“Promoting savings is one of our core values” says Benson Porter who took over as CEO of the credit union BECU in 2012—77 years after the member-owned financial cooperative was formed.

As a banker, Porter says, you hear plenty of stories about people who do everything right in handling their finances “but then something happens–a medical condition or a spouse dies prematurely. That puts them on a downward spiral.” In these situations, your savings can be a crucial buffer. But banks typically pay their highest interest rate to the depositors that give them the most money, upwards of $100,000, “That makes it hard to motivate people living paycheck-to-paycheck to put money in a savings accounts, especially with the low interest rate environment we’ve been in.” (He cites a report that found 43% of Americans can’t afford a $400 emergency expense.)

So Porter and BECU have flipped that model, “We pay our highest interest rate on the first $500 in deposit from our members, whether it’s kids or adults, to show them the benefit of savings.” The 6% interest rate that BECU offers is incredibly rare in today’s historically low interest rates, and it incentivizes the their members to start saving. Last year, the bank returned $174 million to its members (or $180 per member) in the form of better rates and lower fees, Porter points out.

He credits the innovation with making them the “preferred piggy bank for kids in the Puget Sound because we have over 90,000 of these early saver accounts, and I think it’s popular with parents and the kids because they actually can see their money grow.” The bank, which began as an institution for Boeing’s employees and their families, has since expanded its membership to those who live and work in Washington state (changing their name from Boeing Employees’ Credit Union to BECU in 2004 to better reflect their membership).

Under Porter’s leadership, BECU has also applied the same customer focused thinking to its lending products. “When our members make good financial decisions over the year and their credit score improves, we automatically lower the interest rate on their consumer loans.” As part of a program, which is unique to BECU, he reports that last year the credit union’s 40,000 members “saw an automatic decrease in their interest rate that saved them $2.7 million dollars in interest charges.”

In many ways, BECU’s approach is summed up in its tagline, “more than just money” which is directly counter to how big banks operate. Unlike most large banks that no longer hold their own mortgages, selling them into the secondary market (trading activity in that market turned out to be a major reason for the financial collapse in 2008), he says, “we hold many of our mortgages in portfolio which gives us almost complete ability to modify a loan. The difference for BECU is that we own it, we hold the servicing and so we’re able to make that decision.”

Its keen focus on listening to its customers explains why the credit union has grown to more than 1 million members, to become the fourth largest in the U.S. They are driving innovation in the financial services industry in large part by doing so, and uncovering new opportunities to develop some of their most successful products.

Relationships, Not Returns

“Banks struggle to serve because their focus is on profit,” says Porter. “Community banking allows them to not treat people as just numbers.” Unlike a bank, a credit union is a member organization and its owners are also its customers. This avoids the conflict that banks face in meeting the needs of their customers versus its shareholders. Porter says he has only one boss–his customers, and that informs how the bank measures its performance.

“Our metrics are not at all related to financial return,” he says. “All of our employees across our organization have member experience as part of their performance goals. This makes us different from for-profit banks that look to sell more products to their customers each year. We don’t look at it that way.”

Instead, BECU uses the net promoter score to measure their success. It’s a measure, now used widely in the market, that simply asks customers if they would refer a friend or family member to their business. Porter says  BECU’s score is more than double the banking average; 35% of BECU’s customers report they would refer it to their friends.

For Porter, it is important as CEO to really get out and meet members. Every month he personally reaches out to “our members who are first time home buyers or are celebrating a long term anniversary as a member of the credit union, and I’ll give them a call.” Though he admits many of these calls end up in voicemail, he shares a time when he reached a young woman’s cell phone. “She happened to be at Home Depot in the process of buying paint, to go paint a wall in a new condo, that she’d just purchased with a loan from us. It was just great. I mean, she was so happy.”

CEO As Chief Culture Officer

Porter invests similar time with his employees understanding and building empathy for the work they do. “I go to the contact center, sit down with one of our customer service reps, and listen to calls. When you sit in their shoes and see all the screens they have to go through in order to serve our members… it’s helped lead us to new initiatives as we try to improve those experiences.”

BECU also hosts an annual meeting with their members, which is billed as their “members’ summit”, where members can sign-up to educate themselves on topics like retirement planning or buying their first home, and members can also ask BECU’s executive team their questions on any topic.

While Porter says he is confident their “members love BECU.” He still wonders “if we will lose the magic sauce as we grow. Can you still have the same culture, the same employee experience as you grow?”

As a result, he views his role as the credit union’s chief culture officer to keep their community focused culture alive. This more than anything else informs his leadership approach including the hiring decisions they make as they grow, “The vast majority of people we hire to BECU come from other service organizations because we want to target people who like serving. We generally don’t hire people from other financial institutions unless it’s a particular skill set gap that we’re trying to fill. We generally hire from great service organizations like Nordstrom’s and Starbucks and others, and we’re fortunate to have so many of these organizations, here in the northwest, that we can find talent from.”

Cash-Free Branches

BECU has relatively few physical branches and the majority have no money on site. Instead of tellers, its neighborhood financial centers have member consultants who provide one-on-one support for opening accounts and lending services. This was the result of a major push to invest in ATMs, online, and mobile banking, after Porter came on board as CEO. He says, “People want to be able to bank wherever they are 24/7.”

Porter recalls being so excited when the bank rolled out its new mobile application. “We had done everything. And I thought this is going to be great.” But the product was not as well received by their members, “It was in the app store rated two stars.” So he began to engage with his members to get their input and turn it around, and discovered that they had let the technology lead the way instead of designing the app to their members’ needs. For Porter, this was an important reminder of the value of listening to their customers, “We don’t want to lead them farther than they want to go. And sometimes technology will do that to you.”

The feedback led to nine releases over the next 12 months. As a result, “It’s now a five-star-rated app, one of the top in the app stores for any bank in the country, and to us it’s the example we use around here, to go where the puck is going to go–but then we also listen to our members to make sure we do it in a way that they appreciate.”

Importance of Storytelling

For Porter, the culture and success of BECU lies in stories. “We can share facts and figures about our performance and growth, but I don’t think they reflect our values like a story does.” He is regularly telling stories and soliciting them from both his employees and their members.

“I think the story we probably tell the most is about how BECU came into being.” The credit union was founded by 18 Boeing employees, during the Great Depression when Boeing didn’t supply the tools that new workers needed. At the time small consumer loans weren’t available. “There really wasn’t a source for folks to be able to go out and buy these tools. These eighteen workers had the foresight, after reading an article in the Reader’s Digest about a new cooperative lending concept. They put in 50 cents each, so they had a credit union with assets of nine dollars. Their first loan was a $2.50 tool loan. That’s how we got started. BECU was basically as a tool lending cooperative.”

“It’s good to keep reminding people of why were we formed to exist and what we are really about,” he says. “It was people helping people.” That philosophy guides BECU to this day.

This article is part of a series of articles by Aaron Hurst exploring how leaders find purpose and meaning in their jobs. Last fall, Hurst’s company, Imperative, released a global survey of the role of purpose at work, in partnership with LinkedIn Talent Solutions, which found that those who are intrinsically motivated to find purpose in their jobs consistently outperform their colleagues and experience greater levels of job satisfaction and well-being, regardless of country, gender, or ethnicity. They are also 50% more likely to be leaders. This series will profile those leaders, and how they connect with what’s meaningful to them in their role and the organizations they lead.

Apple’s announcement of the HomePod during its WWDC keynote on Monday followed a familiar pattern. That included the onstage acknowledgement that other companies have been producing lots of products that fall short in some way. This time–unlike with the introduction of Apple TV and the iPhone, when Apple swiped at perceived design flaws of the competition–the company offered a simple contrast. Marketing chief Phil Schiller simply alluded to Sonos by saying that there are Wi-Fi speakers that aren’t smart. And then he referenced Amazon’s Echo by saying that there are smart speakers that aren’t Wi-Fi (multiroom) speakers.

HomePod, it turns out, is both. But not in equal parts. With its emphasis on audio quality, networking capabilities, and spatial awareness, the HomePod is clearly more of a competitor to Sonos than to the Echo. Apple may have used the renewed attention around home audio generated by the Echo as an opportunity to introduce its own product in the category, particularly as it happened to have a voice agent (Siri) and streaming music service (Apple Music) at the ready.

Siri has boned up on enough musical metadata to qualify as (in Apple’s term) a “musicologist.” And with its HomeKit-powered smart home integration, HomePod may be as useful a speaker-based agent as an Echo or Google Home. But it’s clearly not aimed at those looking for a simple way to get things done away from a smartphone.

As Apple itself mentioned, Siri is often used to deal with information that has nothing to do with music. Indeed, a recent ComScore survey showed that general questions and weather were the most requested tasks asked of smart speakers. The list included plenty of low-fi applications, although more than half of respondents streamed music. And speaking of Siri requests, HomePod’s introduction also muddies the rationale for Apple Watch, a device that Apple has positioned as providing a portal to Siri without having to pull out your iPhone. However, at the HomePod’s hefty $349 price, it won’t serve as a cheaper option.

With rivals looking to build their assistants into all manner of products beyond standalone speakers, and Wi-Fi routers now sprouting mesh networks that could receive voice requests around the home, HomePod is unlikely to bring new people into the Apple ecosystem, particularly since–as far as I know–it will be tied to Apple Music as its exclusive streaming option.

But Apple’s discussion of the product’s powerful A8 processor (the same one used in the iPhone 6) may foreshadow how the product could go well beyond what Sonos offers today. The HomePod is capable of hosting its own operating system, just as the Apple TV and indeed the iPhone itself did even before they evolved from devices into platforms.

It’s hard to say what HomePod apps would look like–or, rather, sound like–and how they might differ from existing Siri extensions. Like Apple Watch apps, they could serve primarily as extensions to existing apps. Or they might focus primarily on music services, the way Apple TV apps skew strongly toward video. But it would be very much in Apple’s spirit to allow developers to go beyond the simple commands that Alexa can handle and bolster Siri’s value and intelligence in the process.

In late August 2016, Elon Musk went to check out the first iteration of his new “solar roof” product on a customer’s home. Musk has famously high product standards, but he needed this one in particular to be a stunner. The Tesla CEO was in the middle of pushing through a controversial, multi-billion-dollar acquisition of SolarCity, the company his cousins Lyndon and Peter Rive cofounded. This new offering would be key to selling Tesla and SolarCity shareholders on the merger. In fact, just weeks earlier, on an August 9 SolarCity earnings call, Musk hinted that a “beautiful” roof product would soon be unveiled, telling analysts that it would create a “huge market” for the combined companies. “What if we can offer you a roof that looks way better than a normal roof? That lasts far longer than a normal roof?” he teased. “Different ballgame.”

Yet internally at SolarCity, the solar roof product was far from what he would consider market-ready, let alone beautiful, according to nearly a dozen sources familiar with the project. In recent months, SolarCity had focused on developing a standing-seam metal roof with solar integration, code-named “Steel Pulse.” Whereas traditional solar panels are usually mounted on top of existing shingles, the basic goal of Steel Pulse was to make the roof itself solar powered, so it looked like a normal roof, yet generated electricity through embedded solar cells. Some employees felt Steel Pulse was unattractive, but the project’s leaders, including then-CTO Peter Rive, seemed keen on its aesthetics, and pushed ahead. The company found customers who were open to having the latest prototype installed on their Bay Area home, and when it was ready, Peter invited his cousin to see the metal solar roof in the wild.

Musk hated the implementation. According to two sources, after he arrived, he told Peter and other team members that they were wasting his time with this “piece of shit.” He demanded more “stunning” concepts and soon directed the team to pivot their focus toward a different style of solar roof—and fast. After all, Tesla and SolarCity shareholders would be voting soon on whether or not to approve the merger. Musk needed this new product to live up to the expectations he had set on the earnings call weeks ago.

This story of the Solar Roof’s beginnings, gleaned through research conducted for Fast Company‘s new feature on the Tesla-SolarCity merger, sheds light on Musk’s approach to innovation. He has always thrived on the perception that he will be able to pull off the impossible, which affords him time to deliver on his promises and an unusual degree of goodwill when that delivery takes longer than expected. Given his successes at Tesla and SpaceX, why bet against him? But in this particular instance, considering the timeline of Steel Pulse’s development with the SolarCity acquisition, some insiders have wondered if Musk sold shareholders on a product that didn’t exist. “It’s all about the narrative for Elon,” says a source close to Musk. “Solar Roof was as ‘real’ as anything he’s ever shown [off to the public]. Was it a finished product? By no means.”

Related: The Real Story Behind Elon Musk’s $2.6 Billion Acquisition Of SolarCity And What It Means For Tesla’s Future–Not To Mention The Planet’s

The demo Musk introduced last October at a splashy presentation was a glass-tile solar roof, much different from the metal prototype he’d seen before. How did he pull off this transformation in just weeks? More to the point, who executed the idea and when? Leaders at Tesla and SolarCity, including Lyndon and Peter Rive, gave a variety of different answers on the timeline of its origin and development. At first, the companies said Solar Roof was a Tesla product, and then, later, a SolarCity product. Public statements are similarly contradictory. Some involved with the product’s development suggest that the mixed messages are a result of the combined companies’ wish not to appear as if they rushed out the glass-tile prototype in order to be able announce a high-profile product before the shareholder vote on the acquisition, which some critics viewed as Tesla bailing out SolarCity.

Solar Roof tile vs. hail at 110 mph

A post shared by Tesla (@teslamotors) on May 10, 2017 at 12:30pm PDT

The reality is that much of the early credit goes to an entrepreneur named Jack West and his R&D team, according to multiple sources. West cofounded a company called Zep Solar, which developed an attractive, industry-leading panel-mounting system. After SolarCity acquired the startup in late 2013, the mounting system helped lower SolarCity’s average time of rooftop solar installations from days to just hours.

The Zep Solar team operated relatively independently, with a culture unique from SolarCity’s. West and another cofounder, Daniel Flanigan, held impromptu jam sessions at their office in San Rafael, CA, and often code-named their products after musicians, such as “Jimi Hendrix.” The name “Steel Pulse” comes from the British reggae band.

Related:Can Elon Musk Get SolarCity’s Gigafactory Back On Track?

In late 2015, West and the Zep Solar team, which functioned as one of SolarCity’s R&D units, started more seriously exploring whether they could build an “integrated roof,” meaning that the solar cells would be built inside the roof itself. Such a vision would require that SolarCity begin handling complete re-roofing jobs, rather than simply installing solar panels. When West and team brought the idea to SolarCity execs, they stressed the advantages that SolarCity, with all its resources, would have going head-to-head with traditional construction companies and independent roofers, boasting in meetings that they would “kick their asses.”

Musk and Peter Rive were eventually sold on the idea, and SolarCity set about exploring a number of potential implementations. Though Peter and West considered a tiled concept early on too, they prioritized the development of a standing-seam metal solar roof—that is, Steel Pulse—and put together test concepts in San Rafael in the spring and early summer of 2016. “It was like a monolith, this ugly metal roof,” says someone familiar with Steel Pulse. A former SolarCity executive adds that some employees even “loathed” it. But there were cogent reasons to move ahead: It was inexpensive and brought efficiency advantages in terms of estimated solar conversion and installation times.

Somehow, over the next few months, teams at SolarCity, Tesla, and 3M (which makes solar films that can be used for solar glass tiles) managed to put together a glass-tile solar roof demo, which Musk unveiled on October 28 at an event at Universal Studios’ back lot in Los Angeles, on an old residential set used in Desperate Housewives. Shortly before sunset, Musk appeared onstage in front of a crowd of several hundred to make his big reveal. “The houses you see around you are all solar houses. Did you notice?” he said, gesturing toward the homes with a grin. They appeared to have regular shingled rooftops, but Musk said they’d actually been retrofitted with a new product called the Solar Roof, a potentially transformative system that’s nearly indistinguishable from a traditional rooftop—and one, he promised, that lasts longer and costs less, all while generating electricity. “Why would you buy anything else?” he said. The crowd cheered.

A spokesperson for Tesla and SolarCity explains that the companies had been pursuing both a metal and a glass version for much of 2016, and that “Steel Pulse was a potential version of Solar Roof.” The spokesperson adds that some of the work that had been done on the metal Steel Pulse concept was transferable to the glass version, and that the current prototype of Solar Roof includes metal components.

Still, the company does acknowledge that the demos Musk unveiled at Universal Studios were not functional. Nor, as it happens, had Musk changed his view of the metal Steel Pulse version, which team members had installed on one of the houses there, according to sources. When Musk saw it, recalls one person familiar with the matter, paraphrasing, Musk said, What part of I fucking hate this product don’t you understand? The teams removed the prototype before the event, effectively killing Steel Pulse. (The company says that Musk was shown “five concepts of Solar Roof [at Universal Studios] and he chose his favorite four—all of them tiles.”)

No matter how the Solar Roof came to be, it seems to have worked: Three weeks after Musk’s presentation, 85% of shareholders approved the Tesla-SolarCity merger.

At the height of the European refugee crisis in 2015, as many as 10,000 refugees and asylum seekers arrived in the city of Malmo, Sweden, every day. And while many were sent elsewhere in the country–from small towns to temporary housing at a Wild West theme park–others stayed, and many of them (along with even newer arrivals) are still struggling to find work.

This summer, the city will experiment with a new way to help refugees find jobs: a pop-up pavilion in a city park where refugees can get training, connect with local nonprofits, and, most importantly, network with native-born Swedes.

“We call it a marketplace of ideas, information, and connection,” says Rik Ekstrom, principal at the New York-based design studio ARExA, who collaborated with designers Gustav Fagerström, Milad Barosen, and Nathan King on the winning design for the pavilion, which was created for a Van Alen Institute competition called Opportunity Space, that asked designers to create a concept for an “Opportunity Festival” to be held in August at the park.

During the day, the pavilion will host workshops, art shows and music performances, discussions, and employment services and will serve as a meeting place. At night, the structure transforms, bending up to turn into a beacon of light. Because the offerings go beyond simple job placement, the goal is to draw in as many Malmo residents as possible. Refugees will have the opportunity to meet long-term residents who they otherwise might not encounter while living in somewhat segregated immigrant neighborhoods.

“It’s intended to be a very public event and celebration, but it’s not a refugee center,” says Ekstrom. “It’s not a sequestered camp or Ellis Island kind of situation. It’s intended to invite all Swedes, all people from Malmo, to come see what’s happening and to eat good food, hear good music, see good art, hear demonstrations, and meet new neighbors.”

Immigrants in Sweden often find it difficult to find work. While the unemployment rate among people born in Sweden was 4.7% in 2016, it was 22.5% for those born outside the EU. In some cases, refugees might lack the skills for good jobs, but even educated immigrants are more likely to be unemployed than native-born Swedes. The influx of refugees in 2015, when Sweden took in more asylum seekers per capita than any other European country, made competition for jobs even steeper. One key factor that is lacking, the designers believe, is a strong local network, and the public location in the park may help make more of those connections.

“[The pavilion] is really focused on building relationships, and the social infrastructure that will allow people to come into this society and be productive,” Ekstrom says. “Work is the great divider–the people who have work are enfranchised, they’re part of the system, part of society, and people who don’t have work feel very much separate.”

The design took inspiration from older Swedish union halls, and the fact that the Swedish labor movement began in Malmo in the late 1800s. “This specific project was inspired by the idea that we could, in the same place, in a new century, be part of the beginning of the next phase of progressive thinking about how to serve people in cities,” he says. “Swedish cities are actively being transformed, and that’s only a good thing. The kind of potential that this new energy into Swedish culture and Swedish urban life will bring, are great opportunities for advancement, for innovation, for great ideas, and for a broadening of cultural identity.”

The pop-up building will be up at Malmo’s Enskifteshagen Park from August 22 to September 2, and then is designed to easily be disassembled and taken elsewhere.

Aside from the dog-and-Comey show on Capitol Hill, the other big event of the week live-tweeted by obsessives was Apple’s latest WWDC. While we got the expected collection of new products and features, some more celebrated than others, the brand also took the opportunity to unveil two very different ads.

The first was to remind us just how much it has us all balled up in its tightfisted techno-grip . . . but in a lighthearted funny way! The second, used Carl Sagan and some beautiful “Shot on iPhone” footage to remind us that our little blue planet is dying and we should probably do something about it. Only one made this week’s list. Can you guess which one? Onward!

Apple “Earth”

What: In the wake of the U.S. pulling out of the Paris accord, a new iPhone ad uses Carl Sagan’s book Pale Blue Dot as a reminder of what’s at stake.

Who: Apple

Why We Care: Okay, hear me out. I really liked “Appocalypse” even if, despite the laughs, it kind of creeped me out that they made a joke out of our dependence on their products. But while that one was for the real Apple heads at WWDC, the brand chose to debut “Earth” during the NBA Finals as a direct response to where U.S. policy is on climate change. Of course, it has to back up its words (or, in this case, Carl Sagan’s) with action, but by taking a defined stand on such a significant issue, Apple is staking a claim and standing for something—an approach that will prove to pay off in the long run.

Ikea “The Blue Bag”

What: A thoughtful spot that uses the Swedish retailer’s simple blue bag as a metaphor for its entire brand mission.

Who: Ikea, Acne

Why We Care: Simply put, this is a brand truth told beautifully well. Those damn blue bags are everywhere, and we use them for everything. Turns out, so does everyone else. Hell, it’s even been high fashion. But as this ad points out, it actually doesn’t have any lofty ambitions at all and is just fine with its global utilitarian role, thanks.

SickKids Foundation “SickKids vs. Dadstrong”

What: A new Father’s Day ad from the fundraising foundation for Toronto’s Hospital for Sick Children.

Who: SickKids Foundation, Cossette

Why We Care: This ongoing campaign has been top notch since it launched last year, right up to this past Mother’s Day, and now it uses another real story for Father’s Day. It’s a slow, deliberate, heartbreaking yet inspirational look at what the daily grind looks like when you have a gravely ill child.

Equinox “The LGBTQ Alphabet”

What: For Pride Month, Equinox partnered with the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender Community Center for a dance film that illustrates just how diverse the LGBTQ community really is.

Who: Equinox, Wieden+Kennedy New York

Why We Care: I think Equinox executive creative director Liz Nolan said it best to my colleague KC Ifeanyi about the campaign earlier this week. “We went into this saying there is an [existing] idea of pride: It’s rainbows, it’s electronic dance music, it’s the parade, and that’s all fantastic,” she said. “But there’s also a more serious, thoughtful side of it, too. What this film does is provoke a new conversation around pride and specifically a brand’s right to speak about pride by deepening this understanding of what LGBTQA means.”

Norwegian Directorate for Children, Youth and Family Affairs “The Lunchbox”

What: A lovely, simple ad to attract more people to sign up as foster families in Norway.

Who: Norwegian Directorate for Children, Youth and Family Affairs, Kitchen Oslo

Why We Care: It’s cute and gets the point across. Job done, right? In the last week, it’s also attracted almost 120 million Facebook video views, and hopefully, a lot more new foster families.

Inside a shipping container-sized box at MIT Media Lab, crops of basil are growing in micro-climates designed by artificial intelligence. The first experiments, with controlled levels and duration of UV light, aim to grow a tastier version. As the mini-greenhouse generates roughly 3 million data points for each growth cycle of a single plant, the AI uses machine learning to analyze it and create new and better “climate recipes”–which can then be shared with anyone trying to grow food indoors.

As climate change makes it more difficult to grow crops in outdoor farms because of heat waves, more frequent storms, and more pests and disease, the researchers envision that climate-controlled, tech-filled greenhouses (which they call “food computers”) could be an increasingly useful place to grow food. The technology could also eliminate food miles: Instead of shipping avocados from Mexico to China, a Chinese greenhouse could precisely recreate a Mexican climate in Beijing–or tweak it to create a climate even better for an avocado tree.

“It definitely speeds up the timescale by which we can get interesting results,” says Arielle Johnson, one of the researchers at MIT Media Lab Open Agriculture Initiative, or OpenAg.

“When you talk to [Caleb Harper, the director of OpenAg], he’s like, ‘Yeah, basil is a fast-growing plant,’ but in his terminology, fast-growing is six to eight weeks,” says Babak Hodjat, CEO of Sentient, a company that also designs AI to help stock traders find patterns in the market and hospitals predict infections. “That’s a long time to wait just to get a data point. So we tried out this methodology where the AI itself decides what are the next set of data points to try out.”

The basil is grown in staggered batches, so the AI can use the data from each batch to suggest changes to the “climate recipe” for the next crop before the first crop is finished growing, increasing the experimental throughput.

When the researchers asked the algorithm to optimize for flavor–by creating an environment that would maximize the number of volatile molecules in the plant–they discovered that if the lights in the Food Computer stayed on continuously, there was as much as a 895% increase in the plant’s production of one specific flavor molecule, and a 674% increase in production of another. The AI also rediscovered a known trade-off between weight and flavor (the bigger the plant, the less delicious).

The fact that it’s open-source distinguishes it from related research happening at vertical farming companies (some of which are also using artificial intelligence) or places like Philips’ GrowWise research center for urban farming in the Netherlands.

“Most people doing this kind of research, it’s proprietary, and it’s to optimize their own setups,” says Johnson. “Where I think we’re really strong is, more than trying to optimize something for ourselves, we’re trying to provide the standard that is open for all of this data and optimization to be shared by anybody.”

For fledgling indoor farming companies, the open-source climate recipes could help farmers grow better tasting, more productive, more efficient crops. New indoor farming companies typically invest heavily in their own research. “What we’ve seen is massive capital expenditure to get something up and running using controlled environments,” says Hildreth England, assistant director of the Open Agriculture Initiative. “But what happens is they sort of have to iterate in isolation.” The team envisions creating a shared language for indoor farming, “like the Linux of agriculture,” she says. “If we’re all using the same baseline, then that just lifts everybody up in an industry that is still trying to figure out its place in the conventional ag world.”

The research could also lead to tastier, more sustainably grown food, created without the type of genetic modification that some consumers find objectionable. “Ultimately, this is non-GMO GMO,” says Hodjat. “You’re not messing with the plant’s DNA . . . you’re just allowing it exhibit behavior that it would in nature should that kind of environment exist.”

In 2014, Michael Hickey, a resident of Hoosick Falls, a small town in upstate New York, sent a sample of his tap water to a lab in Canada. Hickey’s father had died of cancer the year before, and he had long suspected the drinking water in his town of being unsafe for human consumption. Because Hoosick Falls is so tiny, the Environmental Protection Agency doesn’t test its water. So Hickey undertook the investigation independently. When the results came back from Canada, they showed a level of chemical contamination unsafe for human consumption.

The chemical culprit, perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA), is, along with perfluorooctanesulfonic acid (PFOS), one of two highly fluorinated toxic chemicals, known as PFCs, that are devastating to human health yet unregulated by the EPA. Leaked into water supplies by the chemical manufacturing processes of products like DuPont’s Teflon and 3M’s Scotchgard, the contaminants are linked to diseases like cancer, kidney failure, thyroid problems, and weakened immune systems. A new mapping project from the Environmental Working Group and Northeastern University has detailed–using data from the EPA and information on publicly documented cases like Hoosick Falls–PFC pollution in the tap supplies of 15 million Americans in 27 states, and around 50 military and industrial sites (you can view the interactive map here).

While there are no federal regulations around the level of PFCs permissible in water supplies, the chemicals are subject to the EPA’s Unregulated Contaminant Monitoring Rule, which since 2013 has mandated that all public water systems serving 10,000 customers or more have their water supplies tested for PFOA, PFOS, and four other PFCs. For these unregulated contaminants, the EPA sets a “guideline” determining a safe level for consumption. For PFOA, that guideline was originally 400 parts per trillion (imagine 400 drops of water in an Olympic-sized swimming pool). But after pressure from communities and legislators following research that found the chemicals were harmful at much lower levels, the EPA lowered that level to 70 ppt in 2015. The EWG, however, follows the findings of Phillipe Grandjean of the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Health and Richard Clapp of UMass-Lowell, and maintains that 1 ppt is the only safe level of such PFCs. In Hoosick Falls, the water contained levels of PFOA around 600 parts per trillion.

Bill Walker, another senior scientist at EWG, adds that the effort to establish truly health-protective regulatory levels often falls prey to corporate resistance. “It’s a negotiation between scientists and regulators and the polluting industry and water agencies, which will resist, saying they don’t want to spend the money to clean up the water supply. So they end up setting a so-called enforceable level as opposed to a level that’s best for people’s health,” he tells Fast Company.

The interactive map, which EWG and Northeastern University will update as more reports of contamination come to light, is the most comprehensive resource to track PFC pollution in U.S. water supplies. “It should be a wake-up call for people that they should no longer assume that their best interests are being looked out for and that the process of evaluating the safety of our drinking water supply has been corrupted,” Andrews says.

Absent any federal action to establish a real, health-protective regulation for these chemicals, which Walker says is unlikely under the Trump administration, which is draining the EPA of the resources and funding necessary to carry out more thorough monitoring, states and citizens will be the ones driving change on this issue. The EWG wants to make this public to let people know about the dangers in their water supply and help galvanize citizen response since that’s the only possible recourse.

And it’s been effective: Pressure from Hoosick Falls citizens has resulted in the suspected contaminating company, Saint-Gobain—which for decades has made Teflon-coated materials at a nearby factory—agreeing to install a temporary water-treatment facility while an investigation into the water supply continues. And following states like Minnesota, New Jersey, and Vermont, which have set or proposed PFC limits between 14 and 35 ppt, New York senators Kirsten Gillibrand and Charles Schumer have introduced a new bill mandating that their state does the same.

“Everyone is bad at email, every single person you know or will ever correspond to,” says Walt Hickey. The FiveThirtyEight journalist who writes the site’s daily Significant Digits newsletter, lays out this theory to me in—what else?—an email. “If you think you’re good at email, you’re probably not, but even if you are good at it, so what? That’s like being good at dirigible piloting or equestrian competition or cursive.”

Then comes the good news: “Realizing that everyone else also hates it means that it’s that much easier to be done with. Eighty percent of the time people will be happy if you reply to their email with a sentence fragment.”

Whether or not you agree with him on either point—that email is obsolete or that responses aren’t mandatory—Hickey is right that most of us agonize too much and for too long over email. He should know; as the brains behind a popular email newsletter, it’s Hickey’s job to think strategically about emailing. So I asked him, along with the writers and editors of other major newsletters, to share how they’ve learned to manage their own inboxes.

Blocks And Bylines

“Your inbox doesn’t own you. You created it. Don’t let it push you around and let its demanding emails run your life,” Nick Martell and Jack Kramer, cofounders of the financial news newsletter MarketSnacks explain in a joint email. “To deal with that, we’ve got a two-part strategy: blocks and bylines.”

The first part is about time management. Martell and Kramer say they “schedule blocks of time during the day exclusively for emails—one in the morning for an hour and one in the afternoon.” This helps avoid that “scary, monotonous cycle of email after email after email after email.”

The second part is to “secretly prioritize the senders. Your buddy Tim or Dave (and, of course, mom) are cooler than your boss in real life. But when facing your inbox, respond to your manager first since it’s likely time-sensitive,” they counsel. “A person related to an important task at hand gets priority. It’s that simple.”

Scan Subject Lines And Delete Without Mercy

“I delete pretty much anything that is unsolicited PR,” admits Jessica Grose, editor in chief of Lenny, the email newsletter created by Lena Dunham and Jenni Konner.

Grose, who wagers she gets around 200 emails a day,  says she “can usually tell from the subject and preheader of an email what needs an immediate response and what I can save for later.” Martell and Kramer agree this is pretty easy. “Most emails are lamely commercial (shocker, another sale at J. Crew) or boringly social (a 37-email–long chain on where to have brunch Sunday).”

For some, that means deleting with abandon. “If I can’t tell if it needs a response instinctively and immediately, I delete it,” says Hickey. “I’m pretty easy to get ahold of, so if it’s really important they’ll find another way,” typically by following up or taking to Twitter.

Hickey offers this wonderfully simple rule of thumb: “If you think it might be spam, it’s almost always spam.”

Don’t Reward Bad Subject Lines

As Martell and Kramer put it, “You live and die by your subject lines. We make ours intriguing and catching so you want to hear more about ‘Lululemon stock’s awkwardly downward-doggish strategy.’ The same goes for yours,” they suggest. “‘Just checking in’ is an email subject-line recipe for ‘ignore.'”

Grose says that writing Lenny has helped her get better at this. “I definitely try to put more clear, concise information in my subject lines than I used to. I never use a generic ‘Hey’ anymore. Gotta get people to click!”

Hickey also opts for clarity but is less interested in capturing recipients’ attention. “I get responses from readers more, which makes feedback instantaneous and me more likely to read—and thus write—shorter, more casual notes over email,” he says. “Casual email is the way to go.”

Flag Now, Reply Later

Just because you don’t instantly delete it doesn’t mean it deserves an instant reply. Says Grose, “My filing system is if something needs a response, I keep it marked ‘unread’ until I answer.” So do Martell and Kramer, who think of their “inbox block” periods as “e-triage.”

“If you try to tackle emails throughout the day,” they point out, “they’ll keep popping up and you’ll never get actually work done.” After first opening messages from senders whose “names you immediately recognize,” they move on to any subject lines that sound genuinely high-priority (to them, not just to the sender). Then, like Grose, they “mark the longer-responses as ‘unread’ to return to after.”

Weekly (If Not Daily) Inbox Zero

According to Martell and Kramer, “There are two types of people in this beautiful world—Inbox 18,233 and Inbox 0.” But as they see it, the latter is unnecessary on a daily basis but can be smart as a weekly approach. “You just can’t always get to everything before the Rangers hockey game is on at 7 p.m. But before a weekend it’s cathartic.”

Martell and Kramer commit to replying to everyone who contacts them within 24 hours. “Since our readers are devoted to opening our MarketSnacks emails every day, then we’re excited to open and respond to all of theirs.” This rule of reciprocity, they say, “gives us e-karma and happiness.”

Grose and Hickey, both more inclined to forego responses, are stricter inbox-zero devotees. “I go to sleep every night at inbox zero,” says Grose, and to help her hit that target, she spends 20 minutes each morning “cleaning out what piled up overnight.”

But when I ask Hickey if there’s anything he considers a bad emailing habit he’s found a way to live with, he names inbox zero. “I have no idea why my brain craves it but it’s a constant schlep. I think it’s worth it—sometimes I’ll look at another journalist’s phone and see ‘29,039’ unread emails and I start seeing stars.”

Hickey adds that he mentioned my inquiry into his emailing habits to a friend. Her advice to him? “Don’t ever respond to his email: This is a pro move. Then years later, be like, ‘Ha! That was just my bad habit flaring up again. I’ve learned to live with it.’ And be at peace.”

“Not gonna lie, there was a non-zero chance that was how this almost went down. That’s a bad habit I’ve come to live with.”

The importance and benefits of taking time off from work are well-documented. Without downtime, you and your team are likely less creative and more likely to burn out.

But Americans just can’t seem to unplug. Between 2000 and 2014, the number of vacation days U.S. workers took declined steadily from a long-term average of 20.3 days to 16. And while the number of vacation days taken ticked up to 16.8 in 2016, 54% of employees have unused vacation time, according to a report by the Project: Time Off Coalition, a group of businesses, mostly in tourism, retail, and related sectors.

Companies have experimented with different methods to get employees to take more time off. In recent years, some have experimented with “unlimited vacation,” which removes arbitrary limits on the number of vacation days an employee can take, with mixed results. Kickstarter found that the policy actually resulted in employees taking less vacation time.

When Paying Employees To Take Vacation Isn’t Enough

Social media sharing platform Buffer has experimented with various vacation policies, including unlimited vacation time. In 2015, the company also found that unlimited vacation wasn’t as effective as they had hoped and began paying employees $1,000 to take vacation time. Even so, 57% of the company’s employees had taken less than 15 days of vacation time. Then, in September 2016, the company began a new policy: Every employee must take a minimum of three weeks of vacation.

Managers are tasked with monitoring employees’ time off and working with them to schedule vacation time if the employee has not done so. Based on the data so far, the company estimates that 56% of employees will have taken 15 days or more of vacation by the end of the year.

“I think that the switch from ‘unlimited’ to ‘minimum’ was huge, and we heard as much from our employees who were slightly confused, or they thought it was vague, and they felt a lot more comfortable,” says Hailley Griffis, Buffer communications specialist.

More Than A Nice-To-Have

Making vacation “mandatory” is a good idea, says Sharon DeLay, founder of HR consultancy GO-HR. Some industries already mandate time off for a variety of reasons. In addition to stress reduction and improvements to quality of work, ensuring that employees take time away from their jobs is also a good hedge against an employee having too much control over a particular area or losing institutional knowledge when the employee leaves.

“They use that [time] to go in and make sure that they can quality control check the employee, making sure there’s nothing going on there that shouldn’t be happening. It’s really risk management,” she says.

Open-source artificial intelligence company Skymind also has a mandatory vacation policy. CEO Chris Nicholson emphasizes the importance of time off to the company’s 25 employees, who average three weeks off per year. He’s pleased with that level, especially because startup culture can be so intense.

“When you’re in a small boat, everybody who is rowing the boat makes a big difference. Taking a break rowing slows it down. When somebody takes a vacation, sometimes the changes are noticeable,” he says.

To ensure that the boat doesn’t slow down too much, Nicholson says that, where possible, employees step in and take over tasks and projects. DeLay says that kind of cross-training and experience ultimately makes the company stronger because no one person is indispensable—if someone leaves, there are others who know how to do the work, she says.

The Trouble With “Mandatory”

But mandatory vacation is a policy that is enforced more with a carrot than a stick. While manager oversight and modeling from company leaders can spur more workers to take their vacation time, neither Buffer nor Skymind has penalties for not taking vacation.

DeLay agrees that mandatory vacation is something managers must actively monitor and encourage rather than relying on disciplinary action for noncompliance. Doing so includes understanding business cycles and obstacles employees face in taking their time off—then, addressing them. That includes training employees to take over each other’s roles and having processes in place to ensure that the vacationer doesn’t return to an overwhelming workload, she says. But Nicholson says that the top-down message is typically effective in generating compliance.

“They’re in human relationships with me and my cofounder,” Nicholson says. “When you tell someone to do something enough times and you’re they’re employer, they usually do it.”

Last Thursday, hundreds of Facebook shareholders at the company’s annual meeting in Menlo Park, California listened politely as top executives discussed the social media giant’s performance metrics and goals–until Natasha Lamb got up out of her chair and stood to face the board. She demanded that the company address its fake news problem by publishing a formal report about its prevalence on the site and its impact.

“We are talking about content that is posted and disseminated with the intent to mislead, not the mainstream media, which the President refers to as fake news,” Lamb explained. While she spoke, CEO and founder Mark Zuckerberg, COO Sheryl Sandberg, and the rest of the board sat with their backs to her. Just once during her speech did Zuckerberg turn around slightly and make eye contact with her. He then turned back around.

Lamb’s proposal was denied. “We do have a special focus on trying to reduce the prevalence of false news in the system, and there’re a bunch of different ways that we’re going about this,” explained Zuckerberg. Facebook also denied another of her proposals for Facebook to disclose its gender pay data.

A few days after the meeting, Lamb seemed unfazed, though she conceded, “It can be a contentious atmosphere.”

After all, doing battle with some of the biggest corporations is par for the course for Lamb, who’s a managing partner at Arjuna Capital. This past week was especially busy for Lamb. First, she flew from Boston to Dallas so she could sit in on Exxon’s annual meeting. There, she was pushing the company to come clean about its environmental impact. When that ended, she hopped on a plane to San Francisco and made her way to Facebook. Two meetings in a week may not sound like much, but Lamb had a busy agenda: important proposals to share with the stockholders, people to meet and speeches to make.

For Baldwin Brothers’ wealthy clients, Arjuna provides them with a impassioned voice for social and environmental impact. Most notably, the firm has convinced seven public companies–including eBay, Starbucks, Apple, and Amazon–to disclose data on gender equity. That issue is only one of the firm’s causes–Arjuna’s proposals focus on myriad social and environmental issues.

This week Arjuna went to Google to try and force its hand at divulging its gender pay numbers, something the Department of Labor is now looking into. That also failed to pass. She describes that meeting’s result as a foregone conclusion; “They continued to pay lip service to it, but would not commit to take action on quantitative disclosures.”

Arjuna’s approach is just one of the most prominent examples of an investment strategy that is becoming a nationwide trend. While the firm has spent years trying to pressure corporate boards to address social and environmental issues, in recent months there’s been a clear increase in such investor-driven proposals. And data shows that more money is being funneled into these impact-based portfolios.

Investing With A Social Conscience

Lamb’s career has focused on the intersection of investing and social consciousness. She holds an MBA in sustainable business from Pinchot University. After graduating, she worked as a VP and equity analyst at the Boston-based Trillium Asset Management, which she describes as “one of the first sustainable investment firms in the country.” In 2013 she cofounded Arjuna with two managing partners–Farnum Brown and Adam Seitchik–who also hail from Trillium.

But the proposal’s success helped propel the issue even further, says Lamb, adding that “institutional investors have taken up the cause.” Exxon is now being investigated for allegedly misleading investors by attorneys general in three states and Arjuna has continued pushing for better and more honest disclosure. While she was in Dallas hanging out with Exxon, another Arjuna representative was at Chevron’s shareholders meeting in San Ramon, California.

Beyond climate change, Arjuna’s most prominent—and arguably its most successful campaign—centered on better gender pay disclosure. Last year the firm began pushing nine gender equity proposals and saw decent results–Facebook and Google remain the two companies that have yet to respond, which Lamb says has a lot to do with the fact that the companies’ founders still own a majority of voting rights.

She finds Facebook’s silence on the issue specifically frustrating. “You would expect Sheryl Sandberg, given her pro-woman rhetoric, to be a leader in this issue,” Lamb says. But that resistance is only giving the movement more steam.

A Nationwide Trend

Investors focusing on social and environmental issues are no longer a quiet minority. Lamb says the firm introduced this year about 10 proposals for better pay data. In total, 28 were introduced by a variety of different institutional investors, she adds.

The issue has evolved from one activist firm’s pet cause into a movement with many members. About 92% of investors surveyed believed that ESG (environmental, social, and corporate governance) issues have “real quantifiable impacts on a company’s performance,” according to a recent survey by Bloomberg Investor Relations. In short, more firms and investors alike are pushing for corporate changes that, at least for the short term, are based on non-financial performance.

Data reflects this too. A report from the Forum for Sustainable and Responsible Investment found that investments in the space have grown 33% between 2014 and 2016. “There’s been an explosion of interest,” says Joshua Brown, CEO of Ritholtz Wealth Management. “It seems to have happened overnight.” He believes that there are a few factors at play–most importantly, wealth is shifting to a younger generation. Older millennials, he says, are now entering their peak earnings years and are looking to invest in a way the reflects their values. So now is a perfect time for firms like Arjuna to take the lead.

Brown adds that a number of other firms focus on impact in different ways. Bridgeway Capital, for example, donates 50% of its profits to charity. He’s also seen a number of asset management companies making ESG principles a big part of their investment focus. “All of these things are happening at once,” he says. “It’s a really interesting time.”

Social responsible investing, of course, is nothing new. The practice has been around for decades, and was inspired less by materialistic than moral concerns. God-fearing wealthy Americans wanted to invest only in the portfolios of companies that did good. What’s happening now goes beyond simply not investing in companies that do harmful things, but heavily advocating for change. Lamb sees Arjuna has been leading this brigade and now more investors are taking up the charge. “There’s a business case for change,” she tells me. Environmental, social, and governance-focused investing has “seen above-industry growth.” Investors are finally waking up this, she says, as it’s not just about altruism, it’s about future growth. “Investors should be thinking about where the puck is going,” Lamb says.

That may be due to the fact that activist investors—whether impact-based or not—are becoming more mainstream. Well-known personalities like Bill Ackman and Carl Icahn have shown the investing world that a single voice can gain power and shift corporate strategy. A CNBC story from last year described the ripple effects that activism was having on the investment community. “Activist voices can be a positive force in keeping companies accountable and responsive,” it wrote.

Things are more pronounced now, with activist voices taking on issues more socially conscious than the average Icahn public letter. Arjuna’s role, while still very small, is about making this investment strategy more normalized. Lamb doesn’t see the firm’s role as revolutionary either–in fact, it’s something necessary. “It’s become an institutional-level exercise in risk management,” she says.

And for Lamb, it’s about giving her clients what they want–the ability to seek out socially and environmentally conscious portfolios. It may ruffle a few feathers now, but in a few years she thinks it’ll pay off.

“We look to press the envelope,” she says. “We tend to identify critical issues early.”

Note: An earlier version of this article said Arjuna Capital was an arm of Baldwin Brothers. While it once was, it has since become independent. We apologize for the error. 

This story reflects the views of this author, but not necessarily the editorial position of Fast Company.

The first week of June—the month widely celebrated as LGBT Pride Month—has come and gone without President Trump acknowledging either the contributions or the calls for equality of the more than 10 million lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender adults in the United States.

An official proclamation (or even a tweet of support) probably isn’t forthcoming. Meanwhile, Congress seems unlikely to pass a key piece of legislation: The Equality Act, would prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity in employment, housing, and public accommodations—something a majority of small-business owners support and that many Fortune 500 companies already implement voluntarily. While most businesses do the right thing by their employees, not all do, and this lack of nationwide protections results in lower incomes, scarcer savings, and higher costs for LGBT people in housing, health care, and education.

But even without Congressional action, there’s still a lot the Trump Administration could do to help LGBT workers. And much of it wouldn’t even prove controversial. Nearly two-thirds of Americans, regardless of political party, already oppose transgender bathroom restrictions, but there are even less-fraught issues that would make a real difference. These are some changes LGBT workers and their employers should press the President Trump to make—and which they actually have a shot at achieving.

Related:We’re About To See If Employers Can Protect LGBT Workers When The Government Won’t

1. Ensure Fairness And Adequate Funding At The EEOC

While no federal law explicitly prohibits discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) was an early advocate for transgender rights under President Obama. In April 2012, the agency recognized that when a transgender woman is discriminated against because she doesn’t conform to the gender printed on her original birth certificate, that’s sex discrimination. Likewise, when a man is discriminated against because he’s married to another man, that’s also discrimination based on sex.

Because of these EEOC rulings, LGBT people can file complaints regardless of whether they live in one of the 28 states without statewide protections. But those complaints will just pile up and go unaddressed if the EEOC isn’t properly staffed or funded, leaving LGBT workers without recourse. Not only did Trump propose cutting the EEOC’s budget while expanding its responsibilities, he also signed an executive order last March to roll back fair pay and safe workplace standards for federal contractors. Both of those things need to change.

2. Collect Data On Sexual Orientation And Gender Identity

There still isn’t much nationwide information about the workplace experiences, earnings, and employment of LGBT people—and there won’t be until the federal government commits to collecting it. Most official surveys that ask about sexual orientation and/or gender identity are limited to public health issues.

The Trump Administration has a chance to give policymakers a deeper understanding of LGBT workers, and the easiest way to do that is by adding questions on sexual orientation and gender identity to federal surveys, like the monthly Current Population Survey and the Survey of Income and Program Participation. Both provide real-time information about unemployment, earnings, and hours worked, and updating them with these two fields would be an important step. Instead, officials have done the reverse, removing questions about sexual orientation and gender identity from a survey that helps allocate services for the elderly.

3. Don’t Let Health Insurers Discriminate

With the Senate now considering the health care bill passed by the House in May, the fate of the Affordable Care Act hangs in the balance. That law contains crucial nondiscrimination provisions for sexual orientation and gender identity that apply both to employer-provided plans and marketplace plans. Those allow transgender people to access medically necessary care and protect LGBT people from discrimination when getting insurance or accessing care through federally funded hospitals or doctors.

Despite those important measures, a nationally representative survey recently found that nearly one in five LGBT people experienced discrimination at the doctor’s office in the past year. Most workers get their health insurance through an employer, and only 13 states and Washington, DC, have anti-discrimination laws on the books that cover LGBT people when it comes to health insurance. So, as the American Health Care Act marches forward in Congress, LGBT workers and their employers need to push legislators to keep those protections in place.

4. Reverse The Education Department’s Position On Trans Students

Last February, the Departments of Education and Justice rescinded guidance that ensured transgender students could safely access facilities at school. When transgender students can’t go to school safely, we lose the opportunity to educate and grow our future workforce.

School districts across the country know that permitting students to use restrooms in accordance with their gender is critical to keeping them in school. And without clear federal guidance on this issue, districts are left confused. In late May, the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in favor of a transgender student in Wisconsin, affirming that Title IX protects all students from discrimination—a view that 59 major U.S. employers have already voiced their agreement with.

5. Maintain Student Loan Forgiveness

In his budget proposal, President Trump proposed cutting the federal student loan-forgiveness program—an issue that, like Education Department policy, you might not think of as directly impacting LGBT people in the workforce. But due to family rejection, many LGBT students have less support to help pay for college.

As a result, they may be saddled with more student loans once they enter the workforce, making it harder to save for retirement, own a home, start a family, or plan for the future. And since LGBT people are more likely to work in so-called “helping professions” like teaching, health care, and nonprofit service, curbing student loan forgiveness disproportionately prevents LGBT workers from giving back to their communities.

The fact is that all workers deserve to get solid educations, feel safe at work, and stay healthy. In each of these areas, anti-discrimination policies just make good economic sense for everybody. LGBT workers, who too frequently experience harassment and discrimination on the job, want to provide for themselves and their families just like other workers. The federal government needs to give them a fair opportunity to do just that. If it won’t, droves of LGBT workers and their allies in the business community should come together this month and demand it to think twice.

Naomi Goldberg is the director of policy and research for the Movement Advancement Project, an LGBT think tank focused on speeding equality for LGBT people through thoughtful and rigorous analysis, research, and communications.

This week, we learned how a $200 adult security blanket perfected a formula most startups struggle with, what it really takes to hire and keep great developers, and the skills required for NASA’s future astronauts class.

These are the stories you loved in leadership for the week of June 5:

1. Why $200 Adult Security Blankets Are A Stroke Of Startup Genius

Two hundred dollars might seem like a lot to pay for a blanket, but that’s what Gravity, the self-described “blanket for sleep, stress, and anxiety” plans to charge its customers. The product recently raked in over $4.7 million in Kickstarter funding. How? According to Brian Scordato, who heads an accelerator for early-stage founders, Gravity successfully got customers excited about “an idea nobody’s ever heard of.” That’s something lots of startups fail at, and this week Scordato shared why.

2. I’m Stack Overflow’s COO—Here’s How To Hire (And Keep) Great Developers

In today’s tech-centric workforce, it’s more crucial than ever for businesses to hire and retain talented programmers. Yet outside of Silicon Valley, they’re often treated like “glorified typists,” according to Stack Overflow COO Jeff Szczepanski. This week he shared what steps companies can take to improve that state of affairs and make sure the best developers stick around for longer.

3. How A Degree In Scandinavian Mythology Can Land You A Job At One Of The Biggest Tech Companies

Is a liberal arts degree useful in the modern job market or a waste of money? For three liberal arts graduates, it led to positions at a company that isn’t known for hiring art history or English majors–Microsoft. From developing communications for social chatbots to translating complicated AI concepts into simpler language, here’s how those new hires are using their humanities training in the tech world.

4. NASA’s Future Astronauts Will Need These Job Skills

Earlier this week, NASA announced its latest class of astronauts following an 18-month selection process. While a STEM degree is required, the agency isn’t just looking for people who are versed in the hard sciences. Fast Company recently spoke to NASA’s public affairs specialist to find out what else its future astronauts need to bring to the table. As in many jobs, it turns out that having a high level of emotional intelligence is critical.

5. Six Things You Can Negotiate For Other Than A Higher Salary

As soon as you get a job offer you’re interested in, negotiating your salary is probably top of mind. But sometimes getting paid handsomely just isn’t possible, whether because of company policy or budgetary concerns. If you’re willing to be creative, though, there are other ways you can boost your overall compensation–like requesting stipends for transportation costs or assistance with student loan repayments.

Just as you were getting used to the rules and politics of university life, you’re back to square one with a new challenge: your first job. While the skills and knowledge you’ve gained in college will certainly be an important part of your toolkit for doing well in your new job, there’s also a new rulebook you need to get acquainted with. Prepare for your first job by avoiding these nine mistakes that you may be liable to inadvertently make.

1. Not Understanding The Implications Of Your Mistakes

Before, when you messed up or didn’t put the work in, only you bore the consequences–through a bad grade or a failed class. Now, your mistakes have wider implications than just grades–other people are depending on you to do a job that will have real effects and results in the world. You need to take responsibility for your mistakes, because now their implications affect more people than just you.

2. Not Networking Enough

Networking can be intimidating, especially for a generation accustomed to socializing through screens. But a simple coffee chat with someone in your company may have more beneficial consequences down the road than you would expect. It’s also important to learn how to network smarter. “I always believe networking is not about only meeting new people, but making the most of your existing relationships. Ask them the question “Who do you know who . . . ?” and start to leverage their networks so you move out exponentially,” says Andy Lopata, author of Recommended: How to Sell Through Networking and Referrals.

Related:New Graduates: These Are The Unspoken Rules Of The Workplace No One Tells You 

3. Underestimating The Importance Of Finding A Mentor

“If I hadn’t had mentors, I wouldn’t be here today. I’m a product of great mentoring, great coaching . . . Coaches or mentors are very important. They could be anyone–your husband, other family members, or your boss,” Indra Nooyi, the CEO of PepsiCo, has said. Mentors can leverage you through your career when you most need it. While mentorship isn’t something that’s talked about a lot when you’re entering the workforce, it’s critical to start thinking about finding mentors from day one.

4. Leaving Work Until The Last Minute

It might have been okay in college to pull all-nighters before a big deadline. But pulling an all-nighter and then going to work the next day is unsustainable, especially if you’re expected to be fully functioning at work. It’s now your responsibility to your job–and even more importantly, your colleagues–to bring an awake mind to your job.

5. Treating Your Boss Like Your Professor

While your professor may have been gracious in granting you extensions for your paper you handed in a week late, your boss might not be so understanding–especially if you tell them at the last minute that you’re going to need more time for something. In addition, while your professor’s primary goal was to help you learn, your boss’s primary goal is to help you work. Keep that in mind as you navigate this new power dynamic.

Related:How To Advance Your Career In A Crappy Entry-Level Job 

6. Not Showing Up Prepared

Just because a big meeting isn’t a final exam doesn’t mean you shouldn’t study for it like you would for a test. And just because you’re not being evaluated with a grade every time you turn in an assignment or complete a project doesn’t mean you should take it any less seriously. Especially as a newbie on the job, this is your time to show up with your research already done and your slides already made, so that you can prove yourself to others and avoid wasting their time.

7. Not Going The Extra Mile

As a new member of the workforce, this is your first chance to prove yourself in the professional world. Marissa Mayer, the former CEO of Yahoo, has said of starting out in her career, “I always did something I was a little not ready to do. I think that’s how you grow. When there’s that moment of ‘Wow, I’m not really sure I can do this,’ and you push through those moments, that’s when you have a breakthrough.” Failing to find that edge can stall your future development.

8. Avoiding Feedback

In college, feedback was almost always associated with an event that many consider stressful: finding out your grade. But in work life, there is no report card. The feedback you get only serves to correct your mistakes and propel you forward. Feedback should be solicited rather than shirked.

9. Using Social Media In The Office

Unless your job title contains the words “social media strategist,” chances are your boss (and colleagues, for that matter), won’t be very happy to look over and see you browsing on Facebook. The same goes for scrolling through your smartphone. Your office does not afford the anonymity of a large lecture hall.

This article originally appeared on Glassdoor and is adapted and reprinted with permission.

For social entrepreneurs and nonprofits seeking to make a dent in the world’s most vexing problems, figuring when and how to use behavioral science can be its own conundrum. While the field is all about creating simple “nudges”—subtle design cues (sometimes cascades of them) in products, interventions and even basic paperwork that encourage others to make socially good decisions in their own best interest, it’s not very user friendly for cause groups that might want to implement some of the techniques.

When the work is done right, more people, say, gain access to financial services that help them automatically save money, court summonses designed to ensure they stay out of jail, and academic encouragement that can boost graduation rates. But the industry as a whole is decentralized and jargon-y. It’s hard to translate the mostly academic-speak into useful guidelines for how others in the field might use these ideas.

“This came about because we started to see certain behavioral innovations that would come up time and again and they were pretty simple to implement,” says Piyush Tantia the co-executive director at Ideas42. “What we’ve done is brought out more of the details of each product design, so that somebody somewhere else can copy it.”

Of course, the behaviors some groups may seek to modify can be pretty culturally specific. And the approach that aid groups take to do that may depend on how they’re set up to operate. So B-Hub is searchable by issue (criminal justice, environment, social inclusion, etc.), geography (both region or country-specific), and problem type (things like “navigating a process” or “sustaining behaviors and forming habits”). It’s essentially a decision tree toward various solutions.

For instance, a University of Pennsylvania study about the power of plan-ahead prompts like postcards to increase the number of employees getting flu shots, shows the actual variations that a Midwest utility company mailed out. (Same thing for this text-based medication reminder study by IPA that improved the rate of malaria vaccinations in sub-Saharan Africa.) An Ideas42 effort to keep at-risk freshman enrolled at San Francisco State shows the actual student testimonial video that kicked things off, as well as all the surveys, supportive texts and emails that were used. It’s all laid out with catchy charts and graphs, plus there’s contact info for the researchers involved.

Ideas42, IPA, and CHIBE  have also tapped other major field contributors like the Behavioral Insights Group at the Harvard Kennedy School, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, and the U.K.’s Financial Conduct Authority to chip in studies. The repository currently has over 60 evidence-driven examples of what’s worked, covering things like how to improve college retention, encourage saving, and improve the likelihood of people consistently taking medication or being vaccinated.

Crucially, the database doesn’t just link to what’s been previously published elsewhere—everything has been painstakingly reformatted to shares costs, challenges, impact, and results, and real-life examples of what the each “nudge” actually looked like.

So far though, B-Hub has been visited by people in over 90 countries. The site actively solicits other behavioral science practitioners to submit their own studies for review and, perhaps, inclusion.

“This is not a static site. It’s a growing tool for people,” adds Manasee Desai, vice president at Ideas42, who notes that her group is already analyzing how people are engaging and considering ways to boost interactions. (One obvious missing feature? A discussion forum.) “It is an innovation, which means there’s no way we got it right the first time,” adds Tantia.

Inside a raucous Oracle Arena in Oakland last Thursday, with Rihanna, Jay-Z, and Kevin Hart sitting courtside for Game 1 of the NBA Finals, Golden State Warriors superstar Stephen Curry faked out LeBron James and hit a wide-open 3-pointer. Moments later, my phone buzzed with the arrival of a video courtesy of the Warriors’ Messenger bot.

Accompanied by the caption “Steph #SPLASH,” the 9-second clip showed the two-time-reigning NBA MVP burying the trey and giving the Warriors a 21-point lead over the Cleveland Cavaliers in the third quarter of a game they would eventually win by 22, putting them on the path to the 3-0 series lead they currently enjoy. If they win tonight’s Game 4 in Cleveland, they will become the first team in NBA history to go 16-0 in the playoffs and take home their second title in three years.

Even the most casual sports fan has seen countless highlights over the years, but what was notable about this one was that I received it mere seconds after Curry’s shot swished through the net. And not a single human being had been involved in pushing that notification to my phone.

At least not in the time between Curry’s made bucket and the message hitting my phone, that is. Its arrival was due to a highly automated clip-generation tool employed by the NBA and many of its teams to almost instantaneously build highlight packages.

The Israeli startup behind that tool, WSC Sports Technologies, is a model beneficiary of an ecosystem the NBA has built over the last few years to discover and evaluate new technology, and which revolves around ongoing informal communications between the league’s home offices in New York City’s bustling midtown and the posh corridors of Silicon Valley’s venture capital community.

It’s an ecosystem that has been built to make the NBA especially nimble and responsive to the needs of the league, its teams, and its many partners.

The NFL has its own venture fund, and Major League Baseball teams like the Los Angeles Dodgers run tech incubators, says Courtney Brunious, the associate director of the USC Sports Institute, but the NBA may well have have the edge when it comes to technology.

The “NBA has been one of the most forward-looking leagues in terms of technology, in terms of being on top of new innovations in tech,” says Brunious. “As a whole, I would say the NBA is probably the most tech-savvy amongst the leagues.”

The NBA’s leadership in that area, and its impetus to move quickly in adopting new technologies, is due in part to the fact that some of its newest team ownership groups are led by venture capitalists (the Warriors and the Boston Celtics) or those who’ve run tech companies (the Cavaliers, the Dallas Mavericks, the Sacramento Kings, the Los Angeles Clippers, the Memphis Grizzlies, and the Portland Trailblazers). Still, the efforts began in earnest when Adam Silver became league commissioner in 2014.

For his part, Silver lauds the league’s relationships in Silicon Valley and credits work done by the Warriors to help build bridges to the largest companies in the tech community there, who have been enthralled by the team’s recent success, and the NBA.

The league has worked with many of those tech giants, such as Facebook, for some time. But when it comes to discovering and evaluating startups, Silver credits Melissa Brenner, the NBA’s senior vice president of digital media. “She seems to know all of those small companies,” Silver said during his annual pre-Game 1 State-of-the-NBA press conference. “She finds them, she meets with them, and then she brings [in] the really interesting ones.”

“As it relates to new technology…we have a pretty tight process where we want to have a team in place that could vet new companies, because you never know what company’s going to walk in the door that will have a transformational effect on our fan experience,” Brenner said, almost shouting over the oppressive din that comes with putting on a major pro sports championship. “So whether it’s virtual reality, augmented reality, or a bot, or AI, there’s so many exciting pieces of technology out there from all over the world.”

The process is multi-faceted, but also pretty simple. The league puts on networking events at things like the All-Star game in order to meet VCs and promising startups. Individual NBA teams also serve as a front line for feeding the league interesting companies. Then Brenner and her team stay in touch with all of those people to make sure they keep abreast of the latest sports-related technology, as well as to ask for potential solutions to challenges the NBA has decided it has to solve. And internally, experts on everything from business development to strategy to social media to finance to engineering vet possible new tech partners.

Instant Highlights

WSC is a good example of a startup whose nascent products were discovered, and then adopted by the NBA, thanks to the process Brenner has installed.

“We took on the philosophy that we should meet with everyone [who pitches the league], as ambitious and crazy as that sounds,” says Bob Carney, the NBA’s vice president of emerging media, the primary reason being “to make sure we’re educated in the space….We’ve always thought it’s critical to be as educated as possible on what’s happening in the industry.”

As Carney recalls it, WSC, founded by several veterans of Israel’s military who had been building basketball scouting software for coaches, first came calling—thanks to an introduction from an industry consultant—in 2014.

“They had an incredibly poorly designed website and poorly designed marketing materials, and it was one of those intros you get where I’m not sure I have the time,” he says. “But going back to that philosophy [of meeting with everyone] because you never know, I ended up taking the meeting.”

WSC was pitching automatic highlight generation, something Carney had heard before. But it also offered something special—the ability to automatically determine the start and end time of every single play that happens in every single game, in close to real time. That meant its technology was capable of producing highlight packages almost immediately, and with zero human intervention.

Impressed by WSC’s pitch, he gave them a tryout, providing them some games where the downside of failure was low: NBA Developmental League, or D-League, contests. Quickly, WSC returned a highlight package for every player in every game.

“That was the holy s–t moment,” Carney says. “All of a sudden, we had an immense amount of content that would have taken several people and many, many hours…to create….That was the first moment where we were truly wowed and began to understand where this could truly go.”

Late that season, in the spring of 2014, the NBA extended the pilot, letting WSC loose on the remainder of the D-League season. The result was large amounts of auto-generated highlight packages that WSC was also able to automatically distribute on YouTube, as well as through the D-League’s social channels and app.

The NBA had struck gold, and began to utilize the system for its own teams. As a league with a global fan base, it has countless social channels, apps, and websites, all of which have their own owners inside the league offices and around the world. Now, Carney says, each of those people could tell the NBA what they wanted to feature in order to best serve their audiences, and WSC’s tools would be able to generate that content almost in real time after each night’s games.

Previously, when producing highlights manually, the NBA would never have made a nightly package for a middle-of-the-road player like the Australian Matthew Dellavedova, a former Cavaliers backup now with the Milwaukee Bucks. But with over 10 Australian players in the NBA, there’s a hunger from Down Under for regular highlights, and now WSC’s tools make it possible to give the people what they want, including all the Dellavedova highlights they could ever handle.

“Imagine that, but applied to every single digital distribution point we control in the world, of which there are many,” Carney says, “and you start to see how powerful a platform like this can be for an organization that’s trying to feed a global audience.”

WSC’s system allows its users to input any number of rules, looking for all the key stats—players’ made and missed field goals, assists, blocks, steals, and so on. The NBA knew that things like Curry 3-pointers were a big hit, so it could set up a rule that any time the so-called Babyfaced Assassin hit three of them in the first quarter, the tool could spit out a highlight package.

Or anytime anyone in the league hit six treys in a game, it could do the same. No one knew where exciting performances were going to come from, but the beauty of the platform was that rules could be set up for something like any player burying six 3s.

“By the time a person would actually know” a player had hit six 3-pointers, Carney says, “this system would have already created a highlights package.”

Working With VCs

Some of the most important contributors to the NBA’s tech-evaluation ecosystem are the informal network of venture capitalists that Brenner has cultivated over the last few years, a group of sports-loving investors who are on the lookout for anything that might be useful to a global sports media and events company like the NBA.

The relationships with the VC community have also been built to make it easy for the NBA to reach out to the Silicon Valley types for suggestions when there’s a specific business problem to solve. An example is translation services technology, a must-have for a league with fans all around the world, and 25% of its players from abroad. Currently, the NBA translates information into seven languages, but it knows that if it expands that number, it could potentially reach more fans.

An expansion like that has to be economically scalable, though, so Brenner recently put the word out to her VC partners that the NBA was looking for new translation or transcription technology.

“We said this is an area we’re concerned about [and] do you have any ideas on tech companies that do this really well,” Brenner recalls. “There’s companies that do it, but you also want someone that is nimble, and scalable, and economical, and [the VCs] start to tell you the story of where their investments [in the area] are, or what they’ve heard about.”

Her team is currently in the middle of vetting some of the recommendations that came back.

Sometimes, the advice is more general, such as two years ago when one VC—Brenner can’t remember which one—recommended that the league should get heavily involved in bots, given that they can quickly and easily push valuable information to fans about their favorite teams or players. Get enough fans engaged that way, the argument went, and soon you’ll see more ticket sales and more people subscribing to the NBA’s League Pass service, which allows for unlimited viewing of out-of-market games.

That advice led the NBA to begin working directly with Facebook on development of its Messenger bots.

“They have been very proactive in developing select relationships,” says Jeff Jordan, a partner at the A-list VC firm, and NBA partner, Andreessen Horowitz. “There’s a short list of VCs who clearly love athletics….The NBA establishes relationships with people who have that interest [and] we see deals that are of interest to us. They’re getting into the deal flow by having the relationships.”

Jordan, who has also advised individual players interested in tech investing like the Warriors’ Andre Iguodala, recalls suggesting the NBA look into several different technologies geared toward new ways to present sports on TV. One was a rotating 3D technology that ultimately was used during the broadcast of the Winter Olympics, he says.

In the meantime, there’s also a two-way street that runs between the league and its teams.

The Warriors’ Messenger bot, which incorporates WSC’s highlight-creation tool, is an example of that. But the give-and-take also involves new technologies, either coming from the teams to the NBA, or vice versa.

“If there’s a tech we want to try, it’s not like we’re scared to bring it to [the NBA], says Daniel Brusilovsky, the Warriors’ digital initiatives lead. “We’re encouraged. Friends at other leagues are jealous, because of how much the NBA empowers teams to be innovative.”

Brusilovsky says that Warriors co-owner, Hollywood mogul Peter Guber, had raised the idea that though fans sitting in the first few rows at games can hear the players and referees talking and many other game sounds, those behind them miss out on that part of the experience. In contrast, Guber notes, at the opera or symphony the acoustics are designed so that everyone can hear everything. He wanted the team to look into sound amplification technology.

For the last two years, the team has been testing various approaches to this, and “when we told the NBA, they said ‘this is amazing, let us know how we can help test [it],'” Brusilovsky explains. “They saw this as a great idea for the league….I think they’re looking at this as a great enhancement to the fan experience and something the league should be looking at.”

Kirk Lacob, the Warriors’ assistant general manager, points to another type of technology used by NBA teams that the league later adopted–cameras that capture 3D data that’s then used to generate analytical data.

A few teams had been using a system called SportVU that’s able to track the movement of all players in real time. But the NBA felt that unless every team was using the technology, there wouldn’t be a level playing field, so the league agreed to pay for its implementation by all 30 teams, Lacob says. And more recently, he adds, the league decided to switch over to a new system, from Second Spectrum, that includes cameras and data analysis.

An example of a more fan-facing technology moving from the teams to the league is that of YinzCam, a startup that had developed mobile apps for the Phoenix Suns.

Carney says he met YinzCam through the Suns and quickly saw that the startup was uniquely positioned to build the kind of high-quality apps for multiple mobile platforms, and a lot of them, that the NBA requires of its teams. Today, thanks to that introduction, the NBA is a part owner of the company, and it has built about 100 apps for the league and 24 of its teams.

“We always say, the way we’re structured,” Carney says, “we view the 30 teams plus the league office, as one community that is always vetting technology partners.”

For her part, Brenner thinks the NBA should be open to new ideas, no matter where they come from–teams, consultants, VCs, or directly from companies.

“You think about the last couple of huge companies that have come from [Silicon] Valley,” Brenner says. “Mark Zuckerberg created his in his dorm room. Sergey [Brin] and Larry [Page] did it in their garage. So how are you set up to be open to hear from interesting entrepreneurs–and we see a lot of them, because so many people love the NBA and want to be involved in some way. So how do you have a process where you’re open to see all these new ideas as they come in?”

We are back for another week in some sweet tuneage. We have narrowed it down to eight new songs for your playlists and speakers. Speaking of speakers, ICYMI: Apple announced the HomePod on Tuesday. We’ll keep things short so you can get back to saying “Okay, Google, tell Alexa to Ask Siri ‘Shazam this for me.'”

Track 1. Mura Masa & Desiigner – “All Around the World”

DJ/producer Mura Masa teamed up with the Brooklyn rapper, Desiigner for their new song “All Around the World.” As impressive as the song is, the music video deserves its own kudos, having been shot in just one take.

Track 2. Taylor Swift – “Better Than Revenge”

Ah, the return of our lady Taylor Swift. By releasing her entire back catalog to Spotify et al, she obviously intended the media to take up the job of overpowering Katy Perry’s new album Witness. Well, we the media will fall gloriously into that trap. As you peruse Swift’s 11-year career, take the time to enjoy simpler days. Use this gift to remember a time before “The Feud,” when Tay was more concerned with telling off cheating ex-boyfriends and encouraging Kanye West to be a better person. And then let’s thank Taylor for her endless pettiness and the thoughtfulness to know we needed a palate cleanser after suffering through months of Katy Perry gaffes and floppy singles. I’m so glad that feminism now lets us critique other women. Swish swish bish. — Recommended by P. Claire Dodson

Track 3. DJ Khaled & Drake – “To the Max”

This is just expected at this point: Drake and DJ Khaled are consistently dropping summer anthems, as a joint venture and independently. This latest item is a nice little dance jam. The volume needs to go . . . TO THE MAX on this one.

Track 4. Death From Above – “Freeze Me”

Canadian noise-rock duo Death from Above are now the artists formerly known as“Death From Above 1979.” The band has been kicking out the jams since as early as 2002, so taking a dive into their past tracks is highly recommended.

Track 5. TLC – “Way Back”

T-Boz and Chilli released the music video for their lead single “Way Back” from their fifth and final studio album TLC, due later this month. TLC has been slowly but surely creeping up on us with some new songs: In addition to “Way Back,” check out “It’s Sunny,” featuring an an Earth, Wind & Fire sample.

Track 6. SZA & Kendrick Lamar – “Doves In The Wind”

It’s been a long, painstaking trek filled with fake-out release dates and album title switches, but we’ve finally reached the alt-R&B nirvana that is SZA’s latest full-length release Ctrl. Following her 2014 EP Z (see what she did there?), SZA is entirely in her element with Ctrl‘s downtempo sizzle, see: “Doves in the Wind” featuring her Top Dawg Entertainment label-mate Kendrick Lamar. — Recommended by KC Ifeanyi

Track 7. MuteMath – “Hit Parade”

Psychedelic Rock group MuteMath released a behemoth of a record this week. Note: The last minute is a trip down 1970s nostalgia.

Track 8. David Guetta & Justin Bieber – “2U”

Ladies and Gentlemen, this is where we are now. Justin Bieber has traded Skrillex and Diplo for David Guetta. Let’s see how this plays out, as this new electronic R&B song has some big shoes to fill.

Bonus Track. Katy Perry – “Déjà Vu”

Today we saw the full release of the new Katy Perry album, and it was underwhelming. All of the great takeaways were already released as singles. The one plus from the 15 tracks of Witness is the song “Déjà Vu.”

With that, I leave you to it–so good ahead and pop in those headphones and take all of these tracks with you. Be advised we will be updating this Spotify listing every Friday.

WHAT: A new ad from Volvo that uses a little girl’s first day of school to illustrate how just one moment can impact an entire life. What’s that got to do with the new XC60? You’ll see.

WHO: Volvo, Forsman & Bodenfors

WHY WE CARE: Car commercials are a staple of advertising–from local dealerships to national ads of the latest models careening through Sedona. But lately, we’ve been seeing less of these glorified product demos and a hint at something more soulful–a realization that brand story and image can be as powerful than a slick hood design and leather interior. Back in March, it was Mercedes, and here Volvo uses emotionally deft storytelling that actually revolves around a product strength.

After mentioning its interest in augmented reality (AR) publicly on several occasions, Apple still managed to surprise many of us on Monday by announcing a new tool–ARKit–that will let developers create augmented reality experiences for the iPhone.

This is a perfectly Apple way of entering a new tech space. Yes, plenty of big Apple platforms have launched the hardware, then later let developers create on it–iPhone, Apple Watch, Siri, tvOS, for example. But Apple is known for being patient and cautious about entering new tech areas, and leading with a development kit is just another way of doing that.

Apple says the AR experiences that developers create will run on any iPhone with an A9 or later chip. The ARKit AR, in fact, is already starting to show up on Twitter. And, admittedly, they look impressive.

Higher quality version on YouTube. https://t.co/1fzIg6Ghdh#ARKit

— Cody Brown (@CodyBrown) June 7, 2017

“This is shot on a 6s,” says developer Cody Brown in a reply to the tweet. “Can only imagine what they will do with a better depth sensor.”

Yep. I’m betting Apple’s real intent is to let developers start getting their feet wet developing AR for future iPhones that create better AR using more and better sensors.

Developers, ultimately, are not going to be satisfied with the limitations imposed by the basic smartphone camera of most existing iPhones, which were built for taking photographs, not measuring 3D space (with the possible exception of the dual-camera iPhone 7 Plus).

That’s why it makes sense that at least one of the new iPhones announced this fall will include a 3D sensor on the back to more accurately capture the fine layers of things situated closer or farther away from the camera. Only then can it place digital imagery within that environment in a convincing way.

A key question is whether ARKit be used to create AR experiences that exceed the limitations of existing iPhones. Can ARKit create experiences that would look better with the help of an additional 3D sensor on the device they’re running on? Since developers are just getting their hands on the new SDK, it’s hard to know. But it would be strange for Apple to release a development kit that tied the quality of its product to the limitations of the existing consumption devices. Apple, if you haven’t noticed, isn’t shy about moving on to new and better technology standards, even at the expense of people who own older-generation devices.

Anyway, here's a chameleon trying to catch bubbles. pic.twitter.com/RSSKV1nFYY

— Paul Bronks (@virtuallydead) June 7, 2017

The new 3D sensor coming in the iPhone 8 (or “iPhone X” 10th anniversary edition) will be supplied, at least in part, by Lumentum. A recent channel check indicated that Lumentum will be supplying about half of the 3D sensors, while II-VI and possibly one other vendor will be proving the remainder.

Until the announcement of ARKit on Monday, it was unclear whether the new 3D sensor would be located on the front of the phone for use in facial recognition (for unlocking the phone) or on the back of the phone for AR. Now it seems more clear that the sensor will be on the back of the phone.

Releasing the SDK now will give developers ample time to create cool AR apps before the appearance of those new phones this fall. It’ll also allow a little more time for the general public (those who haven’t played Pokémon Go, anyway) to understand and warm up to the concept of AR.

Of course Apple will develop some of its own native AR experiences, which will likely begin showing up in iOS 12. In Maps, for example, AR may be used to put digital place markers and other information within a sort of 3D “Street View” environment.

Google has been working on AR for years with its Tango software. Apple is coming at AR from a very different angle, however. While Google has, so far, depended on partners like Lenovo to create phones with the multiple sensors needed to support AR, Apple brings its own consumption device with the iPhone. Because there are already hundreds of millions of iPhones in the wild that could run the ARKit apps, Apple says ARKit is already “the biggest AR platform in the world.”

But claiming the biggest AR platform comes at the cost of lowering the threshold for admission, at least where the devices are concerned. ARKit experiences running on single-camera phones probably won’t be as good as those running on multiple-sensor phones (like Tango) or ones running on powerful dedicated devices (like Microsoft’s HoloLens and, potentially, Magic Leap).

Apple, of course, won’t be comfortable with that competitive dynamic. It will want to build future iPhones for superior AR. And unless Apple has built software so magical that it can create great AR on existing single-camera iPhones, it’ll do that by adding new 3D sensors in the iPhone 8 and beyond.

Power utilities generally live in a world divorced from their customers. Yes, they might answer your call when there’s a billing issue, or the line outside is down. But they answer more to regulators and shareholders. State public utility commissions set the rates we pay for electricity. Most utilities are effective monopolies, with no competition. And, the way regulation works, they’re incentivized to be inefficient: Their mandate is to keep the lights on, at all costs, not to provide power at the lowest possible price.

In time, technology may begin to undercut this model, which effectively guarantees returns to companies (utilities are often criticized for “gold-plating” their capital investments, as higher costs mean higher profits). Solar panels and home storage systems allow homeowners to operate more independently of utilities (which is why many are resisting solar so hard). And the internet allows new forms of trading relationship that are more “peer-to-peer” (that is, supplier-to-customer) rather than “hub-and-spoke” (where utilities take up an enlarged role in the middle).

Drift, a startup utility from Seattle, is a glimpse of what that future could look like. Launched recently in New York, it links up independent upstate power producers with residents in New York City and aims to cut out the flabby center of the supply chain, including unnecessary middlemen and outdated software. Using machine learning, high-frequency trading, and a blockchain digital ledger for handling power trades, it claims to cut costs to the consumer by 10%-20%. And that’s just the beginning. As its supply network grows, it believes it can continue slashing prices.

“Google and Amazon are taking control of their own power buying, going around the utilities’ administrative bureaucracy to buy directly from power makers, or they’ll develop their own plants. We’re basically that energy buying team for everyone who can’t afford an energy buying team,” Robinson tells Fast Company.

Residential consumers pay a flat rate of $1 per week ($4.33 a month) plus whatever it costs to supply the power from wholesale markets. That doesn’t sound radical, but it is. While traditional utilities make more money the more power you use, Drift has an incentive to reduce its costs and end-prices. It makes money by signing up more customers, not by enlarging what it charges per customer. (Of course, it could raise the rates in the future but probably not before it’s won a customer base).

Though Drift is a utility and is taking on the customer relationship, it doesn’t actually take over the wires that supply your home. It leases distribution and transmission capacity based on the amount of power it needs. That again offers an incentive to be more efficient. If it can supply New York City customers from, say, Westchester County instead of Niagara Falls, it costs less money to distribute: local power is cheaper power.

“We are completely incentivized to lower the cost of energy,” Robinson says. “We want to find more local sources, more efficiencies, and strip out the middle man. We don’t lose money if your power bill goes down. But we probably won’t sign up many people if your bill goes up.”

Using a web dashboard, customers choose whether they want to prioritize the cheapest power or the cleanest. If enough renewables aren’t available on the grid, Drift will fill in with dirtier power (though generally clean power is always available in some form). Customers are billed on a seven-day basis, with hard data clearly visible on energy sources and types. (In reality, all power, whether it’s dirty or clean, is mixed together by the time it reaches your home. But, in paying for clean energy, Drift guarantees your money will go only to clean producers).

Drift has signed up small hydro producers, home developers with excess solar power, as well as large buildings that “shed” load at high-demand times (say, by turning off or turning down machinery). Its pitch to these producers is simple: we can provide a market for your small-scale supply where traditional buyers can’t. Generally, anyone with less than 1 MW is not an interesting proposition for wholesale markets, Robinson says.

It’s no accident that Seattle-based Drift is launching in New York first. The state’s Reforming the Energy Vision (REV) re-regulation program aims to open up power markets to new players in distributed generation, storage, and other services while maintaining the role of utilities as maintainers of the core infrastructure. It was easier to win approval for a new utility here than it might have been in other, less forward-thinking states. “We were inspired by REV in New York, rather than going to Boston or Chicago first. You start to see a group of regulators who understand the market and what the future opportunities are,” Robinson says.

Though it’s probably unfair to blame utilities for the regulatory structure they operate in, the electricity industry is surely ripe for change, including greater customer empowerment through technology. Power prices have risen almost 50% in the last 15 years, even as the price of natural gas–which drives more generation than any other energy source–has fallen. Distributed generation plus the internet allows power to be produced and distributed more efficiently, and there’s no reason customers should effectively pay for legacy grid investments. It can only be a matter of time before customers start demanding lower prices through startups like Drift, instead of the heavily-regulated prices offered through more traditional utilities.

The Apple Watch was supposed to be more than just a fancy fitness tracker with fashionable wrist straps when it launched in 2015. As Apple executives explained at the time, this device was supposed to save us from our phones, making our digital lives more efficient while keeping us engaged with the real world.

Things didn’t quite work out that way, as the Watch’s non-fitness elements proved less compelling than Apple imagined. Consequently, the product’s direction has changed dramatically over the past two years. With the Watch Series 2, Apple made fitness the primary selling point, and last year’s WatchOS 3 update overhauled the entire interface, demoting unpopular features and de-emphasizing third-party apps.

WatchOS 4, the upcoming software update that Apple announced this week, doesn’t seem like a major shift by comparison, at least not on the surface. But beyond its obvious new features–like a new Siri watch face, better workout tracking, and the ability to grab exercise data from gym equipment–WatchOS 4 brings lots of behind-the-scenes changes, especially for third-party apps. Together, they add up to a significant change that could bring the Apple Watch much closer to its original promise.

Faster Apps

Third-party apps on the Apple Watch used to be mostly worthless. Navigating through WatchOS to reach them was a chore, and the apps themselves were so unresponsive that taking out your phone was almost always faster and easier.

WatchOS 4 aims to be a breakthrough for standalone apps. Although Apple has allowed third-party apps to run directly on the watch since WatchOS 2, the next update will combine each app’s code and interface elements into a single process that loads at runtime. Native apps should automatically become smoother, more responsive to the touch, and faster at loading new screens as a result.

“This is going to make a huge difference in the performance of your apps,” Ian Parks, who works on the WatchOS software team, told developers during a presentation at Apple’s WWDC.

Apple is also making a few tweaks to alleviate the Watch’s navigation woes. Users will be able to sort the app dock by recency, instead of having to pick favorites, and the home screen will offer a list view as an alternative to the cumbersome honeycomb grid. Another change seems more subtle, but elicited cheers from developers at WWDC: Apps that use a horizontal page layout can launch on any page, not just the left-most one. If you’ve ever swiped right on a smartphone app to pull up a menu, this will allow Watch apps to have a similar layout.

Meanwhile, Apple is trying to streamline its own apps as an example for developers to follow. Apple’s Workout app, for instance, will allow users to launch new exercises from within existing ones. And by default, those exercises will use whatever goal the user had set previously. What used to involve a half-dozen steps will instead require just a couple of taps.

“This is a great example of building a responsive user experience, where it’s not just about updating the data in your UI, it’s also about thinking of what the user might want to do next in your app based on what you already know,” Parks said during his developer presentation.

Smarter Apps

Aside from improving performance, Apple is also letting Watch app developers pull some new tricks.

For instance, they’ll be able to gather location data in the background, then use sounds or haptic feedback to announce when something important happens. A mapping app might be able to signal upcoming turns this way, and an augmented reality game (think Pokémon Go) could alert users to nearby activity.

Apple is also extending background privileges for audio recording, allowing apps to capture sound while the watch screen is off. If you can imagine a music app for recording jam sessions with a built-in haptic metronome, or one that delivers spoken translations in real time, WatchOS 4 will enable them in a way that doesn’t destroy battery life.

Similar to WatchOS 4’s performance improvements, one of the most significant feature changes seems mundane on its face: Upon request, Apps can remain in an open state for up to eight minutes instead of the default two minutes, and then close once a given task is complete. Picture a shopping list that continues to pop up when you raise your wrist–but only until all the items are checked off–or a ride-sharing app that updates the driver’s location through to the time of arrival. WatchOS 4 will help avoid instances in which the app has closed, and users have to navigate back to it from the home screen.

“This is something we are really excited about, and I think it’s going to change the way that we think about creating our Watch apps,” Parks said.

Freedom From The Phone

Even with WatchOS 4’s app improvements, many apps still won’t fully function without a nearby iPhone. But while rumors of an Apple Watch with cellular connectivity have circulated for more than year, Apple may not need to go that far to make its smartwatch less iPhone-dependent.

The Apple Watch can already run some standalone apps and make payments through Apple Pay without a data connection, and it can use Wi-Fi networks for connectivity when a paired iPhone isn’t in range. With WatchOS 4, Apple is taking that independence a step further by letting the Watch connect directly to nearby Bluetooth devices.

Tim Bajarin, the president of analyst firm Creative Strategies, says this is of great interest to him personally. Bajarin is diabetic, and has a device implanted on his stomach that measures blood sugar and transmits the data to his iPhone via Bluetooth. WatchOS 4 will allow him to get that data directly through the Apple Watch. (Dexcom, which makes the glucose monitor that Bajarin uses, was one of the partners Apple highlighted for WatchOS 4’s Core Bluetooth functionality.)

“That to me was really a big deal,” Bajarin says. “Now, if I leave my phone downstairs, and I go upstairs, it doesn’t matter, because I’m going to get that blood glucose reading on my Watch no matter what.”

The Watch’s new Bluetooth features should also let users connect directly to more specialized health and exercise devices, such as EKG monitors, smart surfboards, golf-swing monitors, and tennis trackers. Down the road, Bajarin theorized that the Watch’s Bluetooth smarts could connect to future Apple wearable devices, such as augmented-reality glasses.

“I feel that particular piece is an important technical building block that eventually makes the Apple Watch even more useful” to other products, he says.

WatchOS 4’s ability to grab workout data from gym equipment could also foreshadow greater smartwatch independence. Outside of Apple Pay, it’s the first instance of Apple using the Watch’s near-field communication chip to interact with objects in the real world. Apple is already opening up NFC chip access on the iPhone in iOS 11, so it’s reasonable to think the watch may follow.

“It does show you that Apple is thinking about much more aggressive use of NFC, and this is just another good example,” Bajarin says.

For what it’s worth, Apple itself seems to be downplaying the potential for greatly improved apps in WatchOS 4. Many of the improvements mentioned here are practically a footnote on the company’s WatchOS preview site, and some don’t get mentioned at all. Fitness still reigns as the ultimate Apple Watch selling point, and probably will long into the future. But WatchOS 4 is the surest sign yet that the dream of saving us from our phones hasn’t died.