Journal

You can’t manage your teams the same way you might have done a decade ago and expect the same results.

What’s true in life is true for managers in 2016: Some things change, some things stay the same. But how do you know which ones fall into which category? For starters, effective managers do what they’ve always done: lead a team of people to efficiently convert a vision into an actual reality. They know how to head off problem scenarios and mitigate those that do arise before they spiral out of control.

Read Full Story

Tell photographer Thomas Brown what you see when you look at his portraits, and forever shape how others take in his work.

Prepare to take the greatest Rorschach test in recent memory.

Read Full Story

As artificial intelligence gains ground, designers will need to adapt. Here’s how to get started.

Artificial intelligence is a $15 billion dollar industry and growing. With more than 2,600 companies developing intelligent technology, the value of AI is expected to rise to more than $70 billion by 2020. And it’s not just attracting the tech giants: USAA is using AI to protect its users from identity theft, and Under Armour has connected its health app, MyFitnessPal, to IBM Watson so users can get a more thorough read of their health.

Read Full Story

The Heijmans One might be the solution to housing crunches in cities. As long as you don’t mind a little crunched housing.

The first thing you notice about the Heijmans One house is how skinny it is. At 3.5 meters across, it’s only a little wider than a parking space—and exactly as wide as the back of a semi, so it can be built in a factory, delivered to an empty space, and set up in a few hours.

Read Full Story

Is your Slack team just starting up—or getting out of control? Advice from the author of the new book Take Control of Slack Admin.

Slack is a productivity tool, designed to make it easier for groups—especially ones spread out across buildings, regions, or continents—to work together seamlessly. But we all know that easy communications can be a two-edged sword.

Read Full Story

This year’s top competitors stand to remake their industries and society at large.

Last year, when we initiated the idea of a New Rivalries package, it was driven in large part by the idea of disruption and insurgents challenging incumbents. It was also influenced by Uber and Lyft. Their competition for riders and drivers was (and is) fascinating, but what was truly instructive at the time was that a lot of prominent people were calling for the two companies to join hands and sing kumbaya. While we don’t endorse dirty tricks, competition is something to be celebrated and learned from, not swept away.

Read Full Story

People are increasingly living past 100. That means some big changes for the future of work.

It’s no secret that people are living longer. But breaking down the numbers is surprising. Life expectancy has increased at a rate of more than two decades every decade, with more people than ever living well into their 80s, 90s, and 100s.

Read Full Story

What looked like a small change to how media companies can share stories could have a huge impact.

Everyone assumes that if Facebook were to drop an anvil on media companies, it’d come in the form of an algorithm reconfiguration, a change in the revenue split on Instant Articles, or some combination of the two.

Read Full Story

Slack and Microsoft, via Office, Skype, and now LinkedIn, are fighting to be the talk of the office.

In an alternate universe, Microsoft wouldn’t have to compete with Slack—because it would own it. In March, TechCrunch reported that Microsoft applications and services chief Qi Lu had pitched his bosses the idea of paying up to $8 billion to acquire the messaging phenom. CEO Satya Nadella and cofounder Bill Gates reportedly nixed the idea, with Gates arguing that Microsoft should instead focus on turning Skype—its voice, video, and messaging service—into a formidable Slack rival.

Read Full Story

Sociology professors unpack research into why traditional diversity efforts don’t work to get more women and minorities hired and promoted.

While some tech companies have made incremental gains for their efforts to increase women and under-represented minorities among their ranks, the overall business landscape isn’t faring much better.

Read Full Story