Has Facebook’s mishandling of it users’ personal information made CEO Mark Zuckerberg a marked man? You might think that judging by the copious amounts of cash Facebook spends to protect his personal safety.

Big tech companies have to report to the Securities and Exchange Commission how much they spend on security costs. In 2017, the most recent year that a direct comparison was possible, Facebook spent $7.3 million on security for its CEO, reportsWired, and another $2.6 million to protect the company’s COO, Sheryl Sandberg. In contrast, Apple CEO Tim Cook’s public profile is likely as big as Zuckerberg’s, yet Apple pays only $310,000 a year to protect him–a fraction of Zuckerberg’s security costs.

Many residents of San Francisco know that an SUV with two burly security guys is constantly parked outside Zuckerberg’s residence here. They, or others like them, are on the clock 24/7/365. Visiting the Facebook headquarters, one quickly discovers the imposing presence of security people and procedures.

So why do Zuckerberg and Sandberg need so much protection? Facebook declined comment on that question, leaving only the company’s statements in SEC filings for a guide. The board of directors says this in a proxy statement from April 2018:

Because of the high visibility of our company, our compensation & governance committee has authorized an “overall security program” for Mr. Zuckerberg to address safety concerns due to specific threats to his safety arising directly as a result of his position as our founder, Chairman, and CEO. We require these security measures for the company’s benefit because of the importance of Mr. Zuckerberg to Facebook, and we believe that the costs of this overall security program are appropriate and necessary.

What they don’t write is that Zuckerberg and Sandberg are the very public faces of a company that has lost much of the public’s trust, if not its patronage. The two built a business on harvesting users’ personal data to fuel a massive advertising business, while informing users only about the benefits of the Facebook site. Since the Cambridge Analytica scandal, the world has learned much about the company’s willingness to use personal data in ways unbeknownst to its users to fuel its “growth at all costs” modus operandi. Facebook also provided the technology platform used by the Russian government to perpetrate what’s likely the largest-scale interference in a political election in the the history of the world.

This has all come to light in the last couple of years. That’s why it’s interesting to note that the cost of protecting Zuckerberg has gone up dramatically in that time period. Facebook paid “only” $2.6 million in 2013 to protect its CEO. That cash grew to $7.3 million by 2017, and Facebook said last summer it expected Zuckerberg’s protection costs to rise to $10 million this year.

For perspective, Facebook isn’t the only tech company to pay megabucks to protect executives. Google parent Alphabet paid $600,000 to protect Sundar Pichai in 2017. Amazon spent $1.6 million on Jeff Bezos’s security. Intel spent $1.2 million on former CEO Brian Krzanich.

That said, Zuckerberg still won’t be in the same league as Donald Trump unless he runs for president. In 2017, Congress put $120 million in the omnibus spending bill for Trump’s security–$60 million for the Secret Service and another $60 million for law enforcement in the towns the president visits.

Few filmmakers have experienced as wide a range of praise and criticism as M. Night Shyamalan. After finding fame at age 29 with the blockbuster The Sixth Sense, followed by Unbreakable and Signs, he put out a series of misses, culminating in 2013’s widely panned Will and Jaden Smith vehicle After Earth. But in 2015, Shyamalan surprised audiences with a twist: He released The Visit, a horror movie he self-financed for $5 million that went on to gross $65 million in the U.S., sparking a professional renaissance. The next year, his $9 million horror film Split (a sequel of sorts to Unbreakable) grossed $138 million. Shyamalan, who’s now producing a psychological thriller series starring Rupert Grint for Apple TV, explains how he regained his moviemaking powers.

Fast Company:Glass is the third in a series that started 18 years ago with Unbreakable, an unconventional superhero origin story. The movie was a box-office disappointment, though it was well received by critics and gained a cult following. Knowing what you know now, what advice would you give your younger self?

M. Night Shyamalan: You want to be this trailblazing artist, but you [also] want to be accepted. They sometimes don’t go together. [I’d] say to myself, Hey, you’re on the right track. Just keep going. Your gut is right, even though maybe the marketplace hasn’t caught up to it yet.

FC: Why did you choose to revisit the story with 2016’s Split, which only reveals itself to be a sequel at the end of the film, and Glass, which brings together characters from the other two?

MS: When I did Unbreakable, the producers wouldn’t let me sell it as a comic-book movie, because they thought it was uncommercial. So it wasn’t marketed that way. They said, “Everybody comes to thrillers, so let’s make it an ambiguous thriller with your name and Bruce Willis attached.” I felt a little hurt by it. I was probably just being immature, and I put away the idea of making a trilogy, which I had been thinking about. Life went on. I did other movies, and I made some family fare and then I went back to thrillers. While I was making The Visit, I thought, Split will be really good to make that way, super-contained. The low-budget moviemaking was making me feel free.

FC: How so?

MS: I’m doing these films the way I want, because I’ve paid for them. There’s a high likelihood that [the return is] going to be positive, because [the budget is] so low. That’s comforting. For Glass, I said, I’m going to put a loan up against my house. I’m setting the tone, for the actors, that it’s going to be hard, and they might not have everything they’re used to. The process weeds out people organically, because not everyone is up for that, and spurs a kind of a work ethic from everybody.

MS: I made a movie at 20, called Praying With Anger, that failed. I made another movie, Wide Awake, for Miramax and Harvey [Weinstein], and got my ass handed to me when that failed. Then I did The Sixth Sense and wrote [the screenplay for] Stuart Little in the same year. So that pocket of “wow” was narrow. I had setbacks before and after.

FC: Can you describe a time when you shared your creative vision with colleagues, and they didn’t like it?

MS: When I made The Visit, I felt like a film student again, and that was good. When I first showed the [script] to people, everyone said they didn’t think it was going to work. They were like, “You can’t be this irreverent, you can’t have a naked grandmother in this.” When I showed people the script for Split, everyone [who read it], even my agent, said, “No way.” I’ve been feeling that fun kind of “I’ll prove you wrong” sense when I come to people with an idea and they say no.

A Career’s twists and turns

FC: Do you find yourself pushing back often?

MS: It’s more about following my instinct. If I say, “I’m thinking about doing this, what do you think?” and [the other party doesn’t get it], that will actually reinforce my first thought. I’ll think, I know you can’t see it yet, but I can see it. Whereas when what [the other party says] resonates [with me], I know I need to change something. I remember when I wrote The Sixth Sense, I told my agent, “We’re going to put this on sale on Monday for a minimum bid of a million dollars, and I’m attached as director. If we don’t get a million dollars, I’m shelving it.” We didn’t have any money, so can you imagine? But I was dead serious.

FC:After Earth has an 11% rating on Rotten Tomatoes and did not meet expectations at the box office. How do you deal with professional setbacks?

MS: I’m in a good place on all of that. I don’t read a lot of that stuff. I get a general idea from people who tell me whether a movie was well reviewed or not . . . I’ve been surprised by the passion of the hatred sometimes. I tend to look for unifying theories. I had a relationship with my audience that was specific in terms of making thrillers. Then I wanted to go make other stories. I tacked toward kids’ movies mid-career and I’m sentimental, I get it. That’s not your cup of tea. I wanted to make kids’ movies at that time. Now I’m cool with making thrillers again, and there’s an expectation and reward that’s more in alignment for the audience.

FC: The “M. Night Shyamalan twist” has become a trope of sorts. Has that made you rethink anything when you’re writing a script?

MS: The pejorative part of that question is that it seems like it’s a dance move, like the moonwalk. That’s not what it is. There’s always, by the nature of making a thriller, going to be a revelation. All stories have an, “Oh my God, I can’t believe that happened” moment, but mysteries have a more defined [one].

FC: You typically write, direct, and even appear in your own movies, but you’ve also adapted other material, like 1999’s Stuart Little. Which do you prefer?

It’s more of a challenge to adapt stuff because I want to please everyone. I feel bad changing anything. My first draft of Stuart Little was a straight adaptation of that book. I didn’t want to change it because it was by E.B. White. I thought, I’m just an Indian kid here writing. Then [the producers] were like, it’s too quaint. I thought I would rewrite it and just see where my mind went. There was a line in the book: “He looks somewhat like a mouse.” That told me the tone of the movie, which was the answer to everything. I used that line, and that humor, as the North Star. I prefer to go through the torture from scratch.

FC:The Visit was a low-budget horror movie. Glass is a superhero movie. It seems like these are the only two types of bets studios are making now. Why do you think that is?

MS: [Watching] a drama can be an insular experience. It’s harder to get you out of your house because, for example, I would want to experience something like [seeing] a couple getting divorced in private. I don’t need 500 people to have that experience. But being scared or surprised or having an “aha” moment are things you don’t want to see alone.

FC:Glass stars two stalwarts from the Marvel universe—Samuel L. Jackson (Nick Fury) and James McAvoy (Professor X). Do you feel like you’re competing with Marvel and DC?

MS: Our movie kind of comments on all of that. It’s very self-aware. I want to believe that we have come to a place where originality is again going to be a marketable thing.

When the Berlin Wall fell in the autumn of 1989, it felt like the beginning of a sea change in global geopolitics. Borders were beginning to fade, globalization was starting to take root. The concrete barrier had snaked around one of Europe’s most historic capitals for decades, cleaving a city in two and separating thousands of families, friends, and loved ones basically overnight. When the wall came down, Germany was suddenly on its way toward reunification–and it felt like the rest of the globe couldn’t be far behind.

That movement never came to pass. When the Berlin Wall crumbled that November night three decades ago, there were only 15 border walls in the world. Today there are 70, with 7 more proposed or in progress. Border walls have gone up in places like Hungary, Kenya, and Morocco. And, as you might have heard, Donald Trump’s proposed budget for a 1,600-mile wall along the U.S.-Mexico border has shut down the American government, as politicians argue over whether spending $5 billion on “steel slats” is a worthy use of taxpayer money while crucial infrastructure like bridges and highways crumble.

Far from heralding the end of borders, the fall of the Berlin Wall ushered in a golden era of walls and created a booming industry that specializes in keeping citizens of neighboring countries separated.

Vallet is a professor of geography at the University of Quebec-Montreal, where she studies the impact of physical border walls around the world and the growth of wall construction over the past three decades. She says the beginning of the burgeoning border security market can be traced back to the beginning of a new geopolitical era.

“At the end of the Cold War, the military and different defense industries found their markets short, and they have to rethink their business,” says Vallet. “The Boeings and Thales of the world had huge transformations. They knew they wouldn’t be able to build big weapons like they used to, so they kind of slid gradually towards something that was less about war and more about security.”

Border walls and the companies that build them were born out of peace dividends. If the military-industrial complex was going to be wound down, then it was up to the defense contractors of the world to create a border-industrial complex to take its place.

We’re currently in the middle of a golden era for border wall contractors. Companies are building everything from fences lined with concertina wire to military-grade drones to high-tech lidar sensors to monitor borderlands, and budgets for holistic frontier defenses are ballooning in tandem. The global market for border security technology is expected to grow to nearly $53 billion in the next few years, with major security companies like Raytheon, Northrop Grumman, and Lockheed Martin leading the way.

There are a couple of reasons for this: DHS has already built much of the “easier” sections of the border fence in California and Arizona. The federal government owns much of the land along the Mexican border in those states, which eliminates the need for expensive and drawn-out processes like eminent domain compensation and negotiating with the Tohono O’odham Nation, which has said it will not allow the federal government to build a wall on its reservation. Neither complication, according to border expert Reece Jones, has been baked into the estimates provided by the Trump Administration.

“All the places where it’s accessible and on relatively flat ground where you can put a wall pretty easily–those have all been built,” Jones, a professor of geography at the University of Hawaii at Mānoa, told Fast Company. “So the places that aren’t fenced are the places that are really remote or are really rugged or are over a mountain range. The wall in those places is going to cost a lot more than it cost the last time around.” Jones adds that “almost all” of the land along the Texas stretch of the border is privately owned, which means that the federal government will have to engage in protracted conversations with folks who own border-adjacent property.

Still, even with the rising price tags there’s no sign that companies aren’t lining up to submit bids for the Trump Administration’s dream wall, or that border wall construction is slowing down around the world.

In 2016, the U.K. finished a one-kilometer border wall in Calais to prevent migrants from hitching rides on trucks entering from the French side. The cost of the wall itself totaled a little more than $4 million, but the total securitization of the border will run the U.K. government another $57.1 million in order to pay for maintenance, detection technology, and more fencing. Israel is planning on building a subterranean 60-kilometer extension of its wall with Palestine at an estimated cost of $570 million, and Israeli construction and defense companies have been at the forefront of exporting their expertise to countries looking to build physical borders, including the United States. (Elbit, an Israeli defense contractor, was awarded a $145.3 million contract by the Department of Homeland Security to develop a “virtual detection system” along sections of the Mexican border.)

“Israel has been a huge producer and exporter of security technologies and security expertise,” Vallet told Fast Company. “They’ve been working with Saudi Arabia, for instance, to transfer the expertise on building border fences and border security. It’s a globalized market.”

The stateside boom in border security doesn’t show any signs of slowing either. Congress has already authorized $20 million for wall prototypes in advance of the potential $5 billion earmark currently being deliberated in Washington. (The United States government has spent nearly $10 billion on border security since 2007.)

“This is a good time to be in the border security business because we don’t make war as much,” says Vallet. “It’s not direct conflict anymore. It’s about risks and how you sell those risks.”

Highlighting and marketing those dangers–whether they’re real or imagined–are why countries like Argentina have floated the idea of building a border wall with Bolivia and Peru, or why India has continued to erect barriers between itself and its myriad northern neighbors. Saudi Arabia has even proposed the idea of digging a canal on its border with Qatar in the shadow of their recent bilateral fracas. The proposed canal would effectively make Qatar into an island nation, a feat of engineering that is sure to be as complex as it is lucrative.

The future of foreign policy is being shaped out of of razor wire and concrete, and the businesses that specialize in segmenting the world are poised to thrive.

Kirsten Green: I’m deliberate. I always have a plan–organization is important to me. Not only mentally but physically as well. I throw out everything old, and I don’t keep anything I don’t need.

FC: What’s your worst habit?

KG: Going online before bed. After I put my two kids to bed, I inevitably end up on my email instead of, say, reading a book, and then my mind gets going. One hour turns into two . . . maybe three . . .

FC: When you’re stuck creatively, you . . .

KG: Seek alone time outdoors. I live in the Bay Area, so I usually leave my house for a walk. I use the calming scenery to sit and think.

KG: Howard Schultz. Starbucks has stood for the same thing since it opened, but it has also evolved to appease and align with the modern consumer. Howard leads with principle and integrity, and he upheld such profound company culture–the root of any great company.

FC: What business buzzword is overrated?

KG:Disruptive. When people first started using the term, they meant a business pushing for change while delivering something new and different. Now we use it indiscriminately for something new.

FC: What’s the best mistake you ever made?

KG: My first investment loss. I initially walked away from that experience feeling vulnerable and defeated, but soon I realized the benefit of a tremendous amount of learning. That misstep gave me knowledge I leverage to this day.

KG: My eyeglasses. Sadly, I can’t see without them.

KG:“Don’t marry your high school boyfriend (and prom date)!” All relationships require work, but when you need to not only grow but grow up together, it can be an even larger challenge. Now I have a true “lifetime” life partner. We know how to wholeheartedly support each other.

FC: What was your career fork in the road?

KG: At a former job, I was playing by the rules and getting the right promotions. Suddenly, after a merger, I was out of the job. In that moment I realized I could take other people’s lead, or set my own agenda. Now when I have setbacks, they stem from choices that I’ve made and can own.

FC: What’s your work uniform?

KG: No uniforms! I love fashion and use it to express and set my moods.

FC: What’s your favorite object in your office?

KG: I have a print by photographer Melissa Ann Pinney that features four girls climbing a tree. She’s a Guggenheim Fellow and known for her photographs of American women and children. It offers playful perspective on female identity and brings me such joy.

FC: What’s your favorite form of exercise?

KG: Running outdoors.

KG: Green juice. The greener the better.

This week, Gillette joined the noble ranks of Purposeful Brands with a new ad. It suggested that a decent chap should call out toxic masculinity where he sees it, which was something a departure from their output of three decades: phallic symbolism that would make Sigmund Freud choke on his cigar.

On the one hand, you could see where Gillette was going. It’s been slashing prices, squeezed by Dollar Shave Club on one side and Generation Beardy Boy on the other. From a strategic point of view, the ad made total sense. There’s just one thing. Purpose is something you believe, not something you make up one day as a marketing strategy. Its social media mentions flooded with women complaining that Gillette’s razors for women are pink and cost more. For a company that makes shaving kits, Gillette didn’t seem to have looked in the mirror.

If @Gillette really want to make a change perhaps they could start by looking at their pink ‘Venus’ range for women that includes names like Passion and Embrace and costs more than the men’s ranges for the same thing. Thanks.

— Caroline Hirons (@CarolineHirons) January 15, 2019

In recent years, companies have been told that they need a purpose, a reason for existing beyond making money. Consumers look for authenticity, and prospective employees want to work somewhere that makes the world better. “Purpose” has been touted as the key to 21^st-century success by both the Harvard Business Review and Fast Company.

Johnson and Johnson claims, “We put the needs and well-being of the people we serve first.” Starbucks exists “to inspire and nurture the human spirit–one person, one cup, and one neighborhood at a time.” State Street made a statue of an empowered little girl facing down Wall Street’s bull.

With the world’s top companies staring nobly into the middle distance, it seemed to be the dawn of something magnificent: capitalism with a soul.

LOL, just kidding.

State Street underpays women. Starbucks paid no U.K. corporate tax for three years on sales of £1.2 billion  (about $1.5 billion), thus failing to nurture my local neighborhoods by paying for police, social services, or even street sweepers. Johnson and Johnson kept 98% of its cash offshore in 2017–almost $42 billion. If you wriggle out of paying the taxes that cover your customers’ healthcare and education, you don’t really care about the well-being of the people you serve.

Brand purpose is at risk of losing any meaning; it’s already being hilariously mocked.

We need genuinely moral companies to exert their power and tackle the big problems of the day. Besides, high-mindedness can make a company a ton of money. It has done so, over and over again, for centuries.

Learn from the Quakers

When Queen Victoria was still young and athletic, two brothers took over their father’s cocoa business and started making chocolate bars. Their surname was Cadbury so–spoiler alert–this is a success story. They outgrew their factory in the U.K.’s industrial heartland of Birmingham, so they began planning to build a bigger one. They bought land, lots of land; far too much land for a chocolate plant. They had a vision for a factory in a garden, and a town that would grow in that garden. George Cadbury decreed that, “one-tenth of the Estate should be laid out and used as parks, recreation grounds, and open space.” Those spaces weren’t just for Cadbury’s employees. They were for everybody.

George and Richard Cadbury were Quakers. They believed that wealth was meaningless unless you used it to raise the living standards of others. It’s a concept called the Commonwealth, something Quakers exported to America. Quakers have proved remarkably successful in business, founding Barclays and Lloyds, two of the U.K.’s biggest banks, Clarks (of desert boot fame), Nike, and even Sony.

All these companies had founders who believed in a commonwealth, who wanted to create a tide that floated many boats, not just their own. Centuries before anybody said the words “brand purpose,” these companies had it–and flourished because of it. Quakers were honest. Quakers were straight dealers. Quakers paid their debts. There’s a great documentary about them here–but don’t watch it yet, I’m just getting to the good bit.

Right now, purpose is often left in the hands of ad agencies. Every second brief begins, “In a world where everybody is increasingly polarized, at least they can come together over [insert client’s product here].”

It would be better to set the senior management an exam question: What is this company’s commonwealth, and how do we help it to prosper? Patagonia treats the environment as a commonwealth: There’s no point in making great outdoors clothes if the outdoors has become a climate-baked hellscape. It donated its $10 million tax break to environmental charities. If you can easily identify your commonwealth, then you probably had a purpose all along. If you can’t, then I’d advise you to spend some time watching the documentary above.

Cadbury was sold to the food-processing giant Mondelez in 2001. In 2017, Mondelez U.K. managed to pay £122,000 ($157,000) of tax on sales of £1.65 billion ($2.12 billion). Its purpose states that it will be, “Right for our communities as well as the planet.” Yeah, right.

Brian Millar is the cofounder of Paddle Consulting, a company that collects data about the things that people love on the internet. @paddlepowered

In late June last year, Julie Schwietert Collazo was on her way back from the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) office in lower Manhattan where she had just missed a demonstration by a group of mothers there. Like many, she and her husband, Francisco, were troubled by the immigrant detention stories at the southern border and didn’t know how they could help beyond making their voices heard. During that car ride, Julie heard a radio report that would change her life.

Jose Orechena, a New York City attorney, was being interviewed about his client, Yeni González Garcia, a Guatemalan mother seeking asylum in the U.S. who was being held in immigrant detention in Arizona. Her children were in foster care in New York. Provided González Garcia could post bail, she could relocate to New York and work on being reunited with them. The only thing standing between her and her children was money.

“I thought, ‘Okay, well that seems like a really tangible thing–we could mobilize people to raise money for this person’s bond,'” Julie recalls.

At the time, Julie didn’t even know the amount of what was a $7,500 bond. And she also knew that González Garcia would need help getting to New York, as well as ongoing support, including help getting her children into school, assistance with finding a place to live, organizing transportation, and tending to the day-to-day needs of her family. She would not be able to apply for authorization to work until her asylum application had been in process for 180 days, so she would need help supporting herself. Plus, alone with her children in a new country, she would need friends. Helping her would be a commitment beyond just raising money.

After Julie and Francisco decided to move forward, she contacted Orchena and, on June 25, 2018–just a few days after she heard his voice on the radio–she set up a GoFundMe page that would become the catalyst for their organization, Immigrant Families Together, to raise the bond money.

Money changes everything

Through social media contacts, Julie spearheaded raising the bond amount and then some. The couple and fellow volunteers were also able to arrange ground transportation for Gonzales to help her reunite with her children.

But then the money kept coming–and there were so many more people who needed help. Actor Kristen Bell even donated as a birthday present to herself, raising awareness of the effort. And with that attention came travel to meet with potential donors while working–Julie is a full-time freelance writer and editor, and Francisco is a full-time translator–as well as their three children and Francisco’s recovery from surgery. The effort has personal meaning to the family, as Francisco is a Cuban refugee.

To date, Immigrant Families Together has raised about $1 million, reuniting 60 families and providing support to roughly 100 families who are going through the asylum process. They help families with everything from finding legal counsel to locating a place to live. One fact that many asylum seekers don’t realize is that their chances of being granted asylum vary greatly depending on where they live. Syracuse University tracks the records of federal immigration judges. Those in Baltimore and New York tend to find in favor of the asylum seekers more than judges in Memphis or Miami, for example. One judge in Louisiana has denied all asylum cases in her court since its 2013 fiscal year.

The Motivating power of families

The stories of families on the southern border have stirred people to take action, says Barbara Peña, education and outreach coordinator with Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services (RAICES), a San Antonio, Texas, nonprofit that focuses on providing free and low-cost legal services to immigrant families. Because the organization is small, it typically focused on local issues. However, since family detentions escalated in 2018, the nonprofit’s resources were stretched thin. Then, Charlotte and Dave Willner, a couple from Menlo Park, California, who are also parents, decided to launch a Facebook fundraiser for the organization, and things began to change, Peña says.

The RAICES team kept an eye on the Willners’s effort. “We thought that if the fundraiser maxes out at $5,000, that would be a bonus. It would be a sign of success,” Peña recalls. Then, the amount started going higher–$25,000, $30,000, $50,000—and the excitement grew. When the fundraiser broke the $100,000 mark, she says the office erupted in cheers. In all, the fundraiser raised more than $20 million—tripling the group’s annual budget in roughly two weeks. It became the largest fundraiser in Facebook history.

The money has allowed RAICES to scale in ways they never thought possible. Suddenly the focus of a national spotlight, Peña says the organization received more donations, including international gifts, which helped them launch a hotline, add much-needed staff, find more pro bono attorneys, and hire people with specialized skills, such as social workers with experience helping trauma survivors. On January 1, 2019, Charlotte reported on her fundraising page that the money had helped RAICES hire nearly 140 more employees, including 40 attorneys and 40 legal assistants; open three new offices in Houston, Dallas, and San Antonio; and accept more than 400 new cases, among other actions. She doesn’t see the need ebbing anytime soon.

Solving problems like a business

The Collazos are also growing their effort, registering Immigrant Families Together as a 501(c)3 organization. But while it is a nonprofit, Julie looks at its operations as a business with leadership perspective, focusing on how they can deploy their resources most efficiently and effectively. In addition, she realizes the need to provide support to the volunteers in the organization who work tirelessly and need training and development, she says.

Julie hopes that by using good business practices, “I can move more into that role where I’m looking at the bigger picture as opposed to just day-to-day crisis management,” she says. That will give her the time to grow the organization and reunite more families.

In a life-or-death rescue situation, you’d think that the rescuers wouldn’t need to be reminded of the objective. But that’s exactly how 33 Chilean miners were saved in 2010 after being trapped 2,300 feet underground for more than two months. Andre Sougarret, the engineer who headed the effort, led an international team of geologists, drillers, NASA engineers, and others who collaborated on the literally and figuratively groundbreaking effort

And a big part of Sougarret’s success, says Harvard Business School professor Amy Edmondson, comes down to something very simple: “He continually reminded people of their shared purpose: Why they’re here, why this matters—even though it was patently obvious,” she says. “But people in intense work environments like that get frustrated, get into conflict, get discouraged. So he was continually pumping that purpose back in.

The same is true in more prosaic, yet still demanding, work environments: People tend to drift away from the original goal. There may be competing visions of what the objective actually is, or leaders who fail to communicate it clearly. Or, as time goes on, team members may get distracted by “shiny things,” like a really cool feature that’s actually not valuable to the end user. “It’s so easy to lose focus, especially when we’re being asked to come up with crazy ideas all the time,” says Jennifer Sukis, design principal for AI practices and leadership at IBM. That’s especially true if a team has challenging interpersonal dynamics that inhibit their ability to talk openly.

Sukis and Edmondson shared their expertise during a panel sponsored by Post-it Brand entitled “Master Class: Igniting Your Team’s Potential” at Fast Company‘s fourth annual Innovation Festival in October.

THE IMPORTANCE OF PSYCHOLOGICAL SAFETY

There’s more, of course, to meeting a goal than simply restating it frequently—and it certainly helps to have said goals clearly identified on a Post-it Super Sticky Dry Erase Surface to help keep your team on track. When Sukis leads design workshops for the teams working on artificial intelligence at IBM, part of her responsibility, she says, also involves giving them permission to simply be themselves. This “psychological safety,” as Edmondson describes it, is critical for innovation.

“Psychological safety is an environment where people really do feel they can bring their full selves to the work,” Edmondson says. “They can speak up with wild ideas that might not work, they can ask questions, they can express their concerns. That’s the kind of climate where innovation flourishes.”

Without discipline, of course, the innovation can go off the rails—addressing problems that aren’t high priorities, or endlessly going down unrelated rabbit holes. That’s where focus on the goal comes in—and where effective teams distinguish themselves. “As a leader, it’s important to give people room to throw out wild ideas,” Sukis says. “But then you’ve also got to kick them back into balance when they’ve gone too far out, and remind them why we’re here.”

That combination of creativity and discipline creates an environment in which innovation can flourish and teams can collaborate to do their best work.

________________________________________________________

This article was created with and commissioned by Post-it Brand.

Gillette’s new ad urging men to be “the best a man can be” immediately succeeded in justifying its own existence.

If so many prominent adult men could be so triggered by the very suggestion that their gender might want to shave off some less desirable traits, well, obviously there’s some room for improvement.

That @Gillette ad is about the worst thing I’ve ever seen.

It’s a leftist fantasy of negative stereotypes not just about men, but about white men.

In the ad, 43 males exhibit "undesirable" behavior. 42 white, 1 black. 7 males exhibit "desirable" behavior, 5 black, 2 white.

— John Cardillo (@johncardillo) January 15, 2019

I've used @Gillette razors my entire adult life but this absurd virtue-signalling PC guff may drive me away to a company less eager to fuel the current pathetic global assault on masculinity.
Let boys be damn boys.
Let men be damn men. https://t.co/Hm66OD5lA4

— Piers Morgan (@piersmorgan) January 14, 2019

Dear Gillette,

– I am not toxic
– The amazing men in my life are not toxic
– Masculinity is not toxic

The staggering number of 'dislikes' to this video suggest most people agree with me. Now kindly fuck off into insolvency.@Gillette@ProcterGamblehttps://t.co/oRlY168Ak1

— Peter Lloyd (@Suffragentleman) January 14, 2019

Just a couple days (and over 13 million views) after the ad’s debut, Gillette has been accused of everything from perpetuating a war against men to donning a cloak of wokeness in order to cash in on the progressive air of our current cultural climate. However, just because the ad has provoked a divisive reaction doesn’t mean it was designed merely to generate brand awareness through chaos.

“We weren’t trying to court controversy,” says Gillette brand director Pankaj Bhalla. “We were just trying to upgrade the selling line that we’ve held for 30 years–the Best a Man Can Get–and make it relevant. I don’t think our intention was to have controversy just for the sake of controversy.”

The idea of giving more meaning, depth, and accountability to Gillette’s decades-old slogan led the brand to create a series of ads exemplifying what it’s dubbed “bestness” from every conceivable angle. There’s the NFL spot with Shaquem Griffin, exploring how the one-handed Seahawks linebacker has achieved bestness against adversity, and there’s the YouTube ad for Gillette’s Treo razor, which showcases a middle-aged man taking care of his father (partly by shaving him). In the coming weeks, these ads will be joined by a new installment revealing what firefighters have to do to save lives.

But the centerpiece of the whole campaign thus far is the “Best a Man Can Be” ad.

As Bhalla explains it, this ad is directed toward good guys wondering what they can do to be great guys. The answer provided involves standing up to bullies, not allowing physical violence, and respecting women through gender equality–and more importantly, role modeling this behavior for the next generation of men. (Literally putting money where its mouth is, the brand has pledged a million dollars a year in donations to youth organizations like The Boys and Girls Club of America.)

According to Fast Company’s consultation with social media analytics provider Social Sprout, the online response to the ad has been mostly positive. Between January 14 and 16, 63% of the 645,000 tweets about @Gillette have been positive, and 94% of the 246,000 tweets hashtagged #TheBestMenCanBe have been positive.

Of course, the ad also made some men feel attacked. (To be fair, it takes very little for them to feel that way.) For the most part, these men are responding to the perceived assault in the usual manner: with threats of a boycott and the prospect of razor-clogged toilets. In the dingier corners of the internet, though, the opposition has resorted to doxxing the ad’s director, a woman. The ramifications of this response are not lost on Gillette. The brand remains resolute behind its intentions, though, even in the face of outrage and outrageous overreaction.

“I wouldn’t say any of the response is not expected. Masculinity is a complex and layered topic, so we definitely expected debate and conversations,” Bhalla says. “I want to be respectful to the folks who didn’t necessarily like the ad and had a point of view on it–they are absolutely entitled to it. But the ad is not about all men being bad. It’s the exact opposite of that. There’s a part where we say, ‘We believe in the best in all men.’ It’s literally right there in the ad! The intention is to say, ‘All of you guys are great; how about you be an even better role model for your kids?’ That’s it. That’s the ad.”

Bhalla and Gillette’s explanation of the thinking behind the ad seems plausible enough, but there is one alternative theory that places the ad in a larger context, and it’s a theory that’s worth exploring.

They boycotted Keurig, so they're drinking good coffee. Now they're boycotting razors, so they'll end up growing beards. We're just slowly tricking conservatives into becoming hipsters.

— Matt Fernandez (@FattMernandez) January 16, 2019

It sounds like the opening line of a sustainable businesses nerd joke: Bloomberg, Salesforce, Gap Inc., Cox Enterprises, and Workday walked into a solar purchasing agreement together.

But this is actually something that is happening: The five companies have teamed up to collectively act as the anchor tenant of a new 100-megawatt solar project in North Carolina. They’ll be able to use the shared solar to offset the energy use of some of their own operations across the country, and the purchase will help increase the share of clean energy flowing through the local grid.

New renewable energy projects, like a solar farm of this scale, generally need the backing of a large company to provide both the demand for the energy and the funding. Google and Apple, for instance, have both backed large solar developments across the country in order to meet their respective goals of reaching 100% renewably powered operations.

It’s often more difficult for smaller companies to fund and access smaller amounts of renewable energy. But in recent years, a handful of companies–like the five above–have teamed up to collectively purchase renewable energy. This model, called energy aggregation, lowers costs for purchasers, and allows smaller companies with more minimal energy needs to participate in the clean energy market.

But most energy aggregation deals are still led by a large anchor tenant. A deal finalized last year, for instance, saw Apple finance the majority share of both a wind and solar project, under which three smaller companies–Akamai, Etsy, and Swiss Re–gained access to a few megawatts of wind and solar. The deal between Bloomberg, Cox, Workday, Gap Inc. and Salesforce is unique because each partner will split the financing and the energy supply equally.

The five businesses connected with each other two years ago through an event hosted by the Rocky Mountain Institute’s business renewables center. They decided they wanted to pool resources toward the development of a renewable energy project, but how they could do so was less clear.

Separate to the conversation happening between those five businesses, a Seattle-based startup, LevelTen Energy, was coming up with an answer. The company launched three years ago with the idea to develop a marketplace–“sort of like a matchmaking service,” says CEO Bryce Smith–to connect potential energy buyers with renewable projects in development across the country. LevelTen’s marketplace, which came around a year ago, is designed to help smaller companies, or those with lighter energy needs, purchase slices of renewable energy projects that fit their needs.

“These are not the types of energy purchases that a Microsoft would make,” Smith says. But if a company wants to purchase, say, 10 megawatts (for comparison, Apple recently brought a 200-megawatt solar farm online), LevelTen’s platform will show them projects that would enable them to purchase that share. And the platform would match them with other companies looking to make similar, smaller energy purchases so they could team up and aggregate demand.

“It’s all well and good if Apple and Amazon and Google are buying renewable energy, that helps the market,” Smith says. “But if only those companies are buying, we haven’t come very far.”

This has preoccupied the renewable energy industry for quite some time. Large companies have the resources to finance and source large amounts of renewables from big developments, while tiny local businesses, like coffee shops, can sometimes opt for renewable energy through community solar projects. But small or mid-sized companies are often left out.

LevelTen’s platform is designed to help fix that. For Athleta, an athletic wear company under the Gap Inc. umbrella, the joint solar purchase agreement will enable it to offset all energy consumption across its retail stores and operations. “We had a lot of demand from our customer base to invest in renewable energy,” says Chris Samway, Athleta’s CFO. And as a newly minted B Corp, the company wanted to step up its environmental commitments. But compared to an Apple or an Amazon, for instance, Athleta’s energy needs were not large enough to justify a solo solar purchasing agreement. For a company of their size and needs, the partnership model was ideal, Samway says.

The LevelTen platform also provides clear information about a renewable development’s financial outlook and investment risk factors, which is crucial for smaller companies trying to convince stakeholders that purchasing renewable energy is a good idea. “If you’re setting up purchasing agreements with five companies, then suddenly there are maybe 50 people–executives, sustainability managers, board directors–who have to sign off on it,” Smith says. He hopes the LevelTen platform will be able to demystify the risk and financial implications of investing in renewable energy, and make it more commonplace for smaller companies. The five businesses decided on the North Carolina solar project, developed by the company BayWa r.e, because it met their financial criteria (the companies could not disclose the cost and details of the deal), and because the company has a long history of solar and wind energy project developments.

This collective purchase with Salesforce, Gap Inc., Cox, Bloomberg, and Workday is the most high-profile LevelTen has facilitated in the year the platform’s been online, and Smith hopes it opens the market for smaller companies.

Ideally, it will also get larger companies to foray into smaller renewable energy purchases on the way toward reaching their clean-energy goals. That’s the approach Salesforce is taking through this collective purchase. In a lot of ways, Salesforce actually limited its appetite for this deal to look like a smaller buyer,” says Patrick Flynn, VP of sustainability at the company. Salesforce has a goal of reaching 100% renewable energy by 2022, and has made some larger renewable energy purchases in the past. “This is the smallest renewable energy purchase we’ve done, but it may be the most important because it’s a blueprint for how companies can open up opportunities for others to access clean energy,” Flynn says.

Facebook’s head of cybersecurity policy Nathaniel Gleicher published a blog post this morning saying the company has discovered and removed hundreds of pages and accounts it deemed to be “inauthentic.” The pages came from two different sources, both based in Russia.

According to Gleicher, one of the sources had ties to the Russian news agency Sputnik. Essentially, Facebook found over 360 pages that were acting in concert with each other, spreading similar information to “the Baltics, Central Asia, the Caucasus, and Central and Eastern European countries.” The pages posed either as independent news sources or destinations about specific benign topics. Yet, they were affiliated with Sputnik employees and “frequently posted about topics like anti-NATO sentiment, protest movements, and anti-corruption.”

These pages organized hundreds of events over the last three years, as well as had about 790,000 followers and spent about $135,000 in advertising. Gleicher wrote they existed solely on Facebook and not Instagram.

The other source had over a hundred Facebook pages and 41 Instagram accounts. Its posts focused predominately on the Ukraine. Gleicher explained:

The individuals behind these accounts primarily represented themselves as Ukrainian, and they operated a variety of fake accounts while sharing local Ukrainian news stories on a variety of topics, such as weather, protests, NATO, and health conditions at schools. We identified some technical overlap with Russia-based activity we saw prior to the US midterm elections, including behavior that shared characteristics with previous Internet Research Agency (IRA) activity.

This is just one of many updates Facebook has provided about inauthentic accounts it has discovered on the platform. Last November, right before election day, Facebook announced that it had purged over 100 inauthentic accounts that posted in both Russian and English. Before that, Gleicher revealed that the company removed other accounts that were posting content about Iran.

Updates like this show just how much of a game of whack-a-mole this is. It’s good that Facebook is now owning up to the fact that there are thousands of pages and accounts acting in concert to get a hidden message across. Still, it took over a year for Facebook to even admit that such a problem existed.

We should expect to hear more updates of this kind as time goes on. At the same time, the question remains: How is Facebook planning on dealing with this at the systematic level?

The computer you’re reading this on right now uses binary code, a series of ones and zeros that work together to translate human commands into a language the computer can understand. Now, an entirely different way to think about computing that’s been around for decades is on the cusp of being realized. Instead of ones and zeros, this type of computer uses a new language where each quantum bit–called a qubit–can become both one and zero at once. That means it could solve vastly complex math problems that modern computers struggle with, like those that underlie the security of the internet.

Quantum computing is still at an experimental stage, but at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, IBM revealed what it is calling the most advanced system so far, the Q System One. To help the public understand what the computer does, IBM turned to industrial design firm Map Project Office–known for designing DIY computer kits, clever utensils, and Virgin’s in-flight experience–and interior and architecture firm Universal Design Studio, which has designed the Ace Hotel London and retail spaces for H&M and Rimowa. Together, they worked to give the computer a polished, consumer-facing form that would also work within a modern data center.

The exercise was partially about marketing–something of an IBM speciality–but there were also some serious technical challenges to overcome so that the computer could one day be scaled. Previously, the Q System One was just a scattered group of equipment stationed in IBM’s office in Yorktown, New York, but Map and Universal endeavored to give it a single cohesive form so it could easily slide into modern data centers.

This is no ordinary computer: Qubits are incredibly sensitive to the outside environment, and fluctuations in temperature, vibrations, and electromagnetic waves can throw off their delicate balance. For this reason, IBM’s quantum chip, which includes 20 of these qubits, needs to be suspended inside a refrigerator called a cryostat that can create a super-cold environment similar to outer space.

An airtight glass cube

To ensure these conditions were met, Map and Universal created an airtight, nine-foot-tall glass cube, where a stainless steel cryostat cylinder is suspended from a cantilever in the center of the space. The back of the cube is a careful arrangement of the rest of the analog piping and wiring necessary to make the entire system work together, none of which could come into contact with each other, lest their vibrations disturb the qubits. “There’s a lot of space required between things,” says Jason Holley, Universal Design Studio’s director who co-led the project. “It goes against everything we know about digital technology, which is getting smaller and smaller.”

The cube is able to maintain a stable environment, regardless of where it’s placed–a necessary detail, as IBM begins to commercialize the quantum system. Because the cube is a single unit rather than the kit of parts that previously made up IBM’s quantum computer, it’s easier to slot it right into modern data centers. The computer inside will ultimately be accessed from the cloud (anyone can already run experiments on IBM’s current prototype, right from a computer at home).

But the design isn’t all function over form. To make the cryostat–which was originally suspended from a four-post frame in IBM’s lab–more visually striking, the designers wanted to suspend it from cantilever. That way, it would look like it’s floating in midair in a glass vitrine. The team worked with glass manufacturer Goppion, which has created glass cases for the Louvre’s Mona Lisa and the U.K. Crown Jewels at the Tower of London–a fitting partnership given that the design deliberately puts the technology on display.

Originally, though, the engineers worried that the cantilever would destabilize the carefully calibrated conditions necessary to make the computer work. After working through a series of prototypes, the design team created a cantilever that was more stable than the previous four-post frame.

The cantilever also gives engineers 360-degree access to the cryostat for maintenance and upgrades. The engineers are now able to perform updates more than 10 times faster because all the components are together in a single object that’s three times smaller than the original lab setup. “It’s not just this beautiful glass vitrine and this artistic steel thing hanging from the top,” says Will Howe, director of Map Project Office who also led the project. “A lot of thought [went] into how it works in a data center environment and how people use it and maintain it on an everyday basis.”

The simple geometry of the cube also reflects some of the underlying ideas about how quantum works. “[Quantum computing] starts to evoke properties that happen at molecular level. This is how nature organizes things and thinks about things,” says Holley. “We tried to evoke that in the simplicity of the design here. It’s almost as stripped back and a purely geometric as we could make it.”

What’s more, the design is supposed to give future customers, like businesses or universities, a mental image of what a quantum computer looks like. After all, the quantum computers of tomorrow likely won’t ever leave data centers–or even IBM’s offices. “[IBM has] gotten to a point where they want to commercialize the technology: to do that you need to capture the public’s imagination,” Howe says. “If you want to sell it, people need to see what they’re buying.”

Parenting is challenging, even in the best of circumstances. Guiding the emotional and physical development of another human being is a massive responsibility. Throw a separation or divorce into the mix, and it’s easy to see how much more fraught the landscape can be.

Yet this is a common problem. Research from Penn State emeritus professor of family sociology and demography Paul Amato indicates that between 42% and 45% of marriages in the U.S. will end in divorce, resulting in approximately 50% of children experiencing divorce in their lifetimes. As this data doesn’t include parents who are separated or never married, the number of families impacted is likely much higher.

“In my 20 years on the bench, I witnessed countless families torn apart as they slogged through the family law system, battling over the simplest of co-parenting disagreements,” says Hon. Sherrill A. Ellsworth, former presiding judge of the Superior Court in Riverside County, California. “The reality is that most cases–up to 80%, in my experience–do not require legal intervention, yet that’s exactly where many families end up.”

So Ellsworth combined her legal expertise with the technical expertise of entrepreneurs Jonathan Verk and Eric Weiss to create coParenter, an app aimed at helping families collaborate on custody arrangements, child support payments, holiday scheduling, and other issues without conflict. The app just launched on iOS and Android and integrates texting and calendar tools with AI. Parents also have live, on-demand access to professional mediators who can help facilitate co-parenting decisions.

Verk says they began testing the app through court-based pilots in March 2017. “The results were astonishing,” he says. “Judges consistently ordered (or recommended) the platform five times more than we originally anticipated.” He says they rolled out another pilot in December 2017, hoping to acquire 5,000 users by the end of March. “We hit that number in the first week of February, validating our thinking that there would be significant consumer demand.” According to Verk, the pilots have resulted in 2,000 parenting plans and the resolution of more than 4,000 disputes. “We currently have 20,000 registered users,” Verk says, 4,100 of whom are monthly active users.

The app itself has a simple interface designed to function like existing and familiar calendar and SMS tools. Parents have access to all communications, agreements, important documentation, and other evidence if needed for a legal setting.

CoParenter enters a small but growing pool of similar competitors including Talking Parents, Our Family Wizard, and Coparently. However, its AI and live chat components are differentiators.

On the live professional side, Verk says his cofounder Ellsworth heads a team of professionals who vet, recruit, and train all who provide services through coParenter. These are usually experienced mediators who have worked in court, community, and private-practice settings.

Ellsworth says much of their initial training is focused on helping qualified providers transition from physical, in-person mediation setting, to one in which they’re delivering services over the coParenter platform. “Many of the most qualified professionals aren’t digital natives, so it takes some time getting familiar with best practices,” she explains.

Keeping the nonlegal co-parenting issues out of court

“Our professionals focus on specific, individual, and non-legal issues,” Ellsworth adds, noting that up to 80% of what people bring to court are non-legal, co-parenting issues, and they help co-parents make child-centric agreements.

Verk says that these professionals are contracted by coParenter, though the platform can integrate with law and mediation firms, third-party providers, and even family court services who want to provide and charge services on their own.

Should one parent choose not to use the app, the other can still access coParenter’s “SoloMode” so they can still use the features while messages are sent to their co-parent from a separate SMS number.

Using AI to stop fights: “We make it way harder to send that F-bomb”

On the AI side, the app’s natural language processing function can flag potentially contentious conversations and help parents rethink their communication before they press send. Cofounder Eric Weiss explains that at its simplest, the app uses language filters to flag curse words, inflammatory phrases, or offensive names. “It’s not hard to imagine how quickly a normal conversation can escalate into a full-blown argument by dropping a single F-bomb,” Weiss observes. “We make it way harder to send that F-bomb,” he says. “If a user overrides a warning and sends it anyway, the system flags the phrase and may make it available to appropriate third parties such as a judge, lawyer, or mediator because people behave better in daylight.”

Weiss also explained how it can intervene when setting schedules. When a parent receives a request to have the child stay with them, the other parent doesn’t have to open any other apps to coordinate. “The AI pulls the dates and lets you know where it fits in the context of your custody schedule,” he says, “reducing the opportunity for stress, confusion, or conflict.”

Although Weiss can’t say exactly how many disputes the AI has helped resolve, he does point out that of the 20,000 people who have downloaded the app, only 3,000 have actually accessed a live professional, which means the remainder were able to resolve their issues through automated/AI processes.

Saving on lawyer  and court fees

Which is exactly the point, says Verk. It does cost parents to use the app. A $12.99 monthly fee (which includes 20 credits that are enough for two separate mediations), or $119.99 annually (includes 240 credits), or $199.99 for two co-parents annually (who each get 240 credits toward mediations). Verk maintains that minimal compared to what an attorney would charge for their services. According to the LegalMatch law library, a child custody dispute can cost anywhere between $3,000 and $40,000, depending on the nature of the dispute. Other costs that can add up include as much as $30 to pay the sheriff to serve the other party, while other papers that need to be filed with the court may cost as much as $300.

CoParenter’s conflict prevention technology has helped 81% of the couples who resolved their disputes on the platform do so without the need for a mediator or legal professional.

Ellsworth also notes that demand on family law courts is increasing, while resources are depleting. “There is a consensus that family courts are in crisis,” she says, driven in part by self-represented litigants who make up almost 85% of family law litigants and clog up the courts trying to navigate a legal system without legal expertise.

But one cost that can’t be measured is the toll custody battles and daily skirmishes can take on the children. “Too many children of separating, divorced, and never-married parents experience excessive levels of toxic stress from exposure to their parents’ ongoing conflict, in and out of court,” says Verk.

In the quest to give more female founders (especially those who are underrepresented minorities) a leg up when launching their businesses, the Female Founders Alliance (FFA) is partnering with WeWork Labs.

“The top three things our members ask from us all have to do with access,” says Leslie Feinzaig, founder and CEO of FFA. “They want access to angel and VC investors, to potential partners, and to amplifiers as they establish and grow their businesses,” she explains. According to Feinzaig, access to those introductions through WeWork Labs’ global mentorship program is the ideal resource for members of the FFA.

In 2017, the percentage of startups that had at least one female founder was just 17%, a number that has plateaued since 2012. That handful of female founders received just 2%, or $1.9 billion, of the $85 billion total invested by venture capitalists last year.

The FFA runs a pitch-focused accelerator called Ready Set Raise–most of which is conducted remotely to make it easier for women who are juggling multiple commitments at work and home to participate. Starting this summer it will be hosted at WeWork Labs’ offices so participants can log in from their local WeWork spaces for the duration of the program. All of them will be working at the WeWork Labs location in Seattle during the program’s immersion week.

For its part, WeWork Labs also places importance on inclusivity and flexibility. Elizabeth Scallon, head of WeWork Labs Northwest tells Fast Company that since it launched early last year, they’ve served hundreds of startups. “We don’t take equity from member companies and partner with startups for as long as they need,” she adds. They’ve also included over 1,000 mentors within its network.

Scallon points out that one founder, Yemi Adewunmi, joined WeWork Labs in an effort to gain access to the resources she needed to raise capital, while also building her network in the D.C. startup community. “In just a few short months, her company raised a majority of their seed round and placed as a finalist at Extreme Tech Challenge, one of the world’s largest startup competitions,” Scallon says.

In return, FFA will offer benefits to all WeWork members who qualify to join its community and plan to invite WeWork Labs members of all genders to FFA events.

Of course, this access does come at a cost to entrepreneurs. Scallon says that current FFA members will be given access to WeWork workspaces across the U.S. for one-month free of charge, with the opportunity to apply to become a WeWork Labs member. Founders join Labs will pay a membership fee that varies based on the market where they are admitted.

“The biggest crossover is in our missions,” Feinzaig notes. Both FFA and WeWork Labs say they are committed to bridging the gap between underrepresented founders and the growing startup ecosystem and are creating ways to make resources and people more accessible to those who need it most. “Given that only 2% of venture capital is invested in female-founded companies,” says Feinzaig, “there is a huge amount of room, opportunity, and need for communities and our respective offerings to grow and thrive.”

It’s a couple of weeks into the new year, and you’re settling back at work after a whirlwind of  holiday activities. But rather than feeling motivated and ready to tackle 2019, you’re bored with the day-to-day drudgery.

This could be a sign that you need a new job, but it might also signal that you’re in need of habits and rituals that spark inspiration. Before you fire off your resume or hand in your two-weeks’ notice, try doing these things next time you find yourself bored at work.

1. Look for things that make you curious

Sometimes boredom results from a “loss of curiosity,” Steve Gordon, designer and director of marketing consultancy RDQLUS, told Sam Harrison in a 2015 Fast Company article. One simple way to tackle boredom is to find things that make you curious, like a documentary about a topic you know little about, or a fiction book with an intriguing storyline.

This practice can help you develop a sense of curiosity about the things that you’re doing at work. For example, Harrison suggested putting yourself in the shoes of whoever will benefit from your work. “How will the choices you make affect them?” he urges.

Harrison went on to talk about how Heinz designers came up with Heinz Easy Squeeze. At the time, they were intimately familiar with traditional ketchup bottles, so they turned their attention to how customers used (and stored) the bottle. They visited customers who stored their bottles upside down. That discovery, Harrison reported, “helped re-energize the company’s designers, who then invented Heinz Easy Squeeze, an inverted plastic bottle with a patented silicone valve.”

2. Read

Sometimes boredom can come from feeling stuck, and your brain just needs is a little bit of guidance to nudge your creativity. When you’re struggling to solve a thorny problem, everything can seem monotonous.

Psychology professor and Fast Company contributor Art Markman previously wrote, “The tasks that really require inspiration are typically ones that nobody has solved directly before (otherwise you could just Google it). But that doesn’t mean that nobody knows anything that can help you to solve the problem. Chances are there’s a lot of work out there that might prove useful–you just haven’t realized it’s useful yet.”

That’s why Markman recommends surrounding yourself with as much related information to whatever it is you’re trying to figure out, even if they seem useless at first. You might discover new information that piques your interest (see point one), or you might start to identify patterns that help you figure out your next step. At times, boredom is simply a component of the creative process.

3. Make small changes to your routine

Success is built on repetitive routines and habits, but there comes a point when those habits yield diminishing returns. Take exercise, as an example: When you started your 6 a.m. boxing class, it might have taken you a while to master the punches and gestures to the point where you felt like you could keep up. But you might find that you eventually do the moves on autopilot, and what used to challenge you has become a bore.

John Stilgoe, author of Outside Lies Magic, told Jane Porter in a previous Fast Company article that unregimented time can do wonders for the brain and inspiration. And this doesn’t just apply to exercise; you can find ways to do it in your day-to-day work, in big ways or small. Examples could include changing up the time, style, or location of your meetings, or adding some humor to that update email that you write with dread.

4. Introduce constraints

It might be counterintuitive to introduce restrictions when nothing seems to interest you, but you might just find that having some constraints can provide the fire in your belly that you’re looking for. After all, when you don’t have an abundance of resources at your disposal, you have no choice but to be creative and look for solutions that aren’t immediately obvious to you. In his book, Stretch: Unlock the Power of Less–and Achieve More Than You Ever Imagined, Scott Sonenshein wrote, “Our environments . . . either impel us to see things differently or they don’t. That implies that creativity is in many ways situational, not some inborn faculty or personality trait. When people face scarcity, they give themselves freedom to use resources in less conventional ways–because they have to. The situation demands a mental license that would otherwise remain untapped.”

5. Do something that scares you

It’s great to develop expertise in your area of work, and find yourself comfortable with doing projects you once found daunting. But if you don’t seek experiences that push you out of your comfort zone, you’ll become bored and stagnant. Not to mention, you might miss out on amazing opportunities that can help you grow professionally and personally.

Fred Cook, director of the USC center for public relations and a professor of professional practice, previously told Fast Company that building creativity, courage, and inspiration is an ongoing process. “It builds up a little at a time by doing new things and trying things you’ve never done before . . . Every little step pushes you out of your comfort zone.”

The more you train yourself to face your fears, the more comfortable you will be with becoming, well, uncomfortable. When you do that on a day-to-day basis, you’ll find that beating boredom, whether at home or at work, becomes much easier.

If you’re in your thirties and have recently graduated from buying your home goods from IKEA and Target, you have probably heard of Parachute. It’s a five-year-old fast-growing luxury bedding brand, which exists alongside companies like Brooklinen, Boll & Branch, and Crane & Canopy. Soon after it launched, Parachute moved beyond sheets, adding more and more products to its store. These days, you can pick up comfy blankets, alpaca throws, down pillows, all in the brand’s earthy, relaxed, California aesthetic. And starting today, you can even buy an eco-friendly, American-made Parachute mattress.

Last year, I reported on the $29 billion mattress wars. At the time, there were 178 different online mattress brands all competing to become America’s mattress of choice. Parachute is choosing to enter a market that is already crowded–a decision that reflects the evolution of a fast-moving industry.

But this additional level of convenience–coupled with the brand’s use of expensive organic cotton and wool certified by the Global Organic Textile Standard–comes at a cost. At $1,899 for a queen size mattress, Parachute’s new product is priced to compete with the higher end of the market. For comparison, it’s about double the price of Casper’s original mattress ($995), but cheaper than Casper’s premium mattress ($2,250).

Parachute was among the earliest players in the direct-to-consumer luxury bedding space, which has been bubbling over the last few years. However, the bed linen market is still nowhere near as crowded as the noisy online mattress industry.

“It’s relatively easy to manufacture a mattress,” says Seth Basham, a mattress industry analyst with Wedbush Securities. “We’re seeing lots of companies rushing into the market with their own mattresses including Amazon, which sells a Basics mattress. This has also meant that prices of mattresses keep going down.”

Given how flooded the market has become, it is now more expensive than ever to capture a customer’s attention online through Facebook and Instagram ads, or through mattress blogs. But this is exactly why it makes perfect sense for an existing brand like Parachute to enter the market.

“It’s become extremely expensive–perhaps no longer even profitable–to sell these high-ticket one-time purchases like mattresses,” Kaye says. “But we have spent five years building brand loyalty with our existing customers, through their purchases of towels and sheeting. Hopefully all of this work will pay off now.”

Basham says we’re going to see more brands like Parachute enter the mattress market, since they have an advantage over the new flock of startups that exclusively sell mattresses. “These brands don’t have to acquire new customers,” he says. “If you’ve already got a customer base, it makes sense to become a lifestyle brand and sell a wide range of products.”

Kaye started Parachute in 2014 to cater to a very specific demographic of digitally native consumers who were just entering the nesting phase of their lives and ready to invest in more expensive home goods. The brand launched online, but now has a network of five brick-and-mortar locations in cities where the brand is particularly popular, including Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Portland. Last summer, Parachute raised $30 million in Series C funding, bringing its total funding to $44 million, and will use this investment to open up 15 more stores by 2020.

The brand has a thriving Instagram account that reflects a very particular home aesthetic, one that is gender-neutral, peaceful, and full of a clean color palette of creams, whites, and grays. In photoshoots, beds are often not perfectly made but full of crumpled sheets, and rooms are full of natural elements, like wood, sheepskin rugs, and plants. Over time, Parachute has tried to grow with its customers, who began getting married and having babies–it now sells crib sheets, baby blankets, and baby towels. This strategy means that a third of Parachute’s revenue now comes from repeat customers, according to Kaye.

The mattress is a natural next step in this process. “We’re not going after a different customer,” says Kaye. “We know our core customer pretty well. It’s people who are between 30 and 45, who are beginning to prioritize things like self-care and sleep.”

Over the course of interacting with her customers over the last five years, Kaye has identified that educated millennials are particularly concerned about sustainability and organic materials. Parachute stands out from many online mattresses because it isn’t made of foam or latex, but rather, from organic cotton, pure wool from New Zealand, and steel spring coils. One benefit of these materials is that they are naturally flame retardant, so there was no need to introduce flame retardant chemicals. And besides being good for the consumer, they’re biodegradable. Kaye also points out that the mattresses are made in a family-owned factory that has been making them for five generations.

Parachute’s entrance into this already-crowded market reflects growing consolidation in the mattress and bedding markets. Last year, Boll & Branch launched a $2,500 mattress, targeting its own customers who tend to be slightly older than the average Parachute customer and inclined towards a more traditional aesthetic. And meanwhile, mattress brands have been entering the bedding market. Last year, Casper and Saatva also launched sheets.

In other words, more established brands that already have a sizable customer base are now trying to sell them more and more sleep products–until they have effectively monopolized their bedrooms. “This is sort of the final piece of the puzzle to create a true, all-encompassing Parachute sleep environment,” says Kaye.

On the other hand, Basham says that it is going to be harder for smaller startups to enter the mattress space, because it will be hard to compete with the larger, established lifestyle brands.

Not so long ago, the mattress industry was the Wild West, but these days, it is organizing itself into big dominant players, and smaller brands that stand to fall between the cracks. “The smaller brands are less likely to survive, and if they do, they’ll be marginal players,” he says.

Vehicle recalls are all the rage right now, and Hyundai and Kia are getting in on the action. While Ford, Toyota, and Lexus models have all been recalled due to the risk of Takata airbag inflators exploding, Hyundai and Kia have a different yet equally alarming problem–an increased risk of engine fires. According to the AP, the carmakers are recalling about 168,000 vehicles to fix a fuel pipe problem that can cause engine fires.

The extra fun part about this recall is that the fuel pipe problems stem from an earlier recall. Yes, they are recalling their recalled vehicles. The story goes like this: Back in 2015, Hyundai and Kia recalled 1.7 million vehicles due to an issue where manufacturing debris was potentially cutting off oil flow to the rod bearings, causing the engines to wear and fail, which in turn could lead to fires. To fix the problem, dealers had to replace the engine block, which is not cheap and, as it turns out, the repairs are also not easy. The companies are admitting that the engine replacements may have been allowing fuel to leak and hit hot engine parts, causing fires.

While no one has been injured so far, six fires have been reported on Kia models, while Hyundai says it has no fire reports. Neither company had any reports of injuries. Still, unless you want to play action star walking away from a blazing Kia, get your car checked if you drive these models:

• 2011 through 2014 Kia Optima cars
• 2012 through 2014 Sorento SUVs
• 2011 through 2013 Sportage SUVs
• 2011 to 2014 Hyundai Sonata cars
• 2013 and 2014 Santa Fe Sport SUVs

Double check here for Kia and here for Hyundai.

The companies say owners of the recalled vehicles will be notified by letter, but if you drive a Kia or Hyundai of any model or model year, it’s worth checking with the dealer about recalls and updates. The Korean automakers are both under investigation by the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration over the scope of recalls—or they were until the government shut down.

In his TEDx talk, Simon Sinek expounded on a simple, yet profound theory on why some products, people, and organizations fail while others succeed. It comes down to the biology of decision-making. Our limbic system is one part of the brain that holds our emotions. The neocortex, on the other hand, is our powerful, thinking mind, which makes the decisions based upon information. When we make decisions, we probably like to think that we’re basing them on facts and data. But we’re making them based on our emotions, on the “why.”

How else can you explain the success of Harley-Davidson? Japanese manufacturers have been making more technically advanced, reliable, and less expensive motorcycles for decades. By the judgment of the rational brain, Harley-Davidson should have gone out of business a long time ago.

But Harley-Davidson isn’t selling motorcycles. They are selling the experience, freedom, the open road, the lifestyle. They are saying to their customers if that is the experience you are looking for, then come and join us.

If you want to build a long-lasting business, this is precisely the kind of mentality that you need to adopt. Here are five reasons why an organization needs to be clear on its purpose:

It gives you a beacon for everything

Having a “why” gives you a base from which you can make decisions, grow, and evolve. People who have no sense of who they are–or what they stand for–are rudderless, drifting whichever way the wind blows, falling for anything and everything that appeals to their whims at any given time.

This principle also applies to organizations. If they don’t have a sense of purpose, they’ll find it difficult to make future decisions. Having a “why” provides a moral direction to guide them in difficult times. In a volatile environment of rapid technological, environmental, and societal changes, it’s a much-needed constant.

You can attract loyal employees who share the organization’s beliefs

Organizations that know their purpose, proclaim it, and put it out there attract people to their organization who share their beliefs. This has always been true to some degree, but in the past, people were more willing to put up with working for organizations whose values conflicted with their own. They saw it as a necessary way to earn a living and provide for the family. Often employees didn’t see that they had any choice.

Today’s workplace is different. Employees are no longer willing to work for just a paycheck but are looking for a reason to work, contribute to something worthwhile, and make a difference. They actively seek out organizations whose purposes matches their own. In a world of rapid workplace turnover, employees who identify with the values of an organization are less likely to leave.

You can attract loyal customers who share similar beliefs

In addition to attracting workers, you’ll also attract loyal customers. Witness the many organizations that are making every effort to promote themselves as green and environmentally friendly. They are very aware that this will attract a particular type of customer who will only purchase from an organization that shares their values.

You’ll be in a better place to build a stronger team

People who share similar values and beliefs will get along better, and this makes it easier to work toward a common goal. When they share the company’s mission, they’re more likely to be self-motivated, so they require less supervision or external forces to keep them on track. When their own goals align with the overall success of the organization, they’re more internally motivated to do their best.

It makes communication and marketing easier

Having a purpose provides a central focus for all communication and marketing for a company. You can evaluate everything that goes out internally and externally against how well it stacks up to the organization’s purpose. As a result, you’ll be more likely to deliver a consistent message about who you are as an organization, and what you believe in.

Organizational success requires more than facts and numbers. A good product is critical, but so is a sense of mission. When you are sure of your “why,” you might find that you’ll spend less time questioning what you need to do, and more time taking actions that contribute toward your organization’s success.

Last April, New York-based coffee startup Trade entered the market with an interesting premise. It wanted to make the complex world of specialty coffee more accessible to everyday coffee drinkers, the kind who are happy with whatever they find on the grocery store shelf. Trade serves as a matchmaking service, using data science coupled with the expertise of a taster, to help people discover what roasts might be most palatable to them.

So basically, the service allows you to be a little promiscuous with coffee brands. As we’ve said, it’s like Tinder, but for coffee.

For all you people out there who think Michael Cohen, President Trump’s now-disgraced former lawyer, has sex appeal, do I have a Twitter account for you. It’s called “WomenForCohen,” and when it’s not retweeting Michael Cohen, it’s posting its own messages about how attractive the 52-year-old is. Or at least that’s what the account did for a period of time, until it stopped tweeting in December 2016. Another thing you should know about this account is that Michael Cohen paid to have it created.

You may be asking yourself: Why Cohen would do such a thing? It’s not entirely clear. But a Wall Street Journalreport divulges details about an IT firm Cohen worked with when he was Trump’s right-hand man during the campaign. Cohen enlisted this firm, RedFinch Solutions, to do a few digital tasks. For one, RedFinch was asked to rig two online polls to make Trump look like the victor. And two, the company was asked to make the “WomenForCohen” account.

For all this work, Cohen reportedly owed RedFinch and its owner John Gauger $50,000; Gauger said Cohen only paid about $12,000 of it. The WSJ adds that Cohen reportedly invoiced Trump for Gauger’s services, yet never paid him the full amount.

There’s of course a backstory to this. Gauger isn’t just the owner of RedFinch, but also the CIO at Liberty University–the school founded by evangelical preacher Jerry Falwell. Cohen met Gauger in 2012 when Trump went to the university to give a speech, according to WSJ. From there, Gauger helped Cohen with a few vanity technical projects–including setting up his Instagram account. And then, years later, RedFinch would be behind the bizarre twitter account.

It’s not entirely clear what the point of “WomenForCohen” was beyond boosting Cohen’s ego. One tweet shows a Cohen selfie with, of course, the hashtag #selfie:

Other tweets went to bat to defend Cohen or criticize Hillary Clinton.

It’s unclear if RedFinch just set up the account or also sent the tweets. Some do seem like they may have come from Cohen himself.

Whatever the truth, this is certainly a bizarre update to the Michael Cohen saga. He recently pleaded guilty to campaign finance violations. It should be noted that this plea didn’t have to do with his dealings with Geiger.

All the same, “WomenForCohen” sure make it seem like Cohen had some issues he needed to work through. Perhaps his time in jail will help with that.

You can read the full WSJ article here. 

One could be forgiven for dismissing Cardi B’s call to arms over the government shutdown as opportunism. But only if one knew next to nothing about Cardi B.

Cardi B just posted this on Instagram #CardiB2020pic.twitter.com/zg4prRUfdG

— jordan (@JordanUhl) January 16, 2019

Wednesday’s Instagram video, in which the artist likens 2019 America to a hellhole, did indeed coincide with the release date for Cardi’s latest music video. However, I would refer anyone who doubts her sincerity in decrying the prolonged and pointless government shutdown to the many other political statements the Bronx-born performer has made over the years. Rest assured, they are all pieces of an intact ideology.

Even before she made a goofy video for VH1’s Love and Hip-Hop pledging to run for president in 2016, Cardi B had a powerful message for her fans. During that year’s primary elections, in the face of suffocating Trump chatter, she urged her fans to keep their eyes on the prize and “vote for Daddy Bernie, bitch.”

Who remembers when @iamcardib endorsed Bernie Sanders for president?#DaddyBerniepic.twitter.com/0GaJzsr8cM

— Waleed Shahid (@_waleedshahid) April 18, 2018

While she offered no solutions for the Black Lives Matter movement beyond prayer, a short video she posted on Instagram in summer 2016 drew attention to the fact that neither peaceful protest nor violence seemed to be cutting through the noise. It’s an honest expression of despair that precedes some of the more thoughtful, righteous fury to come in later videos.

By 2017, Cardi B had graduated from her roots as a stripper, Instagram star, and Love and Hip Hop cast member to bona fide phenomenon. As her profile rose, so did her political unrest and her megaphone from which to vent it. Here she is speaking with Billboard about the president’s war against football players who merely want to draw attention to police violence against black people–and the team owners who apparently side with him.

It’s probably because her income from her breakout year was so robust that Cardi B became outraged by the tax code in 2018. Last spring, she made a widely circulated Instagram video asking perfectly reasonable questions about the process, chief among them: “Where is my tax money going?”

Shortly after making the above video, Cardi must have found out how much of our tax money goes toward social security (as of 2017, 24% of it), because in a GQ interview around the same time, the artist praised Franklin D. Roosevelt as “the real ‘Make America Great President'” for introducing social security, a vital public fund. Her statement caught the attention of one Bernie Sanders, who then declared “Cardi B is right,” bringing her primary support for him full circle.

Cardi B is right. If we are really going to make America great we need to strengthen Social Security so that seniors are able to retire with the dignity they deserve. https://t.co/B8cOkoOdLc

— Bernie Sanders (@SenSanders) April 18, 2018

Finally, perhaps signaling what the future beholds, Cardi appeared on Jimmy Kimmel Live! in October 2018 and discussed what she’d do if elected mayor of New York. Sure, her response boils down to getting rid of “rats and raccoons,” but given her sharp political instincts over the years one senses that “fixing the subways” and “economic reform” would not be too far down on the docket as well.