Twenty-five percent of iPhones break in exactly the same way. It's not just a design problem—it's a UX problem.

Next week, Apple will unveil the iPhone 7. And of all the new hardware upgrades it will likely receive, rumor has it that the design fix the iPhone has needed the most for nearly a decade won't be referenced on stage at all.

The iPhone will still have a glass screen that will shatter if you drop it wrong. And sooner or later, millions of us will drop it wrong.

Since the first iPhone was released nine years ago, Apple's smartphone has received myriad upgrades: 3G data chips, then 4G data chips, a Retina display, an HD camera, a backlit HD camera, a Touch ID fingerprint sensor, and a 3D touch upgrade that senses how hard you push. A magnetometer measures the Earth's magnetic field to point you in the right direction, and a gyroscopic sensor can measure the device's pitch, roll, and yaw.

It got 24% thinner, then 18% thinner, then 9% thinner. It got two times faster, then two times faster, then two times faster, then two times faster, then 70% faster. It was gilded. Then rose gilded. It got an official battery pack and a tiny lightning connector. And the overall industrial design itself has been tweaked half a dozen times—which along the way created new problems including Antennagate. Then Bendgate. Then Touch Disease.

But none of these problems is as devastating as the one problem we already knew about: the screen, that delicate, delicate screen. The Hummel figurine we hold to our face. The antique tea set we text on. The very literal thin piece of glass that we squeeze into the nearest pants pocket a hundred times a day. Apple has prioritized the iPhone's aesthetics over UX, and tens of millions of iPhone users suffer as a result.

Apple sure knows how to sell a product. But does it get how to build one?

I know, I know. It's Gorilla Glass, with a tensile strength that bests aluminum. But it still shatters, and by now, almost every iPhone owner has at least one shatter story to share. Many have several. You dropped your phone—from just a few feet in the air—and it cracked in a spider web of shards. So you squint past the pieces as you attempt to send emails and read Twitter, mulling whether to wait for the next iPhone or to suck it up and take that inevitable trip to the Genius Bar to pay $130 to fix an $800 phone with a two-year shelf life.

Apple's glass iPhone is impossibly beautiful because it connotes fragility—the preciousness of something you have to handle with silver polishing gloves. The problem is that it's actually fragile. According to SquareTrade, 25% of iPhone users have broken their screen at some point, and 15% of iPhone owners are using a phone with a broken screen daily. Can you blame them for delaying the repair? Americans spent $23.5 billion replacing broken smartphones in 2014—an untold chunk of which goes to iPhone screen repairs, which cost Apple about $40 in parts but cost you roughly $110 to $130 (or $80 to $100 if you have AppleCare).

Putting aside the fact that Apple is likely making a lot of money off iPhone screen repairs (and even more from warranties, which represent revenues in the $1 billion to $2 billion range), why hasn't it prioritized durability in its industrial design, as some of its competitors have? Because if Apple focused on building a more rugged product, it could likely make an unbreakable—or at least far less breakable—iPhone screen.

In late 2014, the iPhone 6 was heavily rumored to get a sapphire display—the more scratch- and shatter-resistant clear material used in iPhone's camera lens and the Apple Watch. Ultimately, the factory supplying the sapphire couldn't produce to Apple's specifications and went bankrupt as a result. Furthermore, sapphire would add a lot to the iPhone's build price, as much as 10 times the cost of glass, while requiring thicker material. A viable alternative is in development at Corning, makers of the Gorilla Glass used in iPhones today, which has a process that coats glass with an ultra thin layer of sapphire.

But sapphire isn't the only way to build a tougher screen. Motorola has done so successfully with its Moto ShatterShield displays. Motorola's secret is to build several layers of screen to absorb shock. The catch? While reviewers insist you wouldn't know it, Motorola's display is technically built from plastic—a less premium material than glass. Meanwhile, Samsung's latest "shatterproof" display on its S7 smartphones—which is new enough that it may or may not live up to its name—is glass, but that glass is covered in a thin layer of plastic, like a screen protector.

Adding more layers seems to protect screens. Yet in this regard, Apple has actually gone the opposite direction of Motorola and Samsung. Since the iPhone 4, it has removed layers, not added them, fusing the glass you touch to the screen itself. This allows the phone to be thinner and the screen brighter; it feels more like you're literally touching the content on the screen. But it also makes the part more expensive to replace, because you're not just replacing glass, you're replacing glass that's been fused to a premium LCD display. As third-party repair company iFixit explained to me, separating and re-fusing these two pieces is so hard they don't even bother to sell customers either component alone.

Why would Apple make these decisions—selling us a screen that's the most common break point on the phone, and also building it in a way that's painstaking to fix? Removing repair and replacement profitability from the equation, the most convincing answer is aesthetics. Apple has an obsessive relationship with industrial design, but more than that, a fetish for thinness. The iPhone 6 is roughly half as thick as the original iPhone. Most of us would agree, it feels thin enough! Any thinner, and we're entering SNL sketch territory, with a phone that's difficult to grip (and even more droppable). Over almost a decade, Apple bought itself some precious sub-millimeters before any of us feel like Zack Morris circa 2007. Meanwhile, the iPhone 7 is rumored to be 17% thinner than its predecessor—following the hilarious conspiracy theory that the iPhone will by 0 mm thick by 2023.

As one famed industrial designer explained to me, to make the next iPhone shatterproof—to adopt one of those Motorola screens—it might make the device thicker. The glass (or in this case, plastic) itself might be fatter, or the display might necessitate an extra enclosure securing it. In Apple's iPhone 6 designs, the glass has become a near-artistic statement, with an almost handblown feel, curving around the surface of the device. Even if Apple could make a shatterproof display out of glass or plastic, it might not be able to shape it with such sculptural finesse.

However, Apple actually has made the phone thicker before—twice. The first time was for the iPhone 3G, which packed in lots of extra hardware and features. The second time was the iPhone 6s—which introduced 3D Touch, but may have also been reinforcing the frame against another Bendgate, too. The problem may be that we, as consumers, haven't complained loudly enough about their shattering iPhone screens. And in the meantime, Apple has prioritized design decisions that make an iPhone tactically irresistible compared to anything that runs Android, rather than structurally sound when your toddler drops it from waist-height.

Apple's fetish for fragility isn't just a laughable oversight on an otherwise well-designed product. It actually makes the iPhone a failure when it's pulled from an Apple Store to face the rigors of real-world UX. In its quest for beauty, Apple is championing marketing while ignoring the long-term experience customers have with the iPhone. Apple is being willfully ignorant that 25% of its iPhones break in exactly the same way—so tens of millions of their customers are forced to squint through broken screens or take an unadvertised trip to a back-alley repair shop. It costs people money. It costs people time. And it costs Apple . . . oh, right, it costs Apple nothing.

Given that Motorola has made what's likely the most durable phone in history, and no one outside a few tech bloggers seem to care, Apple's impossibly polished figurine phones might have been the better business decision. But putting so much effort into trivialities like vibrating home buttons, when the iPhone requires the equivalent of bubble wrap to stay safe? That's just a shitty way to build products for people. Maybe Apple should make sure the iPhone's old features are sorted out before it tries to sell us on new ones.

[All Photos: via Apple]

Abuse and violence against women is one reason why some women don't earn as much as men for the same jobs.

Pay equity is about more than just gender equality at work. Violence against women also plays a role in the wage gap, according to a report from McKinsey & Company.

The Power of Parity: Advancing Women's Equality in the United States, finds that closing the wage gap could add up to $4.3 trillion annually to the GDP by 2025. But violence against women is one of the six factors impacting pay equity in the United States.

Fast Company covered some of the other factors working against pay parity for women from the report. They included lack of representation in leadership and managerial positions (there are 66 women for every 100 men in managerial positions), time spent in unpaid care work (women do almost twice the amount of unpaid care work), single mothers (60% of families living in poverty are led by a single mother), teenage pregnancy (600,000 girls ages 16 to 19 become pregnant each year) and political representation (there are 30 women in every 100 men in political office).

"There is a direct correlation between violence and the financial piece," says Vivian Riefberg, a senior partner at McKinsey & Company and one of the report's authors. "Women who suffer violence are likely to see an impact on their earning potential due to lost productivity and lost work days."

This is more common than you may know. As many as one in three women experience violence from an intimate partner, the report found. And there is one incident of sexual violence (not just rape, but all forms of violence) for every two women.

Using data from a CDC report, McKinsey's analysts calculated that violence against women costs about $4.9 billion in the United States annually. Seventy percent of this comes from direct medical costs, 15% from lost productivity, and 15% from lost earnings over women's lifetimes.

Perception vs. Reality When Workers Experience Domestic Violence

Victims of domestic violence have missed opportunities for promotions and pay raises because it appears they have performance issues, she says. "We hear from women on a regular basis that domestic violence prevents them from going into work," says Katie Ray-Jones, CEO of the National Domestic Violence Hotline.

It is not uncommon for the abuser to make the victim appear unreliable in the workplace, says Lisalyn R. Jacobs, CEO of Just Solutions. That's because one way an abuser is able to control the victim is through their finances.

For instance, she says, the abuser might promise to take the kids to school in the morning, but then say they can't. Or, they might commit an act of violence the day before an important meeting or an interview. They might show up at the victim's workplace or keep calling her there and harass her or her colleagues.

"They will commit any type of behavior that causes an employer to do a cost-benefit analysis around whether to keep you employed," says Jacobs. "This can have an effect on employment history and whether someone gets promoted or is eligible for a raise."

A woman with a black eye or bruises in a visible place is more likely to call in sick, rather explain what happened, says Ellen Bravo, director of Family Values @ Work, an organization that advocates for paid family leave and sick leave. This is particularly true, she says, if the woman has experienced repeated violence and has made up multiple excuses like being in a car accident or falling down the stairs. "In most cases," says Bravo, "your employer will see you as a unreliable employee, rather than someone who is being abused."

Victims of domestic violence also risk job loss, says Dina Bakst, cofounder and copresident of A Better Balance, a national legal advocacy organization that advocates for family-friendly laws and workplace policies. Between 25% and 50% of domestic violence survivors report job loss, due at least in part to the domestic violence, according to research from the Joint Center for Poverty Research at Northwestern University. Once you lose one job, it's harder to get a new job. If you lose two jobs, it becomes increasingly harder to find employment which exacerbates the wage gap, Bakst says.

Local Legislative Efforts Focus On Paid "Safe Time"

To help level the playing field, A Better Balance is working with cities, counties, and states to pass legislation that would give victims of domestic violence paid "safe time." Paid safe time is necessary because it takes time to deal with the legal and medical issues resulting from domestic violence such as going to court, finding and moving to a new home, and seeing a counselor.

Bravo points out that it typically takes three hours to file the paperwork to get an injunction against an abuser. Courthouse employees say it's not uncommon for a woman come in, start the process, then realize they need to go back to work or risk losing their jobs, she adds.

To date, five states (California, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Oregon, and Vermont), 10 localities (Montgomery County, Maryland; Seattle, San Diego, Tacoma, Washington; Spokane, Washington; Santa Monica, California; Minneapolis, Los Angeles, Chicago, Philadelphia, and Washington, D.C.) have passed safe time laws, says Jared Make, senior staff attorney at A Better Balance.

In addition, San Francisco is in the process of adding safe time to its paid sick leave law. The provision is expected to be in place in 2017. Although California has a statewide safe time law, California cities are passing their own laws to provide added protections, Make says.

This comparison chart outlines state laws regarding paid time off for sick and safe time leave.

Meanwhile Washington state, Arizona, and the city of Albuquerque, New Mexico, are asking voters to decide this November whether to provide paid safe time, and St. Paul, Minnesota, is working on a legislative initiative to provide paid safe time, Make says.

Recognizing When Domestic Violence Is Impacting Work

Advocates for domestic violence victims say rather than automatically firing an employee who appears unreliable, managers should take time to find out what's going on. Here are five signs to look for, according to the National Domestic Violence Hotline:

1. An employee who calls in sick frequently and is using all of their sick and vacation time.
2. An employee who suddenly seems more withdrawn or depressed.
3. An employee who asks you to divert funds to another savings or checking account, particularly if they are promoted or given a raise.
4. An employee whose partner comes around the workplace more frequently.
5. An employee who is constantly getting phone calls or text messages and appears distracted by them.

To accommodate victims of domestic violence, employers could consider changing their phone number, moving their desk away from a window or public area, putting a lock on the employee's office door, and having a policy in place that protects victims of violence, says Kiersten Stewart, director of public policy and advocacy at Futures Without Violence.

"Know the warning signs," Bravo advises employers, "and make it a safe place for someone to tell the right person, 'I'm in trouble and it may affect my attendance and performance and it's not because I'm not a good employee.'"

A little over a year ago, Tower Paddle Boards started letting employees leave by lunchtime and offering 5% profit-sharing.

In every office, I've often felt, there are just a few people who do three times the work of everyone else, yet their reward is only marginally higher. As an entrepreneur, I've been managing my own productivity time—not on-the-clock-time—pretty effectively for over 15 years, and I've largely been able to work fewer hours than my friends in the corporate world. So when I started Tower, my company that sells stand-up paddle boards, I figured (or at least hoped) that I could hire just these types and give them a better deal in the process.

So while we operated on a standard eight-hour workday at first, just like most other companies, I wanted to put my theory to the test. And it also seemed like freeing up employees' afternoons for the outdoor lifestyle the company promoted would be a natural fit. So on June 1, 2015, I initiated a three-month test. I moved my whole company to a five-hour workday where everyone works from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. Over a year later, we're sticking with it. Here's why, and how we made the change work.

Making The Switch

When we kicked off the pilot program, I told my employees I wanted to give them two things. First, I simply wanted to give them their lives back—so they'd have a pass to walk out each day right at 1 p.m. as long as they proved highly productive. Second, I wanted to pay them better for more the more focused effort that would take. Their per-hour earnings were set to nearly double overnight: we'd be rolling out 5% profit-sharing at the same time.

Prior to the switch, an employee making $40,000 a year would've been paid $20 per hour ($40,000 divided by 2,000 hours per year). With the profit-sharing program leading to about $8,000 per person, that same employee would now make about $48,000 but only have a baseline of 1,250 hours per year, so their per-hour earnings would jump to $38.40. And it was crucial to me that this didn't increase the company's expenses by a single dime—there'd be no increased financial risk to our bottom line.

In exchange, though, I had a big ask: I needed each of my team members to be twice as productive as the average worker. We had a high bar of productivity to clear before this, and that didn't change. I told them they just needed to figure out how to do it all in just five hours now—but there'd be support: we'd all need to figure it out and were in this together. If anybody couldn't, though, they'd be fired. The pressure was real, but so was the incentive to meet the challenge; their workweek had suddenly become better than many people's vacation weeks.

The results have been astounding. We've been named to the Inc. 5000 list of America's fastest growing companies the past two years (we ranked #239 in 2015). This year, our 10-person team will generate $9 million in revenue.

A Leap Of Faith, Made For Good Reasons

To make sure we didn't bite off more than we could chew, I termed the pilot program "summer hours," and set the expectation that we'd go back to traditional hours in the fall. This made some room to keep an eye on anything that might go wrong. I was concerned that our reduced customer-service hours and shop hours would mean an equal reduction in revenue. My gut told me that attracting better people, making them happy, and getting out of their way would compensate for these limitations, but we'd need to prove that. I actually suspected things would go down a bit, but the net effect would be worth it.

The reality is that we didn't take a hit at all. Our annual revenues for 2015 were up over 40%. All our numbers were improving, in fact. When I tell people my team only works five hours a day, their response is always, "That's nice, but it won't work for me." The 9-to-5 workday (or worse) is so ingrained that it's hard to imagine anything else.

Being a beach lifestyle company, where our whole brand is wrapped up the notion of a healthy work-life balance, the idea that should be working differently, too, if we truly wanted to live differently, wasn't as much a leap. But if you ask me, we're more of an online marketing agency that happens to own a surf brand. There's no reason that virtually any company that employees a large chunk of knowledge workers can't cut its hours by 30% and still succeed.

The case against ballooning hours is familiar to most and doesn't need to be rehearsed. Humans aren't machines; productivity declines the longer you spend with your nose to the grind. On the flip side, it's been found that happier workers are more productive. Having time to pursue your passions, nurture your relationships, and stay active gives you more emotional and physical energy overall—including to do your job well.

But there's a less-discussed upside to a shorter workweek, too. In their book Scarcity: Why Having Too Little Means So Much, Sendhil Mullainathan and Eldar Shafir write that having less time creates periods of heightened productivity called "focus dividends." By trimming your workday down to five hours, time management comes baked into the pie, forcing high-value activities to take priority.

How To Make Working Less Work For Everyone

To be sure, a five-hour workday might not work for every type of worker. But for the vast majority of knowledge workers, clocking fewer hours that generate higher productivity is feasible if you keep these tips in mind:

1. Apply the 80-20 rule. You've heard this one before, but it's critical. The well-known Pareto Principle dictates that 80% of production comes from 20% of efforts. If you can identify those 20% activities in your company's typical workday, you'll be able to cut the rest.

2. Shift to a production mind-set. Stop measuring work in hours and start measuring it in output. Most knowledge workers aren't paid by the hour. They're paid a flat salary because their employers aren't buying the ideas they have from 9-to-5; they're buying the ideas they have in the shower, during lunch, and before getting out of bed.

The 5% profit-sharing we began offering at the same time we shortened the workday was mean to help my team shift to a production mind-set. This way, employees are rewarded for how productive they are, not how long they're on the clock.

3. Nix the "always available" attitude. One of my biggest reservations about a five-hour workday was reducing our customer service department's hours. I worried that if we cut our open hours in half, we'd lose half our business. But we weren't running a convenience store, after all; our customers bought new paddle boards maybe once every five years. It didn't matter when we were open as long as our customers knew our hours. And the same proved true with our phones. We still get roughly the same number of calls each day, just at a faster clip. And many of those would-be callers now "self-serve" themselves through our website.

4. Use technology to boost efficiency. The five-hour workday exposed weaknesses that had been hidden by hourly work. To allow our warehouse and customer service employees to work 30% less (without growing our staff), we had to creatively figure out how to serve the same number of customers in less time. The obvious solution was automation. In the warehouse, we reduced our packing and shipping time using software. In customer service, we overhauled our FAQ page and created video tutorials to help customers help themselves.

Once you put a time constraint on work, it forces you to consider how you can get technology to do the heavy lifting so your output doesn't suffer. We learned that even in our instant-gratification society, being available all day isn't necessary. You just need to communicate when and how you're available.

5. Don't restrict yourself to a 25-hour week. My employees know they can always walk out of the office guilt-free at 1 p.m., and most do most of the time. But it isn't forbidden for the occasional high performer to still put in a 12-hour day when it's really crucial. The key is that those crunch periods remain the exception to the rule—which you need to hold up in spirit, not enforce to the letter.

Moving my staff to a five-hour workday was one of the hardest decisions I've ever made, but today my employees are happier, more productive, and better invested in the business. I've since had incredibly high-performers at local companies send us resumes completely unsolicited. We've been able to recruit extremely talented people away from jobs where they were making six-figure salaries to come work at Tower for much less.

Someday, when we're a bigger company, we'll be able to start people at $80,000 to $100,000—and still let them walk out the door at 1 p.m. When that day comes, we'll be snatching all the best talent from every company in town. That's what I'm betting, anyway—after all, this experiment is only a year old, and it doesn't stop here.

Stephan Aarstol is the author of The Five-Hour Workday: Live Differently, Unlock Productivity, and Find Happiness. He is CEO and founder of Tower, a holistic beach-lifestyle company, which includes Tower Paddle Boards, Tower[/] Magazine, SunglassesByTower.com, and a direct-to-consumer surf-and beach-lifestyle company at TowerMade.com.[/i]

Research proves there are ways to learn new skills and concepts with speed and ease.

Whether it's a new technology, a foreign language, or an advanced skill, staying competitive often means learning new things. Nearly two-thirds of U.S. workers have taken a course or sought additional training to advance their careers, according to a March 2016 study by Pew Research Center. They report that results have included an expanded professional network, new job or different career path.

Being a quick learner can give you an even greater edge. Science proves there are six ways you can learn and retain something faster.

1. Teach Someone Else (Or Just Pretend To)

If you imagine that you'll need to teach someone else the material or task you are trying to grasp, you can speed up your learning and remember more, according to a study done at Washington University in St. Louis. The expectation changes your mind-set so that you engage in more effective approaches to learning than those who simply learn to pass a test, according to John Nestojko, a postdoctoral researcher in psychology and coauthor of the study.

"When teachers prepare to teach, they tend to seek out key points and organize information into a coherent structure," Nestojko writes. "Our results suggest that students also turn to these types of effective learning strategies when they expect to teach."

2. Learn In Short Bursts of Time

Experts at the Louisiana State University's Center for Academic Success suggest dedicating 30-50 minutes to learning new material. "Anything less than 30 is just not enough, but anything more than 50 is too much information for your brain to take in at one time," writes learning strategies graduate assistant Ellen Dunn. Once you're done, take a five to 10 minute break before you start another session.

Brief, frequent learning sessions are much better than longer, infrequent ones, agrees Neil Starr, a course mentor at Western Governors University, an online nonprofit university where the average student earns a bachelor's degree in two and a half years.

He recommends preparing for micro learning sessions. "Make note cards by hand for the more difficult concepts you are trying to master," he says. "You never know when you'll have some in-between time to take advantage of."

3. Take Notes By Hand

While it's faster to take notes on a laptop, using a pen and paper will help you learn and comprehend better. Researchers at Princeton University and UCLA found that when students took notes by hand, they listened more actively and were able to identify important concepts. Taking notes on a laptop, however, leads to mindless transcription, as well as an opportunity for distraction, such as email.

"In three studies, we found that students who took notes on laptops performed worse on conceptual questions than students who took notes longhand," writes coauthor and Princeton University psychology professor Pam Mueller. "We show that whereas taking more notes can be beneficial, laptop note takers' tendency to transcribe lectures verbatim rather than processing information and reframing it in their own words is detrimental to learning."

4. Use The Power of Mental Spacing

While it sounds counterintuitive, you can learn faster when you practice distributed learning, or "spacing." In an interview with The New York Times, Benedict Carey, author of How We Learn: The Surprising Truth About When, Where, and Why It Happens, says learning is like watering a lawn. "You can water a lawn once a week for 90 minutes or three times a week for 30 minutes," he said. "Spacing out the watering during the week will keep the lawn greener over time."

To retain material, Carey said it's best to review the information one to two days after first studying it. "One theory is that the brain actually pays less attention during short learning intervals," he said in the interview. "So repeating the information over a longer interval—say a few days or a week later, rather than in rapid succession—sends a stronger signal to the brain that it needs to retain the information."

5. Take A Study Nap

Downtime is important when it comes to retaining what you learn, and getting sleep in between study sessions can boost your recall up to six months later, according to new research published in Psychological Science.

In an experiment held in France, participants were taught the Swahili translation for 16 French words in two sessions. Participants in the "wake" group completed the first learning session in the morning and the second session in the evening of the same day, while participants in the "sleep" group completed the first session in the evening, slept, and then completed the second session the following morning. Participants who had slept between sessions recalled about 10 of the 16 words, on average, while those who hadn't slept recalled only about 7.5 words.

"Our results suggest that interweaving sleep between practice sessions leads to a twofold advantage, reducing the time spent relearning and ensuring a much better long-term retention than practice alone," writes psychological scientist Stephanie Mazza of the University of Lyon. "Previous research suggested that sleeping after learning is definitely a good strategy, but now we show that sleeping between two learning sessions greatly improves such a strategy."

6. Change It Up

When learning a new motor skill, changing the way you practice it can help you master it faster, according to a new study at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. In an experiment, participants were asked to learn a computer-based task. Those who used a modified learning technique during their second session performed better than those who repeated the same method.

The findings suggest that reconsolidation—a process in which existing memories are recalled and modified with new knowledge—plays a key role in strengthening motor skills, writes Pablo A. Celnik, senior study author and professor of physical medicine and rehabilitation.

"What we found is if you practice a slightly modified version of a task you want to master," he writes, "you actually learn more and faster than if you just keep practicing the exact same thing multiple times in a row."

A new rewards program from Uber and Visa is kind of like earning air miles, except you get free Uber rides.

The next time you grab a salad for lunch, it might benefit more than just your health: You could also earn some frequent-Uber miles.

The ride-hailing company is partnering with Visa for a new program called "Local Offers." With it, you can earn points each time you swipe your Visa card at participating local merchants—like that salad shop. Those points can then be redeemed for free Uber rides.

Think of it like accumulating airline miles using your credit card. Each dollar you spend at a local merchant equals one point. When you get to 100, you score $10 off your next Uber trip.

Once you register, everything is handled within the app automatically, so there's no need to remember to pull out a rewards card or get the barista at your local coffee shop to input anything special to make sure you get credit. Every Visa card you attach to your Uber account counts, no matter which one you happen to pull out come lunch time.

Any merchant that accepts Visa can technically sign up to be part of the program (if you happen to be one you can do that here), and Visa has quite a few already signed up.

"The goal has been to get some of your local favorites, as well as merchants perhaps you haven't tried before in your area," says Terry Angelos, vice president of loyalty and offers for Visa.

You can discover which businesses near you are participating right from the Uber app (they'll all be nested under a Local Offers tab. When you make a purchase using your Visa card (or Apple or Samsung Pay with a Visa card attached), then you'll instantly see a push notification on your phone indicating how many points you scored for the transaction, and how many points you've accumulated so far toward a free trip.

Uber's Local Offers is powered by Visa's Commerce Network. The program offers loyalty rewards between two different merchants that accept Visa. For instance, a hotel might offer guests a discount at a local restaurant or tour company. When that guest uses the same Visa card to book their room as they do to purchase dinner or a tour, the discount is automatically applied to their bill, with no need to tote coupons around or remember to redeem the offer.

Uber will be rolling out Local Offers in San Francisco and Los Angeles starting today, with plans to potentially expand the program in the future to other cities.

Snapchat celebrities are making undisclosed paid endorsements. Even more than on other platforms, policing them is a major challenge.

No one has been more influential to Snapchat culture than DJ Khaled. An Adweek cover story on the famous rapper deemed him the "King of Snapchat" in February. One month later, Emmanuel Seuge, senior vice president for content at Coca-Cola, called him the same in a cover story in Bloomberg Businessweek.

As a result of DJ Khaled's prolific snapping, an entire language has emerged in the digital lexicon: "bless up," "another one," and "major key." His snaps alter between vague inspiration and weirdly banal glimpses into his eccentric personality, creating what Adweek called "his own bite-sized reality show."

Sometimes, that reality show includes product placement. His product of choice? Apple Ciroc vodka.

Khaled has actually been promoting the brand for years. His 2010 music video for "All I Do Is Win" is basically one long Ciroc ad. It's difficult, though, to find exact details on his relationship with Ciroc. Fellow rapper Sean "Diddy" Combs became a brand ambassador for the alcohol back in 2007, and the two have appeared in promotional materials together. The only evidence that he's also a paid brand ambassador, however, comes from a Twitter marketing case story which has since been removed. (DJ Khaled's representatives and Ciroc both did not respond to requests for comment).

That's not the only confusing relationship between Khaled and a brand. It can be difficult to tell the difference between what products he's paid to promote and what products he organically brings up (or, more likely, wants sponsorship deals from). Here's a video, for example, of him talking about Dove brand soap (starts at 0:15).

"The key to your success is using the right soap. I only use Dove, Dove soap. Trust me, trust me."

A few snaps later: "Best deodorant in the world. All the other stuff is garbage, man. Use Dove deodorant. It's a vibe. It's so important for the culture."

He ends the video with a quick shot of the product. (Dove did not respond to a request for comment.)

There are plenty of other examples. The Adweekcover story references his love of Listerine and Palmer's Cocoa Butter, with which he says he has no relationships. The dating app Bumble is another brand that Khaled has promoted, though the details of the relationship remain unknown.

The problem is that the snaps are difficult to find. DJ Khaled has millions of followers, but any record of his activity, beyond a few compilation videos, is mostly lost. Snaps, of course, disappear after 24 hours. Unless someone records them or takes screenshots, they're gone forever.

A "Proliferation" of Marketing Platforms

Snapchat's transitory, one-to-one nature is a big part of its appeal. But the platform's ephemeral content is also something of a nightmare for regulators forced to keep up with a rapidly evolving digital landscape.

"In general, there's an issue of the proliferation of social media marketing platforms," Mary Engle, head of the Federal Trade Commission's (FTC) Ad Practices division, told me. "It makes it harder for us to keep on top of all the different marketing messages out there."

The past few years have seen a dramatic rise in the popularity of person-to-person chat apps such as Snapchat. WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Kik, and others are critical to how the world—teens especially—communicates on the internet. Celebrities, brands, and publishers, predictably, have followed users there.

Meanwhile, influencer marketing—a form of native advertising in which a digital "influencer" is paid by a brand to promote a product—has become an increasingly valuable part of many advertisers' repertoires.

But that hasn't come without growing pains. The FTC released new guidelines in December 2015 that took aim at native advertising, asking all campaigns to include clear disclosure language such as "Promoted" and "Ad." Recently, the FTC has begun enforcing those guidelines to send a message to the native ad community. Last month, it sanctioned Warner Bros. for a campaign with famous YouTuber PewDiePie.

Of course, PewDiePie's videos are easy to find. DJ Khaled's snaps, on the other hand, have disappeared from the digital ether. That raises an important question: How are regulators supposed to regulate platforms with private, fleeting ads?

The FTC's Challenge

The FTC was created in 1914 by President Woodrow Wilson. At the time, its primary purpose was enforcing antitrust laws and breaking up monopolies. Since then, its responsibilities have evolved to enforcing consumer protections against deceptive marketing and advertising practices.

In 2000, the FTC found that "a low 20% compliance with applicable laws among internet-based businesses." Only 52% of Americans were on the internet back then; today, that number has risen to 84%.

As more Americans spend more time on the internet—and as the digital landscape changes dramatically month to month—the FTC may be facing its biggest challenge since its early role as a monopoly buster.

The FTC can do little on its own. According to Engle, the agency has to rely on complaints from consumers and watchdogs when it comes to social media marketing. "[It's] not possible to monitor all social media marketing, obviously," she said.

And for transitory platforms such as Snapchat, oversight is even more difficult. "People would have to take a screenshot in order to alert us to something," Engle said. If the FTC opens an investigation, it requires advertisers to submit their marketing material, which they may or may not have on record.

"You have to have the appropriate evidence," Bonnie Patten, executive editor at Truth in Advertising (TINA), a nonprofit advertising watchdog, told me. "Short videos that disappear make it hard to capture that evidence, for sure."

On Snapchat, photos can last as little as three seconds—barely enough time to take a screenshot, assuming that consumers are even aware that an ad doesn't comply with FTC regulations. Even then, consumers may not know the FTC is largely reliant on them to call out deceptive marketing.

Considering that one out of four influencers are asked not to disclose by their sponsors, according to a recent study by influencer marketing platform SheSpeaks, the result is a game of Whac-A-Mole—except consumers don't even know they're playing.

"Clear and Conspicuous"

According to Snapchat's ad policies, which a representative directed me to in response to a request for comment, "Any testimonials and endorsements contained in ads or in a Snapchat account must comply with all applicable laws, industry codes, rules, and regulations. For example, a clear and conspicuous disclaimer is required if an endorser's results were atypical or if the endorser was paid."

Snapchat has also made it clear, when it first launched advertising capabilities, that it doesn't want ads in the more intimate spaces of the platform: "We won't put advertisements in your personal communication—things like snaps or chats. That would be totally rude."

Disclosure, however, isn't as easy as it is on other platforms. There are no filters to mark a snap as an ad, and captions have limited space (80 characters, as of April), which means there's less room to type "#ad." In a Bloomberg Businessweek feature on Snapchat's influencer economy, Caitlin O'Conner, an influencer who regularly posts paid content on Snapchat, told the magazine: "If you don't see a line in my post that says, 'Nobody paid me for this,' then I've probably been paid for it."

Like on Instagram, where the most-liked picture of all time is an undisclosed Coca-Cola ad by Selena Gomez, many influencers on more private platforms like Snapchat are simply unaware of the regulations—and some brands have done a poor job of educating them.

"I think there is a subset of companies that are doing the right thing and making it quite clear and conspicuous on their different social media sites of when it's advertising and when it's not," Patten said. "However, some of the problems that we've seen pre-FTC's revisions to their guidelines, we're still seeing just as prevalently."

For its part, the FTC is putting the onus of disclosure on brands, not influencers or platforms. Its two most high-profile complaints against influencer marketing campaigns—the first against clothing company Lord & Taylor in April, the second against Warner Bros. this July—have exclusively targeted the companies behind the projects in question. As Fair wrote in a blog post discussing the Warner Bros. complaint, "No one knows better than advertisers how to make disclosures clear and conspicuous."

As private platforms like Snapchat, Messenger, and Kik become more popular, an already stretched-thin FTC may find it impossible to enforce its regulations. But influencers like DJ Khaled have already shown they're open to disclosures: The rapper regularly tells his audience to drink responsibly. He even told Adweek that promoting responsible drinking is a "major key" to him.

Now, the question is whether the FTC and advertisers can educate a new breed of influencers to make disclosures a major key as well.

Dillon Baker is an associate editor at Contently and a tech journalist. Follow him on Twitter as @dillonmbaker.

Matt MacInnis spent seven years at Apple, and says some lessons he learned there made for bad training in the startup world.

I helped build Apple during its renaissance in the 2000s. Surrounded by incredible people, I learned the value of relentless focus and of a brand powerful enough to drive consumer trends the world over. It was a phenomenal place to start my career. But it was terrible training for a startup founder.

There's no doubt that Apple's contrarian approach has been part of its wild success. It makes sense, then, that many startups try to emulate it. But when they do, they inevitably find that the common wisdom about culture, which Apple largely flouts, is both common and wise for a reason: it works.

In fact, the company's culture is so misunderstood outside of Apple that even after seven years there I didn't realize how impossible it would be to replicate it until I'd tried—and failed. It took me years to unlearn these three bad habits as a startup founder and CEO.

1. Defaulting To Secrecy

From your first day on the job at Apple, you're reminded how important confidentiality is. Of course, external confidentiality was simple and strict: Don't talk to outsiders. But Apple also discouraged employees from talking with one another about specific projects unless they were mutually "disclosed."

Disclosure often took the form of secret meetings and non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) that employees had to sign. On occasion, I was called into meetings to sign legally dubious but psychologically effective NDAs that reminded me of my obligation to maintain confidentiality around a certain project. Everyone in the room was admonished against discussing its details with coworkers, including our own managers if they weren't being disclosed.

Needless to say, this wasn't conducive to open collaboration. In fact, it led to information "haves" and "have-nots." What you knew demonstrated your position on the totem pole, and refrains of "Are you disclosed?" were less a way to protect information than a way to assert your position.

So when I started my own company, I was afraid to share information openly. I was afraid to talk to the media. I even made early employees sign restrictive NDAs myself! But it soon became clear that the costs of restricting the flow of information overwhelmed any benefits. It's often said that in startups transparency is key—and it's true. Without it, you can't solve problems collaboratively, build trust, or allow smart people to make the quick, critical decisions.

2. Sheltered Innovation

Apple, by dint of its product-design and development methods, has an uncanny ability to predict and accelerate consumer trends. A oft-noted characteristic that Steve Jobs's renown rests on was his sense that Apple's task was to anticipate customers' needs before they themselves could.

Apple, of course, listens to its customers, but during my time there as part of the marketing team, the company viewed focus groups, beta testing, and open collaboration unfavorably. New hires would join and suggest focus groups for message testing. And the response from veterans was typically swift and negative: "Apple doesn't do focus groups." And indeed, we didn't.

Soon after starting my own company, Inkling, we learned that sheltered innovation simply wouldn't provide enough data to guide our development. (And I, dear reader, am no Steve Jobs.) We needed early users, beta testers, and tire-kickers to help us understand our own products. We also realized that, unlike Apple, we couldn't singlehandedly shape consumers' perceptions of technology. What's more, my instincts weren't always trustworthy. We needed to invite the outside world to help us. Startups, I now believe, need to be open to succeed.

3. Head-Down Execution

While I was at Apple, tasks were carefully planned and delegated to teams in pursuit of a focused and specific outcome. Complex systems were broken down into work streams with defined end-points. That system was efficient and often ruthless. As an individual, the thinking went, you need to do your job with focus and excellence—there's little room for your personal interests. If you don't like that, there's a line of people around the block ready to take your place.

Depending on your point of view, this isn't necessarily bad: employees have clear goals and a well understood path to success. But it could become monotonous, especially for inventive types. Genuine, exploratory creativity happened only within certain groups, which were led, while I was there, from the top.

For startups, success often comes more randomly than this. Serendipity helps us discover market opportunities we might miss without it. And startup employees' curiosity and ingenuity are important assets in that process. I've learned that while clear direction is crucial, the unpredictable byproducts of a team's efforts (call that "luck" if you'd like) that are nice-to-haves at Apple are mission-critical inside a startup. Hackathons, pet projects, and scrappy approaches, all generally frowned upon at Apple, have become key components of how we run our company.

Startups benefit from open communication; basically any press is good press, and any collaboration among smart people might create a new opportunity. Early interactions with customers is critical. And when given enough latitude, individuals are fonts of creativity—that's why you hired them. But Apple was no longer a startup by the time I worked there, and it hadn't been for a long time before that. For all its well-deserved cachet, it proved a poor training ground for somebody trying to run an early-stage business.

One thing I didn't learn at Apple helped rescue me after I'd left it: As with most things, the common wisdom is often the best starting point. But you can't just internalize it and stay put—you've got to iterate from there, and do it right out in the open.

The filmmaker talks to us about his new documentary about the Fab Four, which includes rare, meticulously restored film footage and audio.

It might be difficult to imagine, nearly 50 years after the Beatles broke up, that there would be anything new to say about one of the most celebrated and documented bands of all time. But Ron Howard insists that there is. The director's latest project, The Beatles: Eight Days a Week—The Touring Years, is a 100-minute documentary examination of the five-year period in which the Fab Four toured and played live, first as a staple in Liverpool's Cavern Club, then through the chaotic global whirlwind of Beatlemania, all the way through to their last concert at San Francisco's Candlestick Park in 1966.

To shine new light on these formative years in pop music history, Howard and a team of collaborators interviewed the surviving Beatles, talked to the widows of their deceased bandmates, and combed through the archives of the group's company, Apple Corps, and various media outlets for footage of the four lads playing live. They also dug much deeper. Thanks to a crowdsourced, archival research project that first began in 2003, Howard and producers at White Horse Pictures were able to include never-before-seen footage shot by fans and other amateurs around the world during the Beatles' years on the road.

This new footage, combined with the meticulous restoration of the audio, enabled Howard and his team to shine new light on the first half of the Beatles' career and, Howard hopes, delight fans with new visual details and sonic clarity when the documentary arrives in theaters on September 16 (and lands on Hulu the following day). Fast Company talked to Howard about directing Eight Days a Week and what it was like to work with his boyhood idols.

Fast Company: How did you get involved in this project? What attracted you to it?

Ron Howard: I had worked on a movie called Rush, a Formula One racing story. Involved in that production was a guy I got to know well, Nigel Sinclair. I learned that he had done [the George Harrison film] Living in the Material World as a producer. I sort of stumbled into doing this Jay Z documentary about his music festival in Philadelphia, Made In America. Nigel saw that documentary and said, "The Beatles are thinking about making a documentary about their touring years. Is that something you'd want to think about?" I immediately thought, this would be a great way to meet Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr, whom I had crossed paths with, but never really had a conversation with. I was a fan first and foremost. And then I thought, no, there's a real responsibility involved here! I need to delve into the story and really understand it.

I thought that their idea of focusing on the touring years was really ingenious because the Beatles' story in total is epic and sprawling. But this has a narrative. As a director, I immediately identified it as sort of an adventure story. I felt like it was almost a survival story for these guys. They launched themselves into this, and the world reacted in a way that nobody could have predicted. It created all kinds of challenges for them. The way they navigated those challenges is revealing, moving, and impressive.

And you did get to meet and talk to Paul and Ringo, as well as Yoko Ono and Olivia Harrison. How did the surviving Beatles and their families contribute to the creative process?

They gave me the final cut, just like I have on my feature films, which was, I thought, a huge show of respect. I spoke to each of them and met with them first, at length. They had a chance to vet my ideas and decide whether they wanted to get behind this approach. Yoko and Olivia knew all the stories about the very beginning, but we're not telling the part of the story where they're present. Still, they each had a point of view and a tremendous amount of knowledge. They've seen cuts and offered up some comments, and I've agreed with some and not others. They've been fine with that. They really encouraged me to tell the story as I was seeing it. And I think they're happy with the result.

What did you learn from this discussions? Did they help shape the narrative of the film?

Lots of things. I had a sense that it was this intense adventure story. I equated it to Apollo 13 or even Das Boot. They lived through this incredibly intense period, where they're under all this scrutiny, all this pressure. The logistics are wild and, in some instances, a little threatening to their health and well-being. Out of necessity, they're inventing the stadium concert tour. It was because the police kept saying, "If you play a place that holds 8,000 people, it means we're going to have 38,000 people outside. You've got to play in bigger places." So they sort of invented the arena tour before technology could support it, really.

Was there anything that surprised you?

The biggest surprise for me was the kind of brotherhood that Ringo talks about. Paul talks about the connection that he and John had creatively and as friends and how important that was, how they worked together. The artistic growth is another thing that I was able to understand better. They didn't wear it as some kind of badge of honor. It was just kind of who they were. As a group and as four individuals, they just had a creative integrity that is impressive and laudable. You begin to see that that's why they've endured so brilliantly.

There are a few broader historical threads woven throughout the story, it being the 1960s and all. We've all heard about the Beatles' opposition to the Vietnam War, but most people probably didn't realize that they refused to play segregated venues in America.

That's another thing I didn't know and didn't come up in my conversations with Paul or Ringo or Yoko or Olivia. They just took that segregation stand as an obvious choice. To this day, they don't really recognize what a courageous stance it was. It was great to find [civil rights historian] Kitty Oliver and be able to interview her. That came very late in the process. I knew they took a position on Vietnam as a lot of artists did, but I didn't know that a year or two before that, they had taken that kind of controversial stand in Jacksonville.

It's interesting that so much of the archival material is unreleased, amateur footage. Tell me about the process of acquiring and working with this raw material.

Did you hear about the footage that had never been exposed? It was from a lady that had been at Candlestick Park. There was very little surviving footage from Candlestick Park. Right before I came on board, this lady called in and said, "I was at Candlestick Park. I think I shot some footage. I don't think I ever got it developed. Do you guys want it?" That turns out to be one of our most important scenes. And that footage really means a lot. No one knew it was going to be the momentous last performance by the Beatles.

All this additional footage fleshes out the personal moments and concert moments. I knew that that was a great building block. And that's really why they decided to make the movie. It was kind of up to me to find the story in it. I knew that you would see the Beatles better, hear the Beatles better, and therefore connect with them, both backstage and in performance, in a way that you hadn't before—especially people who will see it in a movie theater or on a good system.

It's also very important to me to be able to tell this story and reveal more about the band and more about the world that the band was navigating. For people who know the music and think they know the story, there's so much more there. I fall into that category. I was a fan. For my 10th birthday, I got a Beatle wig, which was only a month after they played on Ed Sullivan. They were that kind of a sensation. My kids like the Beatles a lot, but they don't know much about them. When I showed them a cut of the movie, they were blown away because they had no idea how seismic it all had been and how complex the journey was. Emotionally complex, socially complex, artistically complex.

Much of the footage had to be restored—as did the audio, which was famously noisy thanks to screaming fans. I know Giles Martin, son of the late Sir George, was a big help there.

It was great having Giles Martin on board. What a gentleman. I had met him at Abbey Road. I was scoring the movie In the Heart of the Sea at Abbey Road when this came together, and I learned I'd be making this documentary. I was there for weeks and was getting the Beatles tour of Abbey Road studios almost everyday in some way, shape, or form.

Other than managing and restoring all that footage and audio, what was the biggest challenge in making this movie?

The story is so sprawling. I think the biggest frustration was that there was so much great material. How do you focus it and deliver it in a way that really respects people's time, but really inform—in a tight, fun, fluid way—a clear sense of what that journey was like and what it meant to these four remarkable individuals?

There were montages that we could have easily built out into 20-minute sequences and quick acknowledgements that could have been scenes. There were some interesting people that didn't make the feature version at all. We do have DVD extras with some of the other interviews, because we had some brilliant people talking about the Beatles.

It sounds like this project was a pretty special one for you, personally.

It was. And very daunting. But I knew we had these building blocks, and that this was coming from Apple. They're very thorough and professional. Very thoughtful about everything that they do around the Beatles, obviously. I knew they wouldn't say yes to my ideas if they didn't believe it was a good direction. It was very important to me to have those conversations with the people who lived it.

I also think it's a good time to make the movie because we have this new perspective. We can look at that and say, "Wow, look how much as changed and look how much has stayed the same." We can take measure of what they meant to us then and what they mean to us now. I wish that George and John were with us and could be a part of it. We tried to cull their interviews and make them as much a part of it as we possibly could.

It was great to get Paul and Ringo at this point in their lives. They've been so active and productive, and yet I think maybe they're reaching a point where they have a perspective of wisdom and another level of appreciation of what that experience was, which I think our film benefits from. Especially the second interviews. We did one interview and then waited a few months and showed them a few sequences that were cut together so they could see the tone of the movie and the way that we were trying to delve into the characters and personalize the journey of those years. They were really responsive in their second interviews and even more forthcoming. It was a very gratifying experience.

Othr collaborates with world-class designers to 3D-print home goods in bronze, porcelain, and steel.

Four years ago, on a whim, Joe Doucet decided to 3D-print a steel fork.

A designer and entrepreneur, Doucet was regularly sending designs to 3D printing companies so they could test his prototypes. Once, in the technology's early days, he even 3D-printed a piece of furniture out of resin for an exhibition. But like many designers, he saw little value in producing finished objects out of soulless plastics.

Then Doucet saw a promotion for 3D-printed steel; the cost of the higher-quality material had finally become affordable. "So I ordered a fork," he says. "It was $250 and it was really terrible—so low-fi, low-res. The tines were bent and they were almost welded together in the middle." Fugly perhaps, but Doucet was smitten. "It was a revelation about the industry," he says.

The idea that 3D printing could make high-end, covetable objects attracted two fellow designers, Dean Di Simone and Evan Clabots. Together with Doucet, they became cofounders of a new startup called Othr, which launched in May and sells 3D-printed home goods conceived by leading designers from around the world. Othr releases a new product every two weeks, with the full collection available in perpetuity through its online catalog.

"Our focus is on creating these amazing heirloom-quality objects that are made completely on demand," Doucet says on a recent summer day during an interview at Othr's studio in downtown Manhattan. Globe pendant lights and tall windows highlight the lofted ceilings of the compact office; along one wall, a calendar neatly outlines upcoming launch dates. We sit at a white table with Di Simone, an array of Othr objects between us: a bronze bottle opener ($70); a white porcelain mortar and pestle ($120); a short steel canister with a black matte finish and an elegant, furled lid ($320). Each object is marked with a unique serial number.

Customizing product in this way is prohibitively expensive for most manufacturers. For Othr, it's central to the business model. The serial number serves as a signifier to the buyer: This object is unique. But it is also a reflection of Othr's complete lack of inventory, an extraordinary asset for any retail business and one that on-demand 3D printing has made possible. Companies that rely on traditional manufacturing, in contrast, have to forecast demand in advance and mass-produce their designs, which often leads to waste.

Freedom from inventory has also given Othr the freedom to experiment. Alongside standard home goods like candlesticks and coffee mugs, Othr sells a birdhouse, a lemon juicer, and even a letter opener. The company has curated its catalog through collaborations with outside designers, each of whom earns a royalty based on sales (the first 100 designers will receive an equity stake as well). Objects by 15 designers, including Clabots and Doucet, have been introduced so far.

Saatchi Design's Marc Thorpe, an architect and industrial designer, developed Othr's letter opener with Blake Enting. "Who's really receiving letters anymore? We thought it was an interesting juxtaposition of the typology of the object itself and its use with the process in which it's made," Thorpe says.

The letter opener, a deceptively simple form available in polished bronze, polished gold steel, or matte black steel, references naval architecture. "You have this relationship between the bow and the stern of the boat," Thorpe says. "That inspired the direction of ergonomics for the hand, and how it relates to the table [on which it's placed]."

After Thorpe and Enting made a series of sketches, the team at Othr built a technical model and started prototyping. One engineering intervention: an escape hole for residue powder trapped inside the letter opener, which is hollow.

"In a very short time, we've accumulated so much intelligence around how this is done, we're actually teaching manufacturers what their own limitations are," Di Simone says.

Di Simone and Doucet briefly met 10 years ago while working on a project for Swarovski. Both found success in the design and agency worlds, and eventually became serial entrepreneurs. By coincidence, a mutual friend suggested a joint marketing campaign around Tokyobike, Di Simone's Japanese-inspired bike brand, and SŌTŌ, a sake for which Doucet had designed the branding and packaging. Doucet had been dreaming up plans for Othr on nights and weekends, and Di Simone decided to get on board. Shortly thereafter, designer Clabots joined as the third cofounder.

"We don't really think of ourselves as having an aesthetic at Othr. We think about having a mentality," says Clabots, who takes the lead in coordinating with the company's 3D printing partners. That shared mentality ensures that Othr objects are useful and distinctly tied to the technology tools that enable their production, with beauty that merits a place of honor in the home. "We're working with [our designers] to educate them about the production, and close that loop between designer and manufacturer," he says. "They start to develop really smart products that are really tuned into the material and what it can do."

Many of the objects currently for sale appear to reflect a minimalist, Japanese aesthetic in line with Di Simone and Doucet's past interests. But Clabots says that he expects that perception will change. "I think that over the next few months we'll start to see some divergence," he says. Addressing all the designers who might work with them someday, he adds, "We don't need you to design a minimal object for us. We're interested in how you can create something in your voice with our tools."

The bronze bottle opener, designed by Fort Standard, portends that future. It also speaks to the way in which engineering advancements can spark creativity. "When it comes out of the 3D printing machine, it is in a green state until it goes through a secondary fusing process," Doucet explains. "There's an inner geometry to that; it's a very strong structure. But if the object can't stand on its own [after the first phase], it's not going to make it through the rest of the manufacturing."

As Othr grows, it plans to push the boundaries of home goods beyond the standard bowls and vases. The team is also exploring retail partnerships and limited-edition products.

There is plenty of room to experiment and opportunity to grow. According to research firm Euromonitor, the U.S. home and garden market is worth $256 billion. Worldwide, it's worth nearly $1 trillion.

Of course, that is not to say that success is guaranteed. The post-unicorn era is littered with examples of home goods and furniture startups that have gone from boom to bust. One Kings Lane, which had raised $229 million, sold to Bed Bath & Beyond for a paltry $30 million in June. Fab, where Clabots previously worked, sold for just $15 million after raising over $300 million.

Angel investor Joanne Wilson, who contributed to Othr's seed round, draws a distinction between those flash-sale businesses and the approach that Othr has adopted. "Flash sales grow and then they die, and they die hard," she says. "I, for one, am not a fan of discounted goods. I want to build sustainable businesses. It's good for the economy, it's good for people's jobs."

With Othr, where the design is high-end but the prices are more approachable than most in this category, Wilson sees an opportunity to attract younger customers who want to buy less, but buy well. "I look at Othr and I see the price points, I see these incredible designers who are using 3D printing to bring their ideas to the masses. To me, that was really interesting."

It's also one of the first scale-able and potentially profitable applications of a much-hyped technology at risk of losing its consumer luster. Outside of their function as prototypes, 3D-printed objects have often played the role of punch line or party trick (for a while, one digital strategy firm was 3D-printing whistles during meetings with clients and then presenting them with the finished plastic piece as they walked out the door). Othr points to an emerging maturity: 3D printing, no longer in its awkward phase, is growing up.

The new institution's flexible, work-from-anywhere policy is attracting accomplished faculty eager to teach high-achieving students.

Levy Odera has made it his mission in life to find solutions to poverty. "I grew up in a relatively poor neighborhood with a relatively poor family in Kenya," says the political science PhD, now an expert in international development.

Odera was dividing his time between on-campus lectures at the University of Florida and semi-annual trips to Kenya when, in 2014, he read an article in The Atlantic about Minerva, a San Francisco-based startup school with ambitions to reinvent the Ivy League for the digital age. In some ways, the school resembles an old-fashioned, elite university. Admissions standards value demonstrated leadership and academic achievement, and students live together in a dorm while following an undergrad curriculum that echoes the liberal arts, with broad-based majors like computational sciences. After the standard four years, graduating students earn a bachelor's degree.

"We are now building an institution that has not been attempted in over 100 years," CEO Ben Nelson told the magazine, as the school was preparing to welcome its founding class of 120 freshmen.

But in other ways, Minerva, which has raised $95 million in venture capital, breaks with tradition. The for-profit venture combines online courses with experiential learning that takes place as students rotate through seven different cities around the world. The annual cost, including room and board, is less than $30,000—a relative bargain when tuition alone at many top universities is nearing $50,000. Most notably for academics like Odera, professors can teach from anywhere with a broadband connection.

Odera was intrigued, but he already had a job. "I shelved it for a while," he says. "Then, my wife got admission to a program at Penn State to do her PhD." Like many modern dual-income couples, they faced a dilemma. Would one partner's career have to take priority? And how would the decision affect their young son, now 20 months old? Odera packed the family's bags for Pennsylvania and applied to Minerva.

This week, after in-person training at Minerva's headquarters, Odera starts his new role as an assistant professor of political science. "The model allows me to stay at home with my wife and my son, and attempt to achieve a balance between work and family," he says. Going forward, it will also allow him to take longer trips to Kenya, where he is deeply involved in a range of social ventures and research projects focused on socioeconomic development. For Odera, there is no downside to the unconventional academic arrangement: "I'm efficient when I'm working independently."

Research increasingly supports the preference for working remotely, or telecommuting. One influential study published in 2014 found that employees who work from home are happier and more productive. Employees relish the ability to focus and the lack of a commute; employers, in turn, save on real estate and improve retention.

Yet in higher education, on-campus teaching remains the norm—and a major challenge for far-flung schools looking to attract a diverse set of faculty members. Many colleges and universities are rural and remote, a deterrent for younger academics. And even jobs at urban institutions can create headaches for couples trying to manage two career paths.

Adopting a structure that supports remote work has been a boon for recruitment and diversity at Minerva. In its first year, more than 800 candidates applied for eight professorships. This year, after quadrupling its instructional faculty, Minerva will employ professors in 20 cities and four countries.

Traditionalists may balk at the idea of translating the kind of learning that currently takes place in storied seminar rooms and Gothic-style lecture halls onto laptops and smartphones. But Minerva, undaunted, has designed and engineered a technology platform that enables "fully active learning," a pedagogy that dean of faculty Kara Gardner says is central to the student experience. For the full duration of each class, students and professor are on live video.

"There is no back row," she says. "We don't wait for volunteers; we call on students. They have to be at the ready for answering questions and on top of their preparation." Plus, class sizes are small: Minerva caps each one at 19 students.

For some postdocs, the opportunity to focus on teaching in a more intimate setting than most top-tier universities can offer was enough to land Minerva at the top of their list of dream jobs. "I love teaching; I hate lecturing. It was a no-brainer for me," says assistant professor Abha Ahuja, who studied biology and genetics and previously taught at Harvard Medical School.

Minerva's geographic flexibility became an added benefit, freeing Ahuja's husband, also a biologist, to apply for jobs at a broad range of biotechnology companies. They landed in San Diego and recently had their first child. "I don't think I'm making a compromise, which is what often happens in these situations," she says.

For associate professor Megan Gahl, an ecologist who lives in Juneau, Alaska, the ability to work from anywhere has given her family of four greater stability and her research a boost, thanks to nearby ponds and streams. "I can be in this remote place but have this very global experience," she says.

Still, Gahl acknowledges that the model is not a fit for everyone. "You have to be able to self-motivate, and you have to be able to work on your own," she says. "You can get this feeling that you're very solo, up in Alaska at your computer. But you're part of a larger piece."

The one thing she misses from her years as an on-campus academic in Maine: Passing students in the hallways. "You have to make a little more an effort," she says. "You have to actually make the connections happen."

Outside of the digital classroom platform, professors and students also connect via Skype, Slack, and Facebook. Hardware helps, too: Assistant professor Randi Doyle swears by the giant Mac screen she installed in her home office. "I can see the students more clearly," she says.

Doyle and her husband, who teaches elementary school, live on Prince Edward Island, where they both grew up. "The fact that I can live in this small town with all my family and work at an institution with the caliber of students that Minerva has, and also to have the deans and mentors I have—it's too good to be true," she says.

Having family nearby has come in handy. When an accident knocked out power for half of the island one day last school year, Doyle simply drove to her parents' house, MacBook in tow. "I didn't have my big screen, but it was just fine."

A handful of industry veterans have launched companies meant to do what the giants don't: Cater to hardcore athletes.

Thirty-eight-year-old Matt Taylor has been running his entire life. What he loves most about the sport is the competition. When he trains for races, he's trying to win a medal or at the very least, beat his previous personal record.

Over the years, though, he's struggled to find an activewear brand that speaks to competitive runners like himself. In a post-athleisure world, companies like Nike and Adidas are increasingly designing clothes for casual fitness activities, like going to the gym or a studio class, rather than hardcore athletes. "Our culture now has this philosophy where everyone is a winner," Taylor says. "But when you're running a race, that's just not true. There's only one winner."

Taylor has a keen understanding of how big sportswear brands reach consumers: He spent several years in the belly of the beast as a head of marketing for running apparel at Puma. But three years ago, he decided to strike out on his own to launch a clothing label called Tracksmith, designed with serious runners in mind. His brand uses cutting-edge technical fabrics engineered specifically for serious male and female runners, and it honors the history of the sport by re-creating vintage running singlets. It also publishes Meter Magazine, a quarterly journal that delves into the lives of famous runners.

Taylor's not the only executive who has defected from a sportswear Goliath to create a brand with a different point of view. Three years ago, a former Reebok executive started ISlide, which creates customized slide sandals for sports teams to wear when they're off the court or field.

In 2014, two other Reebok employees left the company to launch NoBull, which makes high-tech shoes for CrossFit training. Like Tracksmith, these brands are reaching out to particular niches of athletes whose needs are not being met by the mainstream brands.

Going up against the giants of the industry as a small startup is not for the faint of heart, but as veterans of sportswear companies, these founders realize that the sports market has always been cutthroat. Two of the oldest brands in this sector—Adidas and Puma—came into existence because of an epic rivalry between a pair of German brothers, who, in 1949, decided to split the family running shoe business into two separate entities. Then came newcomers Reebok, Nike, New Balance, Saucony, and Brooks.

These days, the sportswear industry is still a crowded one, but consumer demand for sneakers, workout gear, and yoga pants is also at an all-time high. Over the last seven years, sales in the activewear category have increased 42% to $270 billion. According to Morgan Stanley Research, this growth is expected to continue, adding an estimated $83 billion in sales by 2020.

The new generation of sportswear founders believe that there is room for innovative brands producing specialized products. While the behemoths go wide, trying to appeal to as many consumers as possible, the upstarts go deep, focusing on particular groups of athletes.

Tracksmith

If you ran high school or college track, chances are you've heard of the Run-Cannonball-Run. It goes something like this: In the hottest summer months, the group will go for a run along a nature trail, then midway through, they'll jump into a river to cool off before hitting the road again. Many competitive runners reminisce about these carefree dips in the water when they were younger: It's part of what sets them apart as members of a particular tribe. This is exactly the kind of nostalgia that Tracksmith wants to tap into. On the company's website, there is a beautifully shot video that shows real runners sprinting through a forest, then diving into cool green water with a big splash.

As someone who took part in many cannonball runs in his youth, Taylor remembers how his regular shorts would get soggy in the water and how if he wore swimming trunks, they would chafe when he ran. So he set out to engineer the perfect pair for the experience: shorts made of high-tech fabric that feels soft and comfortable against the skin while also repelling water. "All you need to know is that the whole thing was built with the express intention of getting wet, then getting dry again, lickety-split," reads the description of the "Run Cannonball Run" shorts on the Tracksmith website.

Tracksmith creates many products like this, with details that only a runner would appreciate. For instance, it sells running singlets specifically designed for relays. A team of runners can buy a set of four tops in a choice of patterns (including the company's mascot: the hare) but still look like they are part of the same collection. The message? A powerful relay squad consists of strong individuals who, together, make an even mightier team.

"The big sportswear brands have failed to speak to competitive runners," Taylor says. "In an effort to capture as much of the market as possible, they're not responding to individual communities of athletes." Tracksmith is meant to fill this void, and many investors are betting that it will make a mark in the industry. While the company declined to share sales figures, Taylor has raised $5.7 million so far from a range of investors, including Pentland Group, which has funded many sports and fashion brands, including Speedo, Canterbury, Lacoste, and Hunter Boot. Everlane's founder, Michael Preysman, is also an angel investor and praised Tracksmith for it's "anti-Nike" approach to marketing—that is, targeting a niche.

One of Tracksmith's most successful marketing campaigns to date gave out $250 gift cards to anybody who could prove that they had beaten their previous personal record, while wearing one piece of Tracksmith clothing. "The idea was to celebrate the achievement of runners who are giving the sport their all, while also getting the word out about the brand," Taylor says.

Soon, he noticed that Reddit chains were popping up in which runners were devising ways to share the purchase of a Tracksmith T-shirt or shorts (which cost $60 and $98) so they could participate in the contest. "At first I got hit by a wave of panic, thinking about how many of these gift cards we'd be giving out," Taylor says with a laugh. "But ultimately, the Personal Record Bonus gets to the heart of what we're trying to do as a brand and we're thrilled that people are so excited about it."

iSlide

For 13 years, Justin Kittredge worked at Reebok, developing and selling basketballs, sneakers, and other sportswear. While working with major sports teams, he realized that there was an unaddressed need for off-court footwear.

Three years ago, he launched ISlide, which specializes in customizable slip-on sports sandals. "The only companies that do slides are the big companies that don't do custom, like Nike, Adidas, and Under Armour," Kittredge says. Big-brand athletic wear companies make rubbery sandals, but they're all heavily branded with their own logos. Kittredge wanted to do something different: Make a comfortable sports slide that could be personalized with any design, logo, or name. The only companies providing that service were promotional product companies (the kind from which you might order custom imprinted wedding favors or team sweatshirts). "It's a really low-end quality flip-flop," he says.

For Kitteredge, designing the slide and outsourcing the manufacturing was easy. The difficulty was in creating a fast and affordable in-house customization process. To print individual designs quickly and at scale, Kittredge created his own screen-printing machine. He's now able to offer printed slides at $50 a pair.

So far,the response has been strong. In 2015, the company sold 15,000 pairs of slides; this year, Kittredge expects the business to surpass a million dollars in sales. (It certainly helps that Madonna, Justin Bieber, DJ Khaled, and LeBron James are among ISlide's customers.) He's also provided boutique sneaker shops with their own specially branded shoes. In a fashion era that glorifies sweatpants, Kittredge is confident the market will continue to grow. "Over the last five years, the slide market has more than doubled. So it's about a $600 million category, just in the U.S., just for athletic slides, not even including flip-flops or anything else," he says.

NoBull Project

Michael Schaeffer and Marcus Wilson met at Reebok, where both held senior management positions, as global creative director and head of brand strategy, respectively. But in their years at the company, they became frustrated. They felt it was hard to be nimble, with so many departments and leaders involved in decisions. They also felt that it was easy to lose sight of the consumer. "Working at a big corporation, you obviously have great resources, especially if you are higher up in management," Schaeffer says. "But you get really removed from your customers. We wanted to get back on the ground floor and design for our customer's needs."

When they left Reebok, they had a chance to take a fresh look at what customers wanted from their sportswear. One thing they realized is that people were tired of brands promising that a particular shoe or piece of clothing would somehow improve their performance in a sport or transform their lives. Anybody who has owned a pair of sneakers can vouch for the fact that what you put on your feet doesn't have the power to make you sprint more quickly or lose 10 pounds. So two years ago, they launched a new brand aptly called NoBull. "Our mentality is that our shoes are not going to make you fitter, jump higher, or run faster," Wilson explains. "The only thing that will make you fitter is you working hard every day."

But it's not just marketing that has set NoBull apart. Schaeffer and Wilson are also responding to what they deem an unmet need among CrossFitters: shoes that perform well in activities such as weightlifting, interval training, and calisthenics (all central to CrossFit workouts), but also look fashionable. Nike and Reebok have begun to make CrossFit shoes, for example, but to the NoBull founders, they're nothing much to look at, usually with few colors and patterns. "In the CrossFit community, style is very important," Wilson says. "They take it seriously and so do we."

NoBull's line of unisex sneakers are made of SuperFabric, a tough, hard material that can withstand the abuse of a hard-driving CrossFit workout, but is also lightweight and breathable. There aren't many seams or overlays, which tend to fall apart quickly. And the shoes come in a variety of patterns, including flower, camouflage, and American flag motifs. A new design goes on sale every two or three weeks.

Many CrossFitters have gravitated to the brand because it seems to be speaking their language; NoBull is on track to sell well over 100,000 pairs in 2016. Since the CrossFit community is very tight-knit, word about the brand spreads organically from gym to gym. On social media, hundreds of people have pointed out how refreshing it is not to be led on by false promises. Occasionally, someone will post a picture on Instagram saying that their NoBull sneakers allowed them to reach their goals. "We always reply back with the hashtag #ItsNotTheShoes," Schaeffer says.

When drivers need support, Uber points them to third-party tools. Stride Drive is the latest.

Technically speaking, participants in the so-called gig economy are tiny businesses, which means their jobs don't come with luxuries (formerly known as social safety-net components) such as health insurance, retirement savings plans, or tax withholdings. Stride Health is one company that hopes to help them fill in some of those gaps.

Stride makes its money on commissions from selling insurance, and its first product, which launched in 2013, helps workers find a heath care plan that fits their needs and income. Gig economy companies such as Uber, courier service Postmates, craft marketplace Etsy, and domestic work site Care.com refer their workers to the tool. Stride Health's latest product, which it launched on Wednesday after a pilot with 20,000 Uber drivers, is called Stride Drive. It helps drivers keep track of tax-deductible expenses such as mileage and car washes.

The new standalone app, says Stride Health CEO Noah Lang, ties in well with Stride's insurance marketplace, which must understand workers' income in order to determine whether they qualify for government subsidies on their health insurance. He says that of the workers who qualified for a subsidy last year, two-thirds did not take a single business or a personal deduction "which is a huge miss, because every one of them should."

Workers can sign up for Stride Drive for free. The app ties into Stride Health's insurance marketplace, with the option for a driver to incorporate income and expense data from Stride Drive when shopping for insurance using Stride Health.

A startup called SherpaShare runs another app that tracks mileage and expenses for gig economy drivers, keeping tabs on 80 drives per month for free and charging $5.99 per month, or $59.99 per year for more active drivers. The two-year-old startup has about 100,000 active users between its apps.

Both SherpaShare and Stride Health see themselves as eventual broad vendors of tools for gig economy workers. Lang says that Stride Health's latest app is "part of a suite." And SherpaShare has also launched Pulse, an app that drivers use as a forum.

Uber's preferred form of support for its workers has been to point them to discounts on services like these. (Because drivers are independent contractors, providing actual benefits could serve as evidence against the company in employee misclassification lawsuits.) This month, robo-investing company Betterment began to offer Uber drivers retirement savings plans free for one year. Uber's partners also offer drivers discounts on fuel and phone plans. Lang says the company plans to similarly help market Stride Drive.

The cofounders of Away met at Warby Parker and show how they used early career experiences at startups to launch their own brand.

If you have dreams of one day launching your own startup, the idea of getting an MBA may have crossed your mind. After all, business schools are great at explaining how successful companies got off the ground and providing networking opportunities so you can connect with potential investors and cofounders. That's probably why U.S. Department of Education data indicates that the MBA is the most popular graduate degree.

But Jen Rubio and Steph Korey, who founded the luggage brand Away last year, would encourage you to give business school a miss. "I actually got an MBA from Columbia," Korey tells Fast Company. "But it was—truthfully—less helpful than startup grad school."

A recent report from the global leadership consultancy DDI supports Korey's reasoning. Students can only be exposed to conceptual learning, according to the findings, and they often aren't able to hone necessary skills like being results-oriented or visionary. That and the cost can be prohibitive. In the U.S., tuition alone for a graduate degree can cost $30,000 at a public college or university and $40,000 at a private school, according to data from Peterson's.

"Startup grad school" is their term for what Rubio and Korey did in the early years of their career. They met at Warby Parker in 2011, when the company was still only two years old and just finding its place in the market. They were both in their twenties and were given big responsibilities. Rubio ran Warby Parker's social media efforts while Korey managed its supply chain.

They each left the company to go work at other startups including a British pressed juice brand and Casper, the mattress company. They believe these experiences gave them the skills, industry knowledge, and networks they needed to launch their own direct-to-consumer brand.

Here, they share their thoughts for creating a startup grad school of your own.

Locate Your Future Cofounder . . . On A Totally Different Team

Rubio and Korey quickly became friends when they met at Warby Parker because they had compatible personalities, a mutual interest in traveling, and enjoyed hanging out in their spare time. But the reason they knew they would be great business partners was due to their very different skill sets. "We ran such distinct areas of the business at Warby," Korey recalls. "We were hardly ever in meetings together."

While Rubio was tasked with helping to tell the brand's story on social media, Korey focused on the nuts and bolts of the supply chain, managing sourcing and manufacturing. Rubio would describe herself as a creative, while Korey is firmly in the operations side of the business.

The idea for the company came to Rubio when her suitcase broke while she was traveling. When she texted her friends to ask what brand they would recommend, none of them had a positive response. As a brand expert, Rubio immediately spotted that people did not appear to have brand loyalty for luggage companies. Luggage seemed to be just a utilitarian product. She felt she could create a superior brand experience for consumers, but to better understand how luggage was made, she immediately turned to Korey.

True to form, Korey placed calls and, within a matter of days, understood the intricacies of luggage making. It was clear that together, they could make a formidable business team. "How is the supply chain set up?" Korey says, describing the questions she asked to better understand the industry. "Is the reason certain brands of suitcases are so expensive that they have a similar markup structure to glasses or mattresses? Is it so heavily marked up that there would be a strong quality to price arbitrage opportunity by going directly to consumer?"

When they launched Away, each felt confident that they would be able to manage their side of the business, which was useful in the early days when they wanted to keep their staffing lean. From the start, Korey knew how to find the best luggage manufacturers and was able to place orders. Meanwhile, Rubio immediately understood what it would take to create a brand identity for Away and how to distinguish it from other brands. Most importantly, both partners had faith that the other knew her stuff and could execute. "Because Jen and I are so left-brain, right-brain, the genesis of Away came from two totally opposite sides," Korey says.

Take On The Biggest Challenges You Can

Part of the reason they were so equipped to start their own business is that they had taken on massive responsibilities early in their careers. Korey was responsible for the big challenges of sourcing and manufacturing at Warby Parker. Because the company was still young, she was able to learn fast and rise quickly. Before long, she was managing staff and in charge of everything including buying, planning, production, and fulfillment. This allowed her to serve as a supply chain consultant for Casper when it was just launching.

Even when your job description is simple, there are ways to create new responsibilities for yourself. When Rubio joined Warby Parker in 2011, social media was still an emerging concept. Instagram, for instance, had only just launched. Rubio saw an opportunity to put Warby Parker on the map by involving consumers on social media. "The idea of user engagement, user-generated content, and creating community through social media was not something that everybody did back then," says Rubio. "A big part of my role was actually being an advocate for all these platforms and getting the team to rally around them."

Rubio saw Warby Parker's try-on program, which allows customers to try on five pairs of frames at home for free, as a clear opportunity to get people involved on social media. She was the mastermind behind encouraging customers to post photos of themselves in different glasses on social media, which might get reposted on the main Warby Parker Instagram account. "It really instilled in the company that we weren't going to be a closed-off, super aspirational brand," Rubio says. "We were going to interact with our customers on a regular basis."

After spending two years at the company, Rubio moved to the U.K. where she took on marketing and innovation roles at various British companies including clothing brand AllSaints and a juice startup called Savse. In these new roles, she similarly worked to find ways to bring creative new ideas to the company and implement them quickly. "You have a very short learning curve at startup grad school," Rubio says, with a laugh.

In the end, this series of intense job experiences helped Rubio and Korey quickly amass the array of skills necessary to launch their own brand.

Use Your Newfound Knowledge To Test Your Business Idea

But a smart idea and some experience are not enough to launch a successful company. Before quitting the stability of jobs to start Away, Rubio and Korey tested their business idea repeatedly. First they interviewed over 800 people from across demographics to better understand their suitcase needs. What did they like and dislike about their bags? What was their wishlist of features a bag should have?

They discovered that most people treated luggage like a commodity, rather than a fun accessory or a beloved possession. And they were also baffled that there was no mid-priced bag on the market. "They found that luggage was either cheap, ugly, and going to break, or more expensive than the vacation they were going on," Rubio says.

Korey, for her part, did in-depth market research to understand how the cost and pricing of luggage worked. She discovered that most luggage is sold wholesale to retailers. Samsonite, for instance, sells most of its products at department stores or on other online stores. Along the way, many middlemen were getting a cut of that price. As a result, the customer was paying between five and 10 times what it cost to produce the bag. All of this consumer and supply chain research convinced them that there was a strong business opportunity.

In 2015, Rubio and Korey launched Away luggage using a direct-to-consumer model like Everlane, Brooklinen, and other startups. Through branding and marketing, they communicated to consumers that the luggage was high quality and made in the world's best factories, but because they were cutting out retailers, they could pass along savings to the customer. The brand's tagline is "first class luggage at coach price."

Since launching last November, the brand has done very well, particularly with millennials who are tired of older luggage concepts. It is on track to sell more than 50,000 suitcases this year, which translates to over $10 million in sales. Since very few people have any brand loyalty to luggage companies, it is relatively easy to convince a new consumer to give their brand a try, especially since the bags are priced at between $225 and $295, which is a fraction of the price of comparable companies. "We're using the same skills that we acquired at startup grad school," says Korey. "But we're working for ourselves, which is a dream come true."

By building a platform and staying a step ahead on design, Tile hopes to "blanket the world" in the ability to find your stuff.

Among what Mike Farley says are his wife's many redeeming qualities, the ability to keep track of her stuff is not one of them.

Over the last five years, the CEO and cofounder of Tile says his wife has lost car keys, purses, wallets, jackets, and at one point even a rental car. The inspiration for a Bluetooth tracking device for personal belongings came during a particularly traumatic moment, when her mother's ruby ring went missing. "She cried for days, and she's still ashamed that she lost that ring. And it really got me to a place where I wanted to help her never experience that again," Farley says.

Tile wasn't the first Bluetooth tracker on the market when it launched in 2014, and since then the market has commoditized with similar products such as TrackR, Chipolo, Protag Duet, and Nonda iHere. All of these devices serve the same basic purpose: Put it in your bag or hook it onto your car keys, then pair the tracker to your phone so you can see where you last left it.

As long as a misplaced item is in Bluetooth range of any Tile device—not just yours—it will update its location. Which means that the more trackers that Tile sells, the better it is for the company's customers.

But Farley has his eyes on a bigger prize than sales of standalone trackers. While Tile is now releasing a much thinner tracker, dubbed the Tile Slim, it's also bringing the technology to other companies' products. And as with the existing Tile, these new devices can transmit a signal to other Tile app users, quietly creating a network of found items. The ultimate goal, Farley says, is to "blanket the world in smart location."

Slimming Down

We expect most gadgets to get thinner over time, but looking at the original Tile, it's hard to imagine how much slimmer it could get while still maintaining its Bluetooth chip, internal battery, and cheery chiptune speaker.

With Tile Slim, the answer was to flatten the product out like a pancake. While the $30 tracker has a larger surface area than its predecessor, it's barely thicker than a couple of stacked credit cards. Now you can fit it in your wallet, or stick it to your laptop without creating an ugly protrusion.

On some level, Tile Slim's thinness is an answer to the biggest criticism of the original Tile: The battery is internal and irreplaceable, which means users must exchange the entire device after about a year. (Tile offers a discount on the replacement, at $12 for the original and $21 for the Tile Slim.) While some original Tile alternatives have replaceable coin cell batteries, including TrackR and Chipolo, the Tile Plus is too thin to accommodate them.

"If we were trying to create a replaceable battery, there's no way we'd be able to make this product as thin as it is, nor as durable or as reliable," Farley says.

By sticking to a guaranteed one-year lifespan, Tile has also figured out exactly how small its custom battery can get. Farley says the company tapped into usage data from more than 6 million existing Tiles to better understand the device's power requirements.

"When we originally launched Tile, we didn't know how long Tiles would actually last in the field," Farley says. "We did our calculations to make sure that they would last more than a year, but of course we didn't really know."

The Tile Slim is otherwise similar to its predecessor, with a built-in speaker and a button for pairing and finding your phone if it's nearby. (The speaker also has some new tunes, including a bluesy riff that Farley is especially fond of.)

And as before, Tile uses Bluetooth Low Energy to automatically send a signal to any nearby phone with the Tile app installed. This system allows Tile users to pinpoint their items after leaving them behind, even if the item is moved. It's also the key to Tile's expansion into all kinds of niche devices.

Software Strategy

Tile's competitors might be able to produce Slim-like products eventually. But along with its own hardware, Tile is now bringing its software to other devices that can tap into the same network of apps to help people find their stuff.

Tile has three of these integrations to start: the Nomad PowerPack (a portable battery pack for phones and other devices), the EcoReco electric scooter, and the Zillion wallet with built-in powerbank and charging cable. As with the Tile itself, users will be able to connect with these devices via Bluetooth, and locate them through the Tile app.

On the hardware side, there's nothing special about these devices that allows them to include Tile's firmware. Farley says that in theory, any device with a power source, Bluetooth chip, antenna, and a means of activation (such as a button) could gain location tracking with an over-the-air update. A built-in speaker is optional.

"Say, a Fitbit tracker has over-the-air update on it, we definitely could over-the-air update that device with the Tile firmware library built in, and then it becomes discoverable by the Tile network, and you can interact with it through the Tile app," Farley says.

That said, it's possible for Tile's partners to make special accommodations. The Nomad battery pack, for instance, has a reserve battery just for location tracking, so you can find it after the main battery is spent. The EcoReco scooter and Zillion wallet simply cut off regular usage with a smidge of battery life remaining—enough to provide location tracking for several weeks.

It's in these integrations that the endgame for Tile becomes clear: Other companies may be able to copy the hardware, but the longer they take, the harder it's going to get to duplicate Tile's network effects, especially if the partnership angle gains traction. For as long as cellular-based trackers remain unfeasible due to cost, battery inefficiency, and the complications of dealing with wireless carriers, that Bluetooth-based network represents a major advantage.

"People are getting massive value with that community all the time," Farley says. "And as we know, the network effects business is so powerful, because it's a big moat that you create."

With voice control, sensors galore, and image stabilization, this aspiring GoPro competitor offers a tantalizing (if imperfect) model.

Action cameras are hard to use. GoPro's top-of-the-line Hero4 Black, for instance, has three buttons that you have to push in different sequences just to navigate the settings. The only indicator of where you are is a 0.8-inch monochrome screen, à la gadgets from the early 2000s. In fact, action cameras—typically ensconced in hard-to-reach spots like the top of your bike helmet—are inherently difficult to control. Try pressing the "record" button while barreling down a mountain trail, and the resulting video could be of you flying off your bike and into a tree.

GoPro's aspiring rival, Garmin, aims to make things easier by including voice control in its new VIRB Ultra 30 camera. And it didn't stop there. The unit (listing for the same $500 as the Hero4 Black) expands on Garmin's unique advantage over its competitors: the G-Metrix system of built-in sensors. Like previous models, it includes an accelerometer, altimeter, barometer, and gyroscope. But the new model also adds a magnetometer (i.e. compass) and a more sensitive GPS receiver. They allow the Ultra 30 to constantly track changes in things like speed, pace, altitude, and G-force—as previous models do—and now also aspects of jumps, like height, distance traveled, and number of rotations in the air. The camera can even incorporate data from other sensors, like a chest-strap heart-rate monitor. Garmin's VIRB Edit software gives you the option to add custom overlays of this data to the video.

In other ways, Garmin is playing catchup to the GoPro Hero4 Black, with upgrades to 4K/UHD video resolution and faster frame rates for slow-mo playback. Garmin also adopted a copycat design—dumping the beefy construction of previous VIRB models in favor of a GoPro-style naked camera module that requires a rugged clear case to use.

The Ultra lets you live-stream to YouTube with one touch, using a connection through the camera's iPhone control app (sorry, Android). In January, GoPro enabled live-streaming to Periscope, and a year before that, GoPro already streamed to Meerkat and Livestream. Meanwhile, Sony action cameras connect to Ustream. Unfortunately, they're all missing what may be the most important live-streaming platform: Facebook Live.

What makes the Ultra 30 a preview of the future is that some new features, especially voice control, are still rough. Garmin seems to be on the right track, though. GoPro is expected to follow with similar, perhaps grander, versions in its likely upcoming Hero5 action camera, which may debut in October. Rumored GoPro features—based on sources like a purported leaked manual and instructional video—include voice control, GPS, and auto uploading of videos from the camera to a cloud storage and editing service called GoPro Plus. It would also seem to have an LCD touch screen, as both the VIRB Ultra 30 and GoPro's lower-end Hero4 Silver do. I know from a source that GoPro is putting a lot of work into a more user-friendly interface. (I contacted GoPro about the Hero5 rumors, but the company didn't respond.)

I Wish You Could Hear Me Now

Holding the Ultra 30 in front of me, and speaking in a normal tone and non-robotic cadence, I said, "Okay, Garmin, start recording," and it did, with a cheerful little beep. It also obeyed commands to "Stop recording," "Take a photo," or "Remember that," to tag a cool video highlight so it's easy to find later.

But when I put my helmet on and rode along a breezy beach trail, the Ultra 30 often couldn't hear me. Sometimes it did, when I carefully enunciated and nearly screamed, "Okay Garmin! Start recording!" or some other command. Sometimes even that didn't get results, although it did get puzzled stares from unwitting beach-goers who could hear me yelling at the air.

Since it's an action cam, trying the Ultra 30 on a bike with a little wind doesn't seem unfair. The voice commands aren't reliable enough to use, though simply making the meek confirmation beep louder could be a good enough fix. The GoPro Hero5 is rumored to support even more commands. It will have to understand them more reliably than the Ultra 30 does to be useful.

The video looked pretty sharp, even under the harsh glare of an afternoon sun, and the audio was really impressive. The Ultra 30 includes a new high-sensitivity microphone and inlet in the waterproof case. It picked up my voice while I was speaking softly and riding into an oncoming breeze. In their own cases, the GoPro Hero4 models sound as if they had been locked in the trunk of a car.

With the VIRB Ultra 30, Garmin has largely closed the gap with GoPro—in part by largely imitating GoPro—and Garmin even excels in some areas. The addition of voice control, though still clunky, is such a common-sense feature that it's hard to imagine future action cameras not having it. The Ultra 30's beefed-up sensors are in line with the trend of quantifying our lives through fitness trackers (which Garmin also makes), smartphones, and smart watches.

But Garmin has been chasing two-year-old rival products. GoPro could easily jump ahead again with its successors, which are likely to emerge soon. That may not be great news for Garmin, but it is for customers who can take advantage of ever-better features in the action-camera arms race.

You spend up to 80% of your day communicating, so take care not to fall prey to these common missteps.

In meetings, emails, conversations, and conference calls, business leaders spend roughly 80% of their time communicating. So, it's a significant waste of time and resources if that communication isn't effective. When it comes to the way we speak to others—either groups or individuals—we can often be inadvertently doing or saying things that undermine our effectiveness.

American English is typically spoken at roughly 183 words per minute, but we can listen and understand at up to 400 words per minute. The difference can lead to distraction, says speech coach Ethan F. Becker, PhD, president of the Speech Improvement Company, a speech and communications coaching firm, and author of Mastering Communication at Work: How to Lead, Manage and Influence. "There are all sorts of conversations in the back of our mind," he says. "When I add filler words or something like that, I increase the chance of miscommunication."

Are you doing or saying things that make people tune out or distract them from your message? Here are eight common habits to avoid.

1. Dismissing Their Message

Common phrases like, "You think that's bad? Listen to this!" could be intended to communicate a shared experience, but actually sounds dismissive of the other person's message or experience, Becker says. That can be off-putting. Suddenly your conversation partner or audience is put in defensive mode rather than listening to your experience. It's better to affirm that you heard the other person's story or experience and state that you can relate because you've been through something similar, then tell your story, he says. Using the word "but" can have a similar effect.

2. Using Too Many Filler Words

Words like "um," "you know," or "like," are filler words—Becker calls them "vocalized pauses"—that we tend to repeat out of habit or because of nervousness. Research his team at the Speech Improvement Company has done found that while a few instances per minute doesn't typically deter the message, upwards of six per minute becomes increasingly distracting and makes it difficult for the listener to focus on what you have to say.

3. Breaking Out The Jargon

It's important to not be condescending to your audience, but even if you're in a room full of people who are fluent in industry jargon, they don't want to hear people speak that way for too long, says Kory Floyd, PhD, professor of communication at the University of Arizona and author of Communication Matters.

Using too much technical language, "or even $5 words when a 50¢ word will do," makes language more complicated than it needs to be, says Floyd. Being accessible and specific in your language doesn't mean "dumbing it down." You're simply making it easier for people to truly understand what you're saying, he says.

4. Pretending To Be Someone You're Not

Similarly, the first rule of great communication is to understand your own style, strengths, and weaknesses and adapt to them. Trying to be overly formal when that's not really who you are can sound inauthentic and make listeners less likely to hear your message.

5. Speaking In A Monotone

When you speak in the same tone throughout the conversation or presentation, you risk losing your audience, Becker says. It's important to change your speaking patterns, especially when you're speaking to groups, he says. Moving from an animated, fast-paced speech pattern to one that's more leisurely and relaxed can help keep your audience engaged. If they hear too much of the same speech pattern, they may "zone out," because monotonous speech patterns can be boring, he says.

6. Failing To Regulate Personal Space

A well-known Seinfeld episode put the term "close talker"—someone who moves in close, especially face-to-face, when speaking to another person—into the common lexicon. In interpersonal communication, ensuring proper personal space is essential, says communication expert Leil Lowndes, author of How to Talk to Anyone: 92 Little Tricks for Big Success in Relationships.

But it's not as simple as it seems. If someone moves in close and you pull back abruptly, you could inadvertently send the signal that you're not open to what they have to say. At the same time, if the person is making you uncomfortable, you need to adjust your distance so that you can effectively speak. Sometimes, getting interpersonal space right is like "a little dance," she says, but take your cues from your counterpart and your own comfort level.

7. Getting Eye Contact Wrong

It's well-known that eye contact is important in interpersonal communication, but there's a fine line between being warm and engaging and making listeners feel intimidated or threatened, Becker says.

Communications-analytics company Quantified Communications found that adults make eye contact between 30% and 60% of the time while speaking to individuals or groups, yet they should make eye contact roughly 60% to 70% of the time.

Becker says that when you're speaking to a group, it's important to vary eye contact around the room. Common advice to speakers is to pick more than two or three faces to avoid making those few people very uncomfortable, he says.

8. Ignoring Interaction

Whether you're speaking to a person or a group, failing to allow appropriate interaction can leave your audience members feeling like you don't care about their feedback, Floyd says. These exchanges are supposed to have give-and-take, he points out. When there's no opportunity to participate, listeners may lose interest.

We're more inclined to take principled stands when there's low personal risk in doing so.

As election day draws near, many Americans are not thrilled with their options for president. Both candidates have historically high unfavorable ratings, with Hillary Clinton at 53% and Donald Trump at 61%, by one recent measure. That's left a sizable proportion of Americans struggling with how to vote. According to CNN's latest tally, some 14% of registered voters plan to cast ballots for a third-party candidate, whereas third-party candidates received less than 1% of the popular vote in each of the three past presidential elections.

Undecided voters this year feel considerable antipathy toward both the Democratic and the Republican nominees; many supported Bernie Sanders in the Democratic primaries, while others tilt conservative but are turned off by Trump. So far, most are considering moving their support to the Green Party's Jill Stein or Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson, or just not voting at all. Enough voters fit this description, in fact, that earlier this week Politico thought to ask, "Could undecided voters swing the election?"

That question may not be answerable until November 8, but until then, research in moral psychology may shed some light on the decision this segment of the U.S. electorate is grappling with. As in much else this election year, there may be more to it than just politics.

You Want People To Think You're Ethical

Scientists know that people care deeply about seeing themselves and having others see them as morally upstanding. But psychologists also know that people love opportunities to enhance their moral reputations and sense of self when there's little or no personal cost.

After all, it's easiest to enhance one's moral value by taking a principled stand when there's minimal risk in doing so. One recent set of studies found that when people take principled stands (those who do are called "deontologists"), they're seen by others as more trustworthy than those who make decisions based on what leads to the greatest good ("consequentalists"). Because it's the deontologists who get rewarded, people tend to shy away from consequentialism, but with a caveat: This happens primarily when we think the decision isn't that important. But when we do, more of us turn into consequentialists.

In one classic ethical thought experiment, called the "trolley problem," a loose trolley is barreling down a street; it risks killing five people or just one, depending on whether you pull a lever diverting its course. Researchers have crafted variations of this scenario, but typically it's used to illustrate that when people realize the importance of saving lives, they tend to make a decision for the greater good.

This tendency may inform third-party voting patterns come November. In states with tighter races, a larger percentage of eligible voters typically go to the polls. In 2012, according to FairVote, voter turnout averaged 66% of eligible voters in the 12 most tightly contested states but only 57% in the remaining states. And as the Atlantic recently reported, over the past three presidential elections, third-party candidates garnered lower shares of the statewide popular vote in hotly contended battleground states.

In other words, when an individual voter had cause to see their own vote as mattering less to the outcome, they were more likely to make a principled (or "protest") vote for a third-party candidate or abstain altogether. Voters want to feel or look moral when there's a comparatively low cost.

(While it's harder to speculate, it may even be that this year's third-party candidates are more appealing to people whose personal lifestyles are better insured to weather political gambles; the demographics, according to Pew, suggest that Stein's and Johnson's supporters tend to be relatively young and fairly well off.)

More Than Just The Facts

There's another psychological principle to factor in, too. When making a moral decision, we aren't always "rational" deciders. We don't always weigh the information at hand evenly, because there's already a moral conclusion that we'd like it to confirm—typically one that's in our own self-interest. This phenomenon is called "motivated moral reasoning," and we usually aren't aware we're doing it.

So for instance, someone who supports a third-party candidate may have thoroughly rational reasons why they're planning to cast a ballot for someone they know won't be elected, like to inform politicians about where the electorate is leaning, or let them know about issues that neither party is paying enough attention to.

But people driven by these motivations, the research suggests, are likely to be guided by more personal ones, too. We all interpret information in ways that support our own beliefs (the well-known "confirmation bias"), after all. So while you may place a higher value on a protest vote than on one for either major-party candidate, there's a good chance that you do so for more than just "rational," issues-based reasons—like scoring "principle points" on the cheap.

Not Choosing Is Also A Choice

Finally, "omission bias" may also come into play for those considering third-party candidates—and lead them not to choose any of them. Dozens of studies have demonstrated that people judge harmful actions as worse than inaction. It's no secret that many people consider voting for either Clinton or Trump to be problematic, and feel they're making a more ethical decision by voting for neither.

This is the case, for instance, among many of the Republican politicians who've foresworn voting for Trump but demurred on endorsing an alternative. By avoiding that choice (an inaction), they're able to feel as though they're making a moral decision.

Not voting, though, is still a choice that impacts the election's outcome; inaction, in this case, is no less consequential than action—and can very well contribute to the harm that a conscientious abstainer may be hoping to distance themselves from. But thanks to omission bias, these principled nonvoters are less likely to see it that way.

At the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia, Sarah Silverman called out defiant Sanders supporters on the floor. "To the Bernie-or-bust people," she said, "you're being ridiculous." You may disagree with her choice in adjective, but the uncomfortable reality (all too familiar to moral psychologists) is that choosing the lesser of two evils is sometimes the most rational, pragmatic, and ethical decision you can make.

That circumstance itself may strike you as ridiculous, frustrating, or totally depressing—but the eventual outcome might make you feel worse than taking a moral stand feels good.

Sometimes all people want is a response, even if it's not the ultimate solution they need.

You nod along when everyone around you is talking about how they achieve inbox zero. But truthfully, you never feel like you get there.

And in your defense, that's because you receive messages that require lengthy or thoughtful responses. Someone asked for your opinion, and you'd like to take the time to formulate it. Or there's a five-page attachment for your review—and so you'll need to review it. Or you want to word your response a certain way and would like to wait until you're fresh.

The standard solutions for this situation all kind of suck. You can "confirm receipt," but that sounds super formal, and there's no telling when the other person will prod you with a note that roughly translates to, "And . . . ?" You can leave an auto-responder on 24-7, but that may not be your style—and you're still not providing a specific answer. Or you can just take your time, but you'll have left the other person wondering and waiting.

There's a trick I recently fell into that has solved this problem for me. I aim to reply within 24 hours (if not much sooner), with a line that buys me some time. It satisfies the other person that I'm on it, gives me time to follow up when it works according to my schedule, and gets me that much closer to inbox zero. Here are three of my favorites.

1. "I'll Be In Touch In Approximately [Time Frame]"

I had a former boss who always stressed the importance of managing expectations. Informing people on the front end allows you to bypass confusion and frustration. And the best way to do it is—in the words of the popular adage—under-promise, over-deliver.

If you simply wait a week to get back to someone, he'll assume you considered it a low priority—and that doesn't make anyone feel good. However, if you write him back right away clarifying when you will be in touch, it seems like it was really important to you to provide a timeline as soon as humanly possible.

By setting an expectation for when he can expect a thorough response, you're being thoughtful. And if you beat that date, you're no longer the person who took five days to respond: You're the person who said she'd need a week but replied two days early.

2. "I'm Pushing Up Against A Deadline"

When you're putting off a request, people often to like to know why. Think about it: If someone stops by your desk to brainstorm, she'll probably be thrown off if you say "no" and then turn back to your keyboard. But she's less likely to be offended if you tell her you can't because you're busy preparing for a meeting (or some other totally valid excuse, such as wrapping up projects before your vacation).

This reply follows similar logic. By sharing what's on your plate, you make it possible for your connection to empathize with your workload. She'll know that you're not ignoring her; rather you're preoccupied and need a couple of days before you can give her email your full attention.

I tried this approach and found people appreciated that I even took the time to reach back in such a time-crunched state. Instead of being frustrated or emailing me again a day or two later looking for a response, they wished me good luck and told me to check back in when it worked for me.

3. "I'd Like To Run That By A Colleague Who's Out Of The Office"

This is another line I stumbled upon simply by telling the truth. Most of my team was out of the office a few weeks back, and so I had to postpone any responses that required internal feedback or approval.

Instead of responding like I was giving them the runaround, people were—again—very understanding. We've all had those workdays when our hands are tied, and since you've shared that you can't expedite your reply, there's no reason for the other person to pressure you to write back.

Replying to emails in a timely fashion is worthwhile for everyone involved. It helps you clear out your inbox, and it helps the other person get whatever information he or she needs. And while it may not always be possible to give a full response, it's almost always possible to say something. So, skip a half-thought-out or rushed reply and pick a line that'll buy you some time. It'll make your contact feel like you really care, and it'll allow you to take the time you need to do good work.

This article originally appeared on The Daily Muse and is reprinted with permission.

The Gear S3 runs Samsung's Tizen OS and comes in two flavors—one with its own cellular radio and one without.

It was almost three years ago that Samsung released the first Galaxy Gear smartwatch. That device had an awkward design and a clunky UX, and its design wasn't fashioned after traditional wristwatches. It wasn't treated nicely by the media, and sales were disappointing. What a difference three years makes.

Samsung today unveiled its new Gear S3 smartwatch at the IFA conference in Berlin, and it's clearly learned a lot from its smartwatch-making experience.

The new watch hues to the look and feel of traditional wristwatch design. It's a large watch (46mm across) that covered almost the entire wrist width of one of the female Samsung reps I saw try it on. Samsung says the new watch is targeted mainly at the male market, but points out that large wrist-ware is in vogue for women, too. And while the new watch is wide, and its body is made out of rugged-looking stainless steel, it feels lightweight on the wrist.

Perhaps the biggest idea driving the design of the S3 is Samsung's belief that consumers want a smartwatch that looks and feels like a traditional luxury watch. People also want to be able to look down at their watch and know they'll see something more than a blank screen, Samsung says, so the S3's 1.3-inch AMOLED screen is always displaying the time, even when the watch isn't being used.

Samsung's biggest watch design innovation, perhaps, is the rotating dial that surrounds the screen. You rotate the dial left to see your notifications, and right to see your widgets. When a call comes in, you accept it by rotating right and reject it by rotating left. The Gear S3, like its predecessor the Gear S2 uses Samsung's own Tizen as its operating system.

The Gear S3 comes in two main flavors: the Gear S3 Frontier, which has GPS, Bluetooth, and LTE (cellular) radios inside; and the Gear S3 Classic, which has GPS and Bluetooth but no LTE connection.

Those radios, and all the other sensors (heart rate sensor, barometer, etc.) packed into the Gear S3, require a lot of power. So Samsung increased the size of the battery from 250 milliamps in the Gear S2 to 380 milliamps in the Gear S3. The company says the S3's battery will last through three days of use before needing a recharge.

Both watches have near field communication (NFC) and magnetic secure transmission (MST) chips inside for mobile payments. Wrist-based payments are secure and token-based and can be completed sans smartphone, Samsung explains.

Both versions of the Gear S3 use standard 22mm straps, so you can easily use a strap made by a third party. Samsung will be selling a line of its own straps, too.

Samsung says the prices of the S3 Classic and the S3 Frontier watches have not yet been set.

We'll be soon be giving the new Gear S3 a test drive of our own, after which we'll have a full review.

Much of what you believe to be true probably isn't, thanks to a mental shortcut your brain takes without you realizing it.

In response to a question about whether the Bush administration had adequate evidence showing Iraq was providing weapons of mass destruction to terrorist groups, former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld famously said:

There are known knowns. There are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we now know we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we do not know we don't know.

Something similar can be said about our beliefs. There are "true truths"—things we believe are true and genuinely are: The world is (roughly) round, not flat. Losing weight requires that we exercise more and eat fewer calories. Smoking cigarettes is bad for your health. There are also true lies—things that we believe to be false and actually are. The existence of Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, and perpetual motion machines fall into this category. So far, so good.

But many other times, we're tricked by false truths—things we think are true but aren't. Drinking eight glasses of water a day seems like a good idea, but it doesn't do a bit of good for your health. Many people believe that Napoleon was short, but there's good reason to believe he was actually a bit taller than the average Frenchman of his day. Reducing salt intake has never been shown to prevent heart attacks or strokes, and there's no such thing as an allergy to MSG.

How do these false truths come to be so widely believed? The answer lies in a powerful shortcut that our brains use every day: Information that's easier to process is viewed positively in almost every way. Cognitive scientists refer to this ease as "processing fluency," and it's why your knowledge base is probably more full of flawed ideas than you'd like to believe.

The Mental Shortcut You're Constantly Making

The effect of processing fluency on how we see the world is very robust—possibly alarmingly so. The greater something's "fluency," the more we tend to like it, the less risky we judge it, the more popular and prevalent we believe it is, and the easier we think it is to do. Meals whose recipes are written in hard-to-read fonts are judged as more difficult to make. Money with which we're unfamiliar is perceived to be less valuable. Stock prices of companies with easy-to-pronounce names do better on the day the company goes public than others.

Nor does this come down to just different types of information—it also matters how the same piece of information is presented or stated. We're more likely to believe statements that are themselves easy to process. And one of the easiest ways to increase the fluency of a statement is to repeat it. Randomized controlled trials have shown that people are more likely to believe things to which they've been exposed repeatedly. What's more, the simple act of recalling a "fact" increases its fluency and therefore makes it more believable.

In other words, what counts as common knowledge is a mix of things that are true and other things that are false, all of which are believed because they're widely held, frequently repeated, and routinely recalled. It's this fluency-as-a-surrogate-for-truth shortcut that makes innovation tricky: We trust in assumptions about the way the world operates that seem so obviously true that we fail to test them. And in failing to check these basic assumptions, we slam the door shut on finding new and better ways to do things.

For example, when I worked at a large health care company, we observed that the vast majority of patients preferred to get their regular medications from local pharmacies rather than through the mail. Common sense told us that patients were voting with their prescriptions, choosing retail pharmacies over mail order, and that despite being able to save money by switching, those savings weren't a big enough enticement to get them to change.

As in many other cases, though, common sense was wrong. It turned out that between 35% and 50% of those patients preferred mail order to retail. They simply hadn't gotten around to making the change. What we thought was an intentional choice was just behavioral inertia.

Testing The Ideas We Don't Know Are Bad

So how can you bypass your brain's natural processing-fluency shortcut to make sure you aren't not clinging to so many false assumptions?

The best way is to build explicit experimentation into how you operate. For example, suppose you have a formal process for ranking candidates that you're considering hiring. You might periodically, and at random, hire the candidate ranked second or third. This approach allows you to test whether your ranking algorithm is actually working; without it, you'll never really know.

In the meantime, though, we shouldn't be all that surprised that our brains assume that things that are easier to process are just all around better. After all, in the harsh and dangerous environment in which our brains evolved, things that were familiar—the people in our group, the path to the river, the sun and moon moving across the sky—were likely to be safer and more trustworthy.

But our environment has changed enormously since then. Now more than ever, we need something far more reliable to separate truth from fiction. And for that, there's always the scientific method.