Indholdsfortegnelse for Winter-Dec19/JanFeb20 i Fast Company

At the start of 2019, Fast Company ran a 5,300-word examination of what we called “Masa World,” the empire built by SoftBank Vision Fund founder Masayoshi Son. Contributor Katrina Brooker laid out how Son had amassed $100 billion, which he used to back a group of ambitious entrepreneurs deploying artificial intelligence and machine learning to transform food delivery, commerce, transportation, and more. Of all the strivers he’d backed, however, a clear favorite emerged: Adam Neumann, the charismatic cofounder of WeWork. In this issue, our final of 2019, Brooker chronicles the crash of WeWork and the collapse of Neumann’s relationship with Son. Through interviews with dozens of investors, Son and Neumann associates, and current and former WeWork employees, Brooker details the cooling of a once fervid business relationship. In the process,…

IN HER TWO DECADES AS A PROFESSIONAL MODEL—appearing in campaigns for designers such as Stella McCartney and Tommy Hilfiger—Sara Ziff has seen the industry’s glamorous side and its underbelly, which is rife with child labor, low wages, and sexual harassment. Model Alliance, the nonprofit she founded in 2012, advocates for fair labor standards and safer workplaces for models. Under Ziff, the alliance has pushed lawmakers in New York and California to protect underage models, partnered with researchers to study human trafficking and other issues, and launched a high-profile campaign—signed by close to 140 models—to get Victoria’s Secret to commit to safeguarding its models from sexual misconduct. Here, she talks about how modeling agencies have enabled the likes of Harvey Weinstein and Jeffrey Epstein, and why the exploitation of models should…

National Museum of African American History and Culture Washington, D.C. ASHLEY’S SACK This embroidered sack, which tells the story of the sale of a 9-year-old enslaved girl, was a parting gift from the child’s mother. It reads: “It be filled with my love always.” Freedom Rides Museum Montgomery, Alabama GREYHOUND BUS STATION The museum is housed in the station where Freedom Riders stepped off on May 20, 1961, and met mob violence with nonviolence and courage. Bishop Museum Honolulu The Hawaiian chief gifted this cloak and helmet to British explorer James Cook when he arrived in 1779. They were returned to Hawaii in 2016. Nationwide Children’s Hospital Columbus, Ohio CARVED ANIMAL SCULPTURES These hand-carved and-painted wooden animals were commissioned from local carousel carvers in Ohio to greet patients and their…

“YESTERDAY, I LEFT MY WALLET AT HOME,” says Chancelor Bennett, aka Chance the Rapper. It’s 9 p.m. on a fall evening at a Chicago recording studio, and he and his bandmates are packing up for the night. Four days from now, they will put on their biggest show of the year, at the city’s United Center. Bennett sits next to me in high-waisted track pants and a fitted tee. He admits to feeling a little overwhelmed by having a new baby at home and a new tour to prepare for, and yesterday was proof. He had taken his 4-year-old daughter, Kensli, to Dunkin’ for a rare treat before school. It was the first day all week that he had been able to do morning drop-off, and he’d wanted it to…

Faster data and reduced latency. These are the things we know to expect when 5G wireless technology starts rolling out over the first half of the next decade. But just how fast? And how transformative will it be? Few people know better than David Ward, CTO of engineering and chief architect at Cisco, where he oversees the company’s many innovation programs, from open-source strategies to academic research projects. Here, Ward reveals the potential capabilities of 5G and the impact it will have on business. (Spoiler alert: a very significant one.) Can you explain, in basic terms, how 5G improves upon 4G? 5G uses millimeter waves, which typically have higher channel bandwidths, and so can carry a lot more data bits. And by using special antenna arrays—with a relatively small profile—we…

BASE LEVEL You can quickly find any files your colleagues have shared by typing their names into the search bar. BOLD If you’re stuck using the same Google account for both work and personal storage, consider color-coding folders by right-clicking on them and selecting “Change color.” BALLER To quickly compare multiple documents, hold Control or Command while clicking on them, then right-click and select “Preview.” You can then use the arrow keys to cycle through each document.…

“IF YOU HAVEN’T RESPONDED IN 10 MINUTES, PEOPLE WONDER WHAT HAPPENED TO YOU.” I try to handle my email myself. I’ve found that I am a victim of my own efficiency. When you’re [known for responding] really fast, if you haven’t responded in 10 minutes, people wonder what happened to you. I’m going from meeting to meeting, either every 30 minutes or every hour—all day long. And that’s when I’m not traveling to the ships, or around the world. Because we’re such a complicated business, I’m resetting every 30 minutes to focus on a new topic. And there is a whole other dimension to what we do. We were fortunate here in South Florida that we were spared the storm that wreaked havoc in the Bahamas. We needed to mobilize…

BASE LEVEL The key to responsible Slack use is managing your notifications so you’re not tempted to address every little issue after work hours. By default, Slack’s Do Not Disturb mode mutes notifications from 10 p.m. to 8 a.m., but why not start earlier in the evening, so you can unwind without interruption? BOLD Tell Slack to generate less noise in the first place by using the Settings button at the top of each channel. From the Notification Preferences menu, you can silence all alerts from a given channel, or just mute the @channel and @here alerts that go out to everyone. BALLER Let colleagues know when you don’t want to be bothered by integrating your calendar with Slack. Head to the Slack App Directory and install either the Google…

“I HAVE THREE BIKES IN MY OFFICE.” When I was 7 or 8, I used to say I wanted to be an inventor, and people in Taiwan, where I’m from, were like, “What do you mean? You don’t want to be an accountant or an attorney?” I always had ideas. I wanted to make a dog feeder that had a timer so food would come out [when it was time for] a puppy [to eat], which they make today. We immigrated to the States when I was 11, and I ended up studying political science at UCLA with plans to go to law school. My girlfriend, who is now my wife, used to listen to my ideas and suggested I look into industrial design—I had no idea what it was…

“YOU HAVE TO BE KIND OF CRAZY.” You have to be kind of crazy to embark on [this career]. And you have to be crazier to keep on doing it after 21 years, because it is completely excruciating. It is a full-full-full-full-full-time job. If you’re serious about what you do, you never stop thinking about it. I’m physically strong and can put up with long hours of work and being on my feet and cooking all day or having events [where] you’re moving around all day. Restaurants are always going, and it’s sort of like you’re having the same performance every day, but it isn’t the same. You have to keep everybody excited, as if it were the first day, or the only day People in restaurants are used to…

Chobani CEO Hamdi Ulukaya is standing in his company’s industrial-chic test kitchen in lower Manhattan, gleefully doing shots. He’s not drinking alcohol, but something that is, at least for him, another kind of controlled substance: milk. Yes, the Greek yogurt titan—the man who once milked cows for a living and famously bootstrapped what became a $1.5 billion in annual revenue company by getting America hooked on the creamy, tart, and protein-rich yogurt of his Turkish youth—is sensitive to dairy. Around the time his trademark mop of curly hair began turning salt and pepper, Ulukaya realized that he was lactose intolerant and stopped drinking milk. (Yogurt, because of the fermentation process, is easier to digest.) Then, about a year ago, he began stealthily developing his own plant-based alternative. “Awesome, no?” he…

While the medal has been around in some form since 1861, the Congressional Medal of Honor Society was officially chartered in 1958 by President Eisenhower to create a bond between Recipients and maintain their memories, protect the legacy of the medal and promote the values and ideals upon which the country was founded. The Congressional Medal of Honor Foundation was created in 1999 by the Congressional Medal of Honor Society to raise funds to support Recipients’ efforts to further American values through education and outreach. Specifically, the Foundation was tasked with the following three objectives: 1. To support the Congressional Medal of Honor Society. 2. To perpetuate the legacy of the Medal through education, outreach and recognition. 3. To promote the six values embodied in the Medal. Since 2003 the…

AS WE LOOK BACK ON 2019 AT FAST COMPANY, we engaged in a year of living the experience economy—for our marketing partners and our brand alike. From live events and in-person connections to digital platforms and user experience, across the year, our editors and our partners have shown how vital quality personalized experience can be for customers, audiences, and the bottom line. Here are a few snapshots: IN DIGITAL With support from SAP, Fast Company’s website has been undergoing a refresh fueled by user insights and feedback; we hope you like the changes we’ve made to fastcompany.com. This initiative coincided with a major editorial series dedicated to the experience economy, including stories such as “Why Everyone Is Betting on Experience.” AT DAVOS Last January, Fast Company partnered with HCL Technologies…

Freelancers Union Executive director Caitlin Pearce and I collaborated on successful efforts to expand the NYC Human Rights Law to protect freelance workers from sexual harassment and discrimination.” Garment Worker Center GWC is leading the anti-sweatshop movement to improve conditions for tens of thousands of Los Angeles garment workers. This year, the Model Alliance joined the center on a campaign to get [discount retailer] Ross to take responsibility for wage theft in the factories that produce its clothing.” Coalition of Immokalee Workers “The way our Respect Program is structured is brilliant. No credit goes to me. It [reflects what] we learned from the CIW, which structured the Fair Food Program to use market incentives to reward good business with better business.” Time’s Up “Time’s Up has amplified the Model Alliance’s…

Jacobi Anstruther-Gough- Calthorpe has big ambitions for Iris, his two-year-old audio-technology startup. Iris has developed software that makes sound more immersive—ideal for streaming services and smartphones. But Anstruther-Gough-Calthorpe also wants to be in the burgeoning wellness space, plugging his tech into meditation apps and other health products. A decade ago, a well-financed young company such as Iris—investors include Queen drummer Roger Taylor and independent music label Concord—might have tried to serve a narrow set of customers before expanding into new markets and services. But the rapid ascent of startups such as WhatsApp, Instagram (both now owned by Facebook), and payments platform Stripe has emboldened a new generation of founders to position themselves as multichannel, global, and purpose-driven businesses from the outset. To help articulate his sweeping goals to potential funders,…

Last year, J. Michael Prince, president and CEO of USPA Global Licensing Inc., took his creative team on a field trip to the high-profile Aventura Mall in Miami. USPAGL is the exclusive worldwide licensor for U.S. Polo Assn., the official multibillion-dollar brand of the USPA. Prince went on this pilgrimage for creative inspiration, hoping to infuse new ideas into the brand’s retail fleet of 1,100 stores in 180 countries. Expecting to see innovative product, cool technology, and an amazing consumer experience, the excursion was almost a bust—with one exception. Prince realized he was inspired by the fact that he was so uninspired, as he recently explained from his global headquarters in West Palm Beach. “We experienced store after store with excess inventory, few customers, and unmotivated staff. We realized that…

01 Wrangler Icons 124MJ Men’s Denim Jacket (FROM $139, WRANGLER.COM) “I bought the jacket that Brad Pitt wears in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood for my boyfriend this year. The design is the same, but Brad’s vintage one has a zipper instead of buttons—we’re going to take it to a tailor and see if we can get a zip.” —Yasmin Gagne, Editorial Assistant, Fast Company 02 Hyperrice Hypervolt ($349, HYPERRICE.COM) “With interchangeable heads for different types of pressure, this massage gun is a great recovery tool for sore muscles. It’s an ideal gift because it’s indulgent enough that people might not buy it for themselves.” —Aditi Shah, Yoga Instructor 03 Samsung Gear Fit2 Pro ($199, SAMSUNG.COM) The Fit2 Pro allows me to leave my phone at home during workouts…

Time he gets up “Today I woke up at 4. I have a fresh baby, so I wake up real early. [Otherwise I’m up] by 7 or 7:30. I’ve got to take my daughter to school in the morning. And I just wake up early. I don’t know why.” First thing he does in the morning “I talk to my wife. Usually, we wake up together-ish.” How he handles social media “I’m in the business of having to use social media, and I’m of the generation that really, like, made social media what it is. So it’s something I’m on all day. All the time. I think it’s definitely unhealthy, for sure! It’s just the reality of this time.” Last thing he does at night “Play Fortnite.” Time he goes…

“EVERYONE SAYS IT IS DIFFERENT IF I AM THERE IN PERSON.” Gradually, awareness about the harm we have inflicted on the planet has been growing. But while a few take action, most people do nothing. Why? Because they feel hopeless and helpless. “What can I do about it?” they say to themselves. So they do nothing and sink into apathy. The most important message I have for these people is to help them understand that every single day, each of us makes some impact on the planet—and we can choose what sort of impact we make. It is the cumulative effect of millions—or billions—of ethical choices regarding what we buy (especially concerning our diet) that will move us toward a better world. Of course, some people—decision makers in government, CEOs…

“I HAVE A VERY INTENSE TWEETDECK SITUATION.” Twitter is definitely a distraction. But at the same time, I see it as a tremendous asset. If you’re constantly fighting with people, and you just see it as a tool to waste time and be frivolous, then it’s not going to help. You get out of it what you put in. Building up my Twitter following [to more than 500,000 people] has been invaluable. I get a lot of tips via Twitter, and via my encrypted email address, which I have in my Twitter bio. So, most of the time when people reach out to me, they say, “I follow you on Twitter,” or “I saw you on MSNBC.” I have two screens at work. On one, I just have [Twitter feed…

“WE WOULD LITERALLY EAT LUNCH SITTING ON THE GROUND.” During the [10-and-a-half-month-long tennis] tournament season, I’m traveling to a different country every week or two. My older sister [tennis player Mari Osaka] is my best friend—I call her a lot when I’m on the road. Growing up, she was my hitting partner, and my dad was my coach. He’s actually coaching me now at the Japan Women’s Open. The training was harder when I was younger. I used to spend all my time on the court. We would literally eat lunch sitting on the ground. During the offseason, I have a rigid fitness schedule. I work on my fitness for an hour in the morning and then practice for a couple of hours. I hit for two more hours in…

“I PRETTY MUCH KNOW MY SCHEDULE FOR THE WHOLE YEAR.” I’m an only child, and growing up it was a constant challenge to entertain myself. I’ve been keeping busy my whole life: I’m primarily an actor, but I’ve been DJing since I was a teenager. I’m a producer and a director. I’ve done fashion collaborations, and I have a music label. Imagine you’re a farmer with a piece of land, and you’re growing crops. Some vegetables need a full cycle to grow, others grow quicker. You realize you have to juggle each one’s seasonal pattern. That’s how I think of my projects. I like having some variety, so I could be in a few episodes of something funny [like The Office] and then do something more serious [such as Luther…

Marissa Mayer is back where she began: 165 University Avenue in downtown Palo Alto—the office space where, as a newly minted Stanford graduate, in 1999, she became one of the first people to work at a tiny startup called Google. Mayer went on to spend 13 years at the company, helping to shape its key services, before leaving to become CEO of Yahoo, a gig that ended in 2017 when the web pioneer sold itself to Verizon. Now Google’s onetime quarters are home to Lumi Labs, the 15-person startup Mayer cofounded in 2018 with longtime colleague Enrique Munoz Torres to develop smartphone apps that help people “save a few minutes every day,” she tells me. This returns Mayer to her roots in another way as well—in pursuing new productivity-enhancing technology,…

BASE LEVEL Managing a Facebook business page can be stressful, but a little automation can help relieve some of the pressure. From the “Automated Responses” section of your inbox, try scheduling messages for when you’re not working, or create an instant reply that automatically provides more information to the sender. BOLD Tired of answering the same questions repeatedly? While viewing any conversation, click the chat bubble to set up canned responses that you can send with one click. BALLER Connect your Facebook page with the automation program IFTTT to integrate with other services. Automatically upload photos from Instagram, post updates from WordPress, share YouTube videos, and more. Your brand presence will practically run itself.…

2019 was a great year for seeing what AI could do. Waymo deployed self-driving taxis to actual paying customers in Arizona. Bots from OpenAI and DeepMind beat the top professionals in two major esports games. A deep-learning algorithm performed as well as doctors—and sometimes better—at spotting lung cancer tumors in medical imaging. But as for what AI should do, 2019 was terrible. Amazon’s facial recognition software? Racist, according to MIT researchers, who reported that the tech giant’s algorithms misidentify nearly a third of dark-skinned women’s faces (while demonstrating near-perfect accuracy for light-skinned men’s). Emotion detection, used by companies such as WeSee and HireVue to perform threat assessments and screen job applicants? Hogwash, says the Association for Psychological Science. Even the wonky field of natural language processing took a hit, when…

In Pittsburgh, public trash cans aren’t just collecting litter—they’re also gathering data. This summer, the city completed installation of 1,200 smart garbage cans that use sensors to alert sanitation workers when they’re almost full. The city expects them to cut hours spent on litter collection by 66%, while reducing the carbon emissions from garbage trucks and freeing up workers to do other work, such as patching roads. The trash cans are part of a larger effort to transform the former Rust Belt manufacturing center into a tech and entrepreneurship hub that acts as “a model of what the new economy and environmental standards should look like,” says Santiago Garces, director of Pittsburgh’s Department of Innovation and Performance. The city has undergone a number of smart transformations over the past decade,…

When Greenville, South Carolina, native Aki Carpenter was in fifth grade, she visited the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C. “I remember feeling how physical the narrative felt,” she says. Now, nearly three decades later, she works as a design director and associate for Ralph Appelbaum Associates (RAA), the firm responsible for creating the interior spaces of that groundbreaking museum and dozens of others around the world. Carpenter, who has led 12 award-winning projects, oversaw the creative direction and exhibition design for the National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC), which opened in 2016 on the National Mall, and today is playing a similar role for the Obama Presidential Center in Chicago. Here, she shares her playbook for capturing—and holding—people’s attention. CHANNEL EMOTION Even after working on the NMAAHC…

Fast Company chronicles the experience economy in these pages and online, so it’s critically important that we deliver a modern experience of our own. Over the past few months, we asked readers to participate in a survey that investigated their needs and wants when it comes to delivering the content they want, in the ways they want it. These surveys are part of an ongoing Fast Company digital makeover, one that relies on the principle of experience management—enabled by SAP—to provide the best possible experience for our customers, based on their feelings and emotions. We’re now excited to share the results of that feedback with an updated home page for Fast Company that we invite you to visit and experience. Over the coming months, we’ll continue to roll out new…

MUSIC ALBUM The Big Day, Bennett’s first full-length album, debuted at No. 2 on the Billboard 200 in July, making it his highest-charting release. LIVE PERFORMANCE In addition to a September show in Chicago, Bennett headlined London’s Lovebox Festival, the Life is Beautiful festival, and the iHeartRadio Music Festival. COLLABORATION Bennett’s vocals appeared on tracks by YBN Cordae, Supa Bwe, 2 Chainz, and Guapdad 4000. SOUNDTRACK Bennett produced and cowrote a song for September’s film version of Rebecca Sugar’s progressive animated series Steven Universe. VIDEO APPEARANCES THE LION KING Bennett surprised audiences with an unannounced cameo in Disney’s July remake. RHYTHM AND FLOW The Netflix talent competition show, which debuted in October, features Bennett as one of its celebrity judges. BE TWEEN TWO FERNS Bennett made a cameo in the…

“I’M STANDING ON THE SHOULDERS OF PEOPLE WHO DID SO MUCH MORE WITH SO MUCH LESS.” Most of my day is consumed with meetings. I try to insist that there are a couple of hours reserved to [work on] advancing our agenda—like challenging mandatory sentencing of people with severe disabilities, or changing the way people talk and think about race. We have to protect time to advance those projects. We’ve got more than a hundred active death penalty cases, and probably a couple hundred cases involving children sentenced to extreme punishment or life without parole. And we have what we call impact cases, where we’re trying to use a case with a particular narrative that, if we succeed, could help hundreds or thousands of others. We have some class action…

(Microsoft Outlook, Google, or iCal) BASE LEVEL To avoid getting distracted by upcoming dinner parties and kids’ ball games, consider hiding Saturdays and Sundays from your G Suite calendar. Under “View Options” in the Settings menu, uncheck “Show Weekends.” Outlook has a similar option, called “Work Week,” in the Home menu. BOLD By installing the Google Calendar Plus extension in Chrome, you can set your views to only show working hours, display full event titles when you hover over them, stretch out the monthly view to show more events per day, and more. BALLER Use Calendly, Woven, or X.ai to schedule meetings with fewer back-and-forth emails. You set your availability in advance and let others pick the time that works best.…

“MY CLASSMATES KNEW ME AS THE KID WHO WAS ALWAYS IN TROUBLE.” I try to get a few hours of work done before breakfast. I’ve noticed that when I first wake, I’m still kind of half in a dreamlike state, so it’s good for creativity. I only drink water. I stay away from coffee until I need a little jolt. My wife will call me down for breakfast, we’ll talk for a while, and then I go back upstairs. I usually work straight through until late afternoon, when I’ll take a walk, go kayaking, and get out into nature. We’ll have dinner, and then I go back to work until 7 or as late as 12. It takes me anywhere between two and six hours to sketch, write, and revise…

BASE LEVEL Keep up better with the news by returning to a chronological feed; just tap the star at the top of the screen. (Twitter will switch you back to an algorithmic feed at some point, and you’ll have to do this again.) BOLD Add important sources to a Twitter list, which will always flow chronologically, or use TweetDeck, Twitter’s alternative website for power users. It lets you monitor many lists at once and schedule tweets for later. BALLER Set up advanced search columns in TweetDeck. In addition to keywords, you can search for a link (to see who’s talking about a particular story), limit your search results to verified users or a minimum engagement threshold, and get desktop notifications when a result is found.…

“LIVING THINGS ARE ALWAYS UNPREDICTABLE.” [Every night] I send myself an email with the subject line: “rocks.” The idea is to separate the “rocks”—the big priorities—from the “gravel.” When you check your email in the morning, it can become a sinkhole. By sending myself this note, I’m able to use email in a more productive way. At the Spheres [the giant biodomes at Amazon’s Seattle headquarters], we have 40,000 plants—800 different species from more than 30 countries—and thousands of visitors per week. Making sure that all those folks have a good experience is important to me. I’m getting people excited about nature, but also helping them physically feel better, and potentially, I hope, take better care of our planet. I walk to work—if the weather is bad, I take the…

Edward C. Byers Jr., born in Toledo, Ohio, is a United States Navy SEAL. On February 29, 2016, he received the Medal of Honor for the rescue of an American citizen in Afghanistan. He enlisted in the Navy in September 1998 and spent his first four years as a Hospital Corpsman attached to 2nd Battalion, 2nd Marines in Camp Lejeune, North Carolina. In 2002, he attended the toughest military training in the world, Basic Underwater Demolition SEAL (BUD/S) training to become a US Navy SEAL and graduated with Class 242. During his career, Byers, spent up to 280 days a year away from home to include 9 combat deployments (each up to 7 months in length) conducting missions in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Africa. During his assignment as an Assault Team…

Individuals faced with exceptional circumstances can change fate. True heroes exist. The Medal of Honor, America’s highest military award for valor, has been bestowed upon 3,506* individuals in military service since the Civil War. Today, there are only 71* living Recipients of the Medal of Honor As we reflect on their bravery and selflessness, and gratefully acknowledge the courage of our men and women in uniform, we feel compelled to ask this question: “How would you personally respond in the face of adversity?” The Recipients of the Medal of Honor know that within all of us is the power to make positive impacts on our community and Nation. Help support their powerful message Honor our Heroes A tax deductible donation to the Congressional Medal of Honor Foundation supports a number…