Indholdsfortegnelse for September 2021 i Fast Company

By now you’ve probably heard about—or experienced—“the Great Resignation,” a term coined by Anthony Klotz, an associate professor of management at Texas A&M University, to describe the wave of people rethinking or quitting their jobs post-pandemic. Some 4 million people quit their jobs in April, the highest reported number since the Bureau of Labor started publishing the data in 2000. Klotz and others cite myriad reasons for the departures. Some people, having tasted virtual work, are seeking more flexible arrangements than their current bosses allow. Many are rethinking their priorities after the health crisis; they’re taking sabbaticals or pursuing work that offers them a greater sense of purpose. Employers looking for ways to stem the tide of resignations might find some inspiration in this issue. Our ranking of the Best…

WHAT I CHECK FIRST Trash Talk ($25, HAY.DK) The Paper Paper bin, made from recycled paper, comes in four muted colors with bright linings. Created by Swedish designer Clara von Zweigbergk for Hay, it’s a perfect place to chuck paper you no longer need as you declutter your desk. Instagram @BLACKFORAGER Hilarious adventures in discovering alternative wild foods. You can never learn enough quirky things about plants. Website DEZEEN.COM I go there to be reminded of how beautiful design can be problem-solving. Form and function and aesthetics are most powerful when blended. Podcast BIO EATS WORLD Cutting-edge conversation topics digging into how biology is fundamentally transforming the future. Twitter @NEILTYSON An astrophysicist and science communicator, he’s the author of my favorite quote: “The good thing about science is that it’s…

What’s your best habit, and what’s your worst? Relentless. Relentless. What do you do when you’re creatively stuck? Go for a walk, read, talk with friends. Is there a businessperson you admire? I am not a businessperson, but perhaps it is worth looking at Abbas I (1571-1629), the fifth Safavid Shah of Iran. What’s the buzzword you never want to hear again? All of them. What’s the best mistake you ever made? Making my first film without knowing anything. How do you unplug? Go for a hike upstate with my partner. Is there a book you recommend to everyone? The Death of Ivan Ilyich by Tolstoy. A story of death that makes you want to be truly alive. What’s the advice you’re glad you ignored? “Trust me.” What advice would you…

01 George Washington Gomez AMÉRICO PAREDES Paredes’s story paints a vivid picture of the Mexican American experience and the duality of identities. 02 Shoe Dog PHIL KNIGHT The story of a startup that crossed the chasm and became an iconic global brand. 03 Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln DORIS KEARNS GOODWIN A lesson in leadership about how Lincoln worked. 04 Love You Forever ROBERT MUNSCH “I’ll love you forever, I’ll like you for always, as long as I’m living my baby you’ll be.” [It’s great to] read to your kids, then cry. OFFICE OBJECT A Lego Set “It forces you to sit down for hours on end to just follow instructions one by one. The linear process and not needing to make any decisions almost feels…

For Keysight’s customers, innovation isn’t an option; it’s a necessity. The electronic measurement company works with clients whose business depends on developing, testing, and harnessing cutting-edge technologies. “We’re innovating at the pace of our customers,” says Marie Hattar, chief marketing officer at Keysight. From 2014 to 2020, Keysight doubled down on this vision. During that time, the company increased R&D investment from 12% to 16% of revenue. Since the company grew significantly over those six years, the actual dollar amount spent on innovation nearly doubled. As Hattar says, “To spur innovation, you have to invest in innovation.” It’s commitments like this that have allowed Keysight to continue developing first-to-market solutions-and that have helped it earn recognition as one of Fast Company’s Best Workplaces for Innovators. A 5G BREAKTHROUGH One focus…

Fans of Spider-Man are used to seeing their neighborhood superhero make acrobatic leaps on the pages of comic books and on the screen. But when guests see a human-scale Spider-Man flipping 85 feet into the air at Disney California Adventure Park’s Avengers Campus, the experience is magical enough to draw audible oohs and ahhs. How do you create an animatronic capable of delivering that kind of emotional impact? You turn to the innovators at Walt Disney Imagineering. Walt Disney created Imagineering to bring together technical expertise with Disney’s creative talent to deliver one-of-kind immersive experiences. Almost 70 years later, Imagineers around the world, representing more than 100 different disciplines, include robotics engineers, designers, sculptors, architects, and writers. “When people come to visit Disney, they want to enter a world where…

Two years ago, the supply chain team at American Eagle Outfitters (AEO)—parent company of American Eagle and Aerie brands—developed a strategic initiative to create a supply chain for the future that would support company growth through a shift to a digital-led commerce model. “We wanted to diversify ourselves out of the complex and labor intensive in-store markets and try to get closer to the customer,” said Shekar Natarajan, AEO Inc.’s chief supply chain officer. The idea was to take its traditional model with three distribution centers and turn it into an adaptable, multitiered network. This would increase productivity by moving stored inventory from retail locations further upstream to allow the company to better place product where there is customer demand—either online or in stores. The team gave themselves five years…

As the COVID-19 pandemic swept the nation last year, millions of people lost their jobs, putting them at risk to miss rent and mortgage payments. After reading an article about a possible impending wave of evictions, a salesperson at SixFifty, the technology subsidiary of Silicon Valley law firm Wilson Sonsini, saw an opportunity for the firm to help. The federal CARES Act passed by Congress in 2020 included protections against evictions and foreclosures, but these didn’t apply automatically-renters and homeowners needed to take steps to invoke the new law. “Legal services can be expensive or inaccessible,” says SixFifty CEO Kimball Parker. “And people didn’t know how to generate the paperwork they needed to protect themselves.” Though SixFifty was founded with an eye toward streamlining legal processes for businesses, its leaders…

It’s not easy being a frontline customer-service agent these days. Consumers have all kinds of questions about products, services, deliveries, promotions and more-and they expect to have them answered quickly, seamlessly, and accurately. While providing a great customer experience is the ultimate goal in every interaction, it’s not always as straightforward as it seems. Such was the case for some employees at TELUS International, an organization that designs, builds, and delivers digital solutions to enhance the customer experience of global brands. While supporting a U.S.-based delivery-services client, team members kept encountering roadblocks. The problem? The client’s existing knowledge base-the system for storing and retrieving information- was clunky and difficult to navigate. Instead of making do, TELUS International employees took a proactive approach to address the issue, developing an AI-powered chatbot…

THE MOST CREATIVE PEOPLE IN BUSINESS 2021 Hrishikesh Hirway CREATOR AND HOST, SONG EXPLODER Musician and former graphic designer Hrishikesh Hirway is the brains behind Song Exploder, a seven-year-old podcast with more than 75 million downloads that invites musicians to break down the creative process behind songs, from Solange’s “Cranes in the Sky” to Fleetwood Mac’s “Go Your Own Way.” Last year, it became a two-volume, eight-episode Netflix series, featuring artists such as Dua Lipa and Lin-Manuel Miranda, which brought Hirway’s ability to deconstruct music-teasing out the emotion behind songwriting and production, not just technical particu- lars-to a wider audience. Hirway has produced other pod- casts, including Home Cooking, with Samin Nosrat, and The West Wing Weekly, with Joshua Malina, and is developing additional TV shows. What gave you the…

When upstart activist hedge fund Engine No. 1 secured three seats on the board of Exxon-Mobil, in June, it was a high-profile repudiation of the way the country’s largest oil company has long conducted business: with a laser focus on returns and a blind eye to its impact on the world at large. The fund vowed to push ExxonMobil to develop a plan to address climate change and reduce its carbon footprint. Exxon’s responsibility as a business would no longer be only to its shareholders, the boardroom showdown signaled, but also to the public and the planet. To pull off this coup, however, Engine No. 1 first needed to woo other, bigger shareholders. Launched in December 2020 with a goal of getting companies to prioritize longterm value, the fund found…

Last year, as the U.S. went into lockdown, a clear need arose: Many older Americans needed assistance with simple tasks like picking up prescriptions and going to the grocery store. At the same time, volunteers around the country had raised their hands to let the organization know they were ready to help. The problem was connecting the two groups. Just days after the pandemic was declared, AARP Innovation Labs quickly developed and launched its new Community Connections platform within 10 days, with a Spanish language site coming just five days later. “To be able to move at such a quick pace and to be helping millions of people across the country in a short period of time was amazing,” says Jo Ann Jenkins, CEO of AARP. In fact, such innovation…

For more than 40 years, thousands of people have made a home in the Sahrawi refugee camp in the Sahara Desert in Algeria. Refugees there have typically survived on a combination of international aid and tending livestock whose diet consisted of garbage and organic waste. It’s not a place where you’d expect to see people growing their own food. That’s exactly what’s been happening over the last few years, though, with the help of an innovation team of the United Nations organization called the World Food Programme (WFP) Innovation Accelerator. In 2016, WFP piloted its H2Grow hydroponic cultivation initiative to help people affected by hunger grow their own food. You don’t need soil for hydroponic farming, and it uses 90% less water and 75% less space than traditional farming. These…

AGUIRRE, THE WRATH OF GOD WERNER HERZOG He sees the world with depth and without averting his eyes. WHERE IS THE FRIEND’S HOUSE? ABBAS KIAROSTAMI Persian poetry told with a camera. MEAN STREETS MARTIN SCORSESE Personal, vibrant, character-driven filmmaking. DEKALOG KRZYSZTOF KIEŚLOWSKI A masterwork of cinema that captures the unknowable.…

For the third year, Fast Company is recognizing more than 100 organizations, leaders, and teams that have created cultures of innovation and sustained them, even as remote work extended into 2021. The companies on the Best Workplaces for Innovators list found ways to collaborate and invent despite the challenges posed by the pandemic, and in some cases applied their innovation prowess to the dilemmas of virtual work: PepsiCo, for example, teamed with BlockWorks to embed management training in the game Minecraft based on a suggestion from an employee’s child. More employers are touting cultures of innovation to aid in recruiting. “This year we really focused on the importance of workplace and how companies are able to use innovation at work as a differentiator to attract talent,” says Paul Daugherty, group…

Other Standouts by Category U.S. COMPANIES FINALISTS → Ascendum Solutions CINCINNATI → Cadence Design Systems SAN JOSE → Intuit MOUNTAIN VIEW, CA → Paypal SAN JOSE → Workiva AMES, IA INTERNATIONAL COMPANIES FINALISTS → ATB Financial CALGARY, ALBERTA → New World Development HONG KONG → Telus International VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA → Traveloka TANGERANG, INDONESIA → VIPKid BEIJING SMALL COMPANIES FINALISTS → 300 Entertainment NEW YORK → MycoWorks EMERYVILLE, CA → Ramp NEW YORK → Sidebench SANTA MONICA, CA → The Variable WINSTON-SALEM, NC MEDIUM COMPANIES FINALISTS → Amur Equipment Finance GRAND ISLAND, NE → Bolt SAN FRANCISCO → DealerPolicy WILLISTON, VT → Roofstock OAKLAND, CA → Team One LOS ANGELES LARGE COMPANIES FINALISTS → Booz Allen Hamilton MCLEAN, VA → Curative SAN DIMAS, CA → Motorola Solutions CHICAGO → Nike…

THE MOST CREATIVE PEOPLE IN BUSINESS 2021 Janicza Bravo FILMMAKER Things move fast on Twitter. Within hours of filmmaker Janicza Bravo reading exotic dancer Aziah “Zola” King’s 148-tweet account of a road trip gone epically bad in 2015, Bravo asked her agents to obtain the film rights. But she was already too late. Years later, when the project’s initial director dropped out, she got another chance. Bravo spent months making an ultimately successful case to indie studio A24, which held the rights, that she should take over the project. Her pitch? That it was possible to convey on-screen the digital vitality of a story told through tweets. Zola, which came out in theaters in June 2021—still riding the tidal wave of positive buzz it earned at Sundance in 2020—unfolds with…

In 1996, the internet had yet to make significant inroads into financial markets. Trading floors were noisy, energetic places, where traders yelled into phones—and at each other—as they bought and sold securities. Lee Olesky, then at Credit Suisse First Boston, and his colleague Jim Toffey, recognized the potential of this new technology to transform the piece of the financial sector they knew best: the fixed-income market, where bonds and other debt securities are traded. The company they founded, Tradeweb, became one of the first internet-based platforms for trading fixed-income securities. Fast forward 20-plus years, and Tradeweb averages $1 trillion in trading volume daily, serving banks, insurance companies, brokerage firms, pension funds, and other institutions globally. “The theme throughout this has been to build new tools,” says Olesky, now Tradeweb’s chief…

PHOEBE BRIDGERS SINGER AND SONGWRITER; FOUNDER, SADDEST FACTORY RECORDS THE MOST CREATIVE PEOPLE IN BUSINESS 2021 Phoebe Bridgers’s devastating yet wel- comingly absurd sophomore album, Punisher, gave fans the solace they sought during quarantine, garnering both critical acclaim and four Grammy noms, including Best New Artist. But like most “new” artists, Bridgers has been around-creating her signature nihilistic folk sound with wit and relatable lyrical specificity-since even before her debut album, Stranger in the Alps, was released in 2017. (She was touring with Julien Baker in 2016.) Punisher is Bridgers at her finest: lightly touching on heartbreak, but mostly reveling in poetic existentialism. Bridgers extended her creativity this year to promoting the album, delivering performances, often from her apartment, that were both aligned with her musical ethos and perfectly designed…

When the pandemic first closed in on Synchrony’s Stamford, Conn., headquarters, leadership realized the consumer financial-services company needed to act fast. Faced with an unprecedented challenge, Synchrony quickly moved its roughly 16,000-person workforce home. There was no time for presentations and long discussions. “The leadership team recognized we needed to operate differently,” says Carol Juel, Synchrony’s chief technology and operating officer. Guided by her experience in the tech sector, Juel suggested that management start operating as an agile team, prioritizing speed and decision-making. The team met multiple times a day to discuss issues and make strategic decisions. With leadership’s support, Juel led adoption of agile principles into every corner of the business. In a difficult year, the company saw its massive investment in technology made just a few years earlier…

THE MOST CREATIVE PEOPLE IN BUSINESS 2021 JONATHAN ANDERSON FOUNDER AND CREATIVE DIRECTOR, JW ANDERSON; CREATIVE DIRECTOR, LOEWE COMPANY Designer Jonathan Anderson didn’t let the closed catwalks of the past year deter him from making a statement with his namesake label, JW Anderson. To debut his spring 2021 women’s wear collection, for example, he enchanted fans by creating paper dolls wearing all 37 looks, which could be held up next to a variety of poster backgrounds, letting people create their very own dioramas. “I wanted to make something tactile that could involve the viewer and make them feel part of the collection,” Anderson says. He had embraced a similar crafty ethos a few months earlier, when a ’70s-inspired patchwork cardigan he designed for the JW Anderson spring/summer menswear collection went…

THE MOST CREATIVE PEOPLE IN BUSINESS 2021 Mary Beth Laughton CEO, ATHLETA Superstar gymnast Simone Biles announced in April that she was cutting ties with Nike to sign a partnership with Athleta, saying she valued the women’s activewear brand for seeing her as a person, not just an athlete. Two years earlier, Athleta wooed sprinting champion Allyson Felix, who announced she was leaving Nike because it had failed to support her when she was pregnant. “ Athletes, just like consumers, are choosing brands whose values match their own,” says Mary Beth Laughton, who oversaw both deals. Since becoming CEO in 2019, Laughton has supercharged Athleta’s longstanding mission of empowering its consumers, both famous and not. When stores shut down during COVID-19, Athleta launched a virtual “(Em)power Hour” series, featuring ambassadors…

THE MOST CREATIVE PEOPLE IN BUSINESS 2021 Andi Owen CEO, MILLERKNOLL When iconic American furniture designer Herman Miller announced it was acquiring Knoll this past spring for $1.8 billion, it cemented its status as a modern design juggernaut. The feat was the latest power move by CEO Andi Owen, who joined Herman Miller in 2018 following a career at Gap. Owen’s mission has been to expand the company’s ambit from an office furniture seller (Herman Miller invented the cubicle in the 1960s) into a general design company that sells covetable goods for the office, the home, and everywhere in between. She acquired a majority interest in buzzy Danish furniture and accessories brand Hay in 2020, for example, to bolster MillerKnoll’s direct-to-consumer audience. Today, direct retail accounts for 23% of the…

The Furniture Facsimile Ikea touts its Scandinavian design roots and frequently collaborates with leading firms, but it’s been known to “borrow” from them, such as its 2015 line of molded chairs that leaned heavily on Eames. Influencing the Influencer As influencers launch their own fashion brands, their copycat tendencies are coming under fire: Both Arielle Charnas and Danielle Bernstein have been called out by watchdog Diet Prada. The Prime Reproduction Amazon’s growing private-label portfolio has earned the ire of Allbirds, whose shoes it has knocked off, and lawmakers, who call its practice of prioritizing its own brands monopolistic. Runway to Reality Zara is notorious for replicating runway items. In 2016, it was called out for dupes of footwear from Brother Vellies and Yeezy (by Teen Vogue and Quartz, respectively) and…

► ESG investing is rising $17 TRILLION Amount of professionally managed assets in the U.S. where ESG is taken into consideration Increase since 2018 ► ESG-minded activist hedge funds are growing $1.4 BILLION Amount of assets under management by Impactive Capital But they are relatively tiny: Assets under management by Elliott Investment Management ► Institutional investors are just getting started How major investors voted on supporting climate resolutions at companies in 2020 (percent supported): In January, BlackRock pledged to expand the number of carbon-intensive companies under scrutiny. ► ESG reporting by companies is becoming standard of S&P 500 companies and of the companies in the Russell 1000 Index published sustainability reports in 2019.…

The right tool can elevate even the most mundane task, as Office Space’s Milton Waddams knows. Italian inventor Aldo Balma designed the first Zenith stapler, in 1948, to be stylish and ultrafunctional, with an ingenious anti-jamming mechanism. The now iconic whale-shaped device gets a multicolor upgrade for the Zenith 590, which is sturdy, reliable, and versatile. It can be used for papers on a desk or posters on a wall. ($23, cultpens.com)…

01 “Good as Hell” LIZZO It’s such an empowering song and projects the confidence we all need to start the day on a high note. 02 “Summertime” ELLA FITZGERALD When I really need to concentrate, I put on jazz music. 03 “The Steps” HAIM At the beginning of lockdown, our team put together a WFH playlist on Spotify, which is where I discovered this song. I love the insouciance in their music. 04 “My Future” BILLIE EILISH I am a big fan of Billie—she is unapologetically herself and her soothing (and almost hypnotic) voice is incredibly unique. 05 “It Ain’t Over ‘Til It’s Over” LENNY KRAVITZ When I finish my day, I want to celebrate the small wins and appreciate what the failures can teach me; it is how I…

Last year, five newly hired engineers and data scientists at FIS decided to band together to compete in InnovateIN48, the fintech company’s annual internal hackathon. Members of a new artificial intelligence (AI) team at FIS, they came up with a way to use natural language processing to improve the customer-service process. Their product, Intelligent Ticket Advisor, now has a patent pending and is being incorporated into FIS’s customer-service platforms. That’s not a bad outcome for an invention that lost early in the hack-athon. But thanks to strong internal support and a culture that fosters innovation, Intelligent Ticket Advisor is now ready for prime time. Bruce Lowthers, president of FIS, credits the firm’s chairman and CEO, Gary Norcross, for inspiring innovation at the company. “When Gary became CEO in 2015, he…

Sometimes the entrepreneurial spirit needs a turbo boost. That’s exactly what gener8tor, a startup accelerator that operates in 28 cities across the U.S. and Canada provides. “We help entrepreneurs figure out how to bring their idea to market, how to grow it, or, if it isn’t working, how to come up with something new and innovative,” says Chelsea Linder, gener8tor’s vice president of operations. And the company doesn’t limit its work to tech startups. For gener8tor, the term entrepreneur encompasses musicians, artists, investors, corporations, and even universities. The common denominator of these individuals and organizations is that they’re working to bring positive change to their communities. Essentially, gener8tor is a company of innovators working on behalf of other innovators. The results they achieve together might be described as innovation squared.…

Last year, a conversation between Klick Health Vice President Yan Fossat and his wife, an operating room nurse at a Toronto hospital, kickstarted a warp-speed innovation exercise. The problem: The process of intubating COVID-19 patients can lead to dangerous airborne virus particles. A Taiwanese physician had developed a simple box to contain those particles, but no model existed that would meet requirements for use in North American hospitals. Fossat brought up the issue to his colleagues at Klick, which helps life-sciences companies bring their ideas—for new treatments, medical devices, etc.—to market. Peter Flaschner was one of those colleagues. Flaschner, Klick’s managing director of brand experience, was working closely with a vendor to develop plexiglass housing for a unique marketing mailer. He thought the material would be perfect for designing this…

THE MOST CREATIVE PEOPLE IN BUSINESS 2021 Grace Hwang GENERAL MANAGER OF DESIGN AND UX RESEARCH OF MIXED REALITY, MICROSOFT Grace Hwang leads a cross-disciplinary team at Microsoft that explores what the future of the five- year-old HoloLens mixed-reality project looks like-a glowing, secondary world of holographic objects and people that can appear in an ordinary home or office. This year, the company debuted its “Mesh” platform- a virtual conference room where people can meet not just via HoloLens but also through an Android tablet, iPhone, or Oculus VR headset. Current customers include Accenture and James Cameron’s nonprofit, OceanX. Right now, Microsoft describes Mesh as a conference table. But is that just a stopgap for something bigger in the future? Right now, it’s about bringing people quite literally to the…

THE MOST CREATIVE PEOPLE IN BUSINESS 2021 Shaka King WRITER AND FILMMAKER When Judas and the Black Messiah debuted in February, the film was poised to offend everyone. After months of civil unrest fueled by police violence against Black Americans, the true story of Fred Hampton, a young Black socialist leader assassinated by the FBI, ran the risk of alienating people who view the Black Panthers with suspicion and those who believe Hampton’s revolutionary ideology hasn’t received its proper due. Incredibly, director Shaka King managed to isolate this important piece of American history, wrap it in the sheen of a ’70s crime thriller, and deliver a critically adored film that reportedly attracted more viewers in its first week on HBO Max than Zack Snyder’s Justice League and also won an…

Nsé Ufot CEO, NEW GEORGIA PROJECT AND NEW GEORGIA PROJECT ACTION FUND THE MOST CREATIVE PEOPLE IN BUSINESS 2021 As the leader of the New Georgia Project, the Stacey Abrams-founded civic engagement organization, and its political action arm, the New Georgia Project Action Fund, Nsé Ufot is on a mission not just to enroll new voters in her state but to turn them into what she calls “super voters”- people who show up for each and every election. Since its founding, in 2014, the NGP has helped more than 500,000 young people and people of color register to vote across the state, which tipped Georgia blue in the 2020 presidential race and delivered Democrats Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff to the Senate. Ufot is now working to protect these new…

THE MOST CREATIVE PEOPLE IN BUSINESS 2021 EBRO DARDEN GLOBAL EDITORIAL HEAD OF HIP-HOP AND R&B, APPLE MUSIC; COHOST, HOT 97 ’S EBRO IN THE MORNING When Apple Music named Ebro Darden as its first head of hip-hop and R&B, in 2019, Darden, who’s also the cohost of one of the highest-rated hip-hop and R&B morning radio shows in the United States, saw it as more than just an opportunity to go global. It was a chance, he says, to expand his mission “to platform the other genres where Black artists don’t get to shine.” For example, last year he commissioned Black artists across genres, from country to gospel, to create original music for an Apple Music compilation celebrating Juneteenth. He’s also been able to amplify international Black artists who…

Innovation often conjures a lonely image: a single person tinkering with a new design in the garage late into the night. But at Booz Allen, collaboration, not isolation, is what breeds innovation. Back in 2017, when the consulting firm first partnered with seven different federal agencies to redesign Recreation.gov at no cost to the federal government, they upended what was long considered the standard public-private contract. Instead of relying on traditional cost structures to manage the government’s website for helping visitors discover and reserve the nation’s public lands, Booz Allen uses a transaction-based fee model that lets the government and the firm share in risk, reward, results, and impact. A true public-private partnership-it uses no government money-Booz Allen invested in the development of the platform, and its income is generated…

ATB Financial has been around for a while-83 years, to be exact. Despite its venerable tradition, the Alberta, Canada- based company continues to press the accelerator on innovation, particularly when it comes to emerging technologies such as blockchain, artificial intelligence, and machine learning. “The pace and scale of innovation is accelerating across the board, forcing traditional organizations to shift gears from incremental change to completely reimagining the core of their business,” says Sue McGill, ATB’s SVP of ATB Ventures. “It’s no longer a question of what an organization should change, but rather how quickly a company can transform itself so it’s ready for the next disruption.” To that end, in 2018 ATB launched ATB Ventures, which brings together entrepreneurs, technologists, and creatives with diverse backgrounds and experiences to develop cutting-edge…

THE MOST CREATIVE PEOPLE IN BUSINESS 2021 JADALIA BRITTO SENIOR EXPERIENCE AND INNOVATION GLOBAL BRAND DESIGN MANAGER FOR HILL'S, A COLGATE BRAND W When Colgate was developing its new low-waste Keep toothbrush, which has a reusable aluminum handle and replaceable heads (a starter pack costs $9.99; additional heads are $4.99 for two), the company wanted to come up with a plastic-free way to package it before it hit stores in early 2021. That’s where Jadalia Britto, then a senior global brand design lead in Colgate-Palmolive’s oral care division, stepped in. Instead of the usual clear plastic “blister” affixed to a piece of cardboard, Britto created a tray-comparable to the cost of existing plastic solutions-made from biodegradable sugarcane and wood fiber that’s heat sealed to a piece of recycled cardboard, which…

Several years ago, the engineers, designers, architects, and construction experts at Clayco earned the opportunity to build a research and development facility for a major pharmaceutical company. As the cutting-edge plant was built, Clayco’s teams flew drones over the Chesterfield, Mo., site daily to scan and capture the placement of every pipe and piece of conduit both above and below ground. Clayco used the footage to create a digital model of the building. This allowed headset-wearing team members to virtually walk through the facility, “seeing” through the walls to the infrastructure behind them. While drones and virtual building models aren’t necessary for every project, they proved to be critical for this one: the research lab where Pfizer ultimately developed the COVID-19 vaccine. As the effort to research and develop the…