteller,” Saint John says. “There are certainly things that have happened [at Uber] that [we] want to change. . . . I want people to see the humanity…

STEERING UBER FORWARD

FIGHT OR FLIGHT

Updates from the MiC alumni NIKE At the 2012 London Olympics, Nike debuted its now-lauded Flyknit technology, a strong and ultralight synthetic yarn used to construct durable, breathable sneakers. Five years later, Nike is now taking Flyknit into a brand-new realm: the sports bra. Launched in July, the Fe/Nom bra is made from a near-seamless, porous fabric that weighs only 73 grams (which is 30% less than any other Nike bra) and solves problems like chafing and constriction. The Flyknit bra is part of Nike’s recent campaign to appeal to women at a time of increasing competition in active apparel. Women now have more options than ever when it comes to running tights and sports bras in the nearly $1.7 trillion sportswear market. To better respond to female consumers, Nike holds focus groups…

FIGHT OR FLIGHT

EATALY TAPS INTO IT SINNER DISNEY

EATALY After opening outposts in 31 cities in 12 countries across the globe, the Italian fooderie Eataly is returning to its birthplace with its newest launch: a $118 million experiential park called FICO Eataly World. When it opens in Bologna, Italy, in the fall, Eataly World will span 25 acres and feature pastures, more than 40 restaurants and food stalls, and learning centers that allow visitors to explore the country’s agricultural and food-manufacturing processes (while riding chic adult tricycles from Italian bike maker Bianchi). “Eataly stores are focused on the restaurants and the shopping,” says Eataly World CEO Tiziana Primori. “We’re now going to take you backwards into the production that goes into the culture of how the food is grown and made.” To entertain and educate the expected 6 million annual…

EATALY TAPS INTO IT SINNER DISNEY

THE RECOMMENDER

What the Fast Company community is loving this month Brooks England Rivington backpack $325 brooksengland.com “I bike everywhere, and when I’m on the go, I need something sturdy to hold my computer, chef’s coat, and cooking tools. This is my favorite bag for that—it’s waterproof and made in Italy from organic cotton.” Brian Bistrong Corporate executive chef for market operations, Dean & DeLuca Fatboy inflatable Lamzac lounger $60 fatboyusa.com “This is great for relaxing wherever, and portable enough to bring on hikes. You just swing it around to inflate it, and pack it up when you’re done.” Jonathan Schwartz Cofounder and CPO, Voodoo Manufacturing The Jaunt artwork From $75 per print thejaunt.net “The Jaunt sends artists around the globe for inspiration. You purchase a print before the trip and get it after, not knowing what it will look like.” Brian Smith Cofounder and chief wine…

THE RECOMMENDER

According to Andy Rubin, the modern mobile ecosystem is broken. He should know: He helped break it. When Rubin, the inventor of the Android operating system and godfather of the smartphone market, surveys the industry today, he sees squandered opportunities everywhere. The open-source platform he brought to the masses while at Google, which commands roughly 85% of the market, is overwhelmed with “bad user experiences,” he says. Devices from makers such as LG and Huawei are uninspired. Samsung has been too often content with fast following: “Who at Samsung is responsible for your device’s look and UI? It’s a nameless, faceless machine.” And Apple? “The world’s biggest and most successful company doesn’t have a human side to it,” Rubin argues. “The incumbents have lost track of why they exist, why they’re…

BREAKING THE MOLD

Essential isn’t the only company trying to disrupt the mobile ecosystem. Here are others that signal what’s possible. Modular phone design An attempt at delivering upgradable phones, the devices in Motorola’s Moto Z series come with a variety of back covers, called Mods, that extend the phones’ functionality and life span. This allows parent company Lenovo to support advanced features that would be unwieldy to put in the phone itself, such as a new 360-degree camera that shoots 4K video. Direct-to-consumer retail Shenzhen-based OnePlus has brought higher-end, low-cost devices around the world without the assistance of big carriers, or even much of a retail footprint. Its trick: wordof- mouth marketing, fueled by an invite-only system that gave the small brand a feeling of exclusivity. Today, its OnePlus 5 flagship is poised to go mainstream. A…

BUMBLE GETS DOWN TO BUSINESS

Last year, two people met cute the modern way. Ashley and Connor matched on Bumble, the dating app where people swipe through potential partners but only women are allowed to initiate a conversation. They started texting. But when Ashley asked an innocent question about work, Connor launched into a misogynistic rant in which he called her a “gold-digging whore.” Bumble’s response, a fiery blog post now known as the “Dear Connor” letter, quickly went viral. The company called for a future in which Connor would “engage in everyday conversations with women without being afraid of their power”—and then, in an unusual move, banned him from using the service. Whitney Wolfe, Bumble’s 28-year-old founder and CEO, understands how it feels to be on the receiving end of such messages. Flanked by a…

BUMBLE GETS DOWN TO BUSINESS

Here’s how Bumble Bizz plans to pair users with professional connections. ESTABLISH YOUR EXPERTISE Initially, Bizz will suggest anyone within a range of 5 to 15 miles. Once you start swiping, the algorithm will learn your preferences and show mostly people in your field. SEPARATE BUSINESS AND PLEASURE The app will surface short bios of potential contacts, along with profile photos, educational history, and job status. People who use Bumble Honey or Bumble BFF can maintain independent profiles. START A CONVERSATION The service will allow men who match with men and women who match with women to start chatting freely. But if a woman matches with a man, she must initiate contact.…

THE GROCERY WARS TAKE OFF

Around the time that Amazon was announcing its intent to buy natural-foods pioneer Whole Foods for $13.4 billion this past summer, the little-known (at least in the U.S.) German budget grocer Lidl was opening outposts in Virginia and the Carolinas, kicking off a planned expansion into the States that will bring its number of stores to 100 by next summer. Jeff Bezos’s bold move and Lidl’s international ambition are signs that the grocery wars are just getting started. Here’s how four of the most enterprising chains are planning to keep shoppers—especially health- and budget-conscious ones—in their aisles in the months ahead.…

THE GROCERY WARS TAKE OFF

“YOU JUST CAN’T IMAGINE HOW HARD IT IS”

In the five years since Ellen Pao filed her high-profile sex discrimination lawsuit against VC powerhouse Kleiner Perkins—and was later pressured to resign as CEO of Reddit after backlash from users—the conversation about gender inequality in tech has only gotten louder. In her new memoir, Reset: My Fight for Inclusion and Lasting Change, out September 19, Pao (now a partner at social impact–focused investment firm Kapor Capital) reveals what it was like to endure years of workplace sexism and have her professional and personal life scrutinized in a public trial—and why she’s still working to make Silicon Valley a more inclusive place. It’s been a difficult but somewhat validating year for women in Silicon Valley, with revelations of sexual harassment and bias contributing to the departure of Uber CEO Travis Kalanick,…

“YOU JUST CAN’T IMAGINE HOW HARD IT IS”

A NEW FOOD CHAIN

The future of world food aid arrived, in early May, unnoticed by its first recipients: the grocery shoppers inside a supermarket at the Azraq camp in Jordan, home to 36,000 Syrian refugees. To be fair, their buying process already looked pretty high-tech, especially for a store with a dirt parking lot in the middle of the desert. Before paying, each shopper peered into a black, rectangular iris scanner mounted at eye-level, which confirms users’ identities with the camp’s organizing group, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, and allows them to access a food stipend from the United Nations’ World Food Programme (WFP). That’s a spiffy authentication process, but it had been there for months. What the shoppers didn’t see was the new back-end procedure. Instead of receiving WFP funds via…

A NEW FOOD CHAIN

THE MUSIC MAKER

Once you know what you’re listening for, it’s easy to identify Rostam Batmanglij’s fingerprints on a song. The former keyboardist for the altrock band Vampire Weekend is now a producer who has worked with artists including Solange, Frank Ocean, and Kid Cudi. Batmanglij infuses his penchant for uncommon chord progressions and classical music into every album he touches. The result is fully realized, often startling pop, from Carly Rae Jepsen’s heady single “Warm Blood” to the eerie instrumental theme song for Netflix’s sci-fi show The OA. This fall, Batmanglij is releasing his first solo album, Half-Light. Here’s how he uses collaboration as a tool to unleash creativity, in himself and in others. Make downtime productive When he’s producing an album, Batmanglij often invites the artist to meet at his Los Angeles home.…

THE MUSIC MAKER

BEYOND CROWDFUNDING

In the spring of 2013, musician Jack Conte was frustrated with the challenge of supporting himself as a creative person in the internet age. Conte, who performs both solo and—with his wife, Nataly Dawn—as part of an indie-rock duo called Pomplamoose, had sunk $10,000 of his own money into a wildly inventive sci-fi–themed music video, complete with a singing robotic head. It soon racked up a million YouTube views. But Conte’s share of revenue from the ads the site stuck on his work amounted to a pittance: about $150. “It was so weird to see such a discrepancy between the value that I feel like I’m giving to the world and the value that the world returns to me in dollars,” he says. The predicament was hardly Conte’s alone. Thanks to…

BEYOND CROWDFUNDING

PRODUCERS CIRCLE

How five creators use Patreon to finance their art The Singer AMANDA PALMER 11,463 patrons* $40,715 per project palmer uses patreon funds for new albums, webcasts, performance art, and documentaries. Fans get exclusive content and a peek into her creation process. The Podcasters CHAPO TRAP HOUSE 15,978 patrons $71,154 per month The founders of this leftist podcast raised enough money to bring in additional cohosts by sharing every other episode exclusively with patreon supporters. The Animators KURZGESAGT 8,388 patrons $30,368 per month munich-based design studio kurzgesagt creates quirky cartoons that explain thorny topics. With patreon, kurzgesagt has grown from a oneman show to a team of 11. The Filmmaker DREW SCANLON 3,099 patrons $20,061 per month scanlon, a former videogame journalist, creates documentaries about gaming culture as he travels to far-flung locations. patrons get Q&As and bonus footage. The Builder SIMONE GIERTZ 1,761 patrons $7,040 per month Fans of the…

PRODUCERS CIRCLE

MICROSOFTRE WRITES THE CODE

The place looks more like a neighborhood bookshop than the command center for the third-most-valuable company on the planet “I read a few pages here or a few pages there,” Nadella says, in his typically understated manner. He is sitting in a turquoise armchair, with multicolored socks showing above his casual brown shoes. The stacks around him include heady tomes such as Bionomics and How Will Capitalism End?, but his taste is eclectic. At one point during our conversation he references a Virginia Woolf essay about illness; at another, Trinidadian author C.L.R. James’s literary take on cricket. When explaining the impact of Microsoft’s Cortana AI assistant, Nadella eschews market-share data for Shakespeare: “If Othello had Cortana, would he have recognized Iago for who he was?” One of Nadella’s first acts after becoming…

MICROSOFTRE WRITES THE CODE

Leading While Learning

Nadella makes it his mission to teach, listen, and absorb new ideas. Groomer: Brent Henry (portraits). This page: Chip Somoderilla/Getty Images (Trump); Justin Sullivan/Getty Images (HoloLens)…

Leading While Learning

Satya’s Book Club

The Great Transformation KARL POLANYI “My father recommended this book long ago,” says Nadella of the 1944 classic by a Hungarian- American writer who chronicles the development of England’s market economy and argues that society should drive economic change. Deep Learning IAN GOODFELLOW, YOSHUA BENGIO, AND AARON COURVILLE Elon Musk and Facebook AI chief Yann LeCun have praised this textbook on one of software’s most promising frontiers. After its publication, Microsoft signed up coauthor Bengio, a pioneer in machine learning, as an adviser. The Boys in the Boat DANIEL JAMES BROWN Nadella calls this tale with a local Seattle connection—it involves an underdog University of Washington crew team and the 1936 Berlin Olympics—“a wonderful illustration of the importance of teamwork, which was a core part of my focus out of the gate as CEO.” The Great Convergence RICHARD BALDWIN In this…

Satya’s Book Club

The C in CEO Stands for Culture

The CEO is the curator of an organization’s culture. Anything is possible for a company when its culture is about listening, learning, and harnessing individual passions and talents to the company’s mission. Creating that kind of culture is my chief job as CEO. Microsoft’s culture had been rigid. Each employee had to prove to everyone that he or she was the smartest person in the room. Accountability— delivering on time and hitting numbers— trumped everything. Meetings were formal. If a senior leader wanted to tap the energy and creativity of someone lower down in the organization, she or he needed to invite that person’s boss, and so on. Hierarchy and pecking order had taken control, and spontaneity and creativity had suffered. The culture change I wanted was centered on exercising a growth…

The C in CEO Stands for Culture

A CHAT APP WITH BENEFITS

Mobile chat is where it’s okay to be dumb. Your LinkedIn page may be a work of art wrought in HR-friendly prose; your tweets, so sharp you could shave with them. But texting? Let the autocorrect errors fly! Why punctuate? Isn’t that what old people do? In fact, why use words at all when any number of pictographic pokes, nods, and grunts available at the press of a button will get the job done faster? Blame the medium, says Jason Cornwell, the chief user experience designer behind Google’s communications apps. “Chat is inherently limited and low-bandwidth,” he says. It’s also here to stay: “Our phones are basically chat machines at this point. That’s the dominant activity that virtually everyone does on their phone.” ¦ Allo, a mobile messaging app launched…

A CHAT APP WITH BENEFITS

A FAIRER STOCK EXCHANGE

In 2007, Brad Katsuyama was trading stocks for the Royal Bank of Canada when he noticed that every time he placed an order, the stock price jumped by one or two cents. He realized that high-frequency traders were using faster connections to buy the stock he wanted and resell it to him for a profit. And it was widespread, costing investors like him up to $160 million a day. So Katsuyama created the Investors Exchange, an upstart trading platform powered by an ingenious hack: Every trade encounters a virtual “speed bump” to subvert high-frequency traders. In September 2016, IEX opened for public business. User-centered thinking plays a big role. Product chief Adrian Facini spent more than a decade on Wall Street, where he grew disillusioned by traders gaming the system. “During…

A FAIRER STOCK EXCHANGE

A LEAP TOWARD CUSTOM - PRINTED FOOTWEAR

The soles look like intricate baskets woven from clear seafoam green toothpaste. The sensation underfoot is bouncy yet firm, and strangely, you can literally feel the air passing under your feet. There are only a few hundred pairs of Adidas’s radical new 3-D–printed running shoes, known as Futurecraft 4D, in existence, but already they represent an early victory lap around competitors’ attempts, because they are actually coming to market en masse: By the end of the year, Adidas will have produced 5,000 pairs, with 100,000 more planned by the end of 2018. ¦ Industry leader Nike has spent the past two years focused on building better foam midsoles that maximize athletic performance, culminating in its Nike Zoom Vaporfly 4% and Nike Zoom Fly shoes, which went on sale in June.…

A LEAP TOWARD CUSTOM - PRINTED FOOTWEAR

A FRONT DESK IN THE PALM OF YOUR HAND

More than 10 million people worldwide have downloaded Marriott’s app, which poses a challenge: How do you appeal to everyone—from businesstraveling loyalists to brandagnostic millennials—on every leg of a trip? The solution, from agency Work & Co, was to turn Marriott’s logo, an abstract M, into a functional piece of UI. The symbol sits permanently at the bottom of the screen and serves as a hub for toggling between pages, whether you’re booking a room, reviewing a reservation, checking rewards points, or ordering room service. “Touching the Marriott mark gets you where you want to go,” Work & Co partner Diego Zambrano says. The app can also surface a reservation before arrival or a digital room key after check-in. Active users have increased 25% since the new design launched in…

A FRONT DESK IN THE PALM OF YOUR HAND

A NEW SENSATION IN VIRTUAL REALITY

VR technology lets you travel from the bottom of the ocean to the top of Mount Everest, glimpsing some of the planet’s most remote sites along the way. And yet it’s always had a shortcoming: You can look, but you can’t touch. Apple vet Caitlin Kalinowski (she helped design the MacBook Air and Mac Pro), who now heads product design engineering at the Facebook-owned VR firm Oculus, has remedied this. She and her team have developed wireless controllers that give you functional hands in virtual reality for the first time, allowing you to feel as if you’re throwing objects and making actual gestures. Called the Oculus Touch, the $100 devices—which started shipping in December 2016 and have won nearly universal acclaim—balance in your palm and feature squeezable grips that can…

A NEW SENSATION IN VIRTUAL REALITY

A RENTAL PROPERTY THAT’S REVIVING A COMMUNITY

Airbnb executives heard an inspiring story a few years ago about a mother who’d created the first listing in her town of Tokamachi, Japan. Like many small communities in the country, Tokamachi had been hollowed out by urban migration and an aging population. So the woman, looking for a new way to earn money, got her neighbors to help renovate a vacant house. When guests started streaming through, these neighbors became tour guides. The listing became a capsule tourism economy. “We thought, If she can do that all by herself, what could you do with the resources of Airbnb?” says Joe Gebbia, Airbnb’s cofounder and chief product officer. When he and his team were asked in 2016 to create a home of the future for a Japanese design fair, they…

A RENTAL PROPERTY THAT’S REVIVING A COMMUNITY

The Flow of Innovation

When it comes to high-tech home innovation, televisions and sound systems get the lion’s share of attention. But the latest smart-home technology focuses on reimagining everyday objects, such as showers and faucets. The key to rethinking how we experience water at home isn’t only about incorporating digital bells and whistles. As GROHE, the 100-year-old cutting-edge German water-fixture provider, illustrates, the most successful solutions are rooted in intuitive, user-friendly design. Here, MICHAEL SEUM, GROHE’s vice president of design, shares the thinking behind its award-winning designs, such as the new SmartControl Shower System, and how to create products that change behavior in positive ways. What’s especially challenging about rethinking an everyday experience like the shower? Water is analog. It’s one of the last frontiers of the smart home that hasn’t been injected with any intelligence. So…

The Flow of Innovation

A STIMULATING WORKPLACE

Coke is a legacy brand. That’s a key part of its strength. But when it came to the 131-year-old company’s corporate headquarters in Atlanta, whose buildings were mostly 20-plus years old and still featured cloistered cubicles and drab lobbies, it was a liability. Coke committed seven years ago to im proving the space for its 5,000 employees there (and their more than 400 daily guests). Architecture firm Gensler linked the ground floors of the campus’s six buildings into a strollable “Main Street,” featuring art-filled communal lounges, cafés, and amenities such as a pharmacy and medical center. Julie C. Seitz, director of Coca-Cola’s global workplace team, likens the 350,000-square-foot space and central courtyard to “a vibrant student center at a great university.” Since the redesign was completed, in April 2016, she…

A FINGER-SAVING SOLUTION

iPhones. Android tablets. MacBooks. The desktop PC. Traditionally, each device at your work space requires its very own keyboard, and switching among them during the day often requires you to literally juggle. The Logitech K780 keyboard, which went on sale last year, solves this problem by letting you do all your typing in one place. It features an uncannily steady counterweighted cradle that can accommodate a range of touch-screen devices and can Bluetooth-pair with almost any gadget running almost any operating system, allowing you to switch between them instantly with a single button press. The K780 was inspired by consumer research: Americans were toggling between many devices and desired one keyboard to rule them all. As it happened, two years ago, in an effort to transform from a stuffy PC-peripherals company…

A CROWD SOURCED WAY TO REACH THOSE IN NEED

If you heard an app described as “Tinder, but for humanitarian relief,” you’d probably think you were watching an episode of HBO’s satirical TV series Silicon Valley. But MapSwipe—a collaborative effort by Doctors Without Borders (Médecins Sans Frontières), the American Red Cross, and other nonprofits—was pitched in just that way to Sadok Cervantes, the app’s lead product designer, by developers at MSF in March 2016. “My initial reaction was, ‘Not another app aboard the hype train, please!’ ” recalls Cervantes, whose freelance design practice caters to humanitarian causes. “But I knew their intentions were in the right place—they wanted the app to be easy, accessible, and usable by everyone. The swipeable-card interface definitely checks all three of those.” MSF’s developer team had thought that the Tinder model would be the best…

A CROWD SOURCED WAY TO REACH THOSE IN NEED

A DEEPER LEVEL OF CARE

“Empathy” gets a lot of lip service in the design world, but Honor—a company that connects caregivers with seniors needing inhome assistance—makes it a mandate. Every six months, designers at Honor work caregiving shifts them - selves, doing everything from helping a client get in and out of bed to scrubbing a bathtub. Renato Valdés Olmos, head of design at the three-year-old startup (which was founded by an ex-Googler and is backed by VC Marc Andreessen, among others, and operates in four cities) has done all that and more. He refers to the practice as “Method design,” in a nod to the immersive acting technique, and says it has shaped important aspects of Honor’s app, which links caregivers with clients and their families. A note-taking function, for example, allows caregivers…

A DEEPER LEVEL OF CARE

A TRUST WORTHY TRACKER

Just before Planned Parenthood began celebrating its 100th birthday in October last year, the organization created its first digital product. Spot On is a free period- and birth-control-tracking app that’s been downloaded more than 1 million times since its debut in March 2016. Digital product lab senior director Jenny Friedler explains how the organization’s work at its clinics, visited by 2.4 million people in the U.S. annually, helped differentiate the app from its competitors. We’re the most trusted sexual and reproductive healthcare provider in the country, and we’ve heard every question in the book. Most [tracking apps] focus on fertility and people trying to get pregnant. In the meantime, the average woman will spend about 30 years of her life trying not to get pregnant. We wanted to reflect to people…

A TRUST WORTHY TRACKER

AN EYE - CATCHING NEW LOOK

The A+E Networks’ constellation of channels— including Lifetime, Biography, History, and A&E itself—have always been among cable’s top destinations for bio pics and docuseries. But as the video landscape proliferates and competitors emerge (see: HBO’s Robert Durst series, The Jinx, and ESPN’s documentary O.J.: Made in America), the network is responding with a major new visual branding push alongside Sunshine, a creative agency. In keeping with its overall message, “Life, Magnified,” A+E showcases its content—online, on its app, and on billboards— with rich, intimate photography and sharply written copy in handlettered type that skews more editorial than traditional TV marketing. This gives the network a distinct visual style while still leaving room for each channel to differentiate itself. As A+E Networks CMO Amanda Hill says, the updated, cohesive design shifts…

AN OASIS FOR ENTREPRENEURS

“He called me and said, ‘You’ve got to come stand in this space with me,’ ” says entrepreneur and artist Scott Cohen, recalling the day in 2011 when his friend and business partner, real estate developer David Belt, visited an abandoned, decaying structure while on a tour of the Brooklyn Navy Yard. Following a renovation by Belt’s firm, Macro Sea, the cavernous steel turn-ofthe- century shipbuilding site known as Building 128 was reborn last year as New Lab, an interdisciplinary hub where roughly 500 spacesqueezed New York City founders, developers, and designers are creating emerging technology, from cube satellites to experimental smartphones. New Lab’s 95 member companies share access to fabrication labs (with $3.5 million in prototyping tools), studios, meeting spaces, and, most crucially, each other. Casual encounters within the…

THE PRODUCT Swedish furniture and lifestyle brand Ikea is extending its attractive- yet-affordable design aesthetic to technology. In April, the company launched Wi-Fi– and remote-controlled LED bulbs that allow people to create the right ambience for different activities with a single fixture. They’re dimmable, motion-sensor responsive, and color-changeable. And since most of us are accustomed to using a switch—not an app—to turn lights on and off, Ikea also designed a wireless remote control that can be mounted anywhere. (The $20 starter kit includes the bulb and remote, and a mobile app helps users program settings.) While smart lighting has been on the market for years, it’s been slow to catch on due to price and the perception that it’s complicated to operate. Ikea’s user-centered design, plus the brand’s scale—it has 390…

AN APP TO KEEP YOUNG PEOPLE MOVING

As millennials view it, exercise doesn’t just happen at the gym—a day running errands or a night on the dance floor also count. So when Samsung approached R/GA to create a monthlong launch campaign for a collection of fitness accessories called Move, the digital agency came up with a distinctly DJ-inspired idea. Can’t Stop, released last June, was a web-based app that harnessed the GPS and accelerometer on a user’s phone to play an exclusive mix by DJproducer Diplo—but the only way to hear it all was to keep moving for 30 minutes, the amount of activity recommended by the American Heart Association. “Run, jump, do push-ups,” says R/GA executive creative director Tristan Kincaid. “We didn’t care what you were doing, as long as you were moving.” After Diplo promoted…

AN APP TO KEEP YOUNG PEOPLE MOVING

A SMARTER SUITCASE

Warby Parker alums and frequent fliers Jen Rubio and Steph Korey started the luggage company Away in 2016 to solve one of travel’s biggest pains: not having a suitcase that fits your needs (or your shoes). After extensive user research— during which they learned that travelers often felt embarrassed by their luggage, insecure about their packing skills, and frustrated because they were always landing with a dead phone—the duo designed an attractive polycarbonate suitcase with organizational dividers, compression straps, and a built-in charger. The item was popular, but “a physical product is never done being tweaked,” says Korey, who explains that Away relies on constant customer feedback “to design a more and more perfect item.” One of the most frequent comments from users was that other carry-ons had more space.…

A SMARTER SUITCASE

A WIRELESS BREAST PUMP

THE PRODUCT Wireless technology allows us to talk on the phone, listen to music, and print spreadsheets without using a cord. But women who pump breast milk find themselves isolated in a room and tethered by tubes to a machine, with sets of bottles dangling from their chests. Willow, a pair of lightweight, battery-powered pumps, offers a solution. Each bra-cup-shaped device slips into a nursing bra—no undressing required—and holds a 4-ounce, BPA-free storage bag. With one two-hour charge, the pump can last up to five sessions, and through an app, mothers can track milk expression, compare data across pumping sessions, order additional bags, and set timers and alerts. Willow CEO Naomi Kelman plans to release the pump this fall. THE PROCESS Working with Ideo, Willow conducted dozens of interviews with mothers and realized…

A WIRELESS BREAST PUMP

A LANGUAGE MADE FROM THREE KEYS TROKES

What will the internet of things (IoT) look like, really? How will it be when our trash cans can talk to our refrigerators in some sort of meaningful way? Currently, the sector is small—only 5% of U.S. homes contain connected appliances—but it is projected to grow by 20% in the next three years. Of course, it might grow faster if anyone even understood what it was. “A simple image search for ‘IoT’ leads to a landscape of network schematics with icons as nodes and a Wi-Fi–esque radio graphic placed somewhere in the soup,” says Forest Young, head of design at Wolff Olins San Francisco. “This complexity is, in many ways, the biggest bottleneck [when it comes to] mass adoption and enthusiasm.” What if, instead, you could give IoT a face?…

A LANGUAGE MADE FROM THREE KEYS TROKES

A WATER - SAVING SHOWER

THE PRODUCT The Nebia Shower System was designed to conserve water— up to 70% per use—while delivering an entirely new cleansing experience. Nebia’s showerhead atomizes water into millions of droplets, dramatically increasing surface area for a steam-room-like effect. Since launching on Kickstarter in August 2015 and raising $3.1 million, Nebia, whose subsequent investors include Apple CEO Tim Cook, has tested its product in the gym showers of Equinox, Google, Apple, and Stanford University. Nebia began shipping to consumers in January 2017; to date, more than 16,000 have been sold. “There’s no meaningful way to create more water [in the world],” says Nebia CEO Philip Winter. “We have to use what we have more efficiently.” THE PROCESS Winter and his design team used an array of nozzles borrowed from internal combustion engines and the…

A WATER - SAVING SHOWER

A MODULAR AIRPLANE

To the chagrin of cramped coach passengers, airplane-cabin design hasn’t changed significantly in decades. That’s not only because it’s most profitable for airlines to jam in as many fliers as possible, but because changing 100 miles of wiring inside a commercial aircraft is complex, time-consuming, and very expensive. But at Airbus’s innovation lab, A3 (pronounced “A-cubed”), designer and engineer Jason Chua is pursuing a radical idea: customizable modules that would enable airlines to reconfigure plane interiors to offer fliers more options for how they spend their time in the air. “People value customization, personalization, and choice. We expect it in all aspects of our life,” Chua says. Right now, “we don’t have a lot of those choices when we travel.” Airbus’s concept, called Transpose, would feature sleeping modules, business-focused team pods,…

A MODULAR AIRPLANE

INNDUA BY TIDN DESIGN: THE HONDREES

PRODUCTS 003 Plumen ABODE DIY SECURITY SYSTEM Abode Amp Lyft ARISTOTLE Nabi and Mattel THE BIGGER CARRY-ON Away BUOY Buoy Labs and Herbst Produkt CAAVO Caavo and NewDealDesign CASPER DOG MATTRESS Casper CODING AWBIE Osmo CORE Norton and Herbst Produkt CUBETTO Primo Toys DAYDREAM VIEW Google ECHO LOOK Amazon EDGE Movado and Fuseproject ELECTRO DOUGH KIT Technology Will Save Us ELLIQ Intuition Robotics and Fuseproject ESIGHT 3 eSight and Artefact FIRST PERIOD KIT Lola FLEXIBLE LIVING Bang & Olufsen THE FRAME Samsung and Fuseproject FUTURECRAFT 4D Adidas and Carbon GIROPTIC IO Giropticand Lunar GOOGLE HOME Google GOTENNA MESH goTenna and Pensa GUARDIANS Sarcos Robotics HERE ONE Doppler Labs IKEA SMART LIGHTING I kea INSIGHT ONE Tascent and Whipsaw JAMBOARD Google K780 Logitech and Feiz Design KURI Mayfield Robotics LEVI’S COMMUTER Lev i ’s and Google LINK AKC Link AKC and Astro Studios MOLEKULE Molekule NANOGRID BioLite THE NEBIA SHOWER SYSTEM Nebia NIKE ZOOM VAPORFLY 4% Nike ORI Ori and Fuseproject OTHR Othr PACIFIC CHAIR Vitra and Barber & Osgerby PLAYSTATION VR Sony I n teract i ve Entertainment PLUME WI-FI PODS Plume and Branch POL ARITY COLLECTION Visual Magnetics and Visibility pop SmArt button Logitech PROHIJAB Nike R16 Waarmakers RACEYA Tomorrow Lab RAPTURE VR HEADSET The Void and Optimal Design RIPPLE Royal College of Art THE ROADSTER Vanguard RUNWELL TURNTABL Shinola and Astro Studios SELF JOURNAl BestSelf Co. SMART REMOTE Sevenhugs and Eliumstudio SNOOZ Snooz and Minimal SURFACE DIAL Microsoft SUZY…

10 NEWSLETTERS TO MAKE YOU SMARTER

Fast Company Issue Number 219. Copyright ©2017 by Mansueto Ventures, LLC. All rights reserved. Fast Company® is a registered trademark of Mansueto Ventures, LLC. Fast Company (ISSN 1085-9241) is published monthly except for combined December/January and July/August issues, by Mansueto Ventures, LLC, 7 World Trade Center, New York, NY 10007-2195. Periodical postage paid at New York, NY, and additional mailing offices. Canadian GST Registration No. R123245250. Postmasters: Send address changes to Fast Company, PO Box 2128, Harlan, IA 51593-0317. Subscription rates: One year (10 issues) $23.95, two years (20 issues) $47.90, in the United States. To subscribe to Fast Company: Email subscriptions@fastcompany.com or phone 800-542-6029 (U.S.A. and Canada). Our subscriber list is occasionally made available to carefully selected firms whose products or services may be of interest to you. If…

10 NEWSLETTERS TO MAKE YOU SMARTER

In This Issue

Description

Details

Reviews

Recent Digital Issues Browse all

Recent Fast Company Digital Issues Browse all back issues

Fast Company (Digital) Subscription November 10th, 2023 Issue

Fast Company (Digital) Winter 2023/2024: $4.99

Fast Company (Digital) Subscription September 15th, 2023 Issue

Fast Company (Digital) Fall 2023: $4.99

Fast Company (Digital) Subscription September 1st, 2023 Issue

Fast Company (Digital) September 2023: $4.99

Fast Company (Digital) Subscription June 23rd, 2023 Issue

Fast Company (Digital) Summer 2023: $4.99

Fast Company (Digital) Subscription February 28th, 2025 Issue

Fast Company (Digital) Spring 2025: $4.99

Fast Company (Digital) Subscription November 22nd, 2024 Issue

Fast Company (Digital) Winter 2024/2025: $4.99

Fast Company (Digital) Subscription August 23rd, 2024 Issue

Fast Company (Digital) Fall 2024: $4.99

Fast Company (Digital) Subscription July 5th, 2024 Issue

Fast Company (Digital) Summer 2024: $4.99

Fast Company (Digital) Subscription April 26th, 2024 Issue

Fast Company (Digital) Spring 2024: $4.99

Fast Company (Digital) Subscription March 1st, 2024 Issue

Fast Company (Digital) March/April 2024: $4.99

Fast Company (Digital) Subscription November 10th, 2023 Issue

Fast Company (Digital) Winter 2023/2024: $4.99

Fast Company (Digital) Subscription September 15th, 2023 Issue

Fast Company (Digital) Fall 2023: $4.99

Fast Company (Digital) Subscription September 1st, 2023 Issue

Fast Company (Digital) September 2023: $4.99

Fast Company (Digital) Subscription June 23rd, 2023 Issue

Fast Company (Digital) Summer 2023: $4.99

Fast Company (Digital) Subscription February 28th, 2025 Issue

Fast Company (Digital) Spring 2025: $4.99

Fast Company (Digital) Subscription November 22nd, 2024 Issue

Fast Company (Digital) Winter 2024/2025: $4.99

Fast Company (Digital) Subscription August 23rd, 2024 Issue

Fast Company (Digital) Fall 2024: $4.99

Fast Company (Digital) Subscription July 5th, 2024 Issue

Fast Company (Digital) Summer 2024: $4.99

Customers Also Viewed

Fast Company Magazine (Digital) Subscription

Fast Company Magazine (Digital)

(65)

4 Issues: $19.99

Empire Australasia (Digital) Subscription January 1st, 2021 Issue

Empire Australasia (Digital)

January 2021: $2.58

How It Works Book of Extreme Weather Magazine (Digital) Subscription February 1st, 2016 Issue

How It Works Book of Extreme Weather Magazine (Digital)

How It Works Book of Extreme Weather: $8.99

The Vintage Wedding Book Magazine (Digital) Subscription March 1st, 2016 Issue

The Vintage Wedding Book Magazine (Digital)

The Vintage Wedding Book 2016: $8.99

POPEYE(ポパイ) Magazine (Digital) Subscription April 8th, 2025 Issue

POPEYE(ポパイ) Magazine (Digital)

12 Issues: $72.00

Fast Company Magazine (Digital) Subscription

Fast Company Magazine (Digital)

(65)

4 Issues: $19.99

Empire Australasia (Digital) Subscription January 1st, 2021 Issue

Empire Australasia (Digital)

January 2021: $2.58

How It Works Book of Extreme Weather Magazine (Digital) Subscription February 1st, 2016 Issue

How It Works Book of Extreme Weather Magazine (Digital)

How It Works Book of Extreme Weather: $8.99

The Vintage Wedding Book Magazine (Digital) Subscription March 1st, 2016 Issue

The Vintage Wedding Book Magazine (Digital)

The Vintage Wedding Book 2016: $8.99

POPEYE(ポパイ) Magazine (Digital) Subscription April 8th, 2025 Issue

POPEYE(ポパイ) Magazine (Digital)

12 Issues: $72.00

Fast Company Magazine (Digital) Subscription

Fast Company Magazine (Digital)

(65)

4 Issues: $19.99

Empire Australasia (Digital) Subscription January 1st, 2021 Issue

Empire Australasia (Digital)

January 2021: $2.58

How It Works Book of Extreme Weather Magazine (Digital) Subscription February 1st, 2016 Issue

How It Works Book of Extreme Weather Magazine (Digital)

How It Works Book of Extreme Weather: $8.99

Reviews

48

12

4

0

1

Previous

1234567

Next

Ask a Question

Click stars to rate

Please select a rating for the review.

Please enter title for the review.

Please enter content for the review.

Please enter order number.

Please enter your first name and last name.

Only letters allowed for first name and last name.

Please enter your email.

Upload photo

Cancel Submit

Processing...

Thank you for your feedback! Your review has been submitted and will be published soon.

OK

Be the first to ask a question about this product

Please enter content for the question.

Please enter at least 10 characters.

Your question can not be more than 150 characters.

Please enter your first name and last name.

Only letters allowed for first name and last name.

Please enter your email.

Submit Processing...

Thank you for your question! Your question has been submitted and will be published soon.

Answer this question

Please enter content for the answer.

Please enter at least 10 characters.

Please enter your first name and last name.

Only letters allowed for first name and last name.

Please enter your email.

Submit Cancel Processing...

Thank you for your answer! Your answer has been submitted and will be published soon.

OK

×